The small German academic institution generates an outsize number of unicorns.
Former students of the Center for Digital Technology and Management (CDTM) in Munich, Germany, have formed a €8.2m ($8.5m) venture fund to invest in startups whose founders are alumni of the study programme.
The CDTM Venture Fund has more than 300 limited partners who are all alumni of CDTM, a joint interdisciplinary study programme of the Technical University of Munich and Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich.
Venture funds that are backed by alumni are common in the US but rare in Europe. The CDTM Venture Fund is thought to be Germany’s first alumni fund.
“With 1,200 alumni and 9 unicorns under their belt, CDTM’s track record speaks for itself,” said Leon Szeli (pictured), a CDTM alum who will be on the fund’s board and investment committee, in a LinkedIn post.
The CDTM study programme takes bachelors and masters students from all fields to complement their main studies with courses in technology and management. The small institution limits class sizes to 25 but has generated a quarter of all Germany’s unicorns.
The venture fund will invest in CDTM startups at the pre- and seed stage. Most of the carry generated by the fund will be donated back to CDTM.
Szeli, who is also an angel investor, founded AI startup Presize, which was acquired by Meta.
