Building Angular Ventures
Announcing an $80M First-check Fund II for Deep Tech Founders across Europe & Israel
New $80M fund, a second awesome investment partner, and the same strategy as ever.
Some background. When I set off to build Angular back in 2015, most people I talked to told me it would be impossible to raise a first-time fund from institutional investors for a non-US geography. The idea was to build a venture fund that would specialize in early-stage enterprise and deep tech companies across Europe and Israel, with a focus on helping these companies succeed globally. Angular’s perspective is specialist, borderless, and ambitious.
In some sense, the naysayers were right: it took over three years to get to a first close on Fund I. Eventually, sometime in the spring of 2018, I managed to get Fund I to a first close of $11M. Angular was tiny, but it was in business. That first close was so small that I remember sitting on the couch trying to calculate if the management fees would be enough for me to pay the rent on our one-bedroom London apartment while my newborn daughter slept. We eventually announced Angular Ventures to the world in November 2019 with a $41M fund.
Today we are delighted to announce the launch of Angular Ventures II, an $80M first-check fund to back deep tech founders across Europe and Israel. The Fund, raised entirely over zoom during the pandemic, is double the size of Fund I and eight times the size of that first close on Fund I. Our fantastic limited partners (LPs) returned for many multiples of their investment in Fund I, and Fund II was so oversubscribed that we didn’t even seek external capital. That said, our existing LPs graciously allowed us to include a small handful of new institutions that help set the stage for the future. We are truly humbled that our LP base consists of some of the leading institutional investors in the world, most of which are from the US.
Our plan for Fund II is to double down on the strategy that got us here. We will just have deeper pockets and an ability to be even more aggressive in backing and supporting the founders with whom we are lucky enough to work. Our larger fund size allows us to write first checks of up to $3M, more than enough to lead or catalyze rounds that are much larger than that. We are also very willing and eager to write smaller first checks of as low as $100K when we have the chance to work closely with founders at the earliest stages. For us, it’s always been more about when we engage (crazy early!) and how we engage (intensely and deeply!) than how much capital we are deploying. That hasn’t changed at all.
Most significantly, I am excited to announce that David Peterson is joining us as a second full partner in the fund. David will lead investments and work with me, Anne, and Andrew to continue building Angular into the leading early-stage deep tech fund on this side of the Atlantic. David joins us from Airtable where he was employee #16 and led the company’s growth and partnerships efforts as it scaled from zero to 200,000 customers, achieved unicorn status ($5.7B!), and emerged as one of the iconic companies of our era. Airtable is a leader in no-code, product-led, customer-built growth — and David brings a wealth of operational experience into the Angular family. An American living in London, David combines a Silicon-valley perspective, a cosmopolitan worldview, and a deep intellectual curiosity into what drives growth and success for the most impactful new companies. He’s already had a massive impact on every portfolio founder who has worked with him. I look forward to working with him to find and help build great companies, and I can’t wait to see what his first few investments will look like. (For more on our process and why I’m so excited David is on board, read my piece on our decision to work together.)
Track record. Angular has always defined itself as a specialist firm. We specialize in first-check investments into radically ambitious enterprise tech and deep tech companies coming out of Europe and Israel. That said, our ultimate goal is performance on behalf of our LPs, and we are able to share some data on that front as well.
- Fund I performance. While it’s too early to talk about performance on Fund I, we can solidly say we are benchmarking extremely well against our vintage. We are already at several multiples on invested capital. More importantly, of the 21 early-stage investments we’ve made in Fund I, ten are already marked up — with the vast majority of those having raised their Series A already from Tier 1 US VCs. (In fact, of the first 12 investments, one has already exited and eight are marked up having raised nearly $300M between them). Many of our investments remain very early and are less than 18 months old, so we expect these ratios to increase very meaningfully over time. So far, our US-based co-investors in the Fund I portfolio include Bessemer, Bain Capital Ventures, Boldstart, Bullpen, CRV, Fathom Capital, Gradient, Haystack, Initialized, Insight, Lightspeed, Kleiner Perkins, Root Ventures, Two Sigma, Uncorrelated, Zeev Ventures, and others.
- Pre-Angular performance. Angular Ventures I was raised on the back of my decade-long track record as a VC and angel, first in Israel and, later, across Europe and Israel. That track record has continued to perform extremely well. Of the 26 investments I made before founding Angular Ventures (first rounds in all cases), five have achieved unicorn status (Innovid, Front, JFrog, SiSense, Snyk), and one has gone public (Nasdaq: FROG). Snyk — in which I was one of three investors in the first round — was recently valued at $8.5B, making it one of the most valuable private companies in the history of Israeli technology. Of these original 26 seed investments, six have already exited, only six have shut down, and 14 are alive, kicking, and growing. The collective performance of that pre-Angular portfolio is substantially over 20x (net) no matter how you cut it.
Building a firm. With the launch of Fund II, it seems like a good opportunity to reflect on what we have built so far:
- We have built a team. Angular was never intended to be a single GP firm. We simply can’t provide the level of coverage and portfolio support that we believe founders deserve as a one-person shop. Early on, we added Andrew Poesaste who is leading our deal flow efforts, sourcing investments, and working with founders across Europe and Israel from our humble office in London. Andrew is a major asset to our firm and has endured the challenges of working for a firm that — when he started — didn’t really exist. In 2019, we recruited Anne Blum to lead our global platform effort. Based in New York, Anne works with companies across our portfolio. In record time, she built up an infrastructure that provides an incredible level of value to the companies we work with: from assistance and guidance on setting up US operations, hiring in the US and around the world, recruiting assistance, vendor advice, and a full suite of platform offerings to help make the startup journey much easier for founders. When the pandemic hit, our remote-first team just kept plugging — and our firm culture only got stronger. Adding David as a Partner is a natural evolution as we scale up our team to build what we believe will become a consequential VC firm for this part of the world. Angular has always been a team effort — and that is even more true today.
- We have built the best early-stage advisory platform on this side of the Atlantic. Angular has pioneered a new model of bringing real tangible value to portfolio companies by connecting them to the right advisors at the right time. It has been a secret weapon, but perhaps we should talk about it more. Since inception, we have deployed a large part of our fund’s carry to build a small but very committed network of outstanding advisory partners. By focusing on people we know well and by truly bringing them into our partnership, we are able to drive deep trusted relationships between founders in our portfolio and our network of advisors. As with everything we do at Angular, our focus is on high-quality, high-value relationships — and our advisors are key to that approach. Angular’s network of Advisory Partners and Venture Partners include Asaph Schulman (CMO at Firebolt), Assaf Melochna (co-founder at Aquant), Eldad Farkash (co-founder of SiSense and Firebolt), Fred Simon (chief architect and co-founder of JFrog), Guy Poreh (founder of Playground), Jerry Dischler (GM of Ads at Google), Jennifer Schear (Founder of Schear Immigration), Keren Myr (previously COO at Oribi and Head of Sales Ops at SiSense), Oren Raboy (CTO at Noogata), Ron Yahini (head of the Allen Institute of AI in Israel), Phil Wickham (Founder of Sozo Ventures and former CEO of the Kauffman Fellows Program), and Uri Baruchin (an independent international brand strategist).
- We have built a portfolio. We are immensely proud of our portfolio in Angular I and II. The Angular I portfolio consists of 21 early-stage investments across Europe and Israel, and one late-stage investment in Forter. We’ve already made four investments out of Fund II. We’ve backed companies in Tel Aviv, London, Berlin, Bucharest, Calgary, Turku, Haifa, Belfast, and Soligen. Many of our companies have established operations in the US — and have feet on the ground in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, Houston, and New York. Our portfolio spans applications and infrastructure; vertical SaaS and horizontal platforms; traditional software and cutting-edge technology like nanotechnology and autonomous space navigation. We’ve backed first-time CEOs as well as second-timers who’ve worked with us in the past. The founders we work with have become an extended family — and it’s amazing to see our slack channels fill up with questions and answers as founders begin to help each other across borders.
- We have built a brand. As a firm, we’ve worked hard to build our brand as a specialist fund with a point of view and a willingness to go against the grain. Our Angular Insights newsletter (subscribe here!) reaches over 9,000 people with a weekly digest of significant events across the enterprise and deep tech landscape in Europe and Israel as well as links to a curated set of must-read stories from around the world. Our recurring Insights series of webinars/podcasts has created a forum for early-stage founders from across Europe & Israel to interact with leading operators and investors from around the world.
Thank you. The list of people I need to thank at this point is very long. Angular is the result of years of effort by many people and more help, support, advice, and guidance than anyone could deserve. I am truly blessed.
Thank you to the founders who have agreed to partner with us: whatever success we have is entirely yours.
Thank you to the LPs who decided to back Angular I & II with their capital and their trust.
Thank you to the small army of lawyers and finance professionals who keep this humming: Steve, Jonathan, and Sujata at Gunderson; Dom, Joe, Dave, and Tom at VMS.
Thank you to our incredible network of Venture Partners: Eldad, Fred, Ron, and Phil: only you really know where this started and how we got here.
Thank you to our all-star team of Advisory Partners: Asaph, Assaf, Guy, Jen, Jerry, Keren, Oren, and Uri: You are the secret weapon that has added even more value to our portfolio than any of us expected.
Thank you to Anne and Andrew: your hard work and ability to continually step up inspires me every day.
Thank you to my partner, David Peterson, for making as big a bet on Angular as we are making on you.
And — finally — thank you to my amazing wife and daughter: Millia and Maya. There aren’t enough words in the world for the love, support, strength, and understanding you have both provided over the years.
It’s never been a more exciting time to be a tech founder or a venture investor — particularly in Europe and Israel, and particularly in enterprise and deep tech. With the announcements we are making today — a new fund and a new Partner — I am happy to say that it’s never been a more exciting time for Angular as well. Andrew, Anne, David, and I look forward to continuing to back the most innovative enterprise and deep tech companies in Europe and Israel. We think we’ve built the most founder-friendly, value-added, and independent-minded venture launchpad for tech founders in Europe and Israel. If you are working on something interesting (especially if no one else seems to get it), drop us a line…
