Participated · Equity · Feb 2026

Founded in 2021 by Johann Ahlers, Dr. Christopher Eilers and Julian Trautwein, Raus operates a platform that places carefully designed, mobile cabins on unused rural land, offering guests short, uncomplicated escapes from urban life. Beyond accommodation, the company layers on extras such as alpaca walks, farm visits, guided meditation and local food packages, creating a holistic nature experience. Raus partners closely with land-owners, helping them monetize idle acreage while expanding its own inventory; within two years it has hosted thousands of guests across more than 50 cabins in nine German states. In 2023 the startup reports 500 % year-over-year revenue growth, a five-fold increase in guest numbers and a more-than-tripled volume of new bookings. The firm recently opened its first upscale nature resort, the Lodge am See in Lenzen, inside a UNESCO biosphere reserve. With fresh capital, Raus plans to launch a technology-enhanced “Cabin 2.0”, optimise its proprietary booking system and expand beyond Germany, starting with Austria, while adding more community sites and supplementary products to its platform. Distinguished backers from Airbnb, HomeToGo, TIER Mobility and others underscore strong investor confidence in the model.

Led · Seed · Jun 2022

Lambus is a collaborative travel platform that centralizes waypoints, travel costs, booking documents and other trip data to help users manage and store trips digitally. The company reports having over 200,000 unique users on the platform. Founded in Osnabrück, Germany in 2019, Lambus aims to digitize the entire travel process from planning to execution and follow-up. The product targets travellers who want a consistent, stress-free and digital travel experience. The team plans to use new funding to accelerate monetization and internationalization of the platform. Management cites rising booking volume and user engagement as validation of the product and business model. Lambus is an indie travel app built by German developer Hans Knöechel to centralize trip information and enable real-time collaboration and chat for group travel. The app lets users import travel documents (via a unique forwarding email or PDF import), add photos, manage private and group expenses, and share waypoints and notes with fellow travelers. Lambus is described by its founder as a “Swiss Army Knife” for travel planning and is live on iOS and Google Play. The startup is early-stage (the app is only a couple of months old) and is run by a team of seven with Knöechel as sole founder; he previously worked as a senior software engineer at Appcelerator in San Jose. Lambus is seed-funded by the German Ministry of Economics for approximately €120,000 and plans to generate affiliate revenue by offering hotel, flight, Airbnb and activity bookings in-app. The product still has some UX and localization bugs (calendar missing weekdays, incomplete POI search results, some untranslated German text) and currently does not convert imported documents into a consolidated itinerary like TripIt.

Participated · Seed · Oct 2018

Mapify is a mobile-first social travel app that lets users visually document past and current trips with photos, descriptions and exact locations, and to discover and save places for future travel. The product includes a location-focused feed that pushes personalized recommendations and a social layer for following, commenting and collaborating on collections. Users can search countries, regions and cities and maintain private lists of planned trips, positioning the app as a planning and inspiration tool. The platform has grown virally among millennials through re-shares on Instagram and word-of-mouth. Mapify generates revenue through in-depth partnerships with travel companies such as Airbnb. The company says it is designing the product to unify travel inspiration, sharing and planning around personal recommendations from friends and influencers.