The six most important Dutch university incubators, including StartLife, will collaborate with Fundsup, a platform that brings startups into contact with investors. The other incubators are YES!Delft, Bright Move in Eindhoven, Novel-T from Twente, the Amsterdam ACE Incubator and UtrechtInc.

Fundsup is a platform that brings startups into contact with investors. With the partnership, StartLife’s startups can come into contact with a suitable investor faster and they can they can expand their investor network.

4-bullets Factsheet

  • What’s new? The incubators of all six major Dutch universities will collaborate with Fundsup: YES!Delft, Bright Move (Eindhoven), Novel-T (Twente), Startlife (Wageningen), ACE Incubator (UvA, VU, HvA, Amsterdam UMC) and UtrechtInc.
  • Why? To make it easier for their early-stage startups to come into contact with smart capital.
  • Because? Entrepreneurs spend a lot of time (and money) on finding suitable investors who, in addition to capital, also bring in their network and knowledge. This has an inhibiting effect on innovation in the Netherlands.
  • The result? More suitable investment opportunities for individual early-stage investors + more smart capital for startups = more innovation in the Netherlands + more efficient use of public funds.

Build up a Relevant Investor Network

By using Fundsup, it becomes much easier for startup founders to build up a relevant investor network. Fundsup also offers them insights into the traction their company receives from investors. Incubator startups are also given a badge for recognition, making it instantly clear to investors that these startups are connected to an incubator and which one.

Arjen Strijker, founder of Fundsup, is pleased with all these new collaborations: “The fact that we have connected almost all university incubators in such a short period of time confirms once again that Fundsup fulfills an enormous need in the world of early-stage financing”.

For incubators it’s indeed a great challenge to build up and maintain an informal investor network for their startups. The choice for a partnership with Fundsup is therefore a logical one. The platform efficiently creates valuable connections between screened startups and verified investors, thereby facilitating high quality deal flow.

Social Impact

The collaborations between Fundsup and these six incubators also generate a valuable social impact. The fact that the market for early-stage investments has so far been opaque and highly inefficient, which slowed down innovation in The Netherlands. By collaborating with incubators, Fundsup facilitates interregional and international improved access to high quality risk capital.

“This so-called smart capital makes more private money and — above all — expertise available. Which is so much needed amongst early-stage startups. The Dutch government, which has so far financed 60% to 70% of all early-stage startups in The Netherlands with relatively ‘dumb’ capital in a fairly arbitrary manner, can now deploy our taxpayers’ money in a much more supportive manner, alongside real smart capital” says Strijker. By definition, this will lead to more innovation.

Jan Meiling, Managing Director StartLife, about the partnership with Fundsup: “StartLife has supervised 300+ food & agri startups. Attracting venture capital and linking with informal investors has proven to be a time-consuming process. With Fundsup we give our startups access to an online platform where supply and demand come together.”

About Fundsup

Fundsup is a matchmaking platform that facilitates meaningful connections between entrepreneurs and early-stage investors. Entrepreneurs in need of capital create an extensive company profile that they can publish after screening by Fundsup or a Fundsup partner. In this way, they can efficiently and effectively bring their company to the attention of a rapidly growing network of investors that are right for them.

In turn, investors on Fundsup can find interesting new startups more easily and anonymously. They simply indicate their investment criteria by means of filters. When a new deal opportunity that meets their criteria is published, they receive a push notification in the Fundsup app (iOS and Android). If the investor is indeed interested, then it is possible to contact the entrepreneur directly via a chat function.

Currently, 380+ Dutch investors already use Fundsup. Roughly 80% of them are informal investors and 20% are VCs, government funds and Regional Development Agencies. More than 2,500 registered startups are using Fundsup today.

For more information on Fundsup see: fundsup.co

For more information on the collaboration of StartLife and Fundsup: contact Loet Rammelsberg, StartLife Program Manager, at loet.rummenie@startlife.nl.