Potential entrepreneurs come up with various innovative ideas in a sincere hope of transforming things the way it works. For the startup, the road to success gets blocked either because of lack of finance or competition from bigger market players. These are the time startups typically need backing and more often than not it comes in the form of Angel Investors.
Angel investors a.k.a. Informal investors play a substantial role in the growth of startups. With an adequate amount of money in hand and a choice, to finance others, these Angels literally guide the startups in their initial journey and aid them to establish a base.
But it seems to be the opposite in the land of Dutch! According to recent research from the Angel Academy, the angel investment is growing in Europe but has been declining in the Netherlands in the last two years.
The Netherlands experiencing a steep decline
In the Netherlands, the total amount invested into businesses this year is €461M of which publicly declared angel investments are projected to reach at least €8.4M (~€2M declared each quarter). This is a substantial decrease when compared to the previous year, where total investments were as high as €802M and angel investment reached at least €11.2M in declared funding.
Adyen is the most-funded angel-backed company in the Netherlands!
Overall, most of the angel-backed and still active companies operate in the Enterprise Software industry (18.28%). In addition, the Health industry has received almost a third of the total amount of funding in the Netherlands (31.54%).
In this article, we have compiled a list of six companies that are backed up by the Angel investors in the Netherlands.
#1 Shypple
Based out of Rotterdam, Shypple was established in 2016 by Jarell Habets. The company aims to make the sea and air cargo market transparent and also to make world trade accessible to more people. In most of the cases, the cost of shipping goods has to do with the handling of and communication between the various stakeholders.
Hence, Shypple wants to put an end to this excessive paperwork created by the communication and documentation of sea freight. As a result, it offers a web application with a simplified administrative handling and communication between parties. To be specific, it has a real-time dashboard that displays the status of the shipments while offering shippers with several booking, planning and communication possibilities.
On top, Shypple lists the most efficient and cost-effective routes via a user-friendly web-interface. Shypple has raised a total of €1.7M in funding over 2 rounds with the latest funding on Sep 6, 2018, from a Seed round.
#2 Picoo
Based out of Eindhoven, this startup creates interactive outdoor play experiences enabling kids to engage in traditional games with modern, interactive technology. In this process, Picoo is aiming to become the world’s leading creator of technology for active and social play. Established in 2017, this startup was founded by Iris Soute and Daniel Tetteroo.
#3 LiveTours
LiveTours is a smartphone communication app that connects tour guides with their groups. Available on both Android and iOS, this app allows ‘live’ real-time speech communication between a guide, a narrator or a teacher and a group. The guide/speaker establishes a secure network via the hotspot feature or a strong Wi-Fi network on his/her smartphone. The group can log in onto the guide’s phone via the secure Wi-Fi setting. Established in 2017, this startup is headquartered at Amsterdam.
#4 CateraarNL
This Putten-based startup is all about serving some delicious food be at home or work. CateraarNL will put you in touch with the best catering party in your region that will take care of everything down to the most minor detail.
#5 Let’s Post
This online platform offers web store entrepreneurs an easy tool to launch a social campaign. Furthermore, Let’s Post allows good causes to participate free of charge in the donation platform. According to the company, the revenue model of Let’s Post is in the number of campaigns created by webshops.
#6 BridgeFund
Based out of Amsterdam, BridgeFund is an online business platform that offers fast business credit up to € 250,000 without the intervention of a bank. Plus, it allows you to know whether you qualify for a business loan, the same working day as well.
What can be done?
Everyone involved with Angel Academy would like to strongly encourage any private investors to forgo old habits such as keeping deals private or being afraid of negative publicity related to investment failures and instead contribute towards making angel investing more transparent.
According to Nils Beers, director of StartupDelta, the report also shows that lasting incentives from the government are needed to make it easier for Angel Investors to invest in startups.
On the other hand, Jaap Dekter, Managing Director of the Angel Academy stated that “Angel investment is a crucial phase for building a healthy ecosystem.” He also added that to stimulate angel investments, the government should simplify programmes such as the ‘Seed Business Angel Regeling’.
Further, the Angel investors should also make efforts to collaborate more often by sharing deals and knowledge and they should contribute with data to ensure the entire ecosystem can see what works well and what does not.
Stay tuned to Silicon Canals for more updates in the tech startup world.
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