KIZOO provides mentoring, seed and early stage financing  for Rejuvenation Biotech and IT startups. Having been entrepreneurs ourselves for many years, we are a friendly source of capital with lots of added value. We are extremely passionate about the companies and the teams we support.

If you are looking for financing and support please feel free to send a presentation or anything else you think might be appropriate to highlight your story to [email protected]

Rejuvenation Biotech

As part of Michael Greve's Forever Healthy Initiative we directly support the creation of startups turning research on molecular and cellular repair of the root causes of aging into therapies for human application.

Elevian is a Harvard spinout developing therapeutics to stimulate regenerative capacity, the body’s ability to repair itself, that declines as we age. 

Elevian’s founders have identified circulating blood factors, including GDF11, that broadly stimulate regenerative capacity in aged animals in many organs and tissues (e.g. brain, heart, pancreas, muscle, and others).  Initially planned indications include Alzheimer’s disease, heart failure, Type II diabetes, and age-related muscle dysfunction.
Antoxerene uses proprietary next generation screening technology to identify small-molecule compounds that target pathways of aging. 

The team focuses on next generation screens with higher predictive value than traditional approaches and expects first on-target therapeutic candidates for the p53/MDM2 pathway, a oncology target, and the p53/FOXO4 pathway, a newly identified pathway involved in cellular aging.
FoxBio will develop Antoxerene’s collection of small molecules that specifically target senescent cells. 

There has been a lot of interest surrounding the therapeutic applications of senolytic drugs – compounds that clear toxic senescent cells – particularly with respect to age-associated disease. As molecular pathways unique to senescent cells have begun to be identified, drugs to target these pathways can now be developed.
​AgeX Therapeutics, Inc. is a biotechnology company applying technology relating to cell immortality and regenerative biology, to aging and age-related diseases. The company has three initial areas of product development: pluripotent stem cell-derived brown adipocytes; vascular progenitors; and induced tissue regeneration. Initially planned indications for these products are Type II diabetes, cardiac ischemia, and cancer respectively.

​When a cell reaches the end of its life or becomes damaged beyond repair it is supposed to either kill itself or signal the immune system to remove it. Unfortunately every so often this mechanism fails, the cell stays around indefinitely and starts poisoning it's environment. Over time we accumulate more and more of these harmful, death resistant senescent cells.

​A recent study in rodents has shown that clearing senescent cells can both reduce the negative effects of age-related diseases and extend the healthy lifespan by up to 35%. Oisin is developing a cellular repair therapy based on a genetically-targeted intervention to clear senescent cells from our body.

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the leading cause of vision loss among people over the age of 50. AMD is thought to be caused by aggregation of A2E a toxic, non-degradable cellular waste product in our eye's retina cells. Lysoclear is a molecular repair therapy based on the targeted delivery of exogenous A2E degrading enzymes to our retinal cells to eliminate A2E, treat AMD and restore vision.

The team recently announced a Series-A offering to bring its product through Phase I clinical trials. LysoClear would be the first clinical candidate based on the repair and rejuvenation paradigm, pioneered by the SENS research foundation.

CellAge is aiming to increase human healthspan and reduce the incidence of age-related diseases by helping the human body destroy senescent cells. The team is focusing on a novel approach for this challenge by developing synthetic promoters for senescence cell detection and removal.

The teams joint expertise in senescence, synthetic biology and bioinformatics gives CellAge a unique angle on improving ways that gene therapies could be targeted to senescent cells.

Grapeseed.Bio is a life science accelerator program for young companies that develop therapeutic interventions for age-associated diseases. 

​To accelerate the development of rejuvenation therapies for human use, our Forever Healthy Foundation has teamed up with the SENS Research Foundation and created the annual Undoing Aging Conference in Berlin. Undoing Aging is focused on the molecular and cellular repair of age-related damage as the basis of therapies to bring aging under full medical control.

Speakers include leading researchers from around the world focused on topics including stem cells, senescent cells, immunotherapies, biomarkers, and drug discovery.

SAAS, Internet & Mobile

Being part of the German internet right from the beginning, founding and developing several major internet companies ourselves, multiple exits including taking one of them public, has been an incredible journey for us. Now we are even more excited to support and mentor some of our country's most promising startups.

Staffbase closes the intranet gap for non-desk workers. It is a ready-to-go SaaS solution to extend the reach of internal communications to employees working outside the office, a group representing more than 2/3 of the global workforce.

​Employees can use the EmployeeApp on their own (private) smartphones which fundamentally reduces the costs of launching an intranet for them.

Mambu enables any financial institution to easily deliver state-of-the-art banking through its software-as-a-service cloud solution. Agile, flexible and open, Mambu eliminates the complexities typically associated with core banking software, at a fraction of the cost.

​Established in 2010, the Berlin ­based company works with more than 100 institutions in 30 countries worldwide.

Babbel has made learning languages fun, easy and accessible to everyone. The market-leading app consists of high-quality courses available for iOS, Android, desktop and Apple Watch. Babbel currently offers 14 learning languages (Spanish, French, English, German, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, Turkish, Polish, Indonesian, Dutch, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish and Russian).

​At present over 500 people work from the company’s offices in New York and Berlin, representing 28 different nationalities between them. The company has been profitable since 2011 and has experienced 100% year-on-year growth since that time.

MOQO is the SaaS-engine for shared mobility services. Its cloud-based platform enables everyone to offer shared mobility services with outstanding quality and exceptional economy of scale. 

Shyftplan is an online shift-planning service that SMEs can use to organize and communicate with their employees. Company administrators can quickly and easily create the payroll for all employees. Shyftplan, in comparison to a tax accountant, is about 70% cheaper for generating payrolls.

Prescreen is an e-recruiting solution that enables organizations to optimize their recruiting process. The system helps HR departments in the advertising of job vacancies, the search and recruitment process, as well as interviewing and assessment of candidates.  Exit to Xing in 2017.

Suitepad is a new communication channel that brings hotels and their guests closer together, renders an even more comfortable guests experience, and yields additional financial value for hotels.

In addition to a combined hardware and software solution the Suitepad solution also provides access to many different hotel entertainment features such as movies, newspapers, and event tickets.

Tamyca is Germany's first and leading peer-to-peer carsharing marketplace, connecting car owners whose vehicles are sitting idle for most hours of the day with people who need a car.

Providing fully comprehensive insurance as well as all legal forms and documentations, there is no hassle or risk for owners or renters. Exit to Snappcar in 2017.

REVL is a new kind of action camera, a better camera. One that allows you to enjoy the moment, knowing your footage will look great and you can spend less time editing and more time having fun.

REVL wants to bring this camera to the world and build a stronger community of passionate, adventurous people who love sharing their adventures with the world.

MegaZebra is a developer and publisher of Social Games. Its platform allows users of social networks to play online games against their friends. Millions of games are being played by its users.

Management

Michael Greve

Michael and his brother Matthias are probably two of the most successful founders of the German-speaking Internet industry.

Among numerous ventures, they founded flug.de and grew the site into one of Germany´s most successful flight booking destinations (Sold to Otto Group). They launched lastminute.de and turned the service into the largest last-minute travel site in Germany (Sold to Lastminute.com). Most notably, the brothers founded web.de and after a successful IPO, grew the company into one of Germany's largest Internet portals and online media businesses (sold to United Internet).

Matthias Hornberger

Matthias is CFO of Kizoo. He has been part of the senior management team since the IPO of the AG in 2000.

With his long-standing experience in the investment sector and his comprehensive knowledge of typical features of successful business models on the internet, he is a competent reference person for young founders. Matthias has extensive contacts in the high-tech industry and numerous local and national networks.

Frank Schüler

Frank Schueler, MSc is Managing Director of Kizoo.

​Frank led the IPO of web.de, co-founded the Kizoo Venture Capital business with Michael and Matthias, and since then has helped numerous startups to grow. Among Franks board-level assignments, he is COO of the Forever Healthy Foundation, co-founder of the Undoing Aging science conference series, member of the board of the SENS Research Foundation, Mountain View, California and on the executive board of Atevia AG, a public company for 16 years.
​Previously, he was a strategy consultant with PriceWaterhouseCoopers. Frank holds a M.Sc. (New York) and a Dipl.-Wirtsch.-Ing. from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany.
Patrick Burgermeister
Patrick Burgermeister recently joined Kizoo coming from the venture capital group BioMedPartners where he was one of the partners. His experience in the industry encompasses both banking (as a senior analyst for pharma/biotech) as well as pharma (as a senior portfolio manager at Novartis). Patrick supported various biotech companies as a director on their boards, was a successful business developer for early-stage biotech companies and led collaboration and licensing deals with public and private companies. He headed business development at several companies including Apeiron Biologics and BioVersys.

Patrick holds a Master's degree in molecular biology from the University of Basel, an MBA from the University St. Gallen and a degree as a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA).