Haniel

Visionaries Club: €600M VC Backed by Family Businesses

The article profiles Robert Lacher and the Visionaries Club, a venture-capital vehicle he co-founded with Sebastian Pollock that has grown since 2019 to manage about €600 million. The Club aggregates capital from family-owned companies and successful founders (including names like Oetker, Haniel and Swarovski) and backs startups such as Personio, Xentral and Miro. Lacher discusses his path from founding the fashion startup Amaze (sold to Zalando) to building multiple VC vehicles (including a prior fund, La Famiglia). The Visionaries Club focuses primarily on B2B investments and collaborates with larger US funds such as Sequoia for bigger rounds; Lacher says the fund avoids participating in large capital-intensive AI “race” investments because it lacks the financial firepower. The piece is drawn from an OMR podcast interview covering fund strategy, founder support through entrepreneur networks, and Lacher’s background.

Emma grew to €645M; plans US and China expansion

In an OMR Podcast interview, Emma founder Dennis Schmoltzi recounted the company's rapid growth from a direct-to-consumer mattress startup to a global sleep brand. Emma reported roughly €645 million in revenue last year (about 60% growth), operates in 30 countries and is present in over 3,500 physical stores through partners like Jysk. The company has about 900 employees and the founders are targeting nearly €900 million in revenue for the current fiscal year, profitably. Schmoltzi discussed the 2019 Stiftung Warentest test win that accelerated sales, the 2019 majority acquisition by Haniel (after initially raising ~€5 million in VC), product diversification (beds, pillows, smart mattress pilots) and plans to expand further into the US and China (a Shanghai team of ~30). He also described internal culture choices, such as giving interns approval responsibility for budgets around €10,000 to preserve startup mentality.