Interview with Lars Lombardi Backer Too Many Great Founders Go Unseen

Interview with Lars Lombardi Backer on Startup Discovery, Systematic Investing, and the Future of Venture  Partner of Investigate.vc

Q: Lars, you’ve worked closely with founders, growth companies, and private markets. What convinced you to join Investigate.vc? 

Lars Lombardi Backer: 
I’ve been fortunate to spend my career working with early-stage companies in one form or another — as an advisor, operationally, or helping optimize structures for growth and exits. Across all of those experiences, the common denominator has been founders: incredibly knowledgeable entrepreneurs trying to build companies that can make a real impact in their industries. 

What I’ve seen firsthand is how difficult it can be for these founders to access the right support and capital at the right time. Many are building genuinely valuable businesses, but they struggle to get discovered by the right investors early enough to truly accelerate their growth. 

At the same time, I’ve also seen the reality inside venture capital. Many funds receive hundreds of decks every week — far more than they can realistically evaluate properly. As a result, investors increasingly go out searching for opportunities through existing networks, while many founders never get the visibility or support they deserve. 

That creates a major inefficiency in the market. 

What convinced me to join Investigate.vc was that they are trying to solve this structurally. They’ve built a systematic, data-driven approach to identifying and supporting a large group of early-stage companies globally. That immediately stood out to me as both highly differentiated and deeply needed in today’s private markets. 

I believe a major shift is coming in how venture capital operates — and I see Investigate.vc as having a meaningful first-mover advantage in that transition. 

Q: You’ve said that traditional venture models leave too many opportunities undiscovered. What do you mean by that? 

Lars Lombardi Backer: 
The venture industry still relies heavily on human bandwidth, relationships, and pattern recognition. That works to a point — but with rapidly changing markets, an explosion of data, and more founders building globally than ever before, it becomes increasingly difficult to scale effectively. 

There are simply too many startups, too much information, and too much innovation happening simultaneously for traditional sourcing models to keep up. Great founders can easily be overlooked — not because they lack quality, but because the system itself is overloaded. 

That’s why I believe the future of venture has to become more systematic. 

The funds that will generate the strongest alpha while also minimizing risk are the ones capable of filtering intelligently through enormous amounts of information, identifying signals earlier, and supporting founders in a much more scalable way. 

Private markets are becoming too large and complex for traditional sourcing models alone. This kind of infrastructure is becoming necessary, not optional. 

That’s where Investigate.vc is building something very different. 

Q: What makes Investigate.vc’s approach unique in your view? 

Lars Lombardi Backer: 
Investigate.vc combines something you rarely see together: deep venture experience, operational scaling expertise, and a proprietary AI- and data-driven investment approach. 

The platform is designed to filter through massive amounts of private market data globally and identify companies with strong underlying characteristics — particularly around network effects, scalability, and long-term resilience. 

But what really stood out to me is that the model doesn’t stop at discovery. 

The platform is built to actively help companies collaborate and scale together. For example, one portfolio company may be able to accelerate growth through strategic partnerships with another company inside the ecosystem. That creates entirely new possibilities for scaling founders faster and more effectively. 

Sitting on top of that kind of intelligence and connectivity not only reduces the likelihood of companies failing — it materially increases the ability for founders to succeed and create impact. 

What also impressed me was that the platform isn’t constrained by geography or sector. The ability to identify patterns across industries globally creates a significant advantage in understanding where markets, technologies, and opportunities are heading. In an increasingly AI-driven world, that kind of data becomes incredibly valuable. 

The ability to systematically increase exposure to exceptional outlier companies is where venture capital generates disproportionate returns. I believe Investigate.vc is building infrastructure specifically designed for that. 

I also believe this “fat-tail” approach — where you allocate broadly across promising founders early, then scale capital aggressively into the highest-performing outliers — is where much of venture capital and private equity is ultimately heading. 

Q: Why is the global aspect of Investigate.vc important to you? 

Lars Lombardi Backer: 
Because innovation is now truly global. 

The most interesting companies and trends are emerging across Asia, Europe, North America, South America, and increasingly Africa as well. To properly understand the future, you need exposure to multiple markets, sectors, and ecosystems simultaneously. 

What attracted me to Investigate.vc was that the platform is being built with that global perspective from day one. 

The data being collected through its technology and strategy becomes incredibly valuable in helping navigate a rapidly changing world. Having a broad international footprint allows the firm to identify patterns, opportunities, and shifts earlier than firms operating within a single geography or narrow thesis. 

I believe that global perspective is something we should all think more seriously about as we support the next generation of companies. 

Q: What excites you most about working with founders through Investigate.vc? 

Lars Lombardi Backer: 
What excites me most is the ability to help more founders get heard — and get access to meaningful support during critical stages of growth. 

Some of the best entrepreneurs are incredibly strong builders, operators, and innovators, but they shouldn’t also have to become experts in fundraising, investor positioning, scaling strategy, and global market navigation all at once. 

Investigate.vc has the opportunity to help fill that gap. 

I may be relatively new to venture capital itself, but I’ve spent years working closely with founders and growth companies. I understand many of the operational and financial challenges they face while scaling. Bringing that experience into a platform that is already deeply data-driven, globally connected, and operationally engaged is incredibly exciting to me. 

At the end of the day, we’re investing in founders with ambition and vision — while building a more systematic and sustainable way of supporting innovation globally. 

The approach is not something you see every day — but personally, I believe it fills an important gap in the market, and that’s exactly why I wanted to be part of it.