Meet Our Talent Partner, Anna Franziska Hunger
In the now capital-abundant world of European VC, it is talent that has become acutely scarce. The best teams build the best products and move faster than the competition, which is in turn richly rewarded by capital markets. Talent and culture, by which we mean the ‘algorithms’ that drive behaviours and decisions within a company, is more critical today than ever.
At KAYA VC, we invest at the earliest stages of a company’s life-cycle, and over the course of the past decade we’ve partnered with dozens of founders who set out to shape their industries and build enduring organisations. People and culture have been the very foundations of the successes we’ve had the privilege to be a part of.
This is why we’re delighted to welcome Anna Franziska Hunger as our first Talent Partner, a newly created role. She is an experienced people leader, a veteran of three top European startups (Airhelp, Peakon, and Stylight), a psychologist, and an ICF-accredited executive coach with years of experience coaching clients at Torch. Franzi will play an essential role in creating value by helping scale organizations and attract and retain the best people, in collaboration with our founders and their executive teams. She will provide strategic counsel and coaching across our portfolio, helping fuel growth and optimise operations. Together with the operating and board experience of our investment team, our EIR Petr Kovacik, and venture partners, we believe having this dedicated role will further enhance KAYA VC’s ability to provide best-in-class support to founders.
Franzi’s wealth of experience has enabled her to develop a sophisticated understanding of the challenges — especially related to people and culture — that founders and leadership teams face when scaling, and we knew this would be a valuable asset to our entrepreneurs. Moreover, she has built a deep network of senior tech operators and we are confident this will unlock new talent to drive the success of our companies. Franzi will be based in Lisbon, where she lives with her husband Henrik, daughter Aya, and a Portuguese poodle Hazel. This extends the footprint of KAYA core team members to Lisbon in addition to Prague and London, the former two being among the most exciting emerging talent hubs of Europe.
As we’ve gotten to know Franzi through working with her over the past few months on a project basis, we were able to witness her values in action — her passion for operating, her commitment to excellence, and her belief in people as instruments for positive change. While she is as driven to win as anyone, she’s a consummate team player, a great partner to her colleagues, and someone with a high degree of empathy and integrity. She welcomes challenges and doesn’t shy away from ambiguity and chaos, whether it’s figuring out how to blitzscale on a shoestring, transitioning a leadership team, or creating a new organisational structure following a transformational acquisition. Franzi brings with her an incredible set of personal and professional qualities and we can’t wait to work together!
