By Uwe Horstmann
The first time I met Enrico Mellis, he had just joined us as an intern. With a surprisingly atpyical background of having worked in the music and advertising industry (before landing in the Berlin tech ecosystem), he wasn’t the stereotypical candidate for a career in venture capital. But he possesses two specific qualities needed above all: Firstly, a massively positive energy, both when interacting with others, as well as when working on himself. Secondly, he just enjoys the hustle. If he senses an opportunity to meet an outstanding founder or connect the right people with each other, he goes after that opportunity with laser focus. In a nascent & dynamic industry like venture capital, these are the most important ingredients. Enrico built his own path in record time, step after step, investment after investment — all while remaining the absolute class act of a person he was when he joined as an intern back then.
So I am more than happy to announce that Enrico is now promoted to Principal at Project A.
At Project A, we believe in building talents early on. Many of our team members joined Project A as interns — and so did Enrico. Enrico became part of the investment team in 2017. He kept working for Project A while finishing his Masters in Paris and then started full-time in Berlin in 2018. Before joining Project A, Enrico had his first startup experiences at foodora/Delivery Hero.
In the investment team, Enrico has become an expert in all things real estate, deep diving into the Proptech and construction tech market after our investment in Casavo which he accompanied closely. Beyond that, he focuses on procurement and b2b marketplaces as well as logistics (he wrote about the challenges of COVID vaccination supply chain management here). Enrico is also keen on everything that happens in the gaming and entertainment market, and is working on our hypotheses around community-driven business models (for example, check out his medium post on the latest wave of fitness tech startups). Enrico is a real networker, connecting founders, angels and other VCs alike and he quickly builds friendships that go beyond work. So all you founders out there looking for pre-seed or early-stage funding, just reach out to Enrico!
We are thrilled to have Enrico on the team and we have the highest conviction he will keep excelling at this role! Congratulations, Enrico!