Former La Famiglia investor Judith Dada, who left the firm shortly after it merged with mega US firm General Catalyst in 2023, is joining Berlin-based VC firm Visionaries Club as a general partner.
Dada joins former colleague and La Famiglia founding partner Rob Lacher, who left to found Visionaries in 2019 but continued managing La Famiglia’s first fund.
Dada announced her departure from General Catalyst over the summer, just months after the deal closed. “I was ultimately really looking for something that is more boutique [rather than] a really, really big firm. I was really craving more of this boutique element and approach to VC,” Dada tells Sifted.
Lacher and fellow founding partner Jeannette zu Fürstenberg brought Dada on to La Famiglia back in 2017, and continued working together managing La Famiglia’s first fund, which includes bets like Personio and Deel.
Dada says that shortly after she posted about her departure from General Catalyst, Lacher reached out and the two talked about working together again over vegetarian sushi. The two will be leading Visionarie’s software and B2B funds; Visionaries also has a deeptech-focused fund, Visionaries Tomorrow, led by Visionaries co-founder Sebastian Pollok, which is currently fundraising.
In terms of fund carry, Dada says they’re still hashing it out, although she is described as an equal partner with Lacher. The pair are not currently fundraising but Lacher says Visionaries is likely preparing its next fund in early or mid-2026.
La Famiglia 2.0
Both Dada and Lacher describe Visionaries as something of a La Famiglia 2.0. The two have “similar” DNA, Dada says. “Even though I’ve never, obviously, been part of Visionaries in the past, it does feel like a very familiar place in many ways.”
Many of Visionaires’s LPs are founders themselves, including Personio’s Hanno Renner, HelloFresh’s Dominik Richter and UiPath’s Daniel Dine. Moving forward, “We really [want to] continue exactly what we once started at La Famiglia, and we really want to stay independent,” Lacher tells Sifted.
Visionaries has made a number of high-profile deals, including buzzy and mysterious French AI startup H Company and nuclear company Proxima Fusion — though the VC is selective, only striking four deals in 2024, according to Sifted data.
Going global
Visionaries is spending more time outside of its home base of Berlin, hosting events in Paris and focusing on its London office; Dada says she also expects to spend more time in Paris, a big AI hub, moving forward (she remains based in Berlin).
“We’re doing more and more in the US,” adds Lacher, who says the firm gets pulled into a lot of early-growth deals in the US by founders who want to expand to Europe.
For Dada, the geopolitical turmoil of recent weeks — which has seen the US pause military aid to Ukraine and the EU try to step up its defence funding — is a “shit show.” But “at the same time, I feel that this is Europe’s rallying cry,” she says. “I think this is just such a golden moment and a great opportunity to really come together and define Europe, not just in the best version of itself, but really in the best version that we can play in this world more broadly.”
For Visionaries, that could mean also looking into defence startups (Dada’s former firm is invested in German AI defence titan Helsing). “Honestly, every fund has the responsibility — in terms of, there’s just amazing returns in that sector, but then also, more broadly, when it comes to our continent — to take founders who are building in this space very, very seriously,” Dada says.
Dada says she will officially start work after Easter, although the timeline is flexible as she recently gave birth.
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/judith-dada-visionaries-general-catalyst-news/
