Berlin, 1 July 2020 – Cherry Ventures announced today that it is strengthening its investment team with the addition of Sophia Bendz, an experienced angel investor who will join the early-stage venture capital firm as a Partner on 1 September 2020. Bendz will continue to be based in Stockholm, sourcing investment opportunities in the Nordic region and wider Europe.
Sophia Bendz has extensive experience in strategic brand building, marketing and seed investment. She has spent the past four years as Partner at Atomico focusing on expanding the VC’s footprint in the Nordics as well as supporting its portfolio companies with marketing, brand and communications strategy and scaling. Prior to that Sophia was Venture Partner at BetaAngels and from 2007-2014 Global Marketing Director at Spotify, where she built a strong consumer brand from scratch, while launching and marketing the service globally.
Besides running Atomico’s Angel Programme, Sophia is an active angel herself. Her investments include AidenAI, Tictail, Joints Academy, Omnius, Simple Feast, Adelee and Sana Labs as well as Cherry portfolio companies like LifeX, Eastnine, Hedvig, and Manual. She is particularly interested in the femtech space, and her angel investments in that area include Clue, Grace Health, Daye, O School, and Boost Thyroid. She also serves as a Board Director at the non-profit organization Race For The Baltic, is co-founder of non-profit foundation AllBright.se, and is an innovation advisor to the Swedish Prime Minister.
Christian Meermann, Founding Partner, Cherry Ventures: “We have been impressed with Sophia’s work for a long time and we are really excited to welcome her to our team. Among many things, Sophia brings to Cherry a deep-rooted expertise in the Nordics, a shared interest in supporting seed-stage companies, and an unparalleled marketing background as evinced by her work at Spotify, which she helped grow from a small Swedish startup to the top international player in audio streaming.”
Sophia Bendz: “The Cherry team and I share the same passion for early-stage investing. Their proven track record and our shared values is something I truly appreciate, and I am looking forward to working with the Cherry team to expand its footprint in the Nordics as well continuing to support inspiring founders across Europe.”
About Cherry Ventures
Cherry Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm founded and led by a team of entrepreneurs with experience building fast-scaling companies such as Zalando and Quandoo. The funds back Europe’s boldest founders, usually as their first institutional investor, and supports them in everything from their go-to-market strategy and the scaling of their businesses. Cherry Ventures has previously invested in the seed stage of over 50 companies across Europe, including FlixBus, Auto1 Group, Infarm, DashDash, Forto, and TourRadar. Founded in 2012, Cherry Ventures is headquartered in Berlin and has operations in London and Paris. To learn more, visit www.cherry.vc
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