Visionaries Club raises €400m in new funds to boost European B2B tech and adds new fund focused on science-driven frontier tech investments.
● Visionaries Club announces second B2B-focused fund generation with a new
€150m Seed Fund and €200m Early Growth Fund
● Visionaries Club also launches new €50m Tomorrow Fund focused on sciencedriven frontier tech investments
● The Berlin-based VC names Sahar Meghani and Marton Sarkadi-Nagy Partners
Founded in 2019, Visionaries Club’s LP base combines the best of both worlds and enables leading digital entrepreneurs as well as Europe’s family businesses to invest in the next generation of founders building global category leaders out of Europe. From the founders and operators behind UiPath, Miro, Flixbus, Mollie, Spotify, Personio, Adyen, Sennder, HelloFresh and Pitch to dynasties such as Swarovski, Miele, Mittal, Haniel, Stihl, Berlusconi, Henkel, Siemens, Oetker, Fiege and Bitburger – Visionaries Club bridges information asymmetries between the old and the new. By leveraging their investors’ knowledge and access, entrepreneurs are supported in their Seed and Early Growth stage to take their companies to the next level. Joining a network with the most promising entrepreneurs across Europe adds significant unique value. It gives portfolio companies access to the experience and network of the fund’s unicorn founders as well as market insights, contacts, and sales opportunities via its industrial LP network.
Visionaries Club announces second B2B-focused fund generation with a new €150m Seed Fund and €200m Early Growth Fund
With its first fund generation raised shortly after launching in 2019, Visionaries Club has already built a strong track record having been among the first investors of many of Europe’s B2B (soon to be) €1bn+ companies such as Personio, Miro, Choco, Xentral, Truelayer, Vay, Taxdoo, Yokoy, Pigment, Leapsome or Gtmhub working closely with other VCs such as Sequoia, Accel, Index, Lightspeed or Bessemer.
“We are extremely proud and humbled that more than 20 of our founder LPs are founders we have backed in the past, that now reinvest their private money into our funds such as Hanno Renner (Personio), Jenny Podewills (Leapsome), Daniel Khachab (Choco), Christian Reber (Pitch / Superlist) or the founders of Taxdoo and Insify…for us, there could be no better validation of our daily work with founders and also no bigger sign of trust”, says Robert Lacher, Founding Partner of Visionaries Club.
While the majority of funds had been immediately committed by Visionaries existing LP base, for the first time it is adding non-profits and university endowments: “For us, as a small, young and hungry team this step represents an even longer-standing commitment and marks the biggest motivation to work even harder and give back as our work now has a direct impact on non-profits.“ says Sebastian Pollok, Founding Partner of Visionaries Club.
Visionaries Club B2B Investment Focus:
Visionaries Club operates as a micro-VC fund, which allows it to lead, and co-lead Seed investment deals a lot earlier. Instead of competing with larger multistage VC funds in Early Growth stage (Series B) deals they co-invest alongside them as well as leading entrepreneurial angels such as Guillaume Pousaz, Christian Reber, Taveet Hinrikus, etc. Combining selected bets in Seed stage disrupters, with investments in category winners in the Early Growth stage while avoiding overcrowded Series A rounds leads to the best risk-return profiles in a highly agile market.
“The VC market is experiencing its biggest disruption in history. New players enter. Capital has been commoditized. Network becomes key to win deals.” says Pollok.
Why B2B? Europe is at an inflection point in B2B and home to many global industrial world market leaders, most of them built on legacy technology with the potential to be either disrupted or enabled by new digital technologies. This is also the space where Visionaries Club adds the most value through its investor network increasing technological disruptions within B2B, which lies at the core of the fund’s investment focus. “There is no economic reason for any part of the value chain not to be digitized in the long run, if there is potential to streamline and automate processes. From developer tools to vertical-specific applications, we expect software to power all areas of business“, says Lacher.
Visionaries Club also launches new Visionaries Club Tomorrow Fund focused onscience-driven frontier tech investments
Launching the Visionaries Club Tomorrow Fund, the team adds a new fund to back sciencedriven frontier tech founders at the Pre-Seed and Seed stage whose ambition is to develop breakthrough solutions for the planet’s biggest challenges. Collaborating with Visionaries Club’s unique investor base, the Tomorrow Fund will help solve frontier tech founders’ biggest challenges – getting to commercial product-market fit and then scaling their solution globally.
“We started our Tomorrow Fund knowing that the world is facing huge problems such as climate change, public health crises, global pollution, etc., – yet we have hope in seeing there are great potential science-driven solutions already existing and being further developed every day. There is just not enough “courageous capital” combined with entrepreneurial experience being deployed in these areas. We are happy to have our share in making both more accessible from now on.” says Sebastian Pollok.
Visionaries promotes Sahar Meghani and Marton Sarkadi Nagy to Partners
Many of the 13 Visionaries Club team members have been founders or operators themselves.
“We always wanted to build the VC we aimed for as founders ourselves. In our heart we are entrepreneurs forever – that’s why we do not see ourselves as investors, but rather as ‘coentrepreneurs’ to the founders we back” says Robert Lacher, Co-Founder of Visionaries Club.
”Today we are proud to announce that we have promoted Sahar Meghani and Marton Sarkadi Nagy to Partners with our second fund generation to take our Visionaries leadership team to a whole new level.” While London-based Meghani will take a lead role in managing the new Growth Fund, Sarkadi Nagy will take a lead on the seed fund activities. Both have already played a key role in leading investment into portfolio companies such as Xentral, Yokoy, Gtmhub, Two, or Tactic.
About Visionaries Club:
Visionaries Club is a €600M AUM Berlin-based Early-Stage VC fund focusing on B2B with its flagship funds and frontier tech with its Tomorrow Fund. It unites the strongest network of successful digital entrepreneurs such as the founders and operators behind UiPath, Miro, Flixbus, Mollie, Spotify, Personio, Adyen, Sennder, Hello Fresh, Pitch as well as Europe’s family businesses dynasties such as Swarovski, Miele, Mittal, Haniel, Stihl, Berlusconi, Henkel, Siemens, Oetker, Fiege and Bitburger in a venture capital fund to invest in the next generation of founders. The €150m Visionaries Club Seed Fund II, €200m Visionaries Club Growth Fund II and the Visionaries Club Tomorrow Fund I leverage its founder LP network for very early and exclusive access to the most promising entrepreneurs across Europe. It subsequently adds significant unique, non-replicable value by giving its portfolio companies access to the experience and network of the fund’s unicorn founders as well as to the market insights, contacts, and sales opportunities stemming from its industrial LP network.
Robert Lacher
Robert is Founding Partner of Visionaries Club, a Berlin-based VC fund backed by some of Europe’s leading unicorn founders and family entrepreneurs investing in B2B SaaS with the Visionaries Seed & Growth funds. Before that, he has seeded more than 30 early-stage companies including unicorns such as Deel, Personio, Forto, Groq or Vay via his seed fund La Famiglia I. For his achievements, he has been awarded as “Investor of the Year” by German Startup Association. Robert also founded fashion platform AMAZE which he sold to Zalando in 2016. Prior to that he worked for The Boston Consulting Group and studied engineering and business at RWTH Aachen, University of Cambridge, Imperial College London, and Harvard University.
Sebastian Pollok
Sebastian is Founding Partner of Visionaries Club, a Berlin-based VC fund backed by some of Europe’s leading unicorn founders and family entrepreneurs investing in “dent in the universe” frontier tech with the new Visionaries Tomorrow fund as well as in B2B SaaS with the Visionaries Seed & Growth funds. Previously, he was co-founder and co-CEO of AMORELIE (exit to ProSiebenSat.1 Media SE in 2018) and investor at Headline in San Francisco. Sebastian studied at Kellogg School of Management, Hong Kong University of Science & Technology, WHU, and University of St. Gallen. He sits on the board of German Startups Association as well as Founders Pledge.
