Tim Schumacher
Tim Schumacher (born 1976) is a German internet entrepreneur and venture capital investor. He is best known as a co-founder and chief executive officer of Sedo, a domain name marketplace, and later as a co-founder of Eyeo.com, saas.group and the climate-technology venture capital fund World Fund.
Career
In 2001, Schumacher co-founded Sedo (an acronym for "Search Engine for Domain Offers") together with Marius Würzner, Ulrich Priesner and Ulrich Essmann. The company, based in Cologne, operated an online marketplace for buying and selling internet domain names and grew into one of the largest businesses of its kind. As CEO, Schumacher led the company through international expansion, including the opening of a United States office in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Sedo subsequently became part of the German internet group United Internet. Schumacher announced his departure as CEO in December 2011 and stepped down in 2012 to focus on early-stage investing.
In 2007, Schumacher was named "Entrepreneur of the Year" by Ernst & Young in Germany.
After leaving Sedo, Schumacher co-founded Eyeo GmbH, the company behind the browser extension Adblock Plus, serving as chairman. Through his investment vehicle TS Ventures he became an active angel investor in the European technology sector. His investments and advisory roles have included the non-profit search engine Ecosia, as well as companies such as YieldKit, Zolar, CarbonCloud, gridX and Pachama.
In 2018, Schumacher co-founded saas.group, a company that acquires and operates small and mid-sized software-as-a-service (SaaS) businesses. The group has reported a portfolio of multiple software brands and combined annual recurring revenue in the region of $100 million. In 2020, he was named "Best Investor" at the German Startups Association awards.
In 2021 Schumacher co-founded World Fund, a European climate-technology venture capital fund, together with Danijel Višević, Daria Saharova and Craig Douglas; Ecosia founder Christian Kroll has also been associated with its launch. The fund collected funds of €300M and with this amount became the largest early-stage European climate tech VC. Schumacher serves as a general partner at the fund and has publicly argued for greater institutional investment in European venture capital and climate technology.
In 2023, Schumacher was awarded the KfW Capital Award for "Best Impact Investor" in recognition of his investment strategy with World Fund.