Emerging founder fellowship EWOR has committed £51m to supporting the world’s most exceptional early-stage entrepreneurs.
As part of an intensive fellowship, the Berlin-based venture capital firm offers selected founders £425,000 in capital, one of the largest investments for a fellowship or accelerator globally.
Ten founders have so far been accepted into this year’s cohort, including UK-based Mark Golab, a 3D printing pioneer applying the technology to organ transplants with Cambridge Surgical Models, after surviving a life-threatening infection himself.
Salil Patel, an Oxford PhD in Computational Neuroscience and NIHR academic radiologist harnessing the power of digital biomarkers to measure brain health has also been accepted, along with London-based Nick D’Aloisio, a 3-time founder with exits totalling €100m, who is currently building a neuro-inspired deep learning hardware and software product which is in stealth mode.
Out of more than 35,000 applicants each year, EWOR accepts just 35 entrepreneurs, who EWOR refers to as ‘fellows’.
The selection process is based on a combination of ML-driven pattern recognition, intensive partner interviews and evidence-based testing.
The company was founded in 2021 and is run full-time by six entrepreneurs who have built companies worth over €12 billion, including SumUp, Adjust, ProGlove, united-domains, and Sigma Squared Society.
“The main value of our fellowship is not money. Most of our fellows don’t even need the money,” said Daniel Dippold, co-founder and CEO of EWOR.
“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.”
Petter Made, partner at EWOR, added: “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 standard doesn’t work for the exceptional. Our model is about curating conditions where the world’s rarest talent can thrive.”
EWOR fellow Jörgen Tveit, founder of Thaleron, said: “EWOR provides a network of people you can build the future with. No fluff, just real support and world-class peers. The founders of EWOR are deeply technical and understand the challenges of building a world-changing tech company.”
Ariel Harmoko, founder of Artifact AI and also a fellow, said: “I chose EWOR because they come in incredibly early, opposed to many US models, and provide hours of hands-on support every single week – from code reviews to helping build our AI models. Working with EWOR feels like working with a co-founder, not with an investor.”