The Fund / 01
Backing the important thing everyone else is ignoring.
Off Piste is where the groomed trail ends. We find uncommon ground, backing exceptional founders building breakthrough companies — in artificial intelligence, space infrastructure, defence, and cryptographic proof — before the rest of the market looks their way.
Fund I held its first close in April 2026: a ~€25M-target early-stage vehicle, run by a solo GP, writing ~$2M checks and leading rounds from pre-seed through Series A.
- Vehicle
- Off Piste Fund I
- First close
- April 2026
- Target
- ~€25M ($30M)
- Structure
- Solo GP
- Stage
- Pre-seed → Series A
- Typical check
- ~$2M · Leads
- Base
- Norway
Portfolio / 02
Four routes, no piste.
More to be announced /26
Full portfolio →
02/ Beyond Reach Labs — Space Infrastructure
Deployable structures for space infrastructure.
Visit beyondreachlabs.io ↗
The General Partner / 03
A decade off the groomed trail.
Max Samuel spent seven years inside Peter Thiel’s world — Associate General Counsel & Chief Compliance Officer at Thiel Capital in Los Angeles, 2014 to 2021 — after investment banking at Credit Suisse and a turn as a technology attorney at Wilson Sonsini. In 2021 he became a General Partner at SNÖ Ventures in Norway, leading investments across the Nordics and Europe through 2025 while keeping the US relationships that define his edge.
Along the way he began backing the frontier himself — an early investor in Starcloud (data centres in space) and Enhanced (NYSE: ENHA). In January 2026 he struck out on his own, founding Off Piste to bridge the two worlds: elite US networks carried to founders the Bay Area hasn’t met yet.
Thiel Capital / Founders Fund ecosystem / US frontier networks → Nordic & European founders
The Route / 2008 → Present
Credit Suisse
Investment Banking Associate
New York
Wilson Sonsini
Attorney
SF Bay Area
Thiel Capital
Associate General Counsel & Chief Compliance Officer
Los Angeles
SNÖ Ventures
General Partner
Led Nordic Air Defence, Cursive, IntuiCell, SINDRi & others
Norway
Off Piste Capital
Founder & General Partner
Fund I first close · April 2026
Starcloud
Pre-seed investor — data centers in space
Personal · during SNÖ
Enhanced
Early investor
NYSE: ENHA
News / 04
Signals from off the trail.
29·04·26EU-Startups Former Thiel Capital investor launches Off Piste Capital as Solo GP with €25 million early-stage fund ↗ 17·04·26TechCrunch Objection raises seed round from Peter Thiel, Balaji Srinivasan and Off Piste to build the AI tribunal of truth ↗ 16·04·26Stendr Stendr raises $5.4M to build the Nordics’ next defence prime ↗ 15·04·26Y Combinator Beyond Reach Labs launches on Y Combinator: solar panels in space the size of football fields ↗ Full press index →Contact / 05
Off the
groomed trail.
Building something important where nobody else is looking? We’d like to hear from you.