CDTM Venture Fund funding news – Munich-based CDTM Venture Fund Secures €8.2 Million to Support CDTM-affiliated Startups

The fund is exclusively backed by it graduates and will invest in around 60 early-stage startups over the next four years. Each startup must have at least one CDTM alumnus/alumna on the founding team.

Fund Manager Franz Waltenberger said, “The CDTM selects 25 students every six months from up to 450 applications and has proven over 25 years that it is able to identify and train the outstanding entrepreneurial personalities of tomorrow, We are building on this foundation and providing these founders not only with early capital but also with the concentrated power of the CDTM network.”​

The CDTM says that only 5 seed VCs in the EMEA region have invested in more unicorns than the CDTM has helped create.

Although alumni investor clubs are common in the USA, the CDTM Venture Fund aims to lead the way in Germany. A large part of the fund's profits will go back to CDTM as donations, supporting the education of future students.

The fund is managed by Franz Waltenberger, a long-time member of the CDTM team. The Investment Committee includes these CDTM alumni:

The Investment Committee includes:

• Dr. Sophie Ahrens-Gruber, Principal at Acton Capital and former Head of Corporate Development at Burda
• Christian Deger, founder and former CEO of Payworks (sold to Visa)
• Leon Szeli, founder and former CEO of Presize (sold to Meta)

The CDTM Venture Fund shares the same mission as CDTM: to "connect, educate, and empower the innovators of tomorrow." The fund offers quick, flexible, and simple initial capital to startups, either as direct funding or in partnership with other venture capital firms and business angels.

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The fund has 316 investors, including over a dozen unicorn founders, more than 100 other founders, top researchers, and corporate executives. They help portfolio companies by providing mentoring, and their network assists with recruiting, sales, and fundraising.

Andreas Franz, Chairman of the CDTM Alumni Association: “As an alumni association, it is important to us to support the CDTM not only financially. Thanks to the special structure of our fund, in the form of an investment club, we enable every member to invest, even with small tickets – this includes alumni from older years as well as current students. After years of planning and thanks to the work of many long-standing stakeholders, we are now a pioneer in the university landscape throughout Germany.”

About CDTM

Founded in 1998 by Andrew Kelly, Arnold Picot, Jörg Eberspächer, and Manfred Broy, the CDTM is a Graduate University that offers the interdisciplinary add-on study programme “Technology Management“, which is part of the Elite Network of Bavaria.

It is the birthplace of 25% of Germany’s unicorns. It’s not only one of the most selective educational institutions to get into, with a mere 6% acceptance rate, but it also boasts the highest "unicorn-to-alumni ratio" in the world (9 unicorns / 1,200 alumni).