Giving European Early Stage Startups a Leg up — Introducing Rolodex

Generally speaking, access to capital has never been easier for a startup. Micro-funds are popping up regularly, and large VCs are now creating small pools to allow for earlier stage investments. However it goes without saying, raising capital in Europe, compared to the United States is a drop in the ocean. For European entrepreneurs raising capital, the harsh reality is that fundraising isn’t just difficult on this side of the Atlantic; it’s that the European VC piggy bank is significantly leaner.

If you sit outside the big tech hubs in Europe you are significantly disadvantaged to raising the capital your company requires.

Raising the capital is one thing, but the actual investor network to those with the funds is another story entirely. If you sit outside the big tech hubs in Europe (London, Berlin and Paris to name a few), you are significantly disadvantaged to raising the capital your company requires. Yes, this is a sweeping statement, but for the earliest of startups — and particularly first time founders — without that network, it rings true.

So how does one go about raising capital without an investor network?

Chances are, your potential investors probably aren’t at networking events — and even if they are, handing them your business card and chatting for 10 minutes isn’t going to bring them on board. Also, for some first time founders it’s incredibly nerve racking to go up to an investor and try pitch to them on the fly.

Apart from attending as many pitching events as possible you could simply search Google for ‘VCs investing X,’ and see whether there are any hits for your industry. If there are, you’ll then need to see if the VC focuses on your current stage (pre-seed, seed or above,) and then see if they’ve done investments in your region before. If not then it’s back to Google until you’re out of results.

But what if there was another way?

Personally having this issue previously when trying to raise money, I wanted to try make the whole ‘sourcing’ part as easy as possible. Rolodex is a web app that aggregates most (but not all) Venture Capital firms investing in early stage European startups. Rolodex is focused on pre-seed, and seed startups, and is organised alphabetically. Find useful information such as industry and stage focus, contact information and even social links such as Twitter and Linkedin profiles. Office addresses are populated via Google maps, which you’ll find helpful in knowing what part of town a VC might be located.

Has anyone tried fixing this issue before?

There have been a few attempts at aggregating VCs into paid platforms such as Crunchbase ($29 a month). Techstars put together an investor list a few years ago, but unfortunately it’s not been actively updated. Trawling hundreds of VC websites can be a drain on a founders time, arguably time spent away from building their business. This is why I was compelled to find a better way to source investors, so others didn’t need to.

The web-app can be saved to your phone home screen, but is also fully accessible by desktop. Rolodex will stay free to access, and I’m happy to hear ways it can be improved. Let me know what you think if you’re an early stage investor. If you weren’t added to the app in the initial rollout, reach out and let me know!

(Disclaimer: This is not an exhaustive list of VCs, but I’ll be adding new VCs to the app every week.)