Angel investors often move in packs.
Given that many aren’t able to write five or six-digit cheques, they often pool their funds to invest as a unit rather than individuals. That also lessens the admin burden on startups, as managing smaller cheques from lots of investors can be a pain.
This has spawned a whole category of platforms that make it easier for angels to pool their money and offer bigger collective cheques under one name.
One such platform, Roundtable, has just secured €3m from — in a quite meta move — the angels who use its service. And unlike some of its competitors, such as Germany’s Bunch, Roundtable also lets angels create communities on its platform. Are the days of angel WhatsApp groups gone?
What does Roundtable do — and why is it different?
Roundtable lets individuals back private companies, regardless of cheque size or existing network connections, by pooling their cash with other investors into one special purpose vehicle (SPV).
The Paris-based startup also lets users create their own community groups with common investment interests to communicate and share potential investing opportunities with other members. This feature eliminates the need for the additional WhatsApp group chat that angels would usually need to set up when pooling their cash.
In the last six months, the company says it has seen over 100 deals onboarded. An average of 20 investors take part in each deal, with ticket size written by the angel groups per deal ranging from €50k to €2.5m, averaging out at €500k. Individual investors chip in an average of around €15k each, but can range as low at €1,000 or as high as €250k.
Why was it launched?
Cofounder and CEO Evan Testa says that Roundtable’s structure helps angel investors who might not be able to access other network-based opportunities: “Investing in private markets, particularly startups, has been limited to a select few due to the need for personal networks to access investment opportunities, expertise to evaluate them, and adequate capital to invest.”
So far, the majority of Roundtable’s users are spread across French, Belgium, the UK and Germany. It’ll use the cash to expand further across Europe, alongside product development.
Who invested?
Roundtable hosted its raise on its own platform, receiving investment from 100 angels active on the site.
Investors included Station F’s Roxanne Varza, who has created a female angel community; cofounder of Friday Finance Christopher Zemina, who has grouped together German and Austrian individual investors; and cofounder of La Belle Vie Paul Lê, who started a group focused on under-represented founders.
