Fellowship for the top 0.1% of founders: EWOR raises €60M to help the outliers ‘build trillion-dollar companies’

Berlin-based EWOR,  an emerging founder fellowship, announced that it has raised €60M in fresh capital to support the world’s most exceptional early-stage entrepreneurs.

Out of the total, €30M will go toward a Series A financing round for its operating business, EWOR, and another €30M allocated to a Luxembourg-based investment fund. 

Daniel Dippold, co-founder and CEO of EWOR, says, “The main value of our fellowship is not money. Most of our fellows don’t even need the money. They join because they’re obsessed with building something great, and they know this is the only place they’ll be truly challenged. EWOR is not for everyone. It’s for the few who have the potential to build trillion-dollar companies.”

As part of the fellowship, the German founder fellowship offers selected founders €500K in capital, making it one of the largest investments for a fellowship or accelerator globally.

It includes €110,000 from EWOR GmbH and an additional €390,000 from the investment fund via an uncapped convertible note or similar instrument. 

EWOR claims that, on average, its alumni have gone on to raise €1-11M during the fellowship, including what was Europe’s largest-ever pre-seed round by a first-time founder.

Accepts just 35 fellows

Out of more than 35,000 applicants each year, EWOR accepts just 35 entrepreneurs (0.1%), whom EWOR refers to as ‘fellows’.

The German fellowship looks for visionaries, technical prodigies, deeply driven operators, and serial entrepreneurs who have the potential to find companies that solve significant challenges.

The selection process is based on a combination of ML-driven pattern recognition, intensive partner interviews, and evidence-based testing. 

What to expect?

Fellows receive support through a virtual-first model that includes one-on-one mentorship (1 to 5 hours a week with a successful founder), customised learning modules, and access to a network of over 2,000 mentors and investors.

Petter Made, partner at EWOR, says: “EWOR’s approach is to provide as much value as an experienced full-time co-founder by blending scientific insight, real-world experience, and deep empathy for the founder’s path. We reject standardization because standards don’t work for the exceptional. Our model is about curating conditions where the world’s rarest talent can thrive.” 

Unlike standard programs, EWOR’s fellowship embraces the founder’s non-linear journey. 

It is virtual-first, decentralised, and borderless – to reflect the current reality where a founder might build a product in Nairobi, hire in Europe, and fundraising in Silicon Valley.

For instance, they helped the team behind Aspect Health, a startup created in Moldova that raised money in Silicon Valley and New York. Within a year of joining the fellowship, their valuation reached $50M.

Inside the 2025 Cohort

Here are a few founders who have been accepted into this year’s cohort. They include:

• UK-based Mark Golab, a 3D printing pioneer, applied the technology to organ transplants with Cambridge Surgical Models, after surviving a life-threatening infection himself.
• US-based Matthew Pierre-Louis, founder of Möbius Industries, a full-stack recycling robotics solution with a team from MIT, Tesla, SpaceX, and Boston Dynamics.
• UK-based Salil Patel, an Oxford PhD in Computational Neuroscience and NIHR academic radiologist, harnesses the power of digital biomarkers to measure brain health.
• Vienna-based Viktoria Izdebezka, Austria’s youngest supervisory board member in a public corporation and 2-time founder, revolutionising AI-powered lead generation with Salesy.
• UK-based Nick D’Aloisio, a 3-time founder with exits totalling €100M is building a neuro-inspired deep learning hardware and software product, currently in stealth mode.

EWOR: Empowering the world’s brightest minds

EWOR, founded in 2021, is run full-time by six entrepreneurs who have built companies worth over €12B, including SumUp, Adjust, ProGlove, united-domains, and Sigma Squared Society.

The founding team includes — Daniel Dippold, Alexander Grots, Florian Huber, Petter Made, Quinten Selhorst, and Paul Müller. 

EWOR partners have lived the highs and lows of scaling unicorns and bring battle-tested experience to the cap table – as peers, not investors.