Visionaries Club investment team narrows to two leads for next fund
Rob Lacher says Visionaries Club’s next fund will be led by two investors as the German VC firm shifts to a more concentrated model.
By Ingrid Halvorsen · Venture Capital Reporter
· 3 min read
The Visionaries Club investment team is being narrowed to two lead investors for the German VC firm’s next fund, general partner Rob Lacher said Tuesday. Lacher said he will lead investing alongside partner Venkat Kondragunta, a change that puts a firm known for backing Lovable, Black Forest Labs and N8n into a more concentrated operating model as it prepares a fund expected later this year.
The size and timing of the upcoming fund were not disclosed. Lacher described the structure in a blog post as a move toward a “GP-led” firm and said Visionaries wants to build a “more AI-native VC firm” for the next vehicle.
Visionaries, founded in 2019 by Lacher and Sebastian Pollok, is making the change after several senior investors shifted or prepared to shift out of full-time investing roles. Judith Dada, who joined Visionaries as a general partner last year, became co-CEO of portfolio company Langdock last month. She will remain a senior partner at the VC firm, according to Lacher.
What is Visionaries Club changing before its next fund?
Visionaries is concentrating investment leadership around Lacher and Kondragunta rather than running the next fund with a broader full-time investment bench. The firm has not said how many other investors will remain in full-time roles for the new fund.
Sifted reported last week that Robert Jäckle and Marton Sarkadi Nagy were leaving their full-time partner positions at Visionaries, with another investor considering an exit. Jäckle and Nagy told Sifted they would move into more entrepreneurial roles at the firm, and Jäckle said they would “complement the full time investment team” next. The firm has not publicly detailed what those roles will involve.
Visionaries’ team page lists Johann Butting, Sahar Meghani, Sandra Tur Mayor and Isabella Yamamoto as partners or junior investors, according to Sifted. Lacher did not respond to Sifted’s request for comment on what will happen to those investors’ roles.
Why Visionaries is pointing to AI
Lacher framed the restructuring as part of what he called a “concentration” model for venture firms in the AI era. In his blog post, he argued that founders want faster access to investors with operating experience, distribution, geopolitical connections, policy reach, operator networks and compute access. He also said AI is now handling the standard diligence work that venture firms historically staffed for.
That claim fits a wider pattern among European venture firms, though the operational impact is still uneven and often under-disclosed. Earlier this year, Austrian VC Speedinvest cut 10% of its staff. Managing partner Oliver Holle told Sifted at the time that the firm wanted to become “more lean and effective,” and said AI was an area where Speedinvest needed to invest more internally. He also criticized the amount of manual back-office work still done inside funds.
AI tooling is becoming part of venture firms’ competitive pitch, especially around sourcing and diligence. QuantumLight, the AI-powered VC firm founded by Revolut founder Nik Storonsky, says it has built a proprietary model tracking 700,000 venture-backed companies. Sifted reported that QuantumLight is in talks to target $500 million for its second fund, after closing its first fund at $250 million in May last year.
For Visionaries, the shift leaves open the question that matters to founders and LPs: whether a smaller full-time investment group can maintain coverage and win allocations while the firm leans on AI and a narrower partner bench. Lacher has stated the model; the firm has not yet disclosed the next fund’s size, final team structure or role split.
This story draws on original reporting from Sifted.
