🆔 Who we are
We are a global pre-seed fund. We really are, by definition and conception, a "Day 0" investor starting to work with you before you have an idea or a team.
We are entrepreneurs. We embrace the chaos. We partner with founders from the beginning of their journey and leverage our global reach to bring an unfair advantage to the equation.
We are founder-first. Most of the people we end up working with, we actually meet at the very start of their intention of founding. We care about ambition, drive and intellect - not slides.
We can be very operational if helpful, but also loose when not. Our team consists mostly of entrepreneurs and operators. We know what it takes to get from 0 to 1.
🧑🏻🏭 Our Value Proposition
🕰️ Long-term investment horizon - We are in it for the long run, just like you
🚅 Speed - We can provide ideas and capital within days, not months
🔛 Flexibility - We embrace that every venture and every founder is different
🧑🏽🤝🧑🏼 Cooperation - We view the founder-investor relationship as a team effort
👓 Transparency - We foster a culture of open communication and profound trust
📚 Expertise - We have access to deep industry knowledge across multiple verticals
💡 The Flash Approach
- We are a talent investor: Instead of focusing on investing in existing startups, we invest in talented operators that have ambitions to launch their own venture
- We partner with founders from day 0: As an entrepreneurial sparring partner, we support and back founders as they scale their company
- We collaborate with founders on ideation: We help founders identify compelling models and support them with our expertise as they build conviction in their idea
📈 Your Founder Journey With Flash
Note: High level walkthrough - every founder journey is different!
- Phase 1 — Getting to Know Each Other: We will first get to know each other to understand whether you are ready to embark on this great-building expedition. We will also discuss your areas of interest so that we can think about what business models might suit your skillset. Then, you will talk to our global investment committee, where you will show our partners that you have what it takes to launch a start-up with Flash.
- Phase 2 — Ideation Begins: Congrats! We’re ready start the ideation process. During this period, we offer bespoke advice and support to help you discover an idea that you can build significant conviction on. We do this by analyzing global trends, understanding and speaking with potential users, making introductions to relevant stakeholders, and much more. You’re in the driver’s seat, but we’re riding shotgun, helping you to navigate the road to launch.
- Phase 3 — Pitching to the Investment Committee: This is the fun part. After the ideation period, you’ll be back in front of the same partners as before. But this time, you’ll be pitching back the idea as a business that you’ve readied for launch.
- Phase 4 — Term Sheet Signed: Welcome to the Flash Family! The journey really starts from here. This startup is ready for launch. Let’s sign the term sheet and start building!
Building a startup with Flash accelerates your timeline. We accelerate 0-to-1 business building from 1-2 years to 6 months.
108 days. 18 meetings. As GM @Cloudkitchen, Mark had little spare time, so we started with bi-weekly workshops. After a few weeks, Mark clicked with the Q-Commerce idea, and in a few days, he was ready to build.
23 days. 10 meetings. Felipe was ready to build ASAP and invested significant time to move fast. We iterated together 3 times a week for 3 weeks. Within a month, he was already starting his venture.
🚀 What You Can Expect From Us
- We assist you in finding the perfect idea that suits your skills and passions
- We provide 100% funding from day zero for you to kick-start the journey
- We work with you to set up the company from scratch, including legal and recruiting
- We connect you with our talent pool, to support you in your team setup
- We help you connect with our network of entrepreneurs to learn from their achievements
- We act as a sparrings partner to solve any major obstacles that you face
- We connect you with investors and advise you on how to raise capital for follow-on rounds
🙅♀️🙅♂️ What You Should Not Expect From Us
- Taking over your role as CEO - It is your business and you make the decisions 😉
- Staffing your team and hiring people - You decide who you hire and who works with you 💪🏽
- Venture building - We don't try to be the entrepreneur nor we want to be 🥇
- Decision making - We will advise you when asked, but won’t push thing on you 😊
❓FAQs
‣
First of all: An ideation is a very individual journey. With the 40+ portfolio companies and 100+ ideations we have derived some best practices that we apply...
- First, you introduce yourself and get to know the team. We identify which sectors and trends you passionate about. We use the Flash Entrepreneurship Compass to capture which industries, sectors, kind of organizations and customer segments are most interesting to you.
- If you have first hypotheses, we can discuss them together and we share our views on the respective markets. Our partner, your first point of contact and our respective industry expert join this call to validate from different perspectives.
- Depending on your interests, you decide to deep-dive into one of the opportunities or we discuss other hypotheses.
- Our goal is that you are convinced that the opportunity can become a unicorn and that you want to work in this space for your next years. For this, we develop the following together:
- Unique selling point
- Go to market strategy
- Key competitors
- Target customers and validation by conducting first customer interviews
- Main markets and termination of market size
We tailor this process on your time availability. On average, the whole process takes 3 months with weekly meetings. However, we have completed it in few weeks and its fine if you need longer because you have planned a holiday or have job commitments.
‣
- That’s great and we are here to help you find both! We believe that the basis for any successful start-up is a great lead founder.
- We start your entrepreneurial journey by finding out which areas you are excited about. We then discuss hypotheses suiting your interests so that you find an idea you want to work on.
- Once the idea is fixed, we consider which type of team maximises its success chances and help you find the appropriate co-founders.
‣
- No, we are much more focused on the few ventures we back.
- We only invest in a limited number of companies every year and can thus provide very close support.
‣
Guiding principle: We se our task in increasing the odds of your success in starting your company. This is only an offer and we support you as much as you consider it helpful:
- There are so many things you need to do as a founder. From our prior experience, we have guidelines when you should focus on which task. This can significantly reduce the time you need to scale your company.
- As an early-stage start-up, hiring talent is both very hard and crucial. We support you by
- We connect you to the best local & international investors for follow-up rounds through our investor network. For example, our portfolio companies received additional capital from Insight Partners, White Star Capital, Sequoia, Y Combinator and Tiger Global.
- Our founders’ associates: We support you in building your landing page, MVP, drafting your product roadmap and doing customer calls. Our team has witnessed the same steps repeatedly at our many portfolio companies and can thus both provide strategic guidance and execute on the ground with you.
- Office space: Many of our founders enjoy working from our office while they ramp up their team. This means not only many fewer things to worry about but also that you can easily consult us and our other portfolio companies about day-to-day decisions.
- Network of other portfolio companies: Exchanging with companies a few months further ahead in the process of building their companies can be a valuable learning opportunity. We are building up a community in which you can also digitally exchange best practices.
- For building up your team, we are also happy to connect you with suitable co-founders.
1) Searching for suitable people in our talent pool
2) Reaching out to candidates with our proven best practices
‣
- After you developed your own idea, we discuss which type of team would complement you for turning this into a success.
- Since we work with hundreds of great profiles, we use our platform and the information from the Entrepreneurship Compass to bring you together with suitable candidates.
‣
- We support founders: We are strong believers in your ability to drive your passion business. We know there will be difficult times. We will support you and make sure that in this business or an adjacent opportunity you will find the success you set off to achieve
- As an ever green fund, we can invest long-term and in the interest of the company. We are life cycle investors and believe value is created in every stage of a great company and we will support along the way.
‣
- We are selective with our investments. We have a partner with his team on every investment. We do not “spray and pray”. We apply for a significant share in your company with our hands-on approach to have fully aligned interests. We deliver first. We agree terms later. Our initial target is, like a co-founder, 20-30% of the company.
- We want to make sure that with our strategic resources and our financial support we are setting up your venture for success. As some guidance, we usually invest 250k to 2M EUR in the pre-seed round but advise most start-ups to take around 500k EUR. This amount has proven a great starter to assembling a stellar team and building a first MVP product.
👨👩👧👧 Meet Our Team
- team members with a track record in venture building and a broad entrepreneurial network
- multiple continents are covered via a global investment approach based on local expertise
🔥 Our Portfolio Companies Achieved Success Globally
We have invested in over 40 companies around the world including insureQ, everstox, and unicorn Razor Group in Germany. Our ventures have already attracted leading VC funds for follow-on funding, including Insight Partners, Sequoia, Y Combinator, Tiger Global, and Global Founders Capital.
Everstox
Everstox
Logistics-as-a-Service platform (DACH)
Since pre-seed in 2019 raised >$25m from top investors like GFC and Acton
Spenmo
Spenmo
B2B payments platform (SG)
Since pre-seed in 2019 raised >$120M from top global investors like Tiger Global
and Insight Partners
Katoo
Katoo
Restaurant B2B supply platform (Spain)
Since pre-seed in 2019 raised >$10M, hired >80 employees, and expanded to 4 countries
Flash Coffee
Flash Coffee
Tech enabled coffee chain (SG)
Raised $20m in total financing from White Star Capital, DX Ventures, and more.
Voly
Voly
Online grocery shopping platform (AU)
Invested pre-seed in Jan 2021. $13m seed round raised end of 2021 to fuel expansion to other cities in Australia.
‣
👨👩👧👦 Here Are Our Portfolio Companies
🤠 What Our Founders Say
“From day 0, we knew that Flash was the perfect entrepreneurial sparring partner for us.”
Geoffroy Henry (CEO & Co-Founder Ofload)
“We wanted to work with investors we trusted, and who would help us scale and support us in early decisions - especially regarding team, structure, etc. We knew Flash through our personal network. This was a totally new philosophy in the VC world.”
Boris Bösch (CEO & Co-Founder Everstox)
“Flash provided us with the freedom and capital that allowed us to make the jump and become entrepreneurs. They invested in us as people, rather than a business, gave us their trust and commitment needed to succeed, and made the initial idea become reality.”
“With the astounding speed and conviction in decision-making, and willingness to proactively engage with founders on business models and strategy, the Flash team proved to be hands-down the best early-stage partner for us.”
Wilfried Buiron (CEO & Founder Zaapi)
“From strategic advisory to practical support with hiring talent and leveraging their extensive network, I've truly valued partnering with Flash on this venture-building journey. They've provided us with the means to go all-in and build with speed and conviction.”
Jenny Huang (Co-Founder Humentic)
