Investor Startup Vauban Is Betting on Europe’s Booming VC Sector
- London-based fintech Vauban wants to take on US investment platform AngelList.
- It speeds up the process for angels to form investing syndicates, or for VCs to tap up investors for new cash.
- Its users include VC firms, a Xoogler syndicate, and a vehicle for African startups.
London-based startup Vauban is betting Europe’s booming venture capital industry will supercharge its globally-focused alternative to US investment platform AngelList.
Vauban, founded by French entrepreneurs Ulric Musset and Rémy Astie, makes it easier to start and run a venture capital firm online. The startup reduces the barriers to entry for investors to set up new special purpose vehicles (SPVs), a type of fund structure, by digitizing much of the process.
Astie, the startup’s chief technology officer, said it was a market with big potential and suggested the previous process for establishing funds could take as long as six months.
“We are a platform that makes it easy and start to run a VC firm online, launch your fund and SPVs, in as little as two days,” Astie told Insider.
“It’s much cheaper, quicker, and easier than the existing process but this is a hard market and it’s very infrastructure-heavy.”
In December 2020, Vauban announced it had brought in $6.3 million in pre-Series A funding to aid in its growth. UK investors Outward Ventures and Pentech led the round, which came after previous rounds totaling $3.4 million from investors including West Loop Ventures and Kima Ventures.
Vauban’s funding came as Europe’s tech scene attracts recent levels of venture capital investment. Startups in the region are on track to raise more than $100 billion this year, smashing previous records and bringing the region closer to the US and Asia.
Astie said the company’s global ambitions gave it an edge over operations like AngelList, which skews towards the US. San Francisco-based AngelList sets up around 600 funds a month and brings in around $1 billion from fund carry every year. The US platform links VCs and investors to suitable startups seeking fresh funding.
“Being international as a platform is very powerful for us,” Astie said. “For a globalized world, it’s very important for private investors as they have a lot of LPs outside their home country, working in multiple currencies and jurisdictions whereas AngelList is very American.”
The company has around 5,000 LPs on its platform and counts VC funds like London’s Passion Capital, Octopus Ventures, and Anthemis as clients. Vauban states on its website as an example that it charges €19,500 ($22,000) for VC fund formation, versus a law firm’s stated charge of €40,000 ($45,000) for the same service.
Despite the skyrocketing amount of capital invested in startups in recent years, the lengthy processes to raise and operate funds can be off-putting and cumbersome for funds, especially smaller offerings.
Angel investors and smaller funds can become more meaningful players as the surrounding ecosystem is democratized, according to Outward Ventures.
The investment firm also noted that smaller investors can syndicate pre-emption rights to their network for increasingly large follow-on rounds in return for carry. In short, it means investors can more easily club together to purchase more shares in their investments as rounds grow in size, buying themselves a right of first refusal.
Vauban’s growth also comes at a time where new types of investors are entering venture capital both in the US and Europe, such as micro VC funds with a small number of partners or solo funds.
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