One of Spain’s most successful investment clubs launches its activities in Benelux
Faraday Venture Partners has been successfully investing in Spanish start-ups for more than 10 years and started operating in Germany in 2019. The team now wants to replicate this success in Benelux and later on in other European countries such as Poland and Italy.
The recipe for Faraday Venture Partners‘ success is mainly due to its unique structure. Behind the CNMV-regulated Investors Club (Spanish BaFin) there are more than 250 private investors (Partners) who invest their private assets “deal by deal” in early-stage innovative start-ups that have already achieved their first commercial successes in the market. The purpose-built fund structure offers Partners full flexibility and transparency as to how much they want to invest and in which start-ups they want to invest in. It also provides them with additional liquidity options. Partners are typically senior executives, SME CEOs and family offices.
Faraday Venture Partners takes care of the sourcing, the filtering, the due diligence and the complete management of the investment. Faraday Venture Partners invests between € 200,000 and € 500,000 in the first round. One of the advantages for portfolio start-ups is that they have only one equity shareholder who supports them in word and deed in their future growth and yet a large network of potential backers. Faraday Venture Partners does not have a thematic focus. Invested start-ups are active in various industries such as HR, e-commerce and video games.
With François-Xavier Fanard, Faraday Venture Partners has brought a seasoned entrepreneur and investor on board as Managing Director for Benelux. François-Xavier holds a M.Sc. in Electro-Mechanical Engineering from UCLouvain and an MBA from the Solvay Business School. He has extensive experience in transaction advisory (EY – Belgium), fundraising for start-ups (EIT Digital – Benelux & EU), start-up management (CFO/COO Cloudalize – Belgium & US) and business angel investments.
On the one hand, François-Xavier will be in charge of serving private investors from Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg (i.e. Partners of the Benelux Club). Together with Faraday’s team, he will provide Partners with an innovative and proven way to access some of the best investment opportunities in early-stage start-ups, locally and in the most interesting ecosystems across Europe. On the other hand, he will invest, support and empower Benelux-based portfolio start-ups. Discussions with private investors to join the Benelux Club and early-stage start-ups are already underway.
Faraday has invested in 33 start-ups in the last 10 years and has already made 5 exits, among others to Pernod Ricard. The current global liquid IRR amounts to 17,38%. Driven by this solid track record, Faraday is currently raising a € 40M fund to co-invest with Investors Clubs.
Media sources: Webcapitalriesgo, Capital Riesgo (English).
