Carles Reina, the angel investor behind Revolut and ElevenLabs, has unveiled a $15 million solo GP fund, Baobab Ventures.
The new fund, which was oversubscribed and raised in a single close, is backed by global Tier 1 institutional LPs including Cendana Capital, Isomer Capital, RSJ Investments, Emergence Ventures and Cyber Fund.
It is also joined by partners from early-stage funds Concept Ventures, Credo Ventures and Lucca & Stella Norton’s Family Office, as well as angels including Mario Goetze – who scored the winning goal for Germany in the 2014 World Cup final (pictured) and is currently playing for Eintracht Frankfurt – broadcast entrepreneur Carles Cuní and DeepTech investor Dr Fatima Godall.
The fund will back pre-seed and seed stage founders building globally ambitious startups across AI, robotics and defence. Half of the fund’s investments will be focused on Europe, with the rest to be deployed in the US and other markets.
Reina has backed 74 startups across a number of industries but most predominantly in DeepTech since 2017. Starting with an angel cheque for then fledgling FinTech Revolut – now valued at $75 billion – he has gone on to back Vsim, Happyrobot, Strawberry Browser, Praktika AI, Praxipal and Theker Robotics.
Reina was also the first investor in ElevenLabs, the voice AI giant now valued at $6.6bn, and became the company’s fourth hire. As the current go-to-market lead, he has driven annual recurring revenues to more than $200m, whilst launching its enterprise offering across the US, Europe, Japan, India, Korea, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia and the Middle East.
His new fund will make average investments of $300-350k in pre-seed and seed stage startups.
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“Building startups has dramatically changed in the last few years: sales cycles are faster, there are hundreds of competitors within months, and AI has killed cold outreach conversion rates,” said Reina.
“Founders need to move incredibly quickly whilst building a sales and growth motion fit for the AI age. To do that, they need operators on their cap table who can draw on relevant frontline experience from the AI era and who are hands-on with their help.
“This AI-informed operator experience is a clear gap in the European landscape and it’s one I believe Baobab can fill.”
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