Sharing dealflow

TL;DR — investors — I want to share dealflow with you. If you’re an accredited angel or work in a VC fund, just sign up here, and I’ll add you to a once a month mailing list of interesting startups. I’m starting with early stage companies raising in Europe, but will expand it to other regions/stages before too long.

Here’s a bit more about why I’m doing this. I see tons of great companies every month, and I wish I could invest in many of them, but time/bandwidth/focus/money and having a life tends to get in the way. However, I think those companies should get more exposure to great angel and VC investors around the world.

Finding great dealflow is tough. We can’t go to every demo day or pitch competition. We can’t meet every CEO or get every referral in every country around the world. Anyone who has been any way public about investing has probably received dozens, hundreds or more cold pitches on LinkedIn, AngelList, email and elsewhere. I remember reading Mark Suster’s piece on proprietary dealflow a few years ago and mostly agreeing with it — but now everyone talks to lawyers, stalks machine learning lecturers, goes to or sends someone to demo days, and tries every trick in the book to get access to the best deals.

I’m not suggesting that everyone should go full Mae-Holland-in-The-Circle and go totally transparent on everything you’re investing in, but I think there is a lot more we could share and syndicate to help surface interesting opportunities for great companies to connect with great investors.

These companies want more exposure. The question I’m frequently asked is how they go about getting on investor’s radars. I’m starting with this mailing list.

Once a month or so, I’ll share info on a couple of great companies that are raising. To start with, they’ll largely be from my existing network. Over time, I’d love for people on the mailing list to share some of the companies they think are amazing. It won’t, and shouldn’t be overwhelming — a half dozen companies or thereabouts across several verticals and countries.

I first mentioned this idea to some friends on Twitter, and in the space of a few hours had over 30 people sign up — some small cap angels, some household name VCs and massive corporates. The interest is clearly there. Everyone wants more dealflow — companies want to be seen by a wider pool of people and investors want to hear about the stuff they’ve missed in Ireland, Estonia, Tokyo or anywhere else in the world.

This is phase one of a bigger plan — I’m starting with early(ish) stage companies in Europe. I’ll be in Hong Kong and Tokyo in August and September with Zeroth, and I’ll be meeting angels, VCs and startups there to get them onboarded. There’s already some interest in a version of this for mid/late stage companies who are thinking of expanding into new markets. It’s all to play for.

Alongside this, I’m also working on tools to help companies find better independent board members and also some initial thinking about how to do a similar mailing list/online system for early stage M&A. Fun times all round. If you’d like to help, let me know. I’d love to have you on board. In the interim, sign up for the mailing list, feel free to intro me to great companies and I’ll hopefully be in an inbox near you before too long.