Czech investors launch Aspire11 to unlock Europe's pension savings

Czech investor Pavel Mucha and billionaire Petr Borkovec have launched a new venture called Aspire11 — a platform designed to channel part of Europe's pension savings into private markets. In their view, it is private equity and venture investment that can revive the trillions held in pension fund reserves, most of which currently sit in conservative instruments.

Both entrepreneurs believe firmly in Europe's long-term potential and want the continent's institutional capital to more actively finance technology and growth companies, rather than flowing mainly to the US or Asia. Aspire11 is conceived as a bridge between conservative pension money and riskier, but potentially more profitable, private assets.

Mucha and Borkovec make no secret of having put their own money into the project, demonstrating their personal confidence in the model. At the same time, they admit that in recent years they have had to rethink a number of investment assumptions — the private assets market is changing fast, and old approaches to assessing risk no longer work the way they used to.

In the interview, the investors paid particular attention to the technology sector: in their view, this is exactly where a risk lies that many market participants underestimate — an excessive concentration of capital in a narrow group of companies and overblown growth expectations. That is precisely why, according to the founders, diversification through platforms like Aspire11 should become a tool for a more balanced allocation of capital in the European market.