# Florian Leibert

> Florian Leibert is a German-born software engineer turned venture capitalist who co-founded 468 Capital, a Berlin-based VC firm managing $1.3 billion across 100+ technology companies. Before VC, he co-founded Mesosphere (later D2iQ), which raised $252M and built the infrastructure layer for companies like Apple, Netflix, and SAP - and before that, he was the engineer at Twitter who helped slay the Fail Whale by architecting the distributed systems that kept the platform from collapsing under its own weight.

- **Role:** General Partner at 468 Capital
- **Organizations:** 468 Capital, Mesosphere / D2iQ, Twitter, Airbnb, Ning, Adknowledge
- **From:** Germany
- **Nationality:** German
- **Education:** Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, International University, Bruchsal
- **Known for:** Co-founded 468 Capital, raising the largest first-time VC fund in European history ($200M Fund I), Raised $252M+ for Mesosphere/D2iQ with customers including Apple, Netflix, SAP, Audi, and Deutsche Telekom, Architected distributed systems at Twitter that helped resolve the infamous Fail Whale scalability issues

## Career timeline

- **2003-2006** — Studied Computer Science at International University Bruchsal, Germany; won ACM programming competition, advanced to European finals
- **~2006-2009** — Software engineer roles at Ning and Adknowledge
- **2009-2011** — Technical Lead at Twitter; architected Apache Mesos deployment, built distributed search service, helped resolve the Fail Whale scalability issues, led recommendation algorithm development
- **2011-2013** — Software Engineer and Technical Lead at Airbnb; managed data infrastructure team and built Mesos-based analytics infrastructure
- **2013** — Co-founded Mesosphere with Tobias Knaup and Benjamin Hindman
- **2013-2019** — CEO of Mesosphere; raised $252M+ from Andreessen Horowitz, Microsoft, T. Rowe Price, Khosla Ventures; built customer base including Apple, Netflix, SAP, Audi, Deutsche Telekom
- **2019** — Mesosphere rebranded to D2iQ; stepped back from CEO role
- **2020** — Co-founded 468 Capital with Alexander Kudlich and Ludwig Ensthaler; raised Fund I at $200M - largest first-time VC fund in European history
- **2022** — 468 Capital raised Fund II at $400M - largest European seed-stage fund at the time
- **2024-present** — Managing $1.3B AUM at 468 Capital; 100+ portfolio companies; active board member across multiple companies

## Achievements

- Co-founded 468 Capital, raising the largest first-time VC fund in European history ($200M Fund I)
- Raised $252M+ for Mesosphere/D2iQ with customers including Apple, Netflix, SAP, Audi, and Deutsche Telekom
- Architected distributed systems at Twitter that helped resolve the infamous Fail Whale scalability issues
- Co-created open-source projects Marathon and Chronos (Apache Mesos ecosystem)
- Won ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) programming competition; advanced to European finals
- 468 Capital Fund II ($400M) was the largest European seed-stage fund
- Total AUM of $1.3B across 100+ portfolio companies
- World Economic Forum Agenda Contributor
- Featured in Forbes Cloud 100 as CEO of Mesosphere

## Latest updates

- **2024-11** — 468 Capital investment in Dash0 announced
- **2024** — Active board member at Iterative, Linearity, Bardeen, QuestDB, Garden.io, DataChain, and others
- **2022-01** — 468 Capital closes $400M Fund II, largest European seed-stage fund
- **2020** — 468 Capital Fund I closes at $200M, largest first-time VC fund in European history

## Links

- Website: https://468cap.com/leadership_team/florian-leibert/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/florian-leibert-b66b545
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/flo
- GitHub: https://github.com/florianleibert

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/florian-leibert
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-05-18