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Angular Ventures closes oversubscribed USD41m institutional seed fund for European and Israeli enterprise and deep tech startups

Angular Ventures has closed its debut fund, which will invest in early-stage deep technology enterprise companies with global expansion plans based in Europe and Israel, at USD41 million in capital commitments.

The firm, which has been operating in stealth mode for nearly two years, has already built a portfolio of 12 companies with plans to make five-seven new investments per year.

The fund’s current portfolio spans Israel, the UK, Finland, Romania, and other countries. Gil Dibner, its General Partner and founder, wanted to reimagine early-seed venture capital in Europe and Israel by building a sector-focused firm; removing geographical boundaries to investing, ans establishing a US presence to support startups in their global expansion. 

Because the fund raised capital exclusively from commercial investors, Angular is able to invest with no geographic targets or constraints. The fund’s approach is to drive startup growth and scale for early-stage companies from across Europe and Israel by rapid expansion into the United States. 

Dibner says: “We invest early – from ‘first check’ to Series A, and our LPs have given Angular the green light to invest anywhere in Europe and Israel. This broad geographic mandate coupled with our specific industry focus and long track record in enterprise tech investing provides Angular Ventures with a distinct sourcing advantage: for example, we recently backed Valohai, a Finnish company building a version control platform for AI/ML. As part of our due diligence process, our network of domain experts also assessed eight competing companies spread across Israel, UK, Poland, and the Nordics – something no other VC was able to do. We selected Valohai’s Finnish team for their team, product offering, revenue, and clear roadmap towards global category leadership.”

Angular, which set out to raise a USD25 million debut fund, ultimately reached a final close of USD41 million. Well over 50 per cent of the fund’s capital comes from the US, and 74 per cent of the fund’s capital base is institutional, including two US-based endowments, several leading fund-of-funds, and sophisticated family offices from around the world. 

Dibner adds: “We are especially pleased that 100 per cent of our LP base is commercially motivated. This validates our strategy, reflects the attractiveness of our opportunity set, and affords the fund full flexibility to pursue the best investments within our geography.”

Beyond sourcing, as sector specialists with a vast global network, Angular provides meaningful support to its portfolio companies both in the US and in their home countries.

With its highly-specialised focus on Enterprise / Deep Tech investing, Angular has assembled a roster of outstanding advisors around the world who work closely with portfolio companies to support their growth and expansion. These include:

• Fred Simon, founder of JFrog
• Eldad Farkash, founder of SiSense and founder of Firebolt, an Angular portfolio company
• Guy Poreh, former EVP New Media at BBDO, led Wix’s US market launch, and founded Playground
• Jerry Dischler who leads the product team for Google’s core ads business
• Phil Wickham who founded Sozo Ventures and is the Chairman of the Kauffman Fellows Program

“One of our recent investments is Candu, a UK-born company in the customer success domain, founded by an American and an Italian,” says DIbner. “Taking advantage of Angular’s global network, we recently connected them with a senior advisor in our Israeli network who served as CTO and VP Product for a related company. His experience was best placed to support Candu. They are now successfully working closely together to tackle product challenges. This sort of cross-border high-touch value-add is a unique capability that Angular brings to the table for enterprise tech companies.”

Through his career, Dibner has backed 40 companies. Of these: 28 have raised capital from US-based VC firms or been acquired by US-based acquirers; eight have exited, and two have reached unicorn status. Prior to founding Angular Ventures, Gil’s 15-year venture capital career spanned blue-chip VCs including Index Ventures and DFJ Esprit in London, as well as Gemini Israel Ventures and Genesis Partners in Tel Aviv. In addition, Gil was an active angel investor and AngelList syndicate lead. 

Angular’s strategy appears to be working. Of the fund’s first 12 investments, seven have US VCs as co-investors, seven were led or co-led by Angular, and four have already raised follow-on capital at a significant mark-up in valuation. 

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