Begin

Building a new venture fund is super interesting, deeply inspiring, and… far from easy. I know many young teams, who are raising their first fund and debating about the right fundraising strategy. At Begin Capital, we are always happy to share our own fundraising experience, but it is important to be objective and make comprehensive research. With this in mind I decided to analyze other VC funds, that were in the same position. Pulling historical data from Dealroom, I ended up with 186 first time VC funds that were launched in 2015-2020 worldwide. The dataset that I’ve got was not perfect: Dealroom’s coverage outside of North America and Europe is poor and also many smaller funds are missing. However, it was good enough to answer some of my questions and hopefully might be useful for other daring first time fund managers.

In September Pitchbook published an insightful research on the role of angel investments in the startup ecosystem. It is quite clear from the research that not only business angels are essential for early stage financing, but they also make a positive contribution to the long-term startup success. The probability to raise follow-on rounds appears to be materially higher for companies whose first investment came from angels. Probability of raising a follow-on round or reaching M&A/IPO Such a significant difference is impressive but might be not intuitively obvious. I have two hypotheses somehow explaining this fact: At early stages a syndicate of strong business angels could be more helpful. Angels usually have a strong professional background and can help startup with necessary first customer introductions. Even more than that, sometimes angels play such an active role in operational processes that they are hardly different from co-founders Startups that decide to skip business angel round and raise more funding from VCs at the start, usually end up with higher post money valuation. This puts more pressure on a startup’s performance and leaves less flexibility to make pivots. While the role of business angels is important and well known, surprisingly, I haven’t observed an active collaboration between angels and VCs. Business angels actively collaborate with each other: form angel networks and syndicates, network together through events and web chats

Just over a year ago, the first season of the new show called ‘Begin Capital’ began. Over the last 12 months, we have achieved the following results: We closed 6 deals: Zadaa (https://zadaa.co/en/) – a marketplace for second-hand clothes. The company operates in Germany, Finland and Denmark. Zadaa’s main competitive advantage - logistics solution that reduces the cost of logistics by 50-70%. Begin Capital became the lead investor with a €1.5M cheque. WOOM (https://woomfertility.com) – WOOM is a data driven app and b2b SaaS solution designed to empower women by maximizing their chances of getting pregnant, either naturally or through medical treatment. Every month, 80,000 women interact with WOOM and thousands of pregnancies are achieved together with WOOM. Begin Capital became a co-investor with a €1M cheque. Mercaux (https://www.mercaux.com) – Mercuax is a B2B SaaS startup that helps retailers deliver superior omnichannel customer experiences by bringing the best of digital and physical retail together. On average Mercaux customers experience a sales uplift of 8% and 5x ROI. Begin Capital became a co-investor in the project with a $500k ticket.