Investing in the agent-first economy
Yo! I'm Andy Lenz, Founder of
t3n and heise ventures.
I invest as an LP in early-stage funds, micro VCs and solo GPs, and as a business angel in Agentic AI, tech infrastructure, longevity and fintech.
Not agentic-first?
Uninvestable!
Agentic-first companies run on a company brain, a living memory of their data, decisions and know-how that agents can act on. Without it, every quote, onboarding and monthly close still needs people. Those companies grow by hiring, not by leverage. That's where capital will stop flowing.
01THESES
Eight convictions on the future of life, technology and capital.
AI is not a bubble. It is the largest capital reallocation of our lifetime.
We are entering an infrastructure supercycle across compute, energy and data, and we are still early.
The internet is being rebuilt for machines.
Agents are becoming the internet's main users. They search, compare and buy on our behalf, so demand follows what machines can read, not what people browse.
Agents don't click. They execute. UI is legacy. APIs are distribution.
If the buyer is an agent, the storefront is an API. Products that can't be called, priced and paid for by machines won't be found. Execution replaces attention as the primary battleground.
In AI, Europe's edge will be trust, not intelligence.
Data protection, sovereignty and open source are not obstacles, they are infrastructure and create a structural advantage for defensible AI systems. The only trust-based AI ecosystem on the planet is being built here.
Finance is becoming programmable and agent-native.
Stablecoins, real-world assets and onchain markets, combined with institutional adoption, create a perfect storm for autonomous capital and agent-driven trading.
Non-engineers become CTOs. When everyone can build, everything gets built.
The bottleneck was never the idea. It was the build. AI removes it. What follows is an explosion of founders, products, apps and companies the world has never seen.
Robotics is AI's real endgame and it scales itself.
Once machines design, build and deploy machines, growth decouples from human labor entirely. We are entering the first era of self-compounding physical GDP.
Longevity is the next trillion-dollar asset class. AI is the unlock.
Time is the most undervalued asset there is. When AI meets biology, health becomes predictable, preventable and personal. The companies that own the loop between data, diagnostics and intervention will define the next era of healthcare.
02PORTFOLIO
From first ticket to unicorn.
- years building t3n
- 15+
- angel investments
- 12
- fund commitments as LP
- 10
- unicorns via funds
- 8
- exits
- 2
I spent more than 15 years building one company. Now I back the people building the next ones.
t3n grew from its first issue into one of Germany's leading tech media brands before I sold it to the heise group. Since then I back founders through two vehicles.
TR3X Ventures is my own investment company. It holds the angel investments and fund commitments shown on this page. heise ventures is the heise group's vehicle for early-stage investing, which I co-founded with Johanna Heise. Together, the two have written around 40 tickets, into early-stage funds and directly into startups.
I invest two ways: directly as a business angel, and as an LP in early-stage funds. Founders get more than a ticket: someone who has built, scaled and sold a company, who knows how brands are made, and who picks up the phone. I invest for the long run, and only where I hold a conviction.
DIRECT INVESTMENTS
VC FUNDS AS LP · 10 COMMITMENTS ACROSS 7 MANAGERS
UNICORNS FROM MY FUNDS
MORE FROM MY FUNDS
03PODCASTS & INTERVIEWS
On the record.
04ABOUT
Founder. Investor.
Brand builder.
Andy Lenz is a tech investor, founder and brand builder from Hannover, Germany. He co-founded t3n, led it as CEO and spent more than 15 years building it into one of Germany's pioneering media brands for the digital economy, before selling it to the heise group.
Today he invests through TR3X Ventures, his own investment company, and is co-founder and venture partner of heise ventures, the venture unit of the heise group. As a business angel he backs founders in Agentic AI, tech infrastructure, longevity and fintech. As an LP he invests in early-stage funds, micro VCs and solo GPs. He is also co-founder of new zapiens, a hub for healthspan maximization, and founding investor and advisor at ShopAgentic.
For more than ten years he has advised Lower Saxony's Ministry of Economic Affairs and State Chancellery, including as a member of the state's startup advisory board.
Off the clock: family & friends, the beach, padel, gadgets, pitch decks and 🔥 brand building ✌️.
I talk about
- Agentic-first companies and the company brain
- Why Europe's AI edge is trust, not intelligence
- Longevity as the next asset class
- Building a media brand: 15+ years of t3n
- Investing as an LP in micro VCs and solo GPs
05CONTACT
Get in touch.
For founders building agent-first companies in my focus areas, and for press, podcast and speaking requests.
WHAT I INVEST IN
- STAGE
- Inception, pre-seed and seed
- SECTORS
- Agentic AI, tech infrastructure, longevity, fintech
- REGION
- Europe, with a focus on DACH
- AS LP
- Early-stage funds, fund of funds, micro VCs and solo GPs