The idea behind Cherry was simple. Build the fund we would have wanted by our side when we were the ones raising. Every person on our investment team has been an operator - someone who has started a company or scaled inside one - because the earliest stages of building are a specific kind of hard, and you can only be useful to someone going through it if you have been there yourself.

That was, and always will be our foundation. But what Cherry has grown into is something bigger, and just like the founders we most respect never stopped raising the bar on themselves, our standards have kept moving up. This means the best version of Cherry in 2026 looks different from the best version of Cherry five years ago, as it should.

This wasn’t a top-down exercise - the full Cherry team contributed to the creation of our new core values. We discussed the type of investors we want to be, the type of founders we want to back, and the type of firm we want to build. Our new core values influence who we hire, how we promote, how we assess founders, and how we show up for each other and the founders we back. 

If you are a founder deciding who to work with, or someone thinking about joining Cherry, this is what you can expect from us - and what we will expect in return.

Entrepreneurship is in our DNA. We’ve lived the highs and brutal lows - so we invest in people first, go all-in on their vision, and never stop pushing for their success. 

Cherry was built by people who have been founders. We know how hard it is - not conceptually, but from experience. That changes everything about how we operate.

We show up prepared. We do not disappear after a deal closes, and we do not back away when a company hits a hard stretch. The founders we back need to be honest with us, and we owe them the same in return. Our obligation is to the founder and the company. That means we are a tough friend sometimes. It also means we are a friend for life.

Our bar is sky-high. We support founders building category-defining, generational companies that will have global impact. Nothing is out of reach. 

We believe Europe will produce its first trillion dollar company. We want to fund it. The word unreasonably is intentional - the most important companies rarely look inevitable at the start, and our conviction has to match our founders' vision, not the consensus view of the market.

We invest in the magnitude of the idea and the team, not in the absence of risk. If something sounds too early or too bold to most people, that is where our attention goes.

We are looking for the impossible. No stone unturned, no assumption unchallenged. We’re eternal students with an obsessive thirst for what’s next and who’s next. 

We are looking for what is next and who is next, which means we cannot afford to stop at the obvious or the familiar.

This curiosity is also what keeps us honest. We keep asking questions after we invest. We treat every new category as something worth understanding properly, regardless of how new or unfamiliar it is. The moment we assume we know enough is the moment we start missing things.

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We thrive through collaboration. Egos stay at the door. Every milestone is shared, every success is everyone’s - because our greatest impact only comes when we’re all in. 

We win as a team and we lose as a team. There is no version of Cherry succeeding where individuals are focused on their own credit or their own lane. Every milestone is shared, and so is every setback.

For founders, that means you get the full team - not one partner's attention when things are going well, but our full network and our full judgment across every function, including when things are hard. We put the interests of the firm and our founders ahead of any individual's interests, and we expect everyone here to do the same.

We don’t dabble, we commit. Our decisions are rooted in deep research and an unwavering belief. We go all-in for every founder we choose, with no room for doubt or complacency.

When we back a founder, that is a full commitment, and we do not hedge after the fact. The founders we want to back need investors who will not flinch, and we hold ourselves to that standard before we ask anything of them.

Conviction here means doing the deep work before we commit, so that when we do, there is no room for doubt or complacency. We go all in for every founder we choose. That is what it means to be a first believer.

The most important company Europe has ever produced is out there right now, probably in a stage that looks too early or a category that looks too crowded. We want to be the first people who believe in it. That takes a specific kind of team, and a specific kind of founder. These values describe both, and we’ll hold ourselves accountable to them.

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