Filip Dames

Who they are

Filip Dames is Co-founder and Founding Partner at Cherry Ventures — trained as a classical baritone who built Zalando-Lounge before co-founding one of Europe's most active early-stage VC firms in 2012.

Person

Filip co-founded Cherry Ventures in 2012/2013 when it was a nascent angel/seed fund alongside Christian Meermann — today it has backed 164 companies over 13 years. His path there runs through two degrees: an MBA from Universidad Torcuato Di Tella (2006) and a Dipl. Kfm. (MSc.) from WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management (2008). After WHU he founded Tamundo GmbH, a digital marketplace for collectibles and art, which ran from May 2008 to September 2009; he then pivoted straight into Zalando, where he founded and ran Zalando-Lounge as CEO from December 2009 to 2012, and held C-level responsibility for business development, internationalization, and product strategy through to Zalando's 2014 IPO. He also passed through BCG as a Visiting Associate and spent time at Sony BMG Music Entertainment earlier in his career. The through-line is operator-to-investor: he built a marketplace, scaled a flash-sales vertical inside Europe's biggest fashion e-commerce platform, and then turned that operating credibility into a fund. He writes on Medium (@filipd) on fundraising, NPS as a VC KPI, the European startup ecosystem, and founder-to-investor transitions, and speaks regularly at Slush, Techsylvania, Q-Summit, and Capital on Stage; he has also lectured at IMD Lausanne. Away from the fund, he trained as a classical baritone and still performs at weddings for friends.

Company

Cherry Ventures closed its fifth fund, Cherry V, at $500 million in February 2025 — split between early-stage bets and follow-on rounds at Series B and beyond, a deliberate expansion of the firm's mandate beyond pure seed. In 2026 the firm has been deploying actively: by June it had invested in 15 companies, including a participation in Dash0's $110 million Series B at a $1 billion valuation in March 2026, and a €2.6 million pre-seed round in Riplo and a €5.7 million pre-seed in INXM. Across 13 years the portfolio counts 164 companies, 8 unicorns, 3 IPOs, and 23 acquisitions — names include FlixBus, Cazoo, and Flink. The firm operates out of Berlin, London, and Stockholm.

Market

Cherry competes for European early-stage deals against Balderton Capital, Earlybird, Creandum, Lakestar, and Seedcamp — a crowded field where the gap in AI funding between Europe ($8 billion) and the US ($97 billion) remains a structural headwind. Macroeconomic volatility, tightening regulatory scrutiny, and shifting geopolitical dynamics are adding friction to deal execution and LP confidence across the European VC market in 2025–2026.

Network

Filip's closest professional ties are his co-founding partners at Cherry Ventures: Christian Meermann, with whom he launched the firm, and Sophia Bendz, who joined as a partner. He is also connected to the Ashoka network as an active supporter, signalling engagement beyond pure tech VC.

Christian Meermann· Co-founder and Partner, Cherry Ventures
Sophia Bendz· Partner, Cherry Ventures

How they likely show up

Long tenure at Cherry Ventures (co-founded 2012/2013, still Founding Partner in 2026) → thinks in multi-year conviction cycles, not deal-by-deal opportunism.
Operator background — founded Tamundo, then built and ran Zalando-Lounge as CEO — → likely pressure-tests founder thinking against real execution experience, not just pattern-matching to decks.
Active public writer on Medium and regular conference speaker (Slush, Techsylvania, Q-Summit, IMD) → comfortable being visible and opinionated; engages substantively when asked for a view.
Wrote specifically about NPS as a VC KPI → quantitatively minded about fund management, not just storytelling.
Founder-to-investor arc via a failed first company (Tamundo shut down after 18 months) → likely has genuine empathy for early-stage risk and non-linear founder paths.
Trained classical baritone who still performs → suggests disciplined long-form practice alongside the deal-flow grind; unlikely to be purely transactional in relationships.

Conversation tips

→ Reference his Zalando-Lounge years specifically — that's where his operator credibility was forged, and he has spoken publicly about lessons from that period; it opens a richer conversation than generic 'your VC career' framing.
→ Ask about the Cherry V fund structure — the deliberate move to add Series B follow-on capacity is a strategic shift worth probing, not just a fundraising milestone.
→ He writes about NPS as a VC KPI, which is an unusual frame — if you want to engage his analytical side, ask how he measures portfolio health beyond valuation.
→ Don't skip the Tamundo story — it lasted 18 months and he moved on; acknowledging that early failure is part of his story signals you've done real homework.

Toolbox

Openers

Open on the Cherry V $500 million close in February 2025 and the explicit decision to extend into Series B follow-ons — it's a strategic repositioning for the firm and he'll have a clear view on why the moment was right.
Mention his Medium post on NPS as a VC KPI — it's a specific, contrarian frame on fund management that he put his name on publicly, and it immediately signals you've read beyond the bio.
Reference Zalando-Lounge: he co-founded and ran it from 2009 to Zalando's 2014 IPO — that five-year operator run inside a rocket ship is the foundation of his investment thesis on European founders, and he's spoken about it at Silicon Roundabout and elsewhere.

Discovery questions

The Cherry V mandate explicitly added Series B follow-on capacity — how does that change the internal decision-making process when you're deciding whether to double down on a seed-stage bet?
You've written about NPS as a KPI for VCs — what does a high-NPS founder relationship actually look like in practice, and how do you track it across 164 portfolio companies?
You ran Zalando-Lounge through hypergrowth and then stepped back to start Cherry — what was the one thing you saw operators consistently get wrong that you wanted to fix from the investor side?

Avoid

Don't treat Cherry as a generic European seed fund — they've backed 8 unicorns, run three offices, and just closed a $500 million vehicle with a deliberate Series B layer; surface-level 'early-stage VC' framing will land flat.

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