Digital + Growth Fund
How could Germany’s first dedicated growth-fund private equity firm build confidence with the US investor base? That was the challenge facing Digital+ when they approached Pulse.
Two men looking at a whiteboard with diagrams
Man with blue shirt looking at white board with blue and white pieces of paper Two men at a whiteboard one writing

Challenge

Digital+’s strength is their deep understanding of the German economic landscape, especially the largely untapped emerging digitalised industrial and financial technology sectors. But the firm needed to make in-roads into the US investor base with a clear proposition. Given our experience of supporting other PE firms, they asked us to help them to explore their purpose, operating principles and overall strategy in order to develop an appropriate narrative.


Insight

Convincing financial backers outside of Europe meant communicating the opportunity of backing German-based digital companies. Through the process of workshops with the founders in Kitzubel, Austria and London, it became apparent that there was a need to strike a balance between being able to ‘fly the German flag’ – highlighting Germany’s significant digital capability and industrial base, while demonstrating the potentially huge impact of digitalised industrial technology on economic and social prosperity. In so doing, the firm’s purpose took greater shape.


Action

Having worked to articulate Digital+ purpose, understand their key audiences and delve deeply onto what kind of company it wanted to be, we set out to help them concisely articulate their proposition when meeting with financial backers and other key stakeholders. With a clearer sense of what needed communicating, we were able to distil the complexity of their proposition and why they were uniquely well-placed to help companies to reach the next level with growth funding. In late 2016, Digital+ undertook their first closing above forecast and ahead of schedule.