Roland Manger

Roland Manger is one of the four co-founders of Earlybird Venture Capital, established in 1997 alongside Hendrik Brandis, Christian Nagel, and Rolf Mathies. Earlybird has grown into one of Europe's most established venture firms, managing roughly €2.5 billion across multiple funds (deep-tech/"Digital West," "Digital East"/UNIQA Ventures-adjacent Eastern Europe, health, and growth strategies) and posting nine IPOs and dozens of trade sales over nearly three decades. Manger is based in the firm's Munich office.

Before Earlybird, Manger built a career spanning strategy consulting and entrepreneurship. He worked as a strategy consultant and principal at Gemini Consulting, focusing on the telecom and media industries, and gained operating/startup experience as part of the founding team of Cybernet AG, an internet and systems-integration company that later listed on both NASDAQ and the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. He has more than 25 years of experience across venture capital, private equity, M&A, and technology leadership.

Manger studied at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), earning a Dipl.-Wirt.-Ing. combining computer science, economics, and operations research (studies roughly 1983–1988). Profile sources also credit him with an MBA (reported as Georgetown University). At Earlybird he has served on the boards of notable portfolio companies including UiPath, Hazelcast, Picus Security, Peak Games, Minit, Simr (formerly UberCloud), Anari AI, and Codasip.

More recently, Manger has been central to Earlybird's push into European defence and dual-use technology. In June 2026 he helped launch E2D, a ~€500M European dual-use and defence growth fund created in partnership with the Paris-based firm AVP, where he serves in an advisory/leadership capacity.

• Backs early-stage (seed–Series B) European technology companies, writing checks generally in the $100K–$5M range (~$1.5M sweet spot).
• Core sectors: enterprise software and application infrastructure, hardware/deep tech, and PropTech, with a growing emphasis on dual-use and defence technology.
• On the E2D defence fund, in his own words: *"We look forward to backing the best European high-growth, deep tech companies that will be instrumental in closing defence capability gaps while also addressing commercial markets."*
• Thesis rooted in European technology sovereignty — the E2D launch was explicitly framed around the fact that ~85% of NATO defence-tech venture funding since 2019 has gone to the US, and the fund aims to help close that gap while delivering investor returns.
• Comfortable with technically deep, category-defining companies (he championed automation leader UiPath early), and takes hands-on board roles rather than passive positions.