This is the page for non-UK deals of my syndicate.
As an active seed investor who's been a VC, tech columnist at the Financial Times, and entrepreneur who took a startup to a Nasdaq IPO, I typically meet 8-10 new founders a week. My personal seed portfolio's historic internal rate of return (IRR) is 32.4%.
My deal flow comes mostly from direct referrals from the founders, investors, engineers and marketeers I've met and worked with over 15 years in the European internet space, plus the entrepreneurs that I mentor in London at places like Techstars, Seedcamp and Entrepreneur First. There are also a few diamonds in the rough that pitch me via my seed fund website.
Most deals are European companies (and many British with the kicker of EIS/SEIS tax breaks), though some come from the US, where my brother Daniel is a computer-science professor at MIT, and a few from Israel, where my brother David is founder and CEO of Seeking Alpha, which is on track to become the world's top financial news website.
My deal criteria are straightforward and public: I rate companies on team, traction, market and barriers. It may seem weird to expect a startup at seed stage to have what Warren Buffett would call 'economic moats', but the cases of AirBnB, Uber and Facebook show that the right companies, over time, can build them.
One group of companies I invest in are pretty time-intensive: they want me to take a board seat and consult on product, strategy, finance and marketing. Others are simply led by super-talented CEOs who ask for little more than the occasional intro or piece of input, but then deliver eye-popping monthly growth like David Langer at Zesty, or go straight on to close a round with Sequoia like Jan-Erik Solem at Mapillary. It's for this second group that I'm syndicating.
European startups are finding it easier to do later rounds (note Andreessen Horowitz's investment in TransferWise at a $1bn valuation). At seed stage, there's value for founders in syndicating to a handful of smart investors, and for backers there's value in getting into great deals that would otherwise go to superangels in the Valley.
This is a portfolio game. My approach is to mentally write off every investment the day I make it, and you should be prepared to do the same. But together, we can help great entrepreneurs build big and exciting businesses.