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The companies that have defined my career were spotted before the opportunity was obvious. What they shared wasn't a sector or a model. It was a founder who saw something nobody else was looking at yet, and had the conviction to build towards it anyway.
Twenty years across every imaginable category has reinforced one belief above all others: the founders who build the most important companies simply refuse to stop. Not out of stubbornness. Out of genuine conviction that what they're building matters. I recognise that quality early, and once I see it, I back it completely.
Growing up between two worlds taught me that the freedom to build something from nothing is genuinely rare. That shapes how I show up for founders: with energy, with patience, and with a belief in what they're building that doesn't waver through the hard periods. The opportunities I find most compelling are the ones that feel slightly uncomfortable in their scale – that's usually the point.
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General Partner
Venture | Munich
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The most interesting companies I've backed didn't fit neatly into any existing box when I first saw them. FlixBus looked like a long shot until it wasn't. Urban Sports Club was a new behaviour before it was a market. That pattern keeps repeating, and it keeps fascinating me. Europe is producing founders with genuinely new ideas at a rate I haven't seen before, people who aren't iterating on what exists but inventing something the world hasn't seen yet. Finding them early, before it's obvious, before the category even has a name, is what this job is really about.
It’s not often you meet someone who started as an intern and made it to General Partner. David Kuczek was born in communist Poland in 1976 and moved to Freiburg at four. Growing up between two very different worlds left him with something that has never faded: a deep appreciation for the freedom to build, and a restlessness that makes standing still feel like a waste.
His brother's obsession with computers pulled him in during the early nineties, not towards code but towards what you could actually do with it. He studied Business Administration in Cologne, worked on an e-learning project at MIT Sloan, taught himself programming, and built a string of amateur social networks that went nowhere in particular. Then he found HV Capital, joined as an intern in March 2005, and never left.
Nearly two decades later, he is one of HV's longest-serving General Partners and one of the most experienced venture investors in the German ecosystem. StudiVZ, Lieferheld, Westwing, FlixBus, Urban Sports Club, CoachHub, Green Fusion. Franchise food chains, fitness platforms, intercity transport, photovoltaics. No single sector, one consistent instinct: back the idea that arrives before the market has a name for it. That instinct hasn't changed since 2005. Neither has the energy he brings to it.
Founders: Dr. Andreas Fruth Dr. Adrian Renner Dr. Gerhard Renner
Founded: 2012
HV Entry: 2012
Funding: Fund V, Fund Coco
HQ: Munich, Germany
Founders: Boris Kofman Constantin Karuzin James Hardy Vadim Fedotov
Founded: 2019
HV Entry: 2019
Funding: Fund VII
HQ: London, United Kingdom
Website: https://www.bioniq.com/
Founders: Magnus Drewelies
Founded: 2021
HV Entry: 2023
Funding: Fund IX Ventures
HQ: Berlin, Germany
Founders: Matti Niebelschütz Yannis Niebelschütz
Founded: 2018
HV Entry: 2019
Funding: Fund VII
HQ: Berlin, Germany
Founders: Paul Schwarzenholz Stefan Smalla
Founded: 2025
HV Entry: 2025
Funding: Fund IX Ventures
HQ: Berlin, Germany
Founders: Dr. Adrian Renner
Founded: 2024
HV Entry: 2024
Funding: Fund IX Ventures
HQ: Munich, Germany
Founders: Jochen Engers André Schwämmlein Daniel Krauss Torben Greve Panya Putsathit
Founded: 2011
HV Entry: 2013
Funding: Fund V, Fund Coco
HQ: Munich, Germany
Website: https://www.flixbus.co.uk/
Founders: Benedikt Schneider
Founded: 2021
HV Entry: 2023
Funding: Fund IX Ventures
HQ: Munich, Germany
Founders: Dr. Stefan Frädrich
Founded: 2012
HV Entry: 2019
Funding: Fund VII
HQ: Cologne, Germany
Website: https://www.greator.com/
Founders: Paul Hock Simon Wagenknecht Nina Germanus
Founded: 2021
HV Entry: 2024
Funding: Fund IX Ventures
HQ: Brandenburg, Germany
Founders: Nono Konopka Jonas Meynert
Founded: 2023
HV Entry: 2023
Funding: Fund VIII
HQ: Berlin, Germany
Founders: Ralph Hage Tonalli Arreola
Founded: 2023
HV Entry: 2024
Funding: Fund IX Ventures
HQ: Berlin, Germany
Founders: Martin Schlichte
Founded: 2008
HV Entry: 2011
Funding: Fund IV, Fund Coco
HQ: Leipzig, Germany
Founders: Markus Haug Dr. Florian Schröder PD Dr. med. Markus Schuler
Founded: 2024
HV Entry: 2024
Funding: Fund IX Ventures
HQ: Munich, Germany
Founders: Andreas Böhm Stefan Roskos Gregor Wiest
Founded: 2021
HV Entry: 2024
Funding: Fund IX Ventures
HQ: Passau, Germany
Founders: Lorenz Hieber Nikita Kowalski
Founded: 2025
HV Entry: 2025
Funding: Fund IX Ventures
HQ: Berlin, Germany
Founders: Jan Rabe Maximilian Both
Founded: 2021
HV Entry: 2023
Funding: Fund IX Ventures
HQ: Hamburg, Germany
Website: https://www.rabot.energy/
Founders: Brad Cordova
Founded: 2017
HV Entry: 2021
Funding: Fund VIII
HQ: San Francisco, United States of America
Founders: Toni Kroos Elias Nerlich
Founded: 2023
HV Entry: 2025
Funding: Fund IX Ventures
HQ: Berlin, Germany
Website: https://www.theiconleague.com/
Founders: Niklas Östberg Fabian Siegel
Founded: 2010
HV Entry: 2010
Funding: Fund IV
HQ: Berlin, Germany
Founders: Cherif Habib Anna Chif Alexis Smirnov
Founded: 2016
HV Entry: 2017
Funding: Fund VI
HQ: Montreal, Canada
Founders: Benjamin Roos Andreas Wels
Founded: 2008
HV Entry: 2008
Funding: Fund II, Fund Coco
HQ: Cologne, Germany
Website: https://jobvalley.com/
Founders: Dennis Bemmann Ehssan Dariani Michael Brehm
Founded: 2005
HV Entry: 2006
Funding: Fund II
HQ: Berlin, Germany
Founders: Moritz Kreppel Benjamin Roth
Founded: 2012
HV Entry: 2015
Funding: Fund VI
HQ: Berlin, Germany
Founders: Delia Fischer Georg Biersack Tim Schäfer Matthias Siepe Stefan Smalla
Founded: 2011
HV Entry: 2011
Funding: Fund IV
HQ: Munich, Germany