What does Hello World Investments do?

Hello World Investments is an Amsterdam-based angel investment firm that backs early-stage founders with time, knowledge, and capital. We invest pre-seed and seed in high-conviction founders building the next generation of great companies.

Who founded Hello World Investments?

Hello World Investments was founded by Sam Renders (co-founder of Sam Feldt and Fangage) and Nick Velten (founder of Stimmt and Fangage), two Amsterdam-based entrepreneurs with deep roots in the European startup ecosystem.

How can I pitch my startup to Hello World Investments?

You can reach out to Hello World Investments directly via the contact form on our website at helloworld.amsterdam or email us at hello@helloworld.amsterdam. We review every pitch personally.

What stage startups does Hello World invest in?

Hello World Investments focuses on pre-seed and seed stage startups. We back founders at the earliest stages of company building, often before product-market fit, when the right support network matters most.

The Amsterdam Startup Ecosystem in 2026

Amsterdam is no longer Europe's best-kept secret. In 2026, the Dutch capital sits firmly among the continent's top five startup ecosystems — alongside London, Berlin, Paris, and Stockholm — with a density of talent, capital, and international connectivity that outperforms its size at every turn. With over 2,500 active startups, more than €2.8 billion in venture capital deployed in the Netherlands last year, and a city that genuinely knows how to attract and retain international founders, Amsterdam has moved from an emerging hub to a mature, self-sustaining ecosystem. We're based here. We see it every day. And we think the best of it is still ahead.

Why Amsterdam

The structural advantages are real and compounding. Schiphol Airport connects Amsterdam to more destinations than almost any other European hub, making it trivially easy for founders to be in London, Berlin, and New York in the same week. The city is English-first in practice — over 90% of the working-age population speaks English fluently, which removes one of the biggest friction points for international founders building European companies here. Corporate tax structures are competitive, the legal environment for startup formation is efficient, and the government has made genuine commitments to attracting international talent through programs like the Dutch Highly Skilled Migrant visa.

But the deeper advantage is cultural. The Dutch have a phrase — doe maar gewoon, dan doe je al gek genoeg — roughly translated as "just act normal, that's already crazy enough." It sounds like modesty, but what it actually encodes is an anti-bullshit gene. Amsterdam's startup culture is pragmatic, direct, and allergic to hype for its own sake. Founders here build things that work. They're not obsessed with narrative over substance, which means the companies that do break through tend to have real business models underneath them.

The international composition of the city matters too. Over 180 nationalities call Amsterdam home. That diversity creates a unique testing ground for consumer products targeting global markets, and it means founding teams can assemble talent from across Europe and beyond without anyone having to uproot their life dramatically.

Key Sectors Growing in 2026

Climate tech and sustainability. The Netherlands has a long relationship with managing environmental risk — water, land, energy — and that national DNA is translating directly into startup activity. Climate tech investment in the Netherlands grew 34% year-over-year in 2025, with companies in carbon markets, green logistics, and sustainable food systems attracting serious institutional capital. Startups like Fairphone, homegrown in Amsterdam, have shown that sustainability-first brands can build global category leadership.

Fintech and payments. Amsterdam sits at the center of European payments infrastructure. Adyen, one of Europe's most valuable public tech companies, is headquartered here and has effectively seeded an entire generation of fintech talent. That network effect is not subtle — dozens of Adyen alumni have gone on to found fintech startups, and the institutional knowledge of building for regulated financial markets is deep in the city's operating fabric.

Creator economy and digital media. This is a sector we know well at Hello World. The Netherlands punches well above its weight in creator-economy infrastructure, from live events (WebSummit now has a strong Amsterdam presence) to D2C brands built on top of audiences. The rise of platforms like Fangage — co-founded by both Sam and myself — demonstrated that Amsterdam-based teams could build global infrastructure for creators at scale. That thesis continues to attract founders.

Developer tools and B2B SaaS. Amsterdam's enterprise software scene is quieter than its consumer counterpart but increasingly productive. The city's concentration of large enterprise headquarters — many European divisions of global companies are based in the Amsterdam metropolitan area — creates both a customer base and a talent pool for B2B founders. Companies like TrackBee are building in this space with deep understanding of the workflows they're improving.

Health, wellness, and functional consumer. Behavioral change at the consumer level is having a moment, and Amsterdam is a natural base for it. Update, one of our portfolio companies, is part of a wider shift toward functional beverages that do more than hydrate — driven by consumer demand for products that support mental performance, recovery, and sustained energy without the crash. Amsterdam's health-conscious consumer base makes it an ideal market to develop and test these products before scaling internationally.

The Funding Landscape

Early-stage capital is genuinely available in Amsterdam in a way it wasn't five years ago. The angel community has matured significantly — there are now dozens of experienced angel investors in the city who've built and exited companies and are actively writing checks into the next generation. Funds like Slingshot Ventures and Curiosity VC, both of which we've backed, represent a new wave of European venture that combines local market knowledge with international network access.

The gap that still exists is at Series B and beyond. European growth equity has historically lagged the US market, forcing Amsterdam-based companies to cross the Atlantic for their larger rounds. That's changing — Tiger Global, Softbank, and several US-based multi-stage funds now have dedicated European coverage teams — but it remains a structural challenge that Amsterdam's best companies have to plan around. The good news is that the founders who've built here know this and factor it into their capital strategy from the start.

What We See From the Ground

Being based in Amsterdam and investing from here gives us a vantage point that pure-financial investors don't have. We see the companies at the earliest stages, when they're still deciding what to build. We see the talent moving between companies and understand what the best operators in the city are working on. We understand the cultural context that shapes how Amsterdam-based founders approach their businesses — the directness, the pragmatism, the international-first thinking.

What we're most excited about in 2026 is the quality of second-time founders coming back into the market. The first wave of Amsterdam startup success — the Booking.com, Adyen, and TomTom generations — has now produced enough experienced operators that founder quality at the earliest stages is measurably higher than it was even three years ago. These are people who understand what it takes to scale, who've seen what good looks like, and who are now building with that hard-won knowledge.

Amsterdam is ready for its next chapter. We're glad to be investing from the middle of it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Amsterdam a good place to start a company if I'm not Dutch? Yes — arguably better than most European cities. The English-first culture removes language friction entirely, the visa pathways for skilled founders are well-established, and the international mix of the city means you won't feel like an outsider. Many of the most successful Amsterdam-based founders in the past decade have been German, British, American, and beyond.

What sectors are underserved in Amsterdam right now? Defense tech and deep tech with long development cycles are still underfunded relative to their opportunity. The city also lacks the critical mass in biotech that you see in London or Basel, though the proximity to the Netherlands' strong university network is starting to change that at the pre-seed stage.

How does Amsterdam compare to Berlin for founders? They're different bets. Berlin is larger, louder, and tends to produce consumer internet companies at scale. Amsterdam is tighter, more internationally networked, and tends to produce companies with cleaner business models earlier. Neither is objectively better — it depends on what you're building. For fintech, creator economy, and sustainability, Amsterdam is our clear preference.

For more on how we think about backing founders across these sectors, read our piece on why we invest in founders, not ideas.