Where entrepreneurial talent joins visionary founders. In DACH.
1. How it works
Apply once - let exceptional founders pitch their vision and roles to you.
- Apply – Fill out a short form with your job preferences. If there’s a fit, you’ll have a quick chat with our founders, Olivia or Zoran.
- Join a batch – Each five.degrees batch brings together a group of carefully selected commercial and engineering talents ready for breakout startup roles.
- Founders pitch to you – Batches kick off with a live pitch night where visionary founders present their roles.
- Fast-track applications– Receive warm introductions to founders for the roles that excite you most.
- Land the job – Get individual support: salary benchmarks, negotiation guidance, and more.
- Lifetime community – Once your are part of five.degrees you have lifetime community access and can join future batches anytime.
2. Who this is for
We bring together the most ambitious early-career talent (commercial & engineering) - the next gen of Europe’s founders and operators.
You're a perfect fit if you:
- Have 0–3 years of professional experience
- Seek full-time roles in DACH (no internships)
- Commercial roles: Founder’s Associate, Chief of Staff
- Engineering roles: Fullstack, Backend, AI and Product Engineering
- Bring something unique to the table, such as:
- Entrepreneurial spirit (side projects, own business)
- High-performance background (sports, arts, competitive fields)
- Professional experience in fast-paced environments (startups, VC, consulting)
- Strong academic background or continuous learning achievements
- We celebrate diverse talent and unconventional journeys.
- Some talents of previous batches: Moritz Bruder (Founding Engineer @tekkr.io), Joe Mcilwaine (Product @Revolut), Ennie Ragusen (Founder’s Associate @Telli), Finn Retzlaff (Chief of Staff @Project B)
3. Startups we partner with
We partner with breakout startups led by visionary founders before they hit the mainstream.
- Early-stage startups (Pre-Seed to Series A), industry-agnostic, we’d bet our careers on.
- Some founders who pitched at five.degrees:
- Benedict Kurz — Founder of Knowunity: Often called the “German Zuckerberg” — founded Knowunity in high school and raised $25M+ by age 23.
- Lukas Köstler — Founder of SE3 Labs: Worked directly with Elon Musk on 3D computer vision at Tesla before founding SE3.
- Fabian Wesemann — Founder of Stealth: Co-Founder & former CFO of Wefox, Europe’s leading insurtech unicorn valued at $4.5B.
- Felix Petersen — Founder of Grouphug: Serial founder and investor; previously founded and exited a company to Nokia, early backer of GetYourGuide, SoundCloud.
4. Wall of love
