European fintech’s most active angel investors
Fintech investments hit the brakes in 2022; Funding for the European sector fell by a third to $19.2 billion, down from $28.9 billion in 2021, according to CB Insights.
Angel investors injected about $2.3 billion into European fintech last year, down two-thirds from $6.9 billion in 2021, according to Dealroom.
Among Europe’s most productive fintech angel investors in the last 15 months are several familiar face – including the founders of Monzo, Checkout.com and GoCardless. But even they tell Sifted that they have invested in far fewer deals than this time last year, and they have also become more conservative on price.
A couple of angels also mention that the quality of early-stage companies coming onto the market has declined in the last six months.
“People are clinging to jobs and I think there are fewer experienced startup alumni taking the risk [to start their own ventures] right now, says one fintech angel, who asked not to be named.
Many of the angels on this list have invested alongside each other over the past year, in companies such as pensions pooling startup Trypenny, CFO tech stack Translucent, asset manager Sidekick and payment initiation sequence.
Some fintech entrepreneurs whose companies have grown rapidly on the back of large rounds of funding have also started to pursue some investments, including the founders of Payhawk and Sorare.
There is only one woman on this list of fintech angels so far. Sifted knows of some who did not want their details shared, but we are also well aware that some may have slipped under our radar: let us know if so and we can update the list.
Here are the 14 most active fintech angel investors in Europe in the last 15 months. Our methodology is listed at the end.
1. Chris Adelsbach
Placement: Great Britain
Number of fintech agreements for 2022/23: 27 new agreements, 17 follow-up offers
Topping the list for the third time in a row, Adelsbach made 27 new European fintech investments and 17 follow-on investments in 2022, at pre-seed and seed.
They included financial management start-ups Ramp (UK) and Scaleup Finance (Denmark); Berlin wealth management startup Ride Capital; and Spain’s health insurance startup Getlife.
Adelsbach has 20 years of financial services experience under his belt and a portfolio of over 100, mainly fintech companies. Among them are three unicorns: Atom Bank, Monese and Marshmallow.
Adelsbach made his name in 2015 as managing director of Barclays Techstars London, and has since advised several fintechs.
In 2019 he was named angel investor of the year by the UK Business Angels Association and he is now the founder of Outrun Ventures, a specialist fintech venture fund.
2. Will Neale
Placement: Great Britain
Number of fintech agreements for 2022/23: 17
Neale is the founder of both Fonix, a mobile payments company which went public in 2020, and cloud-based video editing platform Grabyo – whose clients include the FA, MotoGP, Fox and BT Sport.
Since 2014, Neale has also been quite a prolific angel investor, backing over 50 early-stage startups – primarily in fintech and software – including Revolut and Marshmallow.
In 2022, he invested in 17 European fintechs (mostly in the UK), including UK active investment manager Sidekick, France’s financial management software startup Trezy and UK business lender Sapi.
3. Tom Blomfield
Placement: Great Britain
Number of fintech agreements for 2022/23: 11
Tom Blomfield, co-founder of two $1 billion+ fintech companies, Monzo and GoCardless, has also become an active angel investor in recent years.
Despite once telling Sifted that he didn’t think he would have a knack for angel investing, Blomfield admitted at the Sifted Summit last October that he has now backed 77 startups.
Public funding announcements suggest Blomfield made 11 fintech investments in 2022 (he declined to comment for this piece). They include the UK right RobinAiGreat Britain payment initiation sequence and UK personal finance app Nous.
Blomfield tells Sifted that he has now stopped investing in the angels to focus on his work with startup accelerator Y Combinator.
4. Gloria Bäuerlein
Placement: Germany
Number of fintech agreements for 2022/23: Seven
Berlin-based VC turned operator turned angel investor Bäuerlein has today announced that she has closed Europe’s first solo female GP fund, at €21.5 million.
Bäuerlein was previously an investor at London-based VC firm Index Ventures and Technology Crossover Ventures, before moving to Swedish healthcare tech Kry to oversee global strategy, and then on to Berlin operations software startup. Back where she was COO.
She has run angel investment since 2018, and focuses mostly on B2B, saas and digital health startups.
Over the past 15 months, her seven picks have included Berlin crypto API provider Pile, Hamburg B2B transaction software startup Procuros and Stockholm bank payments API Atlar.
5. Paul Forster
Placement: Great Britain
Number of fintech agreements for 2022/23: Five new investments, six follow-up investments
Forster is best known for founding the job search engine Indeed in 2004, which was acquired in 2012. Since then, Forster has focused on angel investing. His portfolio includes Personio, Nested, MarketFinance and Monzo. He also sits on the board of MarketFinance, Cytora, The Future Forest Company and Sano Genetics.
In 2022, he invested in five new European fintechs through his family office, including Munich’s treasury management startup finway and Berlin’s NFT startup Fuel. Follow-up investments included open banking startup Banked and banking-as-a-service provider Griffin.
6. Perry Blacher
Placement: Great Britain
Number of fintech agreements for 2022/23: Seven
Blacher is a veteran fintech investor, having taken a stake in online gambling site Betfair in 2001. He is now a partner in Augmentum Fintech, one of the UK’s leading fintech venture firms.
He continues to invest in and advise a number of fintechs in a personal capacity, including trading app Freetrade.
In 2022, his seven European fintech investments included Accel-backed UK payments startup Super Payments, CFO tech stack Translucent and Danish CFO tech stack fintech Light, and French startup Flowcast, a SaaS crypto market maker.
7. Hristo Borisov
Placement: Bulgaria
Number of fintech agreements for 2022/23: Five
Borisov is the founder of Payhawk, the spend management fintech company that became Bulgaria’s first unicorn in March last year.
He has already used that unicorn money for good work. He began angel investing in 2022 and backed five European fintech companies, including Greek family finance app Woli and UK pensions aggregating startup Trypenny.
8. Michael Pennington
placement: Great Britain
Number of fintech agreements for 2022/23: Five
Pennington is the co-founder and CEO of Gumtree, which he started in 1999 after quitting his job as a bond trader. He also co-founded the advertising website Slando.com in 2005.
He now invests at the seed stage in the companies he believes could be the next big thing, telling Sifted that he “loves fintech”.
His fintech investments in 2022 included much-loved investment platform Sidekick and UK financial management software Kolleno.
9. Mark Ransford
Placement: Great Britain
Number of fintech agreements for 2022/23: Five
Ransford has more than two decades of financial services experience under his belt.
Since 2015, he has invested in some notable European fintech unicorns – including Lendable, Zego, Wayflyer and Payhawk.
In 2022, he invested in Sidekick, SME financial management tool Kapaga and revenue forecasting startup Ramp.
10. Thibaud Elziere
placement: Belgium
Number of fintech agreements for 2022/23: Five
Elziere founded Paris-based startup studio eFounders in 2011. In 2014, his previous business — stock photography marketplace Fotolia — was acquired by Adobe for around $800 million.
Alongside his work at eFounders, Elziere has been quite a busy angel investor, backing companies including Argent, Spendesk and PayFit.
In 2022, he invested in five European fintechs, including restaurant payments startup Spades, stock management startup easop and business payments startup Duplo.
11. Guillaume Pousaz
Placement: UAE
Number of fintech agreements for 2022/23: Four
Pousaz is the founder of the payment company Checkout.com. He now also has a family office, Zinal Growth, which he uses to make angel investments. It is quite elusive — and did not respond to Sifted’s request for a list of agreements.
Publicly announced investments in 2022 include Irish income-based financing startup Wayflyer, SoftBank-backed Spanish proptech Clikalia and Swiss expense management tool Yokoy.
12. Matt Robinson
placement: Great Britain
Number of fintech agreements for 2022/23: Four
Robinson is the co-founder of payment unicorn GoCardless and real estate sales platform Nested.
He is also a prolific angel: he has invested in over 200 companies, focusing on B2B, fintech (especially payments) and development tools. He tells Sifted that he invested in around 30 European startups last year – four of which were fintechs.
These were credit check UK lending startup Koyo, debt settlement company Ophelos, payment startup Atoa and CFO tech stack Translucent.
13. Phil Chambers
Placement: Great Britain
Number of fintech agreements for 2022/23: Three
Phil Chambers is the co-founder of employee engagement platform Peakon, where he served as CEO until the company was acquired by Workday in early 2021.
Since this exit, Chambers has invested in a number of European startups, mainly in the HR technology and fintech sector.
In 2022, he backed hospitality payroll software All Gravy, income-based financing startup Vitt, and employee financial benefits platform Cobee.
14. Raphael Vullierme
Placement: France
Number of fintech agreements for 2022/23: Three
Vullierme has worked in technology for nearly a decade, first founding a foodtech startup in France before joining Rocket Internet in Berlin in 2014 and founding French insurtech Luko in 2016, where he remains CEO.
In the past year, he backed three French startups, according to publicly announced deals: income-based financing startup Silvr; insurtech Orus and Sequoia-backed insurtech Evy.
Methodology
Given that many angels do not make their deals public, tracking angel investments is far more difficult than VC deals. But we’ve used the public information we have, via Dealroom and Crunchbase, and then checked the number of investments with the angels themselves, to build our list. A couple of angels did not confirm their deals to Sifted.
The list above gives a good overview, but we recognize that there are gaps in the data, meaning that some prominent investors have been left out. For example, investments made via a third party (e.g. Crowdcube or Seedrs) do not have a public record, and many angels invest anonymously.
Amy O’Brien is Sifted’s fintech reporter. She tweets from @Amy_EOBrien and writes our fintech newsletter — You can register here.
