In the startup world, it's not uncommon to see talented people from successful companies founding their own ventures. This is especially true in European fintech, where graduates of unicorns like Monzo, N26 and Revolut are starting new companies one after another.
Andrena Ventures, a UK-based solo GP fund, wants to support the snowball effect of this startup factory by investing in these second-generation startups at the pre-seed and seed stages. To that end, the company has raised $12 million from backers including multiple VCs and entrepreneurs.
Gideon Valkin, the company's general partner, told TechCrunch that Andrena itself is sector agnostic, although the company intends to fund talent with roots in fintech in Europe and the UK. He expects most of the portfolio companies to focus on other categories such as AI, climate technology and B2B enterprise solutions.
Andrena has already made her first investment. Nustom is an AI startup founded by Monzo co-founder Jonas Templestein. Valkin was his subordinate when he worked at Monzo. Nustom has yet to launch publicly (as his succinct website explains), but he already boasts a long list of investors including OpenAI, Balaji Srinivasan, Garry Tan, Naval Ravikant, and more. .
Andrena's participation in Nustom's party round reflects the company's advocacy and strategy, which typically contributes between $100,000 and $400,000 to rounds led by other companies. But Valkin hopes his network will make it easier for founders to raise Series A rounds from limited partners and other connected investors.
solo GP approach
By leveraging his network and writing relatively small checks, Valkin hopes to gain access to hot deals that larger funds are unable or unwilling to participate in.
A small fund means you can potentially get back all of your invested money with a small investment. For large companies, such investments are not transformative and are not worth the risk. Valkin knows that side of the equation. After leaving Monzo, he also became an angel investor and started working as a seed investor at VC firm Entrée Capital, which is currently one of Andrena's limited partners.
However, managing a personal fund is not without its challenges. That's not just because management fees are proportionately lower. As my colleague Rebecca Schuchtak pointed out last year, “Emerging executives have been on the same roller coaster as startups in recent years.”
Valkin has taken a significant pay cut, which he considers a positive. The founders can see him as a trusted partner who is equally at risk. “I think it aligns us very well,” he said. His value proposition is to open up the network to founders and help them raise Series A rounds, while also relying on his operational know-how.
This combination is more common in the US than in Europe, where many local venture capitalists have never founded a company. But things are changing, and angel investing is becoming increasingly common among European entrepreneurs, especially in the fintech sector.
One of Andrena's LPs, Taavet+Sten, is an investment vehicle run by Taavet Hinrikus, co-founder of Wise, and Sten Tamkivi, co-founder of Teleport. Both former Skype employees are now officially launching an early-stage venture fund called Plural with two other partners.
The fact that they both chose to support Valkin can be seen as an indication that his theory is valid. The name Valkin chose for his business is fitting as a swarm of early fintech employees look for their next challenge. Andrena is a type of bee whose “pollination, in my opinion, is probably the most similar to my job,” he says. He said.