❯ WHO IS THIS FOR
Founders who don’t fit
the pitch deck.€10-50k first checks · pre-seed · no board seat · warm intros only.
$ echo "your pitch" | mail niklas@bfc.fyi
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run by a founder who runs a company (SECJUR),
who spent 2023 finding out how deep you can fall and still come back.
And who also happens to be a lawyer and artist.
◢◤ WHO'S BEHIND THIS
Niklas Hanitsch. Founder-CEO of SECJUR (compliance startup, 50+ team, venture-backed, Google for Startups Cybersecurity Accelerator, some awards along the way - Capital 40under40, Deutscher Startup-Pokal Cybersecurity 2022, if any of that matters to you).
Also: criminal defense lawyer since 2016. Wirtschaftsstrafrecht. Which means when a founder calls me at 11pm about something they shouldn't have signed, I can actually tell them what to do.
I know what that call sounds like from the other side too. In 2023 SECJUR ran a down-round while I was losing a co-founder, absorbing an internal investigation, personally exposed on Selbstschuldbürgschaften and Grundschulden against the company's debt, and — for good measure — becoming a father the same year. None of it was supposed to work out. Enough of it did that we're still here.
I'm also a Venture Scout at identity.vc — Europe's first LGBTQ+ venture fund. So beyond the €10k first checks I write personally, queer founders get a dedicated channel through me into a fund that was built for exactly this. If that's you: same inbox. Say so.
If you want the long version instead of this paragraph, it's on the Startup Insider and Arrtist podcasts. Verbal, not curated.
Before all of that: Amazon Legal, Taylor Wessing Silicon Valley, Bird & Bird, WHU MBA. If you care.
◢◤ THESIS
Most VCs bet on markets. I bet on founders who won't be talked out of what they're doing.
That's a smaller pool. It's also a much more interesting one.
I write €10k–50k pre-seed checks - first money, no board, WhatsApp access instead of governance overhead. No thesis about sectors. No partner meetings. No signaling.
Weakest at: consensus. Saying yes fast. Strongest at: legal, security, compliance-adjacent tech, and founders in situations most people would call a mess.
I'm wrong all the time. That’s life.