Home Page - Visionaries Club

we are looking for founders with

massive passion and contrarian ideas

to disrupt the industrialized world.

stories of our entrepreneurs and backers

Flixbus

Jochen, Daniel and André built the world’s fastest-growing intercity bus operator.

We wanted to democratize intercity mobility for everyone.

Daniel Krauss, Jochen Engert and André Schwämmlein, Co-Founders of Flixbus

UiPath

Daniel has built the fastest-growing and leading provider of Robotic Process Automation.

Humility gives you clarity.

Daniel Dines, Co-CEO & Co-Founder of UiPath

Personio

Hanno and his team are revolutionizing human resources management steering HR to the digital age.

People are the single biggest influencer on the success of every company - we help by providing excellence in people operations.

Hanno Renner, Co-Founder & CEO of Personio

Pigment

Eléonore and Romain are tackling only the most ambitious problems. They settled on a plan to replace spreadsheets — in effect, to liberate 1 billion users from the tyranny of Excel. Pigment‘s mission is to allow businesses everywhere to make better, faster decisions in a changing world - drawing on data analysis, intuitive design and sophisticated modelling to help leaders spend more time thinking and less time number-crunching.

Everyday when you wake up as a founder, you should ask yourself, what I'm going to do today that is really going to change the course of my business.

Eléonore Crespo, CEO & Co-Founder of Pigment

Mario Götze

Mario is a football world cup champion and scored the winning goal for Germany in the 2014 FIFA World Cup Final.

I want to compete, prove myself at the highest level and show that I can help any team.

Mario Götze, Soccer World Champion and angel investor

GetHarley

Charmaine is the Founder of GetHarley, an online platform that connects consumers with physicians and personalized skin care products.

I’m used to having good service in other parts of my consumer life, which is why I wanted to create the same thing in the skincare space.

Charmaine Chow, Founder of GetHarley

Miro

Andrey is the Founder and CEO of Miro — the world's most popular visual collaboration platform.

I am not in love with my ideas, I'm in love with the problems. Every product should be.

Andrey Khusid, Founder & CEO of Miro

Nico Rosberg

Nico Rosberg – 2016 Formula One World Champion – is an awarded Sustainability Entrepreneur and Founder of Rosberg Ventures. After his highly successful racing career, he transitioned into the business and startup world with ventures focused on sustainability, innovation and technology.

No matter how good a driver you are, you have to have the right car and the right team behind you in order to succeed.

Nico Rosberg, Founder of Rosberg Ventures & Formular 1 World Champion

Stihl

Selina Stihl is Vice Chairwoman of the Stihl Advisory Board and Co-Owner of Stihl, a German manufacturer of the world's best-selling brand for chainsaws, and the only chain saw manufacturer to make its own saw chains and guide bars.

When we launched our first battery devices in 2009, we were pioneers in our industry. The success of battery technology was not certain at that time, but we took the risk. Today, it pays off.

Selina Stihl

Swarovski

Markus Swarovski is taking the world’s largest crystal manufacturer to the next level.

Everything you want is on the other side of fear.

Markus Langes-Swarovski, Chairman of the Board of Swarovski

KAZAA, SKYPE, ATOMICO

Niklas has changed the game three times as the founder of Kazaa, Skype, and Atomico.

If you want to be an entrepreneur it’s not a job, it’s a lifestyle. It defines you.

Niklas Zennström, Founder of Skype, Kazaa and Atomico

Wolt

Miki is the co-founder & CEO of the Helsinki-based company Wolt, Europe’s second fastest growing company, known for its food delivery platform.

A company needs to have an extreme focus on the smallest subset of things that constitute success. As the founder, your job is to define this narrowest possible focus.

Miki Kuusi, Co-Founder & CEO of Wolt

Max Viessmann

Max Viessmann is taking a 100-year-old market leader in heating and cooling systems to the digital age.

We generate living spaces for generations to come.

Max Viessmann, CEO of Viessmann Group

Amorelie

Lea co-founded Europe's leading sensual lifestyle platform.

I wanted to break with the taboo to openly talk about our love lives.

Lea-Sophie Cramer, Co-Founder of Amorelie

Tacto AI

Tacto AI offers a data-driven, intuitive solution that frees up capacities, reduces complexity, and can be deployed without costly IT resources.

We aim to bridge the gap between the backbone of the European economy, industrial mid-caps, and the digital industry, in order to unlock additional value creation and innovation potential.

André Petry, Nico Bentenrieder and Johannes Groll, Co-Founders of Tacto

Supercell

Ilkka is the CEO and co-founder of Supercell, the Helsinki-based mobile games developer behind Clash of Clans, Hay Day, Boom Beach, Clash Royale and Brawl Stars.

Great teams make great games. Great individuals do not necessarily make a great team.

Ilkka Paananen, Co-Founder & CEO of Supercell

Mollie

Adriaan has been disrupting the payments industry with Mollie’s smart and flexible payment solutions now for over a decade.

Do. Or do not. There is no try.

Adriaan Mol, Founder and CEO of Mollie

Bharti

Bharti Airtel is one of the world's largest and India's largest telecom company with operations in 18 countries across Asia and Africa.

For me, relationship is very important. I can lose money, but I cannot lose a relationship. The test is, at the end of a conversation or a negotiation, both must smile.

Sunil Mittal, Founder and Chairman of Bharti Enterprises

Xentral

Benedikt and Claudia are redefining lean ERP for SMEs.

We want to build a better ecosystem to help our customers run their own businesses better.

Benedikt and Claudia Sauter, Co-Founder of Xentral

Choco

Daniel and his team accelerate the world's transition towards sustainable food systems.

The food supply chain is one of the largest and most inefficient globally.

Daniel Khachab, Co-Founder & CEO of Choco

HelloFresh

Dominik reinvented how we shop and consume our daily food.

You will miss 100% of the shots you don't take.

Dominik Richter, Founder & CEO of HelloFresh

Verena Pausder

Verena is an entrepreneur and one of the best-known faces on the start-up scene in Germany. She is Chairwoman of the Startup Association and stands for entrepreneurial passion, a high degree of economic and socio-political responsibility and the will to actively promote the future viability of Germany as a business location.

We need a narrative that says, "yes we can" rather than "we’re going down".

Verena Pausder, Founder of Pausder Ventures & Chairwoman of the Board at German Startups Association

Miele

Christian’s great-grandfather founded Miele and formed it into a global leader of home appliances. Christian now backs the next generation of Europe’s entrepreneurs as a partner at e.ventures.

The time has come to strengthen Europe’s startup powerhouse: We can build the next generation of digital global market leaders in B2B.

Christian Miele, Partner at e.ventures

Fiege Logistics

Felix and Jens Fiege are pioneering the digital future of one of Europe's leading full-service logistics providers in the fifth family generation.

We embed the latest technologies in networking and automation to stay at the forefront of the complex e-commerce and multi-channel logistics.

Felix and Jens Fiege, Co-CEOs of Fiege Logistics

Oetker

In 1891 Dr. August Oetker invented Backin, a new baking powder that should soon revolutionize how we bake cakes. Today the fourth generation of the Oetker family business is building the future from 125 years of experience.

We support growing the future of food.

Oetker Digital

GetYourGuide

Johannes and Tao re-invented travel experiences with the fastest-scaling tour and activities booking platform in the world.

We often credit our success to our dedication to infinite learning.

Johannes Reck and Tao Tao, Co-Founders of GetYourGuide

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Personio

Munich-based Personio offers cloud-based HR management and recruiting solutions and software for small- and medium-sized enterprises.

our thesis

We are in the middle of the full vertical and horizontal integration of new tech layers for SMEs.

The target group is especially attractive as in many cases there is nothing to replace (e.g. Personio targeting greenfield/MS Excel). We strongly believe in the category of a new generation of lean software tools empowering micro SMEs, as it is the most underserved category regarding professional software, while at the same time the largest and fastest-growing market in terms of numbers of businesses. At the same time we believe HR to be one of the most underserved software categories to empower the most important asset of every single company: Its people who are the key source of each company’s value creation.

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Xentral

Xentral has developed a "Lean ERP" for modern SMEs, to automate the mundane and time-consuming backend processes of running a business – from order, returns and warehouse management to purchasing, invoicing, and accounting. All in a highly modularized, API-driven, and easy-to-implement solution.

our thesis

We strongly believe in a new generation of tools empowering micro SMEs. It is not only the most underserved segment regarding software but also the largest and fastest-growing one regarding the number of businesses. This trend is fuelled predominantly by the remarkable pace of e-commerce development, allowing micro SMEs to easily start and expand their business by selling through Amazon, eBay, Shopify, and a wide array of other platforms. Our investment decision has thus been underlined by the market opportunity of creating a “single source of truth” for all backend processes and the founding team’s insane conviction of building the product bottom-up based on the needs of their customers.

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Pigment

Pigment is the all-in-one business and forecasting platform that allows companies to take better decisions collectively, run operations and plan ahead in a single source of truth tool as they scale.

our thesis

Our investment decision into Pigment has been driven by our core hypothesis of digital tools empowering the decentralization of work. We believe work is getting increasingly digital, distributed, and more complex meaning that people need better tools to do their jobs. After the popularity and unbundling of highly verticalized solutions, e.g. Notion, Zoom, Slack, G-Suite, Trello / Asana, Affinity, Miro, Evernote, etc. now the focus lies on achieving full frictionlessness. Workflows that used to be executed inefficiently with multiple isolated tools can now be integrated, automated, or replaced with a more efficient single tool.

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Tacto

Tacto is focusing on becoming the procurement operating system for SMEs by developing an AI-based software that gives customers a transparent overview of their procurement activities, algorithmically highlights risk & savings potential, and automates all transactional workflows in sourcing and supplier management.

our thesis

We believe re-inventing the enterprise B2B IT stack is the here-and-now opportunity in Europe as everything that can be digitised. 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. Existing software architectures are going to shift towards more modular, consumerized and integrated solutions. Industrial procurement is one of the largest under-digitized markets. Our investment decision in Tacto has been mainly driven by building a tool that re-invents procurement for SMEs by bridging the information asymmetry between the supply and demand side in a digital platform automating transactional workflows across the supply chain.

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Apron

Apron is the partner that every small business needs, pulling together and paying your invoices, fast. So instead of wading through admin, you can get back to moving your business forward.

our thesis

All aspects of B2B Payments are getting reinvented from the ground up.

Small businesses often struggle with the time-consuming task of handling payments - sifting through invoices, reconciling accounts, and managing multiple payments. These administrative tasks divert valuable resources and time away from growth and innovation. Accounts payable and accounts receivable are two areas where we continue to see significant digitisation and automation potential. This is what Apron was built for: radically changing the way businesses handle payments. Apron's platform streamlines and automates payments, turning what was once a time-consuming process into an intuitive experience. Its seamless integrations and simplified payment workflows are unlocking valuable resources, boosting cash-flow, and giving time back to small business owners.

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Miro

Miro is an online whiteboarding platform that enables teams to create and collaborate on any type of content in a flexible and integrated environment.

our thesis

It is rare to see that a single product can radically change the way millions of people work. Andrey and his team started working on an online whiteboard from a warehouse a decade ago. Over the last few years, this project evolved into the vision of building arguably the most indispensable collaboration platform for modern teams, including product, design, engineering and various others. Miro is the most critical puzzle piece in the re-bundling of collaborative future of work & productivity in the years to come.

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H Company

Paris-based H Company is developing frontier action models to enable the new generation of AI for task automation and decision-making.

our thesis

AI is the next fundamental technological platform shift of our time, yet the majority of potential in AI-enabled automation is still locked. We need new and better models capable of automating tasks and processes in the industrialized world. H Company is developing a comprehensive, heterogeneous multi-agent Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) capable of addressing challenges beyond the limitations of current foundational models and infrastructure-level stacks. Our investment decision in H Company is driven by the exceptional team of AI researchers, including Daan Wierstra, Laurent Sifre, Julien Perolat, Karl Tuyls, and Charles Kantor. Their work at DeepMind, contributing to projects like AlphaGo, Gemini, DeepNash, and Chinchilla, and their leadership steering the direction of groundbreaking research puts them in a pole position catalyzing the intersection of AI and automation.

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What our
entrepreneurs say

Hanno Renner

Co-Founder & CEO of Personio

Visionaries Club has become a key building block in Europe's tech ecosystem in record time, driving disruption in B2B. Rob, Sebastian and Visionaries have been supporters of our Journey at Personio, and I have decided to become an investor in Visionaries from day one as well. I love their value proposition and how they constantly re-invent Visionaries.

Hanno Renner

Co-Founder & CEO of Personio

Hanno Renner

Co-Founder & CEO of Personio

Hanno Renner

Co-Founder & CEO of Personio

Eléonore Crespo

Co-Founder & Co- CEO of Pigment

Sometimes the most painful moments in life turn out to be the ones that push you to get started.

Eléonore Crespo

Co-Founder & Co- CEO of Pigment

Sometimes the most painful moments in life turn out to be the ones that push you to get started.

Eléonore Crespo

Co-Founder & Co- CEO of Pigment

Sometimes the most painful moments in life turn out to be the ones that push you to get started.

Eléonore Crespo

Co-Founder & Co- CEO of Pigment

Sometimes the most painful moments in life turn out to be the ones that push you to get started.

Franz Haniel

Former Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Haniel

Visionaries Club is bringing together a unique network of leading entrepreneurial shapers from the old and new economy enabling a fruitful exchange to drive Europe's digital transformation. I believe Visionaries' approach is unique to unlock more entrepreneurial spirit and momentum.

Franz Haniel

Former Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Haniel

Franz Haniel

Former Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Haniel

Franz Haniel

Former Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Haniel

Andrey Kusid

Founder & CEO of Miro

Everything I do is designed to try and make Miro a spherical company.

Andrey Kusid

Founder & CEO of Miro

Everything I do is designed to try and make Miro a spherical company.

Andrey Kusid

Founder & CEO of Miro

Everything I do is designed to try and make Miro a spherical company.

Andrey Kusid

Founder & CEO of Miro

Everything I do is designed to try and make Miro a spherical company.

Charmaine Chow

Founder & CEO of GetHarley

We do what we do, because we are deeply passionate about empowering people to look, feel, and be their best selves at every age.

Charmaine Chow

Founder & CEO of GetHarley

We do what we do, because we are deeply passionate about empowering people to look, feel, and be their best selves at every age.

Charmaine Chow

Founder & CEO of GetHarley

We do what we do, because we are deeply passionate about empowering people to look, feel, and be their best selves at every age.

Charmaine Chow

Founder & CEO of GetHarley

We do what we do, because we are deeply passionate about empowering people to look, feel, and be their best selves at every age.

Daniel Khachab

Co-Founder & CEO of Choco

Visionaries is one of the most ambitious, smartest and most aggresssive ones, and that is why we just love working together as we share those values.

Daniel Khachab

Co-Founder & CEO of Choco

Visionaries is one of the most ambitious, smartest and most aggresssive ones, and that is why we just love working together as we share those values.

Daniel Khachab

Co-Founder & CEO of Choco

Visionaries is one of the most ambitious, smartest and most aggresssive ones, and that is why we just love working together as we share those values.

Daniel Khachab

Co-Founder & CEO of Choco

Visionaries is one of the most ambitious, smartest and most aggresssive ones, and that is why we just love working together as we share those values.

Calling a dream crazy is not an insult, it’s a compliment.

We are entrepreneurs ourselves.

We are entrepreneurs at heart. We have gone through your journey. We have directly lived and experienced it. Today we work hard day and night to build the VC fund we always wished for when we were founders ourselves. It is this joy of building that gets us up in the morning. We make deep and enduring commitments to the founders that we back. In a world of fast-paced deals and momentum-driven opportunism, we take the long-term view. The founders we back want to make a lasting impact on the world. And so do we. Following our deepest passion is what brings out the best in us. Thus, we do not see ourselves as investors, but rather as co-entrepreneurs working tirelessly alongside the founders that we back. We are obsessed with helping you win.

The

club

The importance of money has decreased in venture capital.

Today, access and network have become the most important ingredients that an investor can offer. We are backed by a selection of the world’s leading entrepreneurs from the digital and industrial space. With our family entrepreneurs such as Swarovski, Mittal, Haniel, Stihl, Henkel, Siemens, Oetker, Fiege and Bitburger, we can provide you with direct access to first customers for product-market-fit, and unparalleled scaling opportunities, reaching more than 90% of Europe’s most prolific (industrial) family businesses. Our founders and operators are behind companies such as UiPath, Miro, Flixbus, Mollie, Spotify, Personio, Adyen, HelloFresh or Pitch, and have only just gone through your journey themselves. They will directly assist you in building and scaling a successful SaaS company. This authentic, hands-on entrepreneurial experience is the best possible support we can offer to founders - one which we could never replicate as partners or just “hire” into a fund.

The Power of Old and New

We bridge information asymmetries between the old and the new.

At Visionaries, we bridge the information asymmetry of “what is possible” in the technology startup space and “what is actually needed” in the industrial space. Bringing those two entrepreneurial worlds together lies at the core of our DNA to unlock infinite value in B2B.

Visionaries B2B Funds

Why B2B?

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. Work is increasingly digital, distributed, and getting more complex. People need better tools to do their jobs and free up time for personal health and self-fulfillment. Businesses will thus look more and more like tech companies – the digital world will need new infrastructure, both hardware, and software.

Visionaries Tomorrow Fund

Courageous Capital for the World of Tomorrow

Big, science-enabled technological breakthroughs have changed the world – for the good and the bad. We are at an inflection point that requires radically rebuilding the fundamentals of our world’s largest industries – not just incrementally improving them via digitalization. The current VC ecosystem is not designed for this. Bold investments into frontier technologies require deep domain knowledge, (almost) infinite pools of long-term capital, entrepreneurial risk-taking and a new guiding principle: not just “financial return” but “world return”.

The Visionaries Tomorrow Fund, together with our commercialization partners (our family business & industrial LPs) and our scaling experts (our unicorn founder LPs) is providing courageous capital and entrepreneurial experience to ambitious founders addressing the greatest challenges of the 21st century, from lab to IPO.

Latest Stories

Humility feeds boldness: The stories of UiPath and Miro - and how the two friends Daniel and Andrey build two global SaaS category leaders out of Europe.

Optimism feeds persistence: How Eléonore Crespo is killing spreadsheets and supercharging business planning with Pigment.

Why quality is worth killing for: Ilkka’s story of building Supercell into the leading global games company.

Get skin in the game and be your own inspiration: How Charmaine is reformulating the skin-care industry with GetHarley.

Partnering with Tacto AI: Why We Love Joining Forces with Founders Even Before They Start Their Company.

Human performance & the determination to win: Lessons from a world champion turned entrepreneur.

Nailing go-to-market in 2024: Five tips from Europe’s SaaS leaders

Former Slack exec Johann Butting joins Visionaries Club as Partner to support portfolio companies on Go-to-Market and Growth Acceleration.

view all stories

Never follow.

In

the

media

Apron grabs $15 million to simplify invoice processing

Visionaries-Club-Gründer Robert Lacher (#677)

Procurement software startup Pivot raises $21.6 million just a few months after its creation

Is the UK really ‘the next Silicon Valley’?

Why Europe’s Next Unicorns Need Both Old And New Economy Stars

Fokus auf B2B-Startups: Darauf achten die Investoren des Visionaries Club besonders

Business planning startup Pigment raises $145M in rare French tech mega-round

Lessons From a World Champion Turned Entrepreneur.

Why We Believe Marco, Romain, and Estelle Will Change the Way Modern Procurement Teams Manage Purchasing Spend.

Partnering with Tacto: How André, Johannes, and Nico are Building AI-based Future-Proof Supply Chains… and Why We Love Joining Forces with Founders Even Before They Start Their Company.

„Deutschland ist nicht der kranke Mann Europas“

Der Vermittler

#344 mit Amorelie-Gründer Sebastian Pollok

20VC: Why Signalling Risk is Real, What Founders Need to Know About Taking Multi-Stage Money vs Seed Fund Money, Lessons Scaling to $600M AUM, The Secret to Hiring in VC; Hire People with No VC Experience & How Venture Will Be Disrupted with Rob Lacher

Say hello to Apron: the powerful payment platform that’s raised $5.5M in funding

Causaly, an AI platform for drug discovery and biomedical research, raises $60M

Berlin-based CYCLE swifts €10.3 million in Series A to e-bike last mile logistics around Europe

GetHarley, a skincare telehealth and consultation platform, raises $52M

Insify raises another $10.7 million for its business insurance startup

Pigment announces $88 million Series C

View all media

Power

of

B2B

We are at an inflection point of global tech: Covid-19 pandemic has dramatically accelerated technology adoption in B2B: 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. Work is increasingly digital, distributed, and getting more complex.

People need better tools to do their jobs and free up time for personal health and self fulfillment. Businesses will thus look more and more like tech companies – the digital world will need new infrastructure, both hardware and software. This time we are in a strong position in Europe to shape the next wave of disruption in B2B: Europe is 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.

Robert Jackle

Partner at Visionaries Club

Robert Jackle

Partner at Visionaries Club

Berlin, Berlin

Overview

Work Experience

Visionaries Club

Partner

2020 - Current

3i Group plc

Private Equity

2020 - 2020

heycar

Business Development

2019 - 2019

Education

University of Oxford

Bachelor's degree

Investments

Apron

CYCLE

Pledge

SECJUR

Relevant Websites