Kolja Hebenstreit: The Quiet Co-Builder Behind Berlin's Other Factory
Updated: Sep 20
What Is This About?
Berlin's startup ecosystem is usually told as a story about one family — the Samwers and Rocket Internet. It is only half the story. Alongside Rocket ran a second, parallel company-builder, Team Europe, and one of its quietest architects was Kolja Hebenstreit: co-founder of Team Europe, co-founder of Delivery Hero, and co-founder of the venture firm Point Nine Capital. This is the profile of an operator who helped build Berlin's other factory.
Introduction
Kolja Hebenstreit is a Berlin-based German entrepreneur and early-stage investor who spent the defining decade of Berlin's rise — roughly 2008 to 2018 — inside the machinery that turned the city into Europe's most prolific startup-producing ecosystem. He is best known for three things: co-founding the company-builder Team Europe with Lukasz Gadowski, co-founding food-delivery giant Delivery Hero, and co-founding the influential early-stage fund Point Nine Capital. He is not a household name. That is precisely why he matters.
The Thesis: Berlin Was Built by Two Factories, Not One
The dominant narrative of German tech treats Rocket Internet and the Samwer brothers as the singular engine of Berlin's founder pipeline. The reality is a duopoly. Team Europe — Gadowski's builder, with Hebenstreit as a core co-founder — ran the same incubate, clone, and scale model in parallel, and out of it came Delivery Hero, one of the largest outcomes the German ecosystem has ever produced. This whole series sits inside Startuprad.io's Power Structures map of who really controls the DACH ecosystem.
Executive Summary
Hebenstreit built his career at the intersection of operating and investing. From an executive role at Spreadshirt, he moved into company-building as a co-founder of Team Europe Ventures in 2008 with Lukasz Gadowski. Team Europe incubated and helped launch Delivery Hero in 2011, which Hebenstreit co-founded and served as an early board member; the company IPO'd in Frankfurt in 2017 and later joined the DAX. In parallel, in 2011 he co-founded Point Nine Capital, the Berlin early-stage fund that became one of Europe's most respected SaaS and marketplace investors. He has been an active angel investor across the German ecosystem, with early bets including studiVZ, brands4friends, and amiando.
Key Takeaways
Team Europe was Rocket's parallel, not its subsidiary. Hebenstreit belongs to the Gadowski builder camp — a separate, competing Berlin factory that used the same playbook as the Samwers' Rocket Internet.
Delivery Hero is the marquee outcome. Co-founded in 2011 out of the Team Europe orbit, it became a Frankfurt-listed, DAX-member food-delivery giant.
Point Nine Capital extended the builder into a fund. Co-founded in 2011, it grew from Team Europe's fund into a leading European early-stage investor.
He is an operator-investor, not a mascot — board seats, angel checks, and company-building, rarely on the magazine covers.
From Spreadshirt to the Builder's Chair
Hebenstreit's route into company-building ran through Spreadshirt, the Leipzig-founded print-on-demand platform, where he held an executive and board-level role building the consumer and online-marketing side of the business. Spreadshirt was itself a Gadowski venture, and the working relationship that formed there became the foundation for what came next. In 2008, Hebenstreit and Gadowski launched Team Europe Ventures — a Berlin incubator and company-builder designed to spin up ventures at speed, staff them, and scale the winners. It was, in structure and ambition, Berlin's answer to Rocket Internet, running on the same clock.
Delivery Hero: The Outcome That Outgrew the Rivalry
The most consequential thing to come out of the Team Europe orbit was Delivery Hero. Co-founded in 2011 by a group including Niklas Ostberg (its long-time CEO) and Hebenstreit, the company grew out of the Berlin builder ecosystem and became a global food-delivery platform. It listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in 2017 and later joined the DAX. The clearest bridge between the two Berlin factories runs straight through this business: in 2016, Delivery Hero acquired foodpanda from Rocket Internet — the Gadowski camp buying an asset from the Samwer camp, a single transaction that captures how intertwined the rival builders really were.
The Investor: Point Nine Capital
In 2011, the fund that Team Europe had been running was reorganized into Point Nine Capital, co-founded by Christoph Janz, Pawel Chudzinski, and Hebenstreit. Where Rocket built companies to own, Point Nine backed founders to keep — an early, disciplined bet on SaaS and marketplace businesses that would become one of Europe's most respected early-stage franchises, with a portfolio spanning names like Zendesk, Typeform, and Mambu. Hebenstreit's role sits alongside his angel activity: early German exits such as studiVZ (sold to Holtzbrinck), brands4friends (acquired by eBay in 2010), and amiando (acquired by XING).
Still in the Ecosystem in 2026
Hebenstreit has remained connected to the builder and fund world he helped create — as an advisor and venture partner in the Point Nine orbit and an active angel across the Berlin scene. His through-line is the quieter, compounding work of building the institutions and companies that recycle talent and capital back into the next generation. In the language of the European scale-up debate, he is a source of experience density — one of the operators whose fingerprints are on multiple outcomes. See also the parallel builder Lukasz Gadowski, and the Samwer side of the ledger, Alexander Samwer and Picus Capital and Marc Samwer.
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FAQ
Who is Kolja Hebenstreit? A Berlin-based German entrepreneur and early-stage investor, co-founder of Team Europe, Delivery Hero, and Point Nine Capital.
Was Hebenstreit part of Rocket Internet? No. He belongs to the Team Europe / Lukasz Gadowski company-builder — a parallel and competing Berlin factory to the Samwers' Rocket Internet, using a similar model.
What is his biggest outcome? Delivery Hero, the Frankfurt-listed, DAX-member food-delivery company he co-founded in 2011.
What is Point Nine Capital? A Berlin early-stage venture firm co-founded in 2011 (with Christoph Janz and Pawel Chudzinski) that grew out of Team Europe's fund into a leading European SaaS/marketplace investor.
About the Author
Jorn "Joe" Menninger is the founder and host of Startuprad.io, one of the leading English-language voices on the German, Austrian, and Swiss startup ecosystem. Connect on LinkedIn.
Entities
Kolja Hebenstreit, Lukasz Gadowski, Team Europe Ventures / Team Global, Delivery Hero, Point Nine Capital, Niklas Ostberg, Christoph Janz, Spreadshirt, studiVZ, brands4friends, amiando, foodpanda, Rocket Internet, DAX.
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