Built on Trust: Cherry’s Journey with bunch

Cherry Ventures is one of Germany’s largest and most significant early-stage venture capital platforms, managing a sophisticated suite of flagship funds, opportunity vehicles, and specialised SPVs. Behind that scale sits a story that begins not with finance, but with operators who had lived the chaos of hypergrowth firsthand.

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The firm was established by Filip Dames, a leading figure in European tech whose trajectory—from co-founding and scaling Zalando to his strategic board roles, academic contributions at renowned universities, and civic leadership in arts and culture—remains the blueprint for Cherry’s "operator-first" DNA. Having experienced both the velocity and volatility of building a category-defining company, Filip brought to venture capital a founder’s memory of what support actually feels like on the other side of the table.

Filip’s transition from a high-growth founder to a strategic architect of the European ecosystem has defined the firm’s unique market position. Alongside Christian Meermann and a leadership team of former executives from Spotify and Uber, Filip has engineered a platform built specifically for the complexities of modern company building. This "builder-to-builder" model prioritises the operational nuances of the growth journey over the traditional, hands-off approach of financial reporting; reflecting a belief that companies are not spreadsheets but evolving systems.

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Today, with over $1 billion in assets under management, Cherry operates under a mandate of "dreaming in decades and executing in weeks." This strategic rigour underpins their commitment to founders addressing the world's most formidable challenges; including fusion energy, generative AI, robotics, and aerospace technology. In practice, this means backing companies whose timelines stretch far beyond typical venture cycles, while maintaining the speed required to compete in fast-moving markets.

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As the firm expanded from its early funds (I–IV) toward newer, more complex vehicles, the operational reality behind the scenes became increasingly intricate. What had once been a manageable set of processes began to resemble a patchwork of systems stitched together over time. Each new fund and SPV added layers of reporting, capital activity, and compliance requirements. Cherry wasn’t facing a single operational issue but the natural limits of a fragmented operating model; one that had evolved organically rather than by design, and that wasn’t compatible with the company’s philosophy.

Cherry’s increasing fund complexity and operational scale eventually outpaced the capabilities of its multi-provider setup. 

Each reporting cycle required coordination across tools, involving multiple manual handoffs and reconciliations. Each capital event required cross-checks across different systems to ensure consistency. Each audit and regulatory filing required manual consolidation of information coming from different sources — a process that consumed time precisely when accuracy and speed mattered most.

What had once been workable began to strain under growth. This approach became increasingly unsustainable as the number of vehicles, investors, and reporting requirements grew. Cherry needed an operating model that could support the full fund lifecycle in one place, from fund setup to investor reporting to accounting and compliance, without adding operational burden as the platform expanded.

bunch stood out because it was not only a software platform, but an integrated operational partner capable of covering the entire fund lifecycle.

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Cherry moved toward a model where:

1. Administration, capital management, reporting, and the investor portal operate together
2. Accounting, annual accounts, and investor reporting are handled through bunchtax within the same ecosystem and working with the same data points and workflows. Integrating a tech-first fund administration platform with specialist tax expertise
3. The infrastructure is built on ISO 27001 and DORA-aligned compliance standards, suitable for fully licensed fund managers

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By consolidating a fragmented landscape of tools and providers into a unified operating stack, this shift did more than just streamline processes; it fundamentally transformed the flow of information across the firm. This evolution was further reinforced by dedicated account managers and expert-in-the-loop oversights.

The operational difference is measurable and proven below on the activity handled by bunch:

• 692 reports executed through the platform
• 357 capital calls processed directly on bunch
• €659M in committed capital and €257M in contributed capital tracked 

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Freed from the burden of reconciling data across multiple providers, Cherry’s team can now dedicate their expertise to the core of venture capital: scaling founders and strengthening investor partnerships.

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Audit readiness: sustaining institutional standards

As Cherry’s platform matured, so did the expectations placed on its financial infrastructure, particularly during audit season. Since last year, bunch has supported Cherry through the full audit process with KPMG, taking ownership of the operational backbone that makes a complex, multi-vehicle audit feasible under tight timelines.

This included managing the audit data room end-to-end and serving as the central point of coordination for auditor communication; a role that eliminated the need for Cherry’s team to manually assemble materials across providers or respond to fragmented information requests. 

Cherry now operates on a modern fund infrastructure where administration, capital management, reporting, compliance, and investor experience are seamlessly interconnected. This reduces operational overhead, strengthens data integrity, and provides investors with clear, consistent access to fund information and data.

In partnership with bunch, Cherry is no longer just navigating the changing landscape of private markets; they are co-authoring its future. Beyond a tech-enabled fund administration platform, bunch provides the long-term operating foundation for Cherry’s next phase of global growth, while Cherry serves as the strategic partner for bunch to build towards the next generation of fund intelligence.

As the private markets environment continues to evolve towards greater automation and AI-driven processes, Cherry is perfectly positioned on an infrastructure built to lead that evolution rather than react to it.