Filip Dames

Who they are

Filip Dames is Founding Partner at Cherry Ventures — co-founded Zalando in 2008, took it public in 2014, then built Cherry from an angel fund into a $500M pan-European seed firm.

Person

Filip started at the University of Göttingen studying music — he trained as a classical baritone and sang with the Göttinger Knabenchor — before pivoting to business at WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management (Dipl. Kfm., 2008) and picking up an MBA at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella in 2006. Along the way he did a stint at Sony BMG and The Boston Consulting Group before co-founding Zalando in 2008, where he ran Zalando-Lounge as CEO and led business development and international expansion through to the IPO in 2014. Between Zalando and Cherry he also founded Tamundo GmbH, a digital marketplace for art and collectibles that ran from May 2008 to September 2009. He co-founded Cherry Ventures in 2012 with Christian Meermann when it was purely an angel fund with no institutional capital — and has built it since into a Berlin-headquartered firm with offices in London and Stockholm. The through-line is a founder who built one of Europe's defining consumer companies, then turned that operational credibility into a platform for backing the next generation of European founders. He writes on Medium (@filipd) and LinkedIn on topics including AI regulation in Europe, cap table governance, NPS as a VC KPI, and founder alignment; he also hosts 20Europe, a podcast series profiling European startup ecosystems. Possibly — his music background surfaces in how he talks about pattern recognition and craft, given how openly he references the Göttingen years in public appearances.

Company

Cherry Ventures' most recent headline is its February 2025 launch of Cherry V, a $500 million fund split between early-stage investments and follow-on rounds at Series B and beyond — its largest fund to date. The firm has stayed active in 2026: by June it had participated in 15 company financings, including Dash0's $110 million Series B at a $1 billion valuation in March 2026 and Riplo's €2.6 million pre-seed round the same month, plus INXM's €5.7 million pre-seed in June. Across its history Cherry has backed over 130 companies (some trackers put the figure at 164 over 13 years), with 8 unicorns, 3 IPOs, and 23 acquisitions in its portfolio, including FlixBus, Cazoo, and Flink. The firm operates from Berlin, London, and Stockholm, with Dames alongside partners Christian Meermann, Sophia Bendz, Jasper Masemann, Thomas Lueke, Alexander Langholz-Baikousis, and Dinika Mahtani.

Market

Cherry competes for European early-stage deal flow against Balderton Capital, Earlybird, Creandum, Lakestar, and Seedcamp, among others. The structural challenge for any European seed firm is capital scale: European startups attracted roughly $8 billion in AI funding in recent years against $97 billion in the US, a gap that Cherry V's $500 million mandate is partly designed to address through follow-on capacity at Series B and beyond. Macroeconomic volatility, compressed multiples, and rising geopolitical complexity — including export restrictions on critical materials and evolving trade policy — are the ambient headwinds shaping deal execution across the sector in 2025–2026.

Network

Filip's closest working relationships are his co-founding and investment partners at Cherry Ventures. Christian Meermann co-founded the firm with him; Sophia Bendz, Jasper Masemann, Thomas Lueke, Alexander Langholz-Baikousis, and Dinika Mahtani round out the partner team. He is also an active supporter of the Ashoka network.

Christian Meermann· Co-Founding Partner, Cherry Ventures
Sophia Bendz· Partner, Cherry Ventures
Jasper Masemann· Partner, Cherry Ventures
Thomas Lueke· Partner, Cherry Ventures
Alexander Langholz-Baikousis· Partner, Cherry Ventures
Dinika Mahtani· Partner, Cherry Ventures

How they likely show up

Long tenure building Cherry since 2012 — over a decade as Founding Partner — suggests he thinks in fund cycles and multi-year founder relationships, not quick-flip deal logic.
Team-first investment philosophy (IMD talk titled 'Invest in the team — not the idea') → he will weight founder quality and co-founder dynamics heavily in any conversation about a company.
Wrote publicly on NPS as a VC KPI and cap table governance → he brings operational metrics frameworks from his Zalando days into how he evaluates and supports portfolio companies.
Hosts 20Europe podcast and speaks at Slush, Techsylvania, SuperVenture, and IMD → comfortable being a public-facing voice for European tech; likely sees ecosystem-building as part of the job, not a distraction from it.
Founded Tamundo before Zalando, co-founded Zalando, co-founded Cherry — serial founder pattern → high agency, low patience for abstract strategy without an executable path.
Music conservatory background alongside a business degree → Possibly — brings a pattern-recognition and practice-oriented mindset; he has spoken publicly about both, suggesting he draws the connection himself.

Conversation tips

→ Reference a specific Cherry portfolio company — FlixBus, Cazoo, Flink, or Dash0 — and ask about what the early signal was; he responds to founder-quality discussions grounded in real cases.
→ His IMD talk is titled 'Invest in the team — not the idea' — if you have a team story or a co-founder dynamic question, lead with it; that framing will land.
→ He wrote on Medium about NPS as a VC KPI — if you're discussing metrics or portfolio health, that's a productive shared vocabulary to use.
→ The Zalando story is well-rehearsed and he tells it willingly, but the more interesting entry point is what he took from the Zalando-Lounge years (scaling a members-only flash-sale model inside a fast-growing company) rather than the IPO itself.
→ Don't skip the music angle — he has spoken openly about being a trained baritone and Göttingen choir member; it's a genuine part of how he introduces himself and signals he'll engage with the whole person, not just the pitch.

Toolbox

Openers

Open on Cherry V — the $500 million fund launched in February 2025, with a structural expansion into Series B follow-ons. That's a deliberate strategy shift for a firm known as a seed specialist, and he'll have a considered view on why now and what it changes.
Reference the 20Europe podcast series he hosts — he's profiling European startup ecosystems country by country, which signals he's thinking about the geography of early-stage capital as actively as deal selection.
Bring up the Bloomberg interview on 'Europe's Deep Tech Renaissance' — he put Cherry's name on a macro thesis about European tech, so asking him to stress-test that thesis in 2026 will get a substantive answer.

Discovery questions

Cherry V adds a Series B follow-on mandate alongside seed — how does that change the partner team's time allocation and the type of founder relationships you're building?
Your IMD talk is titled 'Invest in the team — not the idea' — at pre-seed, when there's almost no product signal, what specifically are you looking for in a founding team that tells you this is worth a check?
European AI funding is roughly $8 billion against $97 billion in the US — does Cherry V's scale change how you think about competing for the best AI rounds, or is the strategy still to be the first money in before US funds arrive?

Avoid

Don't treat the Zalando IPO as the whole story — he has spoken at length about the operational years (Zalando-Lounge, internationalization, business development) and finds that more interesting than the exit headline; leading with 'you took Zalando public' will feel surface-level.

Make it yours