We turn generations of substance into your next growth chapter.
Venture building, venture clienting and strategic investing for family businesses.
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The model family businesses were built on is wearing thin.
The next generation inherits a legacy – and a flattened growth curve.
Growth from quality and brand is thinning. Margin sits in new offers.
AI, data and regulation change who can sell, and how fast.
Three routes to growth beyond the core.
We run all three.
Build
Turn an opportunity the core has already seen into its own business.
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Become a startup’s customer, not its investor – and solve a key problem fast.
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Put family capital into companies that matter to your future.
Learn more +Close ×Build is a full-cycle business building process — taking an opportunity from the first question to a business with its own P&L: a new product, a spin-off or a unit. AI takes out the cost that used to make this out of reach — smaller teams, fewer handoffs, proof in months. A venture that wasn’t economic for a company your size three years ago is economic now.
→ Your core is stable but the growth curve has flattened.
→ You want revenue that doesn’t depend on the core.
→ You own something others would pay for that isn’t a product yet.
→ The next generation wants something of their own to run — or brings a skill set the core has no use for yet.
Explore
Map the opportunity space against what you already own.
Incubate
Test the riskiest assumptions with real customers, before anything gets built.
Accelerate
Build the first version, put it in market, find what people pay for.
Grow
Hire the founding team and turn it into a business with its own P&L.
Scale
Operational hand-off to the family. The venture runs without us.
Three months from a shortlist of opportunities to one concept your board can decide on.
You leave with: A mapped opportunity space, one concept tested against real demand, and the case for building it or stopping.
Partner starts with a problem a business can’t solve internally and ends with a startup running inside your operation. You don’t have to buy them or fund them. What they need is what you already have — a real production environment, a channel, a certification, a reference customer. You get the solution, they get the market, and no equity changes hands. And if the pilot works, you’ve run the cheapest possible due diligence on a joint venture.
→ You keep meeting startups that could matter, but nothing survives the first meeting.
→ A capability you need would take three years to build, and someone already has it.
→ Your customers are asking for something your product doesn’t do yet.
→ The next generation wants to work with startups and has no route in.
Frame
Turn a business problem into a searchable spec.
Scout
Map the market, shortlist the companies that can actually deliver.
Pilot
A paid pilot with real users, real data, and a decision at the end.
Integrate
Commercial terms, rollout, and the internal owner who runs it.
Two to three months from a problem you can’t solve internally to a shortlist you can pilot.
You leave with: A written spec of the problem, a screened shortlist of companies that can deliver it, and a pilot scoped with terms and a decision date.
Invest puts family capital to work where the family has an edge — in the company’s strategic field, or across the family office portfolio. One participation, or the whole function: thesis, pipeline, diligence and governance, with operators who can work inside the companies you back. An upside without risking the core operation or passing the judgement to a fund manager.
→ Family capital sits in funds and property while the operating knowledge sits in the company.
→ There are companies and technologies you’d want a stake in before a competitor takes them.
→ You want a standing investment arm instead of deals that arrive by chance.
→ The next generation wants to learn investing on real deals, not from a fund report.
Thesis
Define where the family’s capital has an edge the market doesn’t.
Source
Scouting, network, and inbound from the operating business.
Diligence & close
Commercial, technical and operational diligence, then terms, structure and governance.
Support
Operators in the business, not just a board seat.
Two months from no written thesis to a screened pipeline you can act on.
You leave with: A written investment thesis, the sourcing channels that fit it, and a first screened pipeline with a recommendation on each opportunity.
We don’t stop at strategy.
We stay until things exist.
Every phase ends in a decision – including the decision to stop.
Scoped project
Defined, time-bound projects: a portfolio review, a set of opportunity fields, a market validation, an investment case.
A clear recommendation you can act on — for example your corporate venturing mandate: where to renew and who decides.
Embedded leadership
We take an operating seat in the business, fractionally and for a named period, while the work defines the role your own hire will step into.
A defined role ready for your own hire — for example a 40% Head of Growth building a venture’s external revenue engine.
Strategic mandate
We own one project end to end: a venture to market, a clienting program with startups, or a dealflow from sourcing to signing.
A venture in market, a clienting programme with live pilots, or a signed deal — each with a board-ready case.
Family Incubator
We run the family’s renewal engine as a function: a standing pipeline of ideas, managed vehicles across build, partner and invest, a place for the next generation to build, and a mandate the family re-signs each year.
A named annual budget, two ventures in build, and a mandate for the next generation.
We work at the intersection of
Owners
New growth, without everything running through you.
NextGens
Build and renew. Don’t just manage.
External executives
Growth with a timeline, a budget and clear criteria.
Trusted advisors
You set the strategy. We deliver the operational execution.
Corporate-trained, entrepreneurial & AI-native.
Lisa grew up between Swiss and Turkish family businesses, first as a niece and a daughter, today as a partner to owner families. She studied innovation and corporate venturing at the University of St. Gallen (HSG) and practiced it at SIX Group, where building new business is a function with a mandate and rules. In 2024, she founded Dawn Ventures to bring that discipline to family businesses. In the past 3 years, Dawn has worked with 12 family businesses, from CHF 5M to 1.4BN in turnover. Half of them came through the next generation. Twice a year, she brings together the Dawn NextGen Circle.
Senior advisors
Owners, executives and board members who advise us and the families we work with.
Operators
Hands-on specialists who join our mandates and build with us.
Questions, answered
Three ways to grow beyond your core. Corporate venturing is the umbrella term for all of them.
Build — you start the new business yourself. New offer, new customers, its own P&L. Most control, most effort.
Partner — you don’t build it. You find the startup that already has it and become their first serious customer. Faster, and your capital stays where it is.
Invest — you take a stake. No operating load, and no control either.
Most owner families need all three over ten years. Almost none need all three at once.
We operate. We take ownership of the work – the venture, the pilot or the deal – and hand over something that runs without us.
Owners, NextGens, external executives and the advisors they trust – in family-owned and legacy businesses across the DACH region.
In phases. Every phase ends in a decision – continue, change course or stop – and you keep what each phase produced.
A first conversation. Usually followed by a scoped project: three months from a shortlist of opportunities to one concept your board can decide on.
Every family business was once a venture.
Let’s keep that entrepreneurial capability alive.