EnjoyVenture

EnjoyVenture

EnjoyVenture was founded in 2000 in Dusseldorf, Germany, by the current managing partners Wolfgang Lubert, Dr. Bert Brinkhaus, and Dr. Peter Wolff. The firm emerged at the intersection of German academia and industrial technology, building a model around corporate and university spin-offs. Its 19-person team, a mix of business professionals and engineers, has mobilized over €500 million in total capital for portfolio companies across two decades. The strategy centers on seed and growth-stage technology businesses that can scale. EnjoyVenture deploys capital primarily in Germany, with a focus on sectors including Robotics & Automation, Energy Transition, Enterprise Software, AI/ML, and AgriTech. The firm structures its investments across three seed-fund generations, each with topic- and region-specific criteria. Portfolio companies draw on a co-investor network of more than 140 institutional and private backers, with exits historically split between 30 trade sales and a single IPO. The firm's thesis hinges on capturing innovation at its point of origin — university labs and corporate R&D departments — rather than competing for later-stage deals. EnjoyVenture manages approximately €160 million (per firm website, 2025) from a base in Dusseldorf, with additional offices in Mülheim and Hannover. Its limited partners include family offices, regional banks, and public investors. In 2023, the firm was actively investing out of its third fund generation, continuing to structure seed vehicles with specific geographic and thematic mandates. The team maintains Venture Partners who extend its reach into industrial and scientific communities, reinforcing a pipeline that has sourced more than 40 spin-offs from universities, research institutes, and corporations. A structural differentiator is the firm's spin-off specialization: rather than competing in general seed auctions, EnjoyVenture approaches deeptech founders at the lab-bench stage and provides operational scaffolding — a posture that binds it to the German research ecosystem. This model makes the firm look less like a conventional venture fund and more like an institutionalized pre-seed R&D commercialization partner for the Mittelstand and Max Planck Society-affiliated scientists.