Setting up a business angels network has been one of our main objectives from the start.
It’s with this goal in mind that we joined EBAN – The European Trade Association for Business Angels, Seed Funds and other Early Stage Market Players in early 2009. We aim to acquire know-how and best practices from the European early stage investments scene that would help us launch our own angel group in Athens. And we are also proud to be the sole Greek member of the (EBAN) that has also received EBAN’s “Best European Business Angel Week Initiative” Annual Award the previous year(2014).
As pioneers in early stage corporate venturing, with more than ten different early stage investments from 2003 to 2011, we’ve always dreamed of an open, transparent and efficient mechanism enabling investors to share both the dream and the risk in a structured way.
As with most things in life, love and business, realizing this aim has been anything but easy; the Greek early stage investments ecosystem exhibits everything one would expect from an immature environment.
Investors are afraid to share the deals, trying to keep any “amazing opportunity” for themselves, and they tend to invest larger amounts than they should.
There are, for example, angel investors who invested hundreds of thousands of euros to a couple of startups instead of spreading their investment into a dozen companies to significantly increase their odds.
Trying to respond to this very real need, we have organized three Business Angel Workshops in 2013 and 2014, inviting leading early stage investors from developed ecosystems such as UK, Finland and Australia to present the latest developments in this field to a number of select individuals with the capacity and the mentality to become successful angel investors.
Having completed this process and having just closed our first significant exit, we are very proud to announce the launch of our “Side Car” Angel Group to be operated by the Starttech Ventures Incubator (now, Venture Building) Fund.
The rules are simple: qualified deals which the Starttech Ventures team has decided to invest in, will be presented to an invitation-only group of angel investors who will have the opportunity to join in at exactly the same terms as Starttech Ventures.
The benefits for all parties involved are great:
• Angel investors will have access to a curated high-quality deal-flow ― one that has already been analyzed, evaluated and found to meet the investment criteria of the Starttech Ventures Incubator (now, Venture Building) Fund, and that has already received a hard investment commitment, thus minimizing their investment risk and overhead.
• Starttech Ventures on the other side increases its capacity to support its investees, in terms of both cash and human capital.
• Last, but definitely not least, investees receive higher investments and a larger number of highly qualified and well connected people who care for them and have an interest in their success.
The Side-Car Angel Group will hold meetings on a quarterly basis, each featuring a guest speaker bringing international know-how and experience, as well as six startups, selected for investment by Starttech Ventures, on which the members of the Angel Group will be invited to invest under the same terms.
The first meeting will take place in Athens on Tuesday, September 1st, at the brand-new space of Starttech Ventures at Aiolou St, in downtown Athens, featuring a keynote speaker from Israel and qualified startups from Greece, Hungary, Russia and Israel.
We are extremely excited with this new endeavor and looking forward to enjoying the growth and success of the newly born angel investor ecosystem in Athens!
Stay tuned for more details about the Side Car Angel Group launch event:
– (update)Representing at EBAN’s 2016 Conference in Portugal: “Scaling up for Europe”
In case you are an investor interested in Greek startup investment opportunities, please do not hesitate to contact us.
