Berlin’s Cherry Ventures goes for the whole pie with new €300 million fund

Nearly doubling the size of their previous fund, one of Europe’s most active investors, Cherry Ventures has announced the launch of its fourth iteration, armed and ready to back European founders with a healthy €300 million. Posting a typical ticket size of €1 to €3 million in pre-seed and seed-stage investments, Cherry Ventures runs the gamut covering spacetech, climatetech, agritech, fintech, e-commerce, software, and the list goes on and on. In v4, Cherry is looking to deepen its commitment to crypto and web3 technologies, with a portion of the €300 million specifically earmarked for this sector.

After building and scaling one of Berlin’s bedrock businesses, Zalando from startup to IPO, Partners Filip Dames and Christian Meermann started off with a mere €10 million back in 2013. Since this time the fund has achieved quite the knack for cherry-picking some winners, with a portfolio that adds up to a post-money valuation of €23 billion.

Having backed some of the biggest and fastest-moving players in the biz including Infarm, AUTO1 Group, FlixBus, TWAICE, and Cazoo, 2021 saw no less than five of the firm’s portfolio companies achieve unicorn status.

Notable standouts in this realm include q-commerce firm Flink and FBA aggregator SellerX, both of whom when from seed to unicorn at breakneck speed.

So what’s the not-so-secret sauce that Cherry is baking into the pie? Partner Sophia Bendz explains, “Having been part of building companies like Zalando and Spotify into global market leaders, we as a team understand first-hand the challenges founders face. We support founders from the get-go, remaining a hands-on and easy-to-approach financial and strategic partner across all milestones.”

Cherry Ventures’ newest fund is backed by a number of high-profile institutional LPs, including endowments, foundations, family offices, pension funds, and sovereign wealth funds, alongside an entrepreneurial LP base. Likewise, based on the firm's previous performance and experience, a number of LPs include many of Europe’s top founders and operators.

“It’s a pivotal time for European tech. Last year, Europe welcomed over 100 new unicorns and early-stage funding was, for the first time, near par with U.S. levels,” added Meermann. “Against this exciting backdrop, our new fund gives us additional power to support founders beginning at seed and throughout their journey: 60% of capital is reserved for follow-on investments to even further champion Cherry-backed founders across later stages."