De-risking your next equity round with Orbit Capital

When we sat down with Radovan Nesrsta last year, we unpacked the mechanics of venture debt. We placed under the microscope how non-dilutive capital gives Central & Eastern Europe scaleups an alternative when traditional bank loans or equity rounds aren’t the right fit.

Fast forward twelve months, and the conversation around growth financing has evolved. As CEE scaleups continue to mature, founders are becoming far more strategic about how they fund their next phase – balancing runway, valuation and cap-table control.

Fresh off closing Orbit Capital‘s milestone €107M Growth Debt Fund II, a raise that brought traditional pension funds like Rentea into CEE tech debt for the first time, we reconnected with Radovan ahead of his return to Bucharest for How to Web Conference 2026. Below, he breaks down the flight to quality, using growth debt for M&A, keeping boards founder-led and the non-negotiable rule every scaleup founder must know before raising their next round.

Let’s lead with the elephant in the room, in the best way possible. Congratulations on closing Growth Debt Fund II at €107 million this summer. Beyond beating your original target, bringing Czech private pension fund Rentea and PFR Ventures into CEE venture debt for the first time is a massive milestone. Historically, conservative institutional capital in our region shied away from tech assets. What does their entry signal about the long-term maturity and stability of CEE scaleups?

We see this as a strong signal that the CEE technology ecosystem is entering a new phase of maturity. The significance goes well beyond the size of the fund itself. When large institutional investors like pension funds or sovereign funds allocate capital to venture debt, it reflects growing confidence not only in the asset class, but also in the quality and resilience of the companies being built in the region.

Today, we also have a much deeper pool of scaleups with proven business models, meaningful revenues, international customer bases and increasingly professional management teams. Venture debt is particularly well suited to this stage of the ecosystem. It allows strong, growing companies to access additional capital without relying exclusively on equity, while offering investors a different risk-return profile and greater downside protection than traditional venture capital.

But a mature technology ecosystem needs more than venture capital alone – I’m talking about a full spectrum of financing options that can support companies while they scale. We believe institutional capital entering venture debt is an important step in building that infrastructure in CEE.

When we sat down last autumn, we took a deep dive into how venture debt actually works. You highlighted then how non-dilutive capital bridges a critical gap in CEE, where local banks remain collateral-obsessed and public markets are shallow. Looking at the market today – where early-stage deal volume has dropped, yet a staggering 70%+ of regional capital is concentrated into a select few scaleups – how has this flight to quality changed the way founders view debt? Is it a growth accelerator, or has it become a defensive shield?

What we see today is that founders are much more deliberate about how they finance growth. Rather than automatically funding every new stage with equity, they are looking more closely at what the capital is actually needed for and which type of financing fits that purpose best.

Venture debt is fundamentally growth capital. It works when the business model is proven, the company is performing well and there is a clear opportunity to deploy additional capital to move faster – whether that means entering new markets, accelerating sales, investing in product or reaching the next stage of growth sooner.

My test is simple: if the founder can tell me which line in the P&L the money changes and by how much, it’s an accelerator. If the answer is “it gives us comfort,” it’s a shield – which is far less exciting for us.

Orbit’s core mission remains “growing innovative scaleups,” right? But sitting here in 2026, where the era of growth-at-all-costs is firmly in the rearview mirror, what does high-conviction growth actually look like when you evaluate a €10M+ ticket today? And what is one scaling strategy founders should permanently remove from their playbook?

For us at Orbit, high-conviction growth means that the business model is already proven and that there’s a clear link between additional capital and additional growth. At a €10M+ ticket, we want to see strong underlying economics, predictable revenues and, most importantly, evidence that the company knows how to deploy capital effectively.

We’re not financing the search for product-market fit. We’re financing companies that have found what works and want to do more of it, faster.

If there’s one strategy founders should leave behind, it’s spending ahead of proof. Hiring aggressively, entering several markets at once or significantly increasing sales and marketing spend before you know the model is repeatable can create growth – but not necessarily a stronger company. Debt funding should amplify something that already works, not be used to find out whether it works.

Beyond extending runway or funding sales ops, one of the most underutilized applications of growth debt is financing strategic acquisitions. As CEE scaleups eye market consolidation, what are the green lights that tell a founder they are ready to use debt for an M&A play without putting their balance sheet at risk?

The first green light is a strong core business. You shouldn’t use debt-funded M&A to compensate for slowing organic growth or problems in the existing business. The company needs predictable revenues, healthy economics and enough cash generation or visibility to comfortably service the debt.

Second, the acquisition should have a very clear strategic rationale. It might give you access to a new market, customer base, technology or product that would take years to build organically. In those cases, debt can be a very efficient way to accelerate the strategy without significant dilution.

And finally, the deal has to make sense even if things don’t go exactly according to plan. Integrations take time and synergies are rarely immediate. If the balance sheet only works under the most optimistic scenario, the company is most likely not ready to finance the acquisition with debt. The key is that debt should accelerate a strong M&A strategy, not make a risky one possible.

When market valuations tighten, equity often comes with heavy liquidation preferences and governance trade-offs. From a financial strategy perspective, how can founders use growth debt as a strategic counterweight – de-risking their next equity round while keeping their board agile and founder-led?

Debt lets you move the equity round to a point where you negotiate from strength. If you use the capital to hit the next set of milestones, you raise later on better metrics, so the same dilution buys you more, or you need less equity altogether.

It also protects governance. Heavy liquidation preferences and control terms tend to show up when a company needs money urgently. A founder with debt in place isn’t in that position and can say no to bad terms or take a smaller, cleaner round. 

Debt doesn’t replace equity, yet it gives founders time and options – and those are precisely what keep a board agile and founder-led.

Fund II is strictly for scaleups hitting that €3M+ ARR mark. On paper, these companies have proven product-market fit, but going from €3M to €20M ARR is where things usually might get messy. From your seat at Orbit, what’s the single biggest operational trap founders fall into once they get their hands on that growth capital?

Scaling headcount before scaling the process. Capital arrives, the founder hires quickly, especially in sales, and the company adds people faster than it adds repeatable playbooks, onboarding and management layers. Productivity per head drops, the best early employees get frustrated, and costs are now fixed.

The companies that get through this stage well are the ones that hire behind proven processes rather than ahead of them, and that promote or bring in real middle management early. Growth capital amplifies whatever is already there, including any mess. So fix the machine first, then pour more in.

Our theme for How to Web Conference this year is “what will you build when you can build anything.” For a scaleup founder who has already proven product-market fit, true operational freedom comes down to financial strategy. If a founder could eliminate cap-table dilution anxieties from their expansion roadmap, what ambitious moves should they be making right now?

I’d push back slightly – debt doesn’t remove dilution anxiety entirely, it reduces it and it lands with an obligation to repay. But within that framework, the ambitious moves are quite clear.

Enter a second market before the competition does. Build the product extension you keep postponing because its payback is too long for an equity story. Acquire a smaller competitor or a complementary product. Invest in the sales and customer success capacity that turns a good product into a category leader. 

These are multi-year bets that founders sometimes avoid because equity investors want quick proof. With the right structure, you can take the longer view, and that’s what building “anything” really is all about.

To wrap up before you head back to Bucharest in a few days’ time: if you could place one non-negotiable rule on the whiteboard of every founder attending who is planning their next growth round, what would it be?

“Know exactly what the money will change, and by how much, before you ask for it.”

Every investor, whether equity or debt, is really underwriting that sentence. If you can say it in numbers (“this €X takes us from A to B in 18 months, and here is how we know”), you’ll raise faster, on better terms, and you’ll spend the capital better. If you can’t, you’re not ready – and no amount of investor networking will fix that.

Meet Radovan and the team from Orbit Capital in Bucharest next week. Secure your How to Web Conference ticket now.