EWOR

Almost 700 of you joined us on Tuesday—and we are back next week for the grand finale of our Q&A Series! This time, we are joined by one of our partners: Petter Made. 🏆 Petter was a co-founder of SumUp, a fintech company currently valued at €8.5B. After that, he was CPTO at Drooms, which he helped grow to 9 figures. Next Tuesday, he will sit down with Daniel Dippold and answer any questions you might have about entrepreneurship, his journey as a founder, and the European tech ecosystem! ⏰ Make sure you add it to your calendars and see you there! #EWOR #founder #tech

🚨Friendly reminder: Daniel W. Dippold is hosting an open Q&A at 7pm CET to answer all of your questions about our latest news. Not one to be missed!

🚨 We’ve secured €60 million to help the world’s most exceptional founders to build game-changing companies. From now on, EWOR Fellows will receive €500,000 in immediate funding. In short, we’re taking EWOR to the next level, whilst maintaining what has set us apart from the very beginning. We, as always, continue to be: 𝟬𝟬𝟭 - 𝗥𝗮𝗱𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗦𝗲𝗹𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲: Just 0.1% of 35,000+ applications per year make the cut. 𝟬𝟬𝟮 - 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗺𝗶𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗨𝗻𝗽𝗮𝗿𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗹𝗲𝗱 𝗦𝘂𝗽𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁: Our Fellows get 1:1 mentorship (including up to 5 hours/week with a unicorn founder), as well as direct access to 2,000+ mentors from top-tier VCs and domain experts. 𝟬𝟬𝟯 - 𝗙𝘂𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗠𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗹𝗮𝗿: A founder’s journey is not linear, so a founder fellowship shouldn’t be either. Our platform and approach is fully modular. Take what you need, skip what you don’t. No programme. No standardisation. No ego. We serve founders. 𝟬𝟬𝟰 - 𝗩𝗶𝗿𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹-𝗙𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗧𝗿𝘂𝗹𝘆 𝗚𝗹𝗼𝗯𝗮𝗹: Founders can participate from anywhere in the world - no relocation, no borders. Our model is designed for the modern founder: Building in Nairobi, hiring in Europe, and raising in Silicon Valley We’ve already welcomed incredible founders into our 2025 cohort (with more announcements to come, stay tuned) and we can’t wait to work with them. -- A huge thanks to our world-class network of investors and supporters: Fabrice Grinda (FJ Labs), Michael Baum (Splunk), Daniel Krauss (Flix), André Schwämmlein (Flix), Jochen Engert (Flix), Felix Haas, Kevin Hartz, David Rowan - Accel, Atomico, Balderton Capital, EQT Ventures, 2150, Insight Partners, New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Sequoia Capital, and many more for making this possible! -- 🚀 Founders, apply here: https://lnkd.in/dcbJPv6n -- Our €60 million in fresh capital is split between €30 million going toward a Series A financing round for our operating business, EWOR GmbH, and another €30 million allocated to a Luxembourg-based investment fund. As part of our new standard deal, each startup receives a €500,000 investment. This includes €110,000 from EWOR GmbH and an additional €390,000 from the fund via an uncapped convertible note.

Ever wondered how our investment terms for Traction Fellows are set up? Or how we tailor our mentorship and modules to each Ideation Fellow? Join Daniel for an EWOR deep dive next Tuesday to get answers to all of your questions. He’ll share insights into our mission, discuss what you can expect as an EWOR Fellow, share upcoming plans, and host an open Q&A. 📅Click this invite to add the event directly to your calendar: https://lnkd.in/eiXJNqeS Hope to see you there! #startup #investment #founder

🚨 We’re excited to launch our Summer 25 Q&A Series with two webinars! (1) 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐄𝐖𝐎𝐑 𝐅𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩𝐬, 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 Daniel W. Dippold 📅: 29th April ⏰: 7:00–8:00pm CET ➡️ Join Daniel Dippold for an EWOR deep dive. He’ll share insights into our journey, discuss upcoming plans, and answer any questions about how our fellowships work. Whether you are applying to EWOR, or just curious, this is a great chance to learn more. (2) 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐮𝐩101: 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲 𝐨𝐟 𝐒𝐮𝐦𝐔𝐩, 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 Petter Made 📅: 6th May ⏰: 7:30–8:30pm CET ➡️ Our second webinar will feature Daniel W. Dippold interviewing Petter Made, co-founder of SumUp and former CPTO of Drooms. Expect a candid discussion about scaling a company to an $8bn valuation, through highs, lows and everything in between, followed by an open Q&A. -- 🔜 Make sure to mark your calendars and stay posted for Zoom event links, which we shall share a few days before the webinars. 📥 And be sure to apply to our fellowships before the May 12th Deadline: https://lnkd.in/eQKBGnbp

6 months after launch, Gleb Babiy has hit €1.6m ARR with Aspect Health. Yesterday, he was named as the youngest member of Forbes' 30u30 2025. Heres how he got there: 🩺 At 10 years old, Gleb was told by doctors that an excess of female hormones in his body would likely prevent him from having children. 🏫 By 15, he took matters into his own hands, leaving school to attend medical university and explore solutions independently (yes, aged 15!). 👨⚕️ Two years later (at 17!) he co-authored and sold a breakthrough technology that used Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy to remotely detect nutritional imbalances in the human body. 🚀 Today, aged 22, Gleb is tackling one of the biggest women’s health challenges with Aspect Health : PCOS (Polycystic Ovary Syndrome), which affects 1 in 10 women in the US. 💡 By collecting real-time data from Continuous Glucose Monitors (CGMs), wearables, and at-home blood tests, Aspect Health creates personalised lifestyle modification plans for women struggling with infertility and midlife weight gain due to insulin resistance. 📈 With a bold vision and a data-driven approach, Aspect is transforming how women manage metabolic health. €1.6M ARR in just six months is only the beginning. #tech #entrepreneur #medtech

🎉 Congratulations Gleb Babiy for making it onto the Forbes 30u30 List! 🚀 Gleb's story, which epitomises resilience, ambition and vision, is one we are very proud to be a part of. ➡️ Keep your eyes peeled for more details about Gleb's ever-growing success!

🌞 We've had a blissful couple of weeks at EWOR! 🌍 Following the craziness of our Grand Pitch (which saw 400+ top-tier investors meet 11 of our fellows), we've hosted a series of events in London, Berlin and Paris to turn online impressions into in-person connections. 🫂 Thanks to all the investors from Sequoia Capital, Hummingbird Ventures, EQT Ventures, Accel, Left Lane Capital, Atomico, and many others who joined and made each event so special! ❤️ And an even bigger THANK YOU to Kindred Capital VC and Eurazeo (Paris) for hosting us so well! ➡️ All three events were very intimate, warm and unique. We can't wait to host more events like this across Europe and beyond. 📍 Next stop: SF, where some of our fellows are going to continue the conversations! Catch them whilst you can: Anastasia Trofimova, Ariel Harmoko, Elio Assaf, Johann Rozario, Kyle Collier, Luis Parra, Mark Golab, Piers MacNaughton, ScD, Salil Patel, Tyler Sellars, Viktoria Izdebska #startup #tech #EWOR

🚀 Two brothers from Lebanon and their best friend co-found a startup... and within 6 months they have raised €500,000 from top-tier investors! ➡️ Meet Mario Assaf, Elio Assaf and Raphaël Ausilio, co-founders of Optiverse, an agentic AI for workplace productivity and note-taking. 🇱🇧🇨🇭Emigrating from Lebanon to Switzerland, Mario completed his Master’s in Finance at University of St.Gallen MBA, whilst Elio studied Mechanical Engineering at EPFL and ETH Zürich. 👾 Elio was always a builder. At 12, he built a software to use his neighbours’ WIFI. Years later, he led ETH Zürich’s aerospace team (ARIS) to victory in an engineering competition by launching a 6 meter rocket to the stratosphere. 🏫 Elio then went on to write a Master’s Thesis in Nanotechnology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he met Rapheal, who was developing a new technology for cellular activity monitoring. 🫛 Like Elio, Raphael was also born a builder. In fact, he had also tried to build a software to hack into his neighbours’ WIFI when he was a teen. (Peas in a pod.) 🛋️ After becoming best friends, Raphaël spent 3 months crashing on Elio’s couch to ideate a video-to-video summarisation tool. With a product roadmap drawn, Elio called in his business-minded brother, Mario, to join the ideation-couch-crashing for 3 more months. 🚀 They pivoted, and Optiverse was born. A year later, Optiverse has over 200 enterprise users (pre-launch). And they have a team of brothers working around the clock to build something groundbreaking. Keep your eyes posted! #startup #entrepreneur #tech

🚀 We had a BLAST at START Global Summit last week! Beyond hosting a LIVE Grand Pitch to a packed out room of investors (see list of pitchers below), our 3 biggest highlights were: 1️⃣ Emil Kostadinov (Manamind) beat 80 global applicants to win the SAAS Pitching competition 🏆 2️⃣ Daniel W. Dippold hosted a main-stage panel discussion with Michael Baum (Splunk, The Yope Foundation) 🎤 3️⃣ We hosted a side-event with 20 Tier-1 GPs, and we joined our friends at Sigma Squared Society, Cherry Ventures and Sequoia Capital for various dinners 🫂 --- ➡️ We want to personally thank Max, Hannah, Simone and the whole START team for their incredible work. START Summit is truly a must-attend event. 🗣️ And we want to shoutout our awesome pitchers: Matthew (Möbius Industries), Ariel Harmoko (Artifact AI), Viktoria (Salesy), Johann (Supplied), Kyle (Neobanc), Elio (Optiverse), Anastasia (Your Beet), Mark (Cambridge Surgical Models). -- 🔜 If you missed START Summit, our next Live Grand Pitch will be at Bits & Pretzels in Munich in September - we cannot wait to go again! #tech #entrepreneur #STARTSummit #startup