Filip Dames

Who they are

Filip Dames is Founding Partner at Cherry Ventures — started his VC career after co-founding Zalando-Lounge and Tamundo GmbH, and launched Cherry V, a $500 million fund, in early 2025.

Person

Filip studied Business Administration at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella (MBA, 2006) and then at WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management (Dipl. Kfm., 2008), giving him a dual German-Latin American academic foundation before he ever built anything. His early career moved through Sony BMG Music Entertainment, then The Boston Consulting Group as a Visiting Associate — classic consulting on-ramp. In 2008 he founded Tamundo GmbH, a digital marketplace for collectibles, art, and rarities, which ran until 2009. He then moved into Zalando as a C-level executive covering business development, internationalization, and product strategy, before spinning out Zalando-Lounge in December 2009 and running it as CEO through 2012. He joined Cherry Ventures in July 2013 when it was a newly founded early-stage firm with a small team at inception, and has been building it ever since — it now has offices in Berlin, London, and Stockholm and has backed over 130 companies. The through-line is operator-to-investor: he built and ran consumer businesses before betting on other people who do the same. Possibly — his Sony BMG stint and his status as an amateur musician connect in ways that shaped an eye for creative, consumer-facing founders.

Company

The most recent signal from Cherry Ventures is its participation in Dash0's $110 million Series B at a $1 billion valuation in March 2026 — a bet on developer observability infrastructure that shows the firm following its portfolio into later rounds. That follows the February 2025 launch of Cherry V, a $500 million fund split between early-stage investments and follow-on rounds at Series B and beyond — a structural shift from a pure seed shop toward a longer-hold model. In March 2026, Cherry also participated in Riplo's €2.6 million pre-seed, signaling it hasn't stopped writing small checks at the earliest stage. The combination of a $500 million vehicle and active participation at both pre-seed and Series B suggests Cherry is intentionally building a multi-stage presence around its core European founder thesis.

Market

Cherry Ventures positions itself as Europe's leading early-stage venture firm, competing with other European VC funds for pre-seed and seed opportunities in tech startups. The broader context for European venture in 2026 is shaped by geopolitical multipolarity — shifting trade frameworks and regulatory pressures that affect how capital flows into and out of European tech. Cherry's multi-city footprint (Berlin, London, Stockholm) and its move into follow-on capital with Cherry V appear designed to keep pace with founders who scale across borders.

Network

Filip's most visible co-investors and partners at Cherry Ventures are Christian Meermann and Sophia Bendz, both named co-partners at the firm. No external network edges are available beyond the Cherry Ventures team.

How they likely show up

  • Long tenure at Cherry Ventures (joined July 2013, still Founding Partner) → thinks in fund cycles and decade-long founder relationships, not quarterly portfolio sprints.
  • Operator background — ran Zalando-Lounge as CEO and founded Tamundo GmbH — before moving to VC → likely evaluates founders on execution specifics, not just pitch narrative.
  • Hybrid role-type pattern (CEO, co-founder, and now VC partner) → comfortable moving between building and investing, probably expects founders to do the same.
  • Possibly — public writing signal is near-zero → he may prefer direct conversation over broadcasting views; don't expect him to have a hot take ready for every trend.
  • Cherry V's structure (early-stage plus Series B follow-on) → shows a deliberate portfolio construction mindset, not ad hoc deal-chasing.
  • Amateur musician alongside a career in finance, consulting, and VC → suggests he holds interests outside the professional bubble, and may warm up faster in conversation that isn't purely transactional.

Conversation tips

  • → Anchor early on the operator experience — he ran Zalando-Lounge and founded Tamundo before doing VC, so he'll respond to founders or counterparts who know what it's actually like to build.
  • → Reference Cherry V's structural shift to multi-stage if you want to discuss fund strategy — it's a concrete, recent move you can ask about with specifics.
  • → Don't expect him to perform thought leadership for you; he doesn't post much publicly, so ask direct questions rather than fishing for a prepared monologue.
  • → If the conversation stalls, his amateur musician background is a genuine opening — not as small talk filler, but as a real interest he's named.

Toolbox

Openers

  • Open on Cherry V's structure — a $500 million fund explicitly designed to cover both pre-seed and Series B follow-on is a meaningful strategic bet, and asking what drove that architecture will get a substantive answer.
  • Reference the Dash0 Series B participation (March 2026, $110 million at $1 billion valuation) — Cherry betting on developer observability infrastructure at the Series B stage is a specific portfolio signal worth probing.
  • Bring up Zalando-Lounge: he built and ran it as CEO from 2009 to 2012, which is the origin story of his operator credibility — asking what he learned running a flash-sale business inside a fast-scaling e-commerce platform is a direct, non-generic opener.

Discovery questions

  1. Cherry V bundles early-stage and Series B follow-on into one vehicle — how do you manage the decision-making tension between writing a new pre-seed check and doubling down on an existing portfolio company?
  2. You ran Zalando-Lounge as CEO before moving into VC — when you're evaluating a founder today, what's the specific thing that operators-turned-investors notice that pure financial investors tend to miss?
  3. With offices in Berlin, London, and Stockholm, and geopolitical pressure reshaping how European companies scale — how has Cherry's view of what it means to back a 'European founder' changed since you started the firm in 2012?

Avoid

Don't ask generic questions about 'what Cherry looks for in a founder' — with over 130 portfolio companies and a long operator background, he's heard every version of that question and will disengage quickly without a specific anchor.

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Sources

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Generated by briefthecall.com from public web sources on June 5, 2026. Each claim is linked to its source above.

Automatically generated by AI from public sources. May be inaccurate or out of date. Remove or correct this profile →