Operator turned investor: Philipp Werner as our newest Principal


We’re incredibly happy to announce that Philipp Werner, our former CMO, has transitioned from our operational team to our investment team — as Principal

We’re incredibly happy to announce that Philipp Werner, our former CMO, has transitioned from our operational team to our investment team — as Principal. The move marks yet another turn in his exciting career at Project A.

His operational experience greatly enables Philipp to double down on early stage and Series A+ investment opportunities where he focuses on ecommerce infrastructure, sales tech, marketplaces and energy. From a geographical perspective Philipp is covering the up and coming Spanish and Portuguese ecosystems.

From level to level — Philipp’s career at Project A

Philipp joined us back in 2015 right after his MBA in Hamburg and Paris as one of our first Venture Development Managers — and two years later took over the team’s leadership. As the opportunity presented itself, Philipp transitioned into the data team as Director Business Intelligence with the objective of significantly improving the team’s impact on our portfolio companies. Joining a team of excellent analysts and data engineers that had a hard time generating traction for their solutions within our portfolio, Philipp successfully managed to build up a profound business understanding within the team and reshape the analyst role into what is today referred to as data translators (see definitions by McKinsey or Forbes here) that ensure a relentless focus on business impact.

Having learnt from renowned marketing professionals such as Philipp Westermeyer, Erik Siekmann and our own Florian Heinemann, Philipp became Project A’s CMO in 2018. Since then he put emphasis on strengthening our marketing team’s B2B expertise, fostered cross-functional alignment between the marketing, sales, analytics, and brand departments to accelerate our portfolio companies’ commercial growth and became a trusted advisor to many.

Over the last six years Philipp supported over 40 of our portfolio companies including Trade Republic, Kry, sennder, Spryker and Catawiki and took over several interim C-level positions and project lead roles — so he truly is an operator turned investor.

Philipp’s transition into our investment team further underlines our conviction of the Operational VC model. He has shown exceptional skill and brightness when it comes to understanding the needs of our portfolio companies, taking new routes and leading teams. His wit, his passion and the ability to put himself in the founders’ shoes will bring incredible value to the team. We’re convinced that his operational experience will not only enable him to make great investment decisions but also be a valuable sparring partner to our portfolio companies for all things go-to-market and growth. We’re thrilled to have him on the investment team and are certain that he’ll excel at his new role as Principal.