Blockchain Angels & VCs Europe: Educating & Connecting for Deal Flow

‘‘Blockchain based startups spend on average an hour of time first explaining distributed ledgers, smart contracts and whether they are or aren’t involved in bitcoin before they get to pitch their actual use-case. That’s if they haven’t run out of time! This makes the process difficult and very time consuming’’ says Jamie Burke founder of Outlier Ventures, Europe’s first blockchain venture builder and fund.

So he has made it his mission to enable angel investors across Europe to better understand the space and be able to assess risk in order to capitalize on a once-in-a-lifetime investment opportunity. He will be hosting a Blockchain Angels & VCs every 2 weeks in a new city in Europe for the next 6 months as is looking for existing angel meet-ups to plugin to.

‘’In our fund we are fortunate enough to have a number of angel investors that get blockchain but it’s not enough and it took us many one-to-one meetings to get them there especially because in our case we are pre-seed. There is a distinct gap, traditionally filled by early stage angels, before the larger seed investors can get involved and that is significantly limiting blockchain startups getting to market’’, Jamie said.

Jamie goes onto say, ‘’A lot of the $1 billion that’s been invested to date has largely been from US VCs and focused on Bitcoin but that money has dried up as they wait to see if their bets pays off. They are keeping available funds to follow previous investments, not find new ones, in expectation they are going to need more money soon’’.

Whilst this will change over time today this means the majority of startups, according to research conducted by Outlier Ventures, are self-funded through consultancy services, personal savings and / or friend & family loans. The conclusion is this is going to severely restrict the growth of ecosystem and its success to impact markets and raise the profile of the industry for the next 18 months.

This is where www.BlockchainAngels.eu comes in, founded by Jamie and ran with other entrepreneurs and investors in the space they are developing a platform centered around events that first educates angels & VCs to give them the necessary knowledge and understanding to assess an opportunity and secondly help get in front of the right startups to make investments.

BLOCKCHAIN ANGELS EUROPE carefully select startups that are made up of credible teams, with great ideas well executed with a bigger focus than just Bitcoin which they believe to be a barrier to most angel investors. They also support and advise promising startups how to structure fundraising if required and match them to the right investors who are ready to invest.

‘’We understand for many investors new to the blockchain space it is complex, highly technical and filled with politicised and contradictory opinion. And yet, to those in the know, it represents the single biggest investment opportunity since if Internet itself’’ says Jamie.

As investors themselves they found once someone can get past the buzzwords and is given a clear commercial explanation of the basics, removing a lot of the technical clutter, when supported by real life use-cases they very quickly see the scale of the opportunity.

‘’Rather than do this on a one-to-one basis It made sense to facilitate the process through events’’ said Jamie.

FORMAT:
The event format was first piloted in London in early February this year and was a great success with 100 people signing up in just a week-and-a-half with 50 attending on the day. It is broken down into 4 distinct phases:

1. Understanding blockchains workshop
   A 20min session explaining the technical constituents parts and variations of blockchain technology including crypto-currencies, permissioned and unpermissioned distributed ledgers and smart contracts.
   
   
2. Investing in blockchain Session
   We explain with research based reports and data where and from whom investment has been in blockchain to date from both a global and regional perspective.
3. Investment Horizon Scan
   We provide insight into where we see the greatest, yet untapped, opportunities for disruption and disintermediation by blockchain startups in the mid to long-term.
4. Startup Pitches
   We bring between three to four carefully selected blockchain based startups who are actively seeking investment to live pitch to an audience of now informed investors.

Angels are encouraged to signup at the website where they are asked for their email and location. The tour will then go where they get the most interest.

Blockchain Angels: http://www.blockchainangels.eu/