Fellowship Program, Venture University Europe
Invest in yourself.
Open the door for the next generation.
For post-exit founders and family offices. You have built. This is a way to stay close to the best startups in the world on your own terms, and to open the same door for someone who cannot yet open it themselves. You enroll for a full year inside Venture University as a Venture Partner of the fund. In recognition of your sponsorship, our foundation funds an equal place for the next generation.
You join
A full year at Venture University. €40,000 for four quarters, with full cohort member rights as a Venture Partner.
We match
An equal place, funded one to one, by Venture University Europe
The result
One Fellow for a year, or four Fellows for a quarter. Talented people, carefully chosen on merit, who could not otherwise be in the room.
The model
Two things happen at once.
One decision opens two doors. You take a real seat inside a working venture fund. And by doing so, you sponsor a place for a talented Fellow who joins the same cohort, sits in the same seat, and works closely with you for the year. Their seat is funded one-for-one by the match. So you gain a driven collaborator without adding to your own calendar.
I. What you join as a Sponsor
- A place in the cohort
As a Venture Partner of VU Venture Partners, a top global fund, evaluating real companies and real deals.
- Weekly Partner Meetings and ICs
Open to you whenever you wish to join, never when you do not.
- Profit sharing
On the deals your cohort selects to invest in.
- Dealflow and global network
The same pipeline the cohort team reviews each quarter, and a room of fellow Venture Partners, post-exit founders and family offices across three continents.
- Live deal exposure
Review the same pipeline the cohort sees and observe how real investment decisions are made.
- Full flexibility
No required hours. Around five hours a month is enough to stay close to the work.
II. What you make possible for a Fellow
- An equal place, fully funded
For someone who could not otherwise access Venture University, funded one to one, by Venture University Europe.
- One Fellow, or four quarters
One Fellow for a full year, or four Fellows for one quarter each. The shape of the gift is yours to choose.
- The next generation
Exceptional people fully dedicated to venture, often between 25 and 35, with the instinct for investing but neither the track record nor the means to break in.
- A seat on the jury
If you would like to help choose who walks through the door.
- Monthly coaching
A monthly session with the Fellows you sponsor, for as long as you both find it useful.
Almost everything in the ecosystem is built to train founders. Almost nothing is built to train the people who decide where the capital is invested.
The program
Inside the eleven weeks.
Venture University is a full-scale global VC fund, not a classroom. We defined the investor accelerator category in Silicon Valley in 2018, and each cohort joins an eleven-week cycle inside our fund, VU Venture Partners, evaluating real companies and committing the fund's own capital. You join the parts that interest you, and no more.
Week 1
The Masterclass
An intensive week covering the full toolkit: sourcing, diligence, term sheets, cap tables and fund mechanics.
Weeks 2 to 10
The working fund
The weekly cadence of a real fund, reviewing live companies and bringing deals through to Investment Committee.
By the close
A real track record
Three to seven investments later, the quarter closes with an exclusive dinner and an investor sharper than the one who arrived.
A standard week
Every day
Sourcing, screening, diligence, financial modelling and founder calls. Self-directed, and the heart of the week.
Mondays
Each vertical team presents its strongest companies to the GP team and defends its thesis in front of the fund managers.
Tue & Thu
Working sessions on the craft of investing: term sheets, cap tables, fund mechanics.
Wednesdays
The full cohort team and GPs review the week's inbound pipeline and decide what moves forward.
When a round is live
Called when conviction and a live round align, not on a fixed schedule.
AI runs across every vertical. The fund spans frontier (space and deeptech), healthcare, industrial, fintech and proptech, climate-tech, consumer, and enterprise. Every participant graduates with a documented track record, three Credly certified certificates, and a profit-sharing agreement.
The mission
Building the next generation
of investors.
Venture is the rare asset class where doing the work well means funding the breakthrough technology that transforms the future. The companies that reshape how we live are almost always backed by venture, angel and growth capital, and the people who allocate that capital shape the world the next generation inherits.
And yet the people deploying it are rarely trained. Imagine a hospital appointing a surgeon who never went to medical school. No one would allow it, yet in venture and private equity it is the norm. By most estimates only about a quarter of funds return more than the capital their investors put in, and most angel investments go to zero. Venture University defined the investor accelerator category in 2018 to change this. Backing a Fellow raises the standard of who funds the future.
Misallocated every year by conservative estimates, roughly one trillion euros every five years. Capital that could have funded the next generation of breakthrough companies, allocated instead by people the industry never trained.
Where it leads
Many join as successful operators and graduate ready to allocate. The Fellowship is a full-time, paid learning experience inside VU Venture Partners: you evaluate real companies, sit on investment committees, and build the judgement required to lead or join a fund. Alumni remain part of the global investor network, with pathways to continue deploying capital alongside the fund according to their own accreditation and eligibility.
You arrive
Accomplished, with real capital instinct, but not yet a fund of your own.
You build
Built on live deals, with the fund's capital and the judgement that comes with it.
You leave ready
The mastery for your own direct and fund investments, the qualifications to lead or join a fund, and the network and economics to begin.
How it fits, and how to begin
Built around your life.
Format
Fully remote, or in person in San Francisco, Munich or Hong Kong.
Sessions
Run on California time. For Europeans, reserve 6 to 9 PM CET.
Commitment
Flexible for sponsors. Twenty hours a week for Fellows, up to full-time.
Quarterly cohorts
Mid-January to end-March
End-March to mid-June
Mid-June to end-August
End-September to mid-December
Cohorts fill on a first-come, rolling admissions basis. The Fall 2026 cohort begins Monday, 28 September.
We would be glad to talk it through.
Andy GoldsteinPartner - Europe
Remy GoldsteinPartner - EuropeMany who read this have already spoken with Andy or Remy. If so, this is simply the moment to continue the conversation. If not, a first chat is the natural place to start. We are glad to walk you through the model, the profiles of the Fellows it empowers, and what a year inside the fund, tailored to your goals, looks like in practice.
Take your place, and open the door for the next generation.