Twelve female investors, no male

Since 2001, the Business Angels Netzwerk Deutschland has elected a Business Angel of the Year; only in 2019 did a woman receive this title for the first time. The money in the start-up scene is in the hands of men. But if you take a closer look, there are now many women in crucial roles at venture capitalists. They run them, they decide on investments, they act as business angels. Here are twelve of them.

I

Kiana Mardi, investment director at Alstin Capital.

Kiana Mardi has been managing investments at Alstin Capital since 2017; she previously held the same position at early-stage investor Seed + Speed. Both venture capitalists are part of the Maschmeyer Group.

Alstin's focus is on the tech industry. Current projects Mardi is overseeing include food logistics startup Fliit and proptech Reinvent, the first time Alstin has backed a startup in the real estate industry. As a business angel, she participated in seed funding at Deinestudienfinazierung in 2018.

Previously, Mardi was at Rocket Internet, worked for Edarling and helped build Zalando and Zalando Lounge. In 2013, she co-founded fashion company Glamloop with Alexandra Podeanu, which they successfully sold to a competitor in 2014. From 2015, she helped Holidu succeed and was responsible for the startup's Series A financing round, in which Booking.com founder Kees Koolen participated through his fund EQT Ventures.

II

Daria Saharova, chief executive of Vito One.

Saharova has been chief executive of venture capitalist Vito One since its founding in 2015. The Viessmann Group's early-stage investor focuses on prop techs, and has financed more than 20 startups to date. These include energy manager startup Gridx and Home, provider of an apartment rental platform.

Saharova moved to Munich after school to study, became an investment manager and actively supports the startup scene in the Bavarian capital. For example, she founded the Munich Founders Association and initiated the Venture Wiesn event format.

In 2020, she was awarded the inaugural "Best Investor" prize by the German Start-ups Association.

III

Romy Schnelle, Partner at High-Tech Gründerfonds

In 2008, Schnelle's career began at High-Tech Gründerfonds, Germany's largest early-stage investor with nearly 900 million euros in fund volume. Since then, she has assisted seven startups in their exit, and her portfolio currently includes nine companies. At the tech start-ups Stocard and Quobyte, Schnelle is closely involved in the companies' processes as a member of the supervisory board.

Schnelle herself once started as a founder: In 2003, she helped build the Fraunhofer spin-off Iosono, which was sold to the Dutch company Barco Audio Technologies in 2014.

Since February 2021, Schnelle has also been chairwoman of the Investment Committee of the Swiss media group TX Group. There, she primarily supports start-ups in the development and growth phase.

IV

Tanja Emmerling, Partner at High-Tech Gründerfonds

Emmerling's main interest is Artificial Intelligence in the areas of mobility, logistics, IT security, blockchain solutions or SaaS. Since 2018, she has headed the Berlin office of High-Tech Gründerfonds, where she has been assisting startups since 2014. So far, she has recorded four exits. She is currently mentoring the online marketplace for secondhand fashion Rebelle, for example, and has been supporting the SaaS start-up Virtualq since its founding.

Before joining High-Tech Gründerfonds, Emmerling worked for six years at the business publisher VNR.

V

Marie-Helene Amtsreiter, Partner at Speedinvest.

Amtsreiter is a senior partner at venture capitalist Speedinvest. Based in Munich, she leads the firm's industrial tech team, which focuses primarily on startups in manufacturing, construction, energy, logistics and mobility. According to the firm, its rounds include up to two million euros.

Speedinvest invests primarily in early-stage European startups, and Amtsreiter has been with the company since 2014. Her portfolio of German startups includes, for example, the just-awarded Cleantech Twaice.

She started her career as CEO at a Croatian mobile phone company, later moving to an Austrian competitor. She then moved to the gas and oil industry at the OMV Group. Meanwhile, she met Speedinvest co-founder Oliver Holle, who brought her into the company.

VI

Alexandra Bause, Partner at Apollo Health Ventures.

In 2016, Alexandra Bause co-founded Apollo Health Ventures with Jens Eckstein and Nils Regge. The focus is on biotech startups worldwide. She also manages the VentureLabs program, which initiates and supports the creation of new startups aimed at stopping the aging process. In a first fund, Apollo Health Ventures raised 37 million euros, and at the end of 2020, a second fund with a target volume of up to 100 million euros was launched. Half of the fund invests in early-stage startups in which Apollo intends to hold a majority stake. The other half goes to companies where early entry is no longer possible.

VII

Angie Gifford, vice president at Facebook and multi-supervisory board member.

Gifford's career started at Deutsche Bank after graduating in 1987. For the next twenty years, she worked in various management positions at Microsoft, becoming a member of the executive team. For the past year, Gifford has been vice president at Facebook, based in Berlin.

Gifford is also a multi-supervisory board member, including at TUI and Thyssen Krupp.

As recently as the beginning of 2020, she was part of one of the financing rounds of the HR start-up Tandemploy, to which only female investors were invited.

VIII

Dagmar Bottenbruch, General Partner at Segenia Capital Partners (formerly DC&F Capital Partners).

Bottenbruch has made a full 17 angel investments in her career, including the robo-advisor Vamoo, which was sold to Moneyfarm, or the travel platform GoEuro, now called Omio.

She started as a student at Harvard Business School and Berkley, was an equity analyst in New York and found herself in the executive ranks at Credit Suisse and Rabobank.

Her first own experience with the world of start-ups came at the end of the 90s, when she set up the online broker Self Trade Italy. Today she invests in and advises start-ups as a business angel, currently for example the FinTech CrossLend. Bottenbruch sits on supervisory boards such as that of the Berentzen Group and is a managing director at the investment firm Segenia Capital Partners.

IX

Mariana Bozesan, co-founder and president of Aqal AG.

When investing, Munich-based Aqal AG adheres to the sustainability criteria adopted by the United Nations. Bozesan is not only co-founder, but also president of the investment company, which supports start-ups in the seed and growth phase - the sustainable aspect being crucial.

Bozesan is a Club of Rome member, developer of the "Theta Model" for minimizing risk in investments and advises the European Union, NGOs and funds on sustainable financing. In 2019, she has been named the best female business angel in Europe. The prize is awarded jointly by the associations Business Angels Germany and Business Angels Europe.

X

Malin Holmberg, Partner at Target Global.

Venture capitalist Target Global says it has a balanced gender ratio, and Holmberg has worked for the Berlin-headquartered firm from London since 2018. It invests in startups up to the growth stage, with a volume of €800 million.

Holmberg has 15 years of experience in the telecommunications sector: Starting at Vodafone in London, she worked her way up to CEO of the Dutch company Tele2. She sits on several boards, including listed audiobook platform Storytel, and advises Singapore-based venture capitalist Antler.

"We raise our children to believe that boys need to take risks, ask girls out on dates and learn to deal with setbacks. In contrast, girls are rewarded for kind behavior and doing well in school. Starting a startup is a very risky proposition, and that gives men an advantage."

- Holmberg in Female Founders Monitor 2020 interview

XI

Andrea Röhm, vice president at EQT

EQT Equity Partners has been expanding its German business for several years, and in 2017 the Munich-based private equity firm also brought Röhm on board. Röhm, who has a degree in business administration, previously worked for five years at the Boston Consulting Group.

Today, she is Vice President at EQT and is part of the Level20 initiative, which aims to achieve a 20 percent share of women in management positions in private equity.

XII

Andrea Kranzer, investor and managing director at D.A.D. Investment.

In 2019, she became the first woman to be named Business Angel of the Year by the Business Angels Netzwerk Deutschland. As CEO of the investment firm D.A.D. Investment, she focuses primarily on startups from pre-seed to Series A funding rounds; digital solutions for the healthcare sector are of particular interest to her. Her portfolio mainly includes health start-ups such as Heartbeat, Medipee or Oncgnotics.

In 2015, she herself founded the start-up Balloonas, which offers ideas for children's birthday parties. She is also active in several business angel networks, and in 2018 she founded her own network called Angels4Health with a focus on the healthcare industry.

Female Founders Week 2021

This article is part of our special on female entrepreneurship in Germany.

Want to learn more? Downloadthe entire Female Founders Report 2021 here:

Download study (74 pages, 13 MB)