Invest in the Future

Many of our investments are sourced from the angel investment platform AngelList. AngelList is probably the largest platform for bringing together start-ups and qualified angel investors. The majority of opportunities from AngelList are earlier stage (pre-seed, seed, seed+, Series-A). Occasionally later stage opportunities will be offered as well. 

Anyone can sign up to AngelList and complete the authorized investor application. Of course then the real work starts, and that's where Mapache can help. AngelList - along with several other start-up and private company investment sites - will very quickly overwhelm the uninitiated with literally hundreds of investment opportunities every week. If you don't know your Enterprise SaaS platform from your Multi-Cloud storage service, or your AI powered Internet of Things service to your Next-Gen Endpoint security tool....you might need some assistance. There is - in our opinion - a lot of dross out there. That said - sometimes it is shocking how something that seems like a weird idea can take off (who would have thought paying someone to give you a life in their car or staying in someone's spare bedroom would create two $80B+ valuation businesses?).

You will have access to some of the best start-ups in the business. According to the 2019 AngelList year in review, there are 47 Unicorns ($1B+ valuation start-ups) that have raised funding through their platform and AngelList investors gained access to 36% of the deals funded by the top venture capital firms. The takeaway here is that these investment platforms provide access to many of the best opportunities that the markets can provide.

Interestingly some of the other investment platform sites often provide later stage investment opportunities. This might be Series-B, Series-C or even later. In addition there are often "secondary" offerings which are shares being offered for sale by existing share holders - perhaps employees or earlier investors who are seeking to take some cash off the table in advance of an IPO or other liquidity event. It is often easier to assess the likelihood of success of later stage companies. They have significant revenues and quarterly history which provides great insight into what can be expected in future. Of course with later stage investments there is reduced risk, but also reduced upside since the businesses already have much higher valuations. Still - a balance of earlier and later stage investments is a good recipe for a more "balanced" start-up investment portfolio (if there is such a thing!). We must stress that ALL investments in privately held companies are risky. Investing in early stage start-ups is incredibly risky. A rule of thumb is that you should only invest if you are comfortable with the possibility of losing 100% of any investment in any start-up.

It's probably easier to tell you what we won't recommend. We are not likely to be making recommendations on things like marijuana products, social media, crypto currencies, mental health, retail stores or investment property. A couple of caveats to that. Firstly - we are not saying there are not good investment opportunities to be had in those spaces, they are just not spaces we are comfortable recommending. Secondly - do not confuse something like an investment property versus a property software application. We are very much in the business of looking at services and applications that we believe will show good potential for success. Likewise - retail applications are more interesting for us, than an actual retail shop idea!

Outside of that we like to look at things that offer recurring revenue opportunities as opposed to one-off sales. We are big on software and to a slightly lessor extent hardware technology companies (as opposed to service led companies) as we think these scale better - but we never say never. We also like companies with some revenue, good management teams ands preferably a recognized VC leading the round. With the earliest stage deals that is often missing however.

The easiest and most cost-efficient way for you to invest in start-ups is to do it yourself through platforms like AngelList. However - given the huge volume of investment opportunities out there, sorting the wheat from the chaff can be a thankless task - especially if you do not know what you are looking for, are an investment novice or have no ability to understand or put a value on the value proposition that the company offers.

One remedy for this is to invest in a fund of some kind. There are several start-up investment funds you can choose from. The downside is you have no control over what you invest in and you have to invest a sizeable lump sum or commit to some monthly amount. By self-investing you get to choose where you invest, how much and how often.

The Mapache Newletter will act as an aid. Every week we will filter and review a broad range of investment opportunities and provide our comments on those we like the look of and why.