- Fund: Lucid Capital
- Founded: 2023
- Headquarters: Berlin, Germany
- Strategy: Inception and pre-seed
- bunch customer since: 2023
About Lucid Capital
Lucid Capital is a Berlin-based venture capital firm that backs founders before most investors would consider the company real. Inception-stage investing demands a particular kind of conviction. Lucid was built entirely around it.
The firm was founded in 2023 by Srećko Džeko and Johann Nordhus Westarp, who had worked together at Flash Ventures before launching Lucid. Johann founded Flash Ventures in 2019 and backed more than 40 companies at inception before partnering with Srećko to build something more focused. Srećko brings a product and systems orientation to the partnership, with a background spanning AI infrastructure and long-term company building, including as CSO at Rocket Internet and co-founder of Simplo.
Lucid invests often before a company formally exists, with initial cheques of €500k to €1.5m. The conviction is simple: Europe has the engineers, the researchers, and the operators to build global technology leaders. What it has lacked is the first institutional believer willing to say yes before there is anything to validate. In March 2025, Lucid closed its debut fund oversubscribed at €36m, establishing itself as one of Europe's largest AI inception funds.
The challenge: where to begin
When Srećko and Johann launched Lucid, their experience as investors was not in question, however, building a fund from the ground up was a different story. Investing demands speed and conviction. Setting up a regulated fund requires navigating a sequence of interconnected decisions, from legal structure and BaFin registration to banking, compliance, and LP onboarding infrastructure, where each choice has downstream consequences that are not always visible at the time.
The market offered no clean solution and Lucid wanted a provider that covered the full stack without requiring them to coordinate across multiple tools and relationships. The practical challenge was one of simultaneity. Lucid needed to source a law firm, auditor, notary, and bank, build out the administrative and compliance infrastructure, prepare for a first close, and begin evaluating investments, all at once, without a dedicated operations hire to absorb any of it. For a two-person team whose attention needed to be on founders, the risk was straightforward: let operations consume the first year, or find a way to make it disappear.
The decision: why bunch
Lucid decided to build on bunch before the fund had a single LP and has run without interruption since.It started with introductions: bunch connected the team to the law firm and notary needed to get the fund off the ground. From there, the relationship grew to cover the full operation.
The market didn't offer much of a middle ground. Most providers made GPs choose: work with a traditional administrator and take on separate tools to fill the gaps, or use software that still left most of the manual work with the team. bunch was the only provider that covered fund administration, LP onboarding, reporting, and portfolio data in one integrated system.
"Honestly, what set bunch apart was the comprehensive offer across the value chain…bunch was the only option that actually covered the full stack in one integrated setup, without us having to give up control or stitch five tools together. For a GP-only team, that combination was the decisive factor." – Srećko Džeko, Partner at Lucid Capital
Three things set bunch apart. The numbers were airtight - capital calls, money flows, LP-facing figures the foundation any fund runs on - and bunch got them right, every time. The team acted more like an in-house function than an outside vendor. And the pace matched Lucid's own: digital-first, moving fast, without sacrificing the rigor a fund at scale needs.
For a first-time manager, Lucid would encourage thinking about the whole stack from day one. The stronger your setup at the start, the less hassle down the line - every hour not spent on operations is an hour back for LPs and founders.
The impact: operational scale
bunch has onboarded every one of Lucid's LPs spanning the US and Europe, executed every capital call without a miss, and delivered quarterly reporting to all LPs. Tax and compliance have run through the same integrated stack throughout with nothing dropped as the firm scaled.
The partnership was tested when speed mattered most. A fast-moving follow-on round meant Fund I LPs needed a way to participate on short notice, and bunch had the vehicle ready in two days - without either founder losing a week to it.
"We needed to spin up a vehicle for existing Fund I LPs to participate in a follow-on, and bunch turned it around in 48 hours. What would normally be weeks of legal and ops coordination was done in two days. That kind of speed is a real competitive advantage when you're trying to lean in." –Srećko Džeko, Partner, Lucid Capital
The result is a firm that has reached the scale of one of Europe's largest AI inception funds.
Future with bunch: Fund II and beyond
Scaling won’t slow Lucid down. As the fund grows, every new closing, every new investor, and every new structure will add complexity- and that complexity will continue to be absorbed by bunch, not the Lucid team. In the words of Srećko, bunch is Lucid’s partner for this fund and beyond.
Srećko Džeko
Partner aLucid Capital
"Our ambition with Lucid is to build Europe's leading first-check fund, and to do that we need a back-office partner that can mirror that ambition. We believe bunch is that player in Europe, and we're planning to grow together from here."
