NAP

Three managing partners — Claude Ritter, Stefan Walter, and Rouven Dresselhaus — make all investment decisions. All three were founders and operators before becoming investors. Ritter and Walter co-founded Delivery Hero, which IPO'd in 2017, and Dresselhaus built and sold Book a Tiger and 468 Capital. No non-operating partners sit on the investment committee.

Cavalry's founding DNA traces directly to Delivery Hero. Managing partners Claude Ritter and Stefan Walter co-founded the food-delivery platform and operated it through its early growth stage and 2017 Frankfurt IPO. That exit generated the personal capital and founder-network credibility that underpins Cavalry's deal flow and LP base. The firm is legally and operationally separate from Delivery Hero.

The firm sources primarily through the personal founder networks of its three managing partners, who are anchored in the Berlin startup ecosystem that produced Delivery Hero, Zalando, and N26. Cavalry also runs operator-focused content and community events that bring founders into its orbit before they are fundraising. The firm does not rely on inbound cold applications.

Cavalry operates as a traditional venture capital firm with institutional limited partners, not a family office. The managing partners invest personal capital alongside LPs in each fund, but the primary capital base comes from European fund-of-funds, pension funds, and family offices. The firm closed its second flagship fund at €160 million in 2021.

Rouven Dresselhaus, one of Cavalry's three managing partners, separately co-founded 468 Capital, a Berlin-based venture firm with a distinct fund structure, LP base, and investment committee. 468 Capital and Cavalry Ventures share overlapping deal flow and co-invest occasionally but operate with independent governance. Dresselhaus sits on the investment committees of both firms.

The firm writes first checks at pre-seed and seed stage, typically deploying €500,000 to €2 million initially with reserved capital for follow-on investments through Series A. Cavalry leads or co-leads rounds and takes board seats selectively. The fund does not participate in growth-stage or late-stage venture rounds.

The firm does not invest in hardware-intensive businesses, deeptech requiring long lab-to-market timelines, or capital-heavy infrastructure plays. Cavalry's partnership has publicly stated a preference for capital-efficient software models where the operator team can materially help founders with go-to-market and organizational scaling, areas where deep-tech capital intensity stretches their fund size and operator skill set.