Introducing AngelX

It’s obviously a code name — for now.

Let me tell you the story of how it started.

At eFounders, we’ve launched 30 companies that have gone and raised a total of $400 million across 50 rounds of financing — in only 10 years. We’re also rather active angel investors ourselves. So we’ve learned a whole lot about the ins and outs of the early-stage tech investment scene. Both in Europe and in the US, and both with fundings coming from funds and angel rounds.

We’ve noticed a fundamental trend that has grown and changed over the past few years.

It’s more of a double trend really, on the one hand, we’ve seen an increasing number of operator-angel-investors, successful startup operators who’ve gained influence over their careers and who now have privileged access to invest in much-regarded opportunities. But since some investments have relatively high minimum capital allocations, they tend to leverage their network to share investments. Hence why we’ve also witnessed the rise of community-based investment methods (club deals, syndicates, scout programs, rolling funds, etc).

This has surged — especially in the US.

Being in the SaaS industry focussing on the Future of Work, it’s hard not to have come across Todd Goldberg & Rahul Vohra’s fund or Brianne Kimmel. They’re successful operators and entrepreneurs who’ve dedicated a big portion of their time to angel investing.

Today’s startups absolutely love having these influential and insightful operator investors by their side. Angel operators, therefore, get access to the best investment proposals and as a result, their track records are phenomenal. What might have started as a one-off investment, becomes much bigger. It’s a virtuous circle.

AngelList has done an amazing job in the US. They’ve empowered brilliant angel operators with an easy set of tools to leverage their communities and share investment opportunities. Angel operators don’t have to worry anymore about the legal, fiscal, and regulatory complexities. Say hello to syndicates, rolling funds etc.

The trend is similar in Europe — but we’re missing an AngelList platform. AngelList has claimed it is too complex to come over to Europe due to the discrepancies in regulations and the local implementations that exist. But the demand is already strong.

We’ll do it. We’ll empower angel investors and help them deliver on their core mission: to invest and support incredible companies. They’ll get to focus on getting the business to success and won’t waste their valued time on the admin and legal sides of things.

Within eFounders, we’ve developed strong expertise in club deal management over the past few years. Now we are leveraging it to create the go-to-platform for everything related to angel investing.

It is an ambitious and high-reaching challenge — but the destination will be worth our while.

I’ll take the lead on AngelX for now, feel free to contact me if you share the ambition or want to share your knowledge on the topic.

Stay tuned!