Berlin-based EWOR, a Founder fellowship, has committed €60 million to supporting early-stage entrepreneurs, offering selected Founders €500k in capital which includes €110k from EWOR GmbH and an additional €390k from the investment fund via an uncapped convertible note or similar instrument.
On average, EWOR alumni have gone on to raise €1-11 million during the fellowship, including “Europe’s largest-ever pre-Seed round by a first-time Founder“.
Daniel Dippold, Co-founder and CEO of EWOR, says: “The main value of our fellowship is not money. Most of our fellows don’t even need the money. They join because they’re obsessed with building something great — and they know this is the only place they’ll be truly challenged. EWOR is not for everyone. It’s for the few who have the potential to build trillion-dollar companies.”
EWOR, founded in 2021, is run full-time by six entrepreneurs who have built companies worth over €12 billion, including SumUp, Adjust, ProGlove, united-domains, and Sigma Squared Society: Daniel Dippold, Alexander Grots, Florian Huber, Petter Made, Quinten Selhorst, and Paul Müller.
Together they have contributed and attracted €60 million in fresh capital, with €30 million going toward a Series A financing round for its operating business, EWOR GmbH, and another €30 million allocated to a Luxembourg-based investment fund.
Petter Made, partner at EWOR, says: “EWOR’s approach is to provide as much value as an experienced full-time Co-founder by blending scientific insight, real-world experience and deep empathy for the founder’s path. We reject standardisation because standard doesn’t work for the exceptional. Our model is about curating conditions where the world’s rarest talent can thrive.”
According to data provided to EU-Startups, out of more than 35,000 applicants each year, EWOR accepts just 35 entrepreneurs, who EWOR refers to as ‘fellows’. The selection process is based on a combination of ML-driven pattern recognition, intensive partner interviews and evidence-based testing.
Fellows are supported through a virtual-first model built on 1:1 mentorship (including 1 to 5 hours per week with a unicorn Founder), bespoke modules, and a curated network of over 2,000 mentors, VCs, and subject matter experts.
Unlike the standard one-size-fits-all programme, EWOR’s fellowship embraces the Founder’s non-linear journey. It is virtual-first, decentralised and borderless – to reflect the current reality where a Founder might build a product in Nairobi, hire in Europe and fundraise in Silicon Valley.
For example, they supported the team behind Aspect Health, a Moldova-based startup that raised funding in Silicon Valley and New York, and scaled to a €43.8 million valuation in less than one year after joining the fellowship.
Ten founders have so far been accepted into this year’s cohort. They include:
- UK-based Mark Golab, a 3D printing pioneer applying the technology to organ transplants with Cambridge Surgical Models.
- US-based Matthew Pierre-Louis, Founder of Möbius Industries, a full-stack recycling robotics solution with a team from MIT, Tesla, SpaceX and Boston Dynamics.
- UK-based Salil Patel, an Oxford PhD in Computational Neuroscience and NIHR academic radiologist, harnessing the power of digital biomarkers to measure brain health.
- Vienna-based Viktoria Izdebezka, Austria’s youngest supervisory board member in a public corporation and 2-time Founder, innovating AI-powered lead generation with Salesy.
- UK-based Nick D’Aloisio, a 2-time Founder with two exits > €30 million, building a stealth mode startup.
EWOR fellow Ariel Harmoko, Founder of Artifact AI, says: “I chose EWOR because they come in incredibly early, opposed to many US models, and provide hours of hands-on support every single week – from code reviews to helping build our AI models. Working with EWOR feels like working with a Co-founder, not with an investor.”
Previous EWOR fellows include:
- Ricky Knox, who achieved two 9-figure exits with Azimo and Tandem Bank.
- Andrew Nutter, who built space exploration startup Gama after successfully leading Westwing to IPO.
- Tim Seithe, who led Tillhub to a bootstrapped exit at almost €100 million.
- Ariel Harmoko, who recently raised a €3.5 round led by a16z for his startup Artifact AI, after ten months inside EWOR’s fellowship.
- Jörgen Tveit, Founder of energy storage startup Thaleron, which raised Europe’s largest ever pre-Seed round (€11.4 million) by a first-time Founder.
EWOR fellow Jörgen Tveit, Founder of Thaleron, says: “EWOR provides a network of people you can build the future with. No fluff, just real support and world-class peers. The founders of EWOR are deeply technical and understand the challenges of building a world-changing tech company.”
