Onstage, the creator of Europe’s largest standalone demo day, has taken a giant step towards changing the early-stage startup landscape in Europe. The London-based company made public a £10 million fund that is aimed at providing the first access to early financing to young companies in a more direct way—without the money, equity, and rigid structures typical of accelerators.
Joel Hambly, the founding partner, is the lead investor for the new fund, which will support approximately 80 startups with a focus on the pre-seed and seed stages for the next three years. This is a moment of significance for Europe’s venture landscape, which is like a jigsaw puzzle, where thousands of founders are still struggling to find the right investors at the right time.
Solving Europe’s early-stage bottleneck
The idea behind Onstage, founded by Hector Mason (General Partner at Episode 1) and Taos Edmondson (partner at dmg ventures) in 2020, was to make the European early-stage funding scene more efficient. Rather than imitating the existing accelerator models, they came up with an open platform that was solely aimed at improving the communication between founders and investors.
Their annual demo day has evolved to become one of Europe’s most significant startup meeting points. Every year the event attracts thousands of founders and hundreds of top venture capital firms from both sides of the Atlantic, including Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, and other major Silicon Valley names. For many early-stage companies, presenting at Onstage has become the closest equivalent Europe has to Y Combinator’s famed Demo Day.
This success is now being used to fuel their first investment vehicle.
A new kind of early-stage fund
Hambly stressed that the way Onstage is put together makes it possible for the company not to focus on one particular sector—that is something he considers to be their competitive advantage.
“Generally, funds are very specific in terms of sectors or tech where they have the edge,” he explained to TFN. “We actually have the edge sector-agnostic. Our platform allows us to get the first glimpse of new opportunities in any sector, that too in a very data-driven way coming out from Demo Days and the 4,000+ startups we evaluate annually.”
The investment decision-making group of the fund mirrors the expansive stance the company has taken, comprising the people who have deepexperiencedknowledgeinSaaS,consumertech,AI, andfurthermore. Hambly acknowledges that the mixture also helps their pledge of supporting the founders who are non-stereotypical-molded, i.e., those who have been historically deprived of the access to elite VC networks, the ones that figurelets them folks out the most.
“‘Onstage Demo Day is the great equalizer,” he pointed out. “It gives founders, who are non-stereotypical, access to the best investors and VCs network. This we do without charging any fee or taking equity.”
This way of thinking has been fruitful so far. Onstage’s finalists in demo days have, together, made over £500 million in fundraising up to now. The rise-to-speed-after-participation stories such as Scan.com and Lawhive, both of which have been able to grow fast after their involvement, are the milestones that shine through the platform’s work.
Building an alternative to accelerators
Unlike Y Combinator, Seedcamp, or Techstars, Onstage does not involve co-horts over a long period, equity requirements, orthementorship programs being structured. It is quitea different business model: instead of being a school for startups, it is a potent matchmaking device.
Among the staff there is Issie James—who is incharge of the cornerstonedemo day—and partners with vast experience in the venture world such as Jamesin Seidel (Chapter One), Laura McGinnis (Balderton), Emma Phillips (LocalGlobe), and Peter Simon, thecompanyhas become one of the most vibrant hubs ofventure networkingin Europe.
To the extent that several general partnerscan be seen recently applying for participation in Onstage, which is a way open to deal flow from all over Europe and shows the increasingly vital role ofthecompanyas an entry point that facilitatesdeals.
What comes next
Onstage is willing to expand its relations in the venture ecosystem with the newly acquired fund.
LocalGlobe, Balderton, and chapter one
Almost for a decade the European region has been longing for an answer to the flagship accelerators of Silicon Valley and thus Onstage’s rise might be seen as a change: instead of duplicating the US model, Europe may be coming up with something quite different—more open, leaner, and made for the continent’s uniquely diverse ecosystem.
With a new 10 million-pound fund, Onstage is making a big bet on the next generation of European founders who they think will be the ones to create the new way into the venture world.