AngelPad, an accelerator program that has launched more than 140 companies across 11 different “classes,” has raised $35 million in capital commitments for a new, $50 million venture fund, shows a new SEC filing.
Its husband-and-wife cofounders, Thomas Korte and Carine Magescas, declined to comment on the filing.
The new fund appears to be its first fund of substantial size, following a trial fund the duo had begun investing at AngelPad’s outset in 2010 with their own capital, and a second fund that was roughly $7 million in size and included some outside investors.
Korte has told us in the past that AngelPad also relies heavily on special purpose vehicles (or SPVs) to double-down on its breakout companies. In recent years, for example, the outfit and its investors have made an outsize bet on the delivery company Postmates, say our sources. (Postmates was among the earliest companies to pass through AngelPad’s program.)
We wrote about AngelPad last week, noting that it recently decided to do away with its twice-yearly demo days in San Francisco, in favor or organizing a day of one-on-one investor meetings with its startups instead. (Y Combinator, known for its very full demo days, also helps set up one-on-one meetings with investors and startups that want to meet each other over the course of one day.)
What hasn’t changed at AngelPad: it continues work with roughly the same, low, double-digit number of founding teams as it always has.
You can check out its newest batch of startups — 10 in all — right here. Others of its portfolio companies include the insurance comparison site Coverhound; Vungle, which helps developers insert video ads into their apps; Kinnek, a marketplace that helps small businesses find suppliers; the growth marketing platform Iterable; drone mapping and analytics platform Drone Deploy ; and Zum, a company offering on-demand rides for kids.
All have gone on to raise substantial rounds of follow-on financing, though Vungle had a rocky 2017, after its cofounding CEO was arrested and charged with shocking abuses that police officials believe may have taken place while he was under the influence of LSD. (Vungle quickly replaced him with the company’s former COO, Rick Tallman.)
AngelPad has also had numerous exits over the years. Its biggest win may be Mopub, a startup that helped mobile publishers manage their ad inventory and was acquired Twitter in 2013 for $350 million.
Other trade sales include the acquisition of shopping optimization startup Adku by Groupon in 2011, the sale of to-do app Astrid & Blik to Yahoo in 2014, and the sale of the social search engine Spotsetter to Apple.
Terms of these last three deals were not disclosed publicly.
Korte joined us on stage in Berlin at TC’s Disrupt event last December to talk about his penchant in particular for European founders willing to come to the U.S.
He said at the time that he admired the “fiscal responsibility that Europeans have, because they’re so used to building their companies with relatively little money or knowing they might not get another round.”