It’s not often you meet someone who started as an intern and made it to General Partner. David Kuczek was born in communist Poland in 1976 and moved to Freiburg at four. Growing up between two very different worlds left him with something that has never faded: a deep appreciation for the freedom to build, and a restlessness that makes standing still feel like a waste.
His brother's obsession with computers pulled him in during the early nineties, not towards code but towards what you could actually do with it. He studied Business Administration in Cologne, worked on an e-learning project at MIT Sloan, taught himself programming, and built a string of amateur social networks that went nowhere in particular. Then he found HV Capital, joined as an intern in March 2005, and never left.
Nearly two decades later, he is one of HV's longest-serving General Partners and one of the most experienced venture investors in the German ecosystem. StudiVZ, Lieferheld, Westwing, FlixBus, Urban Sports Club, CoachHub, Green Fusion. Franchise food chains, fitness platforms, intercity transport, photovoltaics. No single sector, one consistent instinct: back the idea that arrives before the market has a name for it. That instinct hasn't changed since 2005. Neither has the energy he brings to it.