Poker Star Fedor Holz Launches Drafted Ventures Fund of Funds

Fedor Holz, the former poker world number one, is moving deeper into venture capital. Together with Instaffo co-founder and CEO Christoph Zöller, he has launched Drafted Ventures, a fund of funds that has already raised more than €15 million in its first close.

The target hardcap is €25 million. According to Zöller, the fund plans to invest roughly €1 million each in around 20 early-stage venture capital funds. Through those funds, Drafted would gain exposure to about 400 startups. "Our goal is to build one of the best funds of funds in Europe with Drafted," Zöller says.

From the poker table to investing

Holz won prize money in the millions and topped the world poker rankings in his early twenties, earning the nickname "German Wunderkind". He then moved into entrepreneurship, founding the meditation app Primed Mind, which was meant to compete with Headspace, and the learning platform Pokercode. As an investor he has backed around 30 startups and 20 funds.

The two founders met almost ten years ago at an Entrepreneurs' Organization event and have since become close friends. For about six years, both have invested privately in venture capital funds, making more than 35 fund investments between them. Their ongoing exchange about those bets led to the idea for Drafted.

Why a fund of funds

Zöller argues the market does not lack good VC funds. Instead, many investors lose money over time or fail to earn the returns the asset class can deliver. Unlike the stock market, where buying an index ETF is a sound strategy, venture capital rewards only access to the best funds, which he puts at the top 25 percent. More than half of all VC funds, he says, do not offer an especially attractive return profile.

Holz says poker taught him to make decisions under uncertainty and to separate the quality of a decision from its outcome, a skill he considers vital in an asset class where results often take eight to ten years to show. He also points to thinking in distributions, which is essentially portfolio construction, and to spotting emerging talent early, a task he sees as the same in selecting new fund managers. Zöller contributes the founder's perspective.