Meet Filip, One of Germany's Most Successful Early Stage VCs from Cherry Ventures #GSA22

Executive Summary

Filip is a founding partner of Cherry Ventures, one of Germany’s most important seed investors. Their portfolio includes unicorns like Flixbus, Auto1 Group, Forto, Infarm, and well-known startups like Amorelie, Kitchen Stories, Flaschenpost, Spryker, and Superlist. Their portfolio also includes our former guests: Qualifyze, Sanity Group, and Rows. Filip has a background as an entrepreneur himself, so he and Cherry approach startup investing differently. Tune in to learn more about him and the VC.

“We have software helping us to find good startups, for example, if you are head of product at a good startup and change your title to ‘working on something new’ we get notified.”Filip Dames, Founding Partner Cherry Ventures

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“I really believe an investor should be stage focused”Filip Dames, Founding Partner Cherry Ventures

The Founder

Filip Dames has had an accomplished career, starting out as an intern in Malaysia with DaimlerChrysler, at BCG, and Sony BMG in New York City. Following his venture into the corporate world, he then founded a collectible marketplace called Tamundo. There he went on to oversee the international expansion of Zalando and become the founder and CEO of Zalando Lounge (Zalando’s shopping club). The venture was a success, helping Zalando to go public in 2014. He decided to leave the company, making his 30th birthday also his Zalando farewell party.

From there Filip decided to venture off and focus on venture capital; so it came as no surprise when he started Cherry Ventures in 2013 in Berlin as business angel and startup investor. With tickets of 10.000–50.000€ they are dedicated to helping Germany, Europe, and beyond with investments for entrepreneurs wanting to make their visions reality.

“We invest almost exclusively in Europe”Filip Dames, Founding Partner Cherry Ventures

Cherry Ventures

Cherry Ventures (https://www.cherry.vc/) is an early-stage venture capital fund founded and led by former entrepreneurs. They are focusing on European seed-stage companies in the B2B and B2C space. Cherry invests there at the pre-seed- and seed stage with initial tickets between €500k and €5M.

“Founders first and investors second” is the motto of Cherry Ventures

They started out with their first fund with their own money and the money of close friends, much less than 10 m €. From there they build a portfolio of 30 companies, of which some did really well. This in turn enabled them to raise an institutional fund, worth 150 m Euros. In the second fund, successful entrepreneurs from the first fund invested like the founder of Amorelie or the founders of Flixbus.

Their portfolio is already pretty impressive and includes names our frequent followers will recognize, unicorns like Flixbus, Auto1 Group, Forto, Infarm. But they are also investors in well-known startups like Amorelie, Kitchen Stories, Flaschenpost, Spryker, and Superlist. 

Their portfolio also includes former guests, Qualifyze, Sanity Group, and Rows, for which you can find the interview link in the show notes.

Further Readings / Additional Resources

Qualifyze (audio only) 

https://player.captivate.fm/episode/220f49cc-2ef1-471a-bd5b-504d9235e892

Sanity Group