Bonn — The Inves­tor Advi­sory Board has appoin­ted Romy Schnelle (44) to the manage­ment board of High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF). Toge­ther with Dr. Alex von Fran­ken­berg and Guido Schlit­zer, she thus takes over the manage­ment of one of the leading fund compa­nies for seed invest­ments in Europe. HTGF laun­ched its fourth fund as recently as Febru­ary and now mana­ges total capi­tal of around EUR 1.4 billion. With the appro­xi­m­ately 500 million euros from Fund IV, the HTGF team can now invest even more capi­tal per start-up.

Romy Schnelle has been part of the startup ecosys­tem for 20 years and brings a great enthu­si­asm for inno­va­tion. She has been working for HTGF since 2008, most recently as a part­ner in the Digi­tal Tech divi­sion. Toge­ther with her team, she is curr­ently respon­si­ble for around 30 invest­ments with a focus on climate tech, digi­tal health, fintech, AI and SaaS. It has alre­ady successfully sold ten compa­nies from its own port­fo­lio, inclu­ding Stocard to Klarna and Kiwi­grid to Innogy, LG Elec­tro­nics and Aqton. With her exten­sive start-up expe­ri­ence as well as rele­vant exper­tise in busi­ness deve­lo­p­ment, fund­rai­sing and corpo­rate finance, Schnelle has contri­bu­ted signi­fi­cantly to the deve­lo­p­ment of HTGF’s Indus­trial and Digi­tal Tech port­fo­lio. She is also an advi­sory board member in start-ups and chair­wo­man of the invest­ment commit­tee of TX Group, one of the leading media houses in Switzerland.

Before joining HTGF, she co-foun­ded the Fraun­ho­fer spin-off IOSONO, now Barco Audio Tech­no­lo­gies, with mp3 inven­tor Prof. Karl­heinz Bran­den­burg. She began her career in busi­ness deve­lo­p­ment at the Fraun­ho­fer Insti­tute for Digi­tal Media Tech­no­logy. Schnelle studied media science at the Tech­ni­cal Univer­sity of Ilmenau.

“With her proven exper­tise and many years of expe­ri­ence in buil­ding inno­va­tive compa­nies, Romy Schnelle will drive the further deve­lo­p­ment of HTGF toge­ther with her manage­ment colle­agues. As one of the first women in the venture capi­tal scene over 15 years ago, she thus also acts as a role model and now brings this valuable perspec­tive to the manage­ment team as well. We are very much looking forward to working with them,” says Anna Christ­mann, Commis­sio­ner for Digi­tal Economy & Start-ups at the Fede­ral Minis­try of Econo­mics and Climate Protection.

“We are very plea­sed to have been able to recruit a highly compe­tent invest­ment profes­sio­nal from the ranks of HTGF for the posi­tion of Mana­ging Direc­tor. Romy Schnelle is an expe­ri­en­ced mana­ger with a proven network, who has convin­cin­gly prevai­led in the appli­ca­tion process. Toge­ther with Dr. Alex von Fran­ken­berg, Guido Schlit­zer and the team, she will write the next chap­ter in the success story of High-Tech Grün­der­fonds,” Dr. Matthias Koeh­ler, Chair­man of the Inves­tor Advi­sory Board and Minis­te­rial Direc­tor, Fede­ral Minis­try of Econo­mics and Climate Protection

“It is with great enthu­si­asm that I, as Mana­ging Direc­tor, will conti­nue to successfully shape the start-up ecosys­tem with HTGF as Germany’s most active seed fund. I would like to thank the Advi­sory Board very much for the trust they have placed in my work. I am looking forward to working with my manage­ment colle­agues, the part­ners and the entire HTGF team. Toge­ther we will lead High-Tech Grün­der­fonds respon­si­bly and entre­pre­neu­ri­ally into the future,” Romy Schnelle (Photo © HTGF), Mana­ging Direc­tor of High-Tech Gründerfonds.

About High-Tech Gründerfonds

The seed inves­tor High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) finan­ces tech­no­logy start-ups with growth poten­tial and has supported more than 700 start-ups since 2005. With the launch of the fourth fund, HTGF has around 1.4 billion euros under manage­ment. The team of expe­ri­en­ced invest­ment mana­gers and start-up experts supports the young compa­nies with know-how, entre­pre­neu­rial spirit and passion. The focus is on high-tech start-ups in the fields of digi­tal tech, indus­trial tech, life scien­ces, chemis­try and rela­ted busi­ness areas. More than €4.5 billion in capi­tal has been inves­ted in the HTGF port­fo­lio by exter­nal inves­tors in more than 2,000 follow-on finan­cing rounds to date. In addi­tion, the fund has alre­ady successfully sold shares in 170 companies.
Fund inves­tors in the public-private part­ner­ship include the German Fede­ral Minis­try for Econo­mic Affairs and Climate Protec­tion, KfW Capi­tal, and 45 compa­nies from a wide range of industries.