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The Angel Investing Landscape in the Netherlands 2018 is now available for download!

Find out how the angel investing ecosystem has been performing in 2018 in our latest report.

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Andreas Stillman
by Andreas Stillman in News
November 21, 2018 • 0 comments

Angel investment is growing in Europe but declining in the Netherlands this year. That is what the Angel Academy concludes in its report “Angel Investing Landscape in the Netherlands 2018”.

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Based on currently available data, research from the Angel Academy suggests that angel investment is growing in Europe but has been declining in the Netherlands in the last two years. Angel-backed funding in Europe is surpassing 2017 levels and is projected to rise to €4BLN by the end of 2018. In the Netherlands, the total amount invested into businesses this year is €461M of which publicly-declared angel investments are projected to reach at least €8.4M (~€2M declared each quarter). This is a sharp decrease when compared to the previous year, where total investments were as high as €802M and angel investment reached at least €11.2M in declared funding.

Amsterdam Receiving 83% of Investments

Overall, most of the angel-backed companies that are still active operate in the Enterprise Software industry (18.28%). However, this year, the Health industry has received almost a third of the total amount of funding in the Netherlands (31.54%). One of the most surprising insights from the available data was that ~83% of investments go into Amsterdam-based startups/scale-ups. To date, Adyen is the most-funded angel-backed company in the Netherlands, with a total of €293M investment, received so far.

Disclosing Angel Deals

The research also concludes that only 1 in 5 deals are disclosed publicly. In a survey carried out within 42workspace, a tech-focused coworking space in Rotterdam, it was found that “from last year’s total angel funding of €9,44 million only €1,70 million was announced publicly. This is only 18% of the total angel funding that was raised”. Everyone involved with Angel Academy would like to strongly encourage any private investors to forgo old habits such as keeping deals private or being afraid of negative publicity related to investment failures and instead contribute towards making angel investing more transparent.

Lasting Incentives Are Needed

According to Nils Beers, director of StartupDelta, the report also shows that lasting incentives from the government are needed to make it easier for Angel Investors to invest in startups. “​While venture capital and big exits tend to attract the bulk of the attention from policymakers, we tend to sometimes forget that Angel Investors are crucial for the birth of any startup. ​Without Angel Investors, we basically can’t build the groundbreaking startups of tomorrow. ​That is precisely why it is so worrying that this report shows that Angel Investors invest less and less money. To find the way up again, they need structural support from the government, making it easier for them to keep supporting startups in an early stage.”

Efforts from the government and investors

Jaap Dekter, Managing Director of the Angel Academy stated that “angel investment is a crucial phase for building a healthy ecosystem. The stagnating angel funding observed in the last few years may have severe negative implications in the long run for our competitive advantage. The ecosystem has all the ingredients for strong growth, but efforts must be made by both investors and the government. In order to stimulate angel investments, the government should simplify programmes such as the ‘Seed Business Angel Regeling’. Angel investors should make efforts to collaborate more often by sharing deals and knowledge and they should contribute with data to ensure the entire ecosystem can see what works well and what does not.”

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About Angel Academy

Angel Academy is a place for angel investors to meet, connect and learn. Angel Academy’s objective is to improve the angel investing ecosystem, by educating angels, organizing relevant angel meetups and by reporting on the progress of the angel ecosystem. Worldwide, but especially in Europe, there is a gap and an absence of easily-accessible data about angel investing despite its growing activity. This is largely because of the lack of a systematic approach to reporting private investments. One of Angel Academy’s goals is to narrow this gap by reporting, educating angels and encouraging angels to share more data about their angel deals. Angels can share their investment data via the angel list platform: ​list.angelacademy.nl In turn, this will give the market more data to learn from and it will also help the startups to connect earlier with the right follow-on investor.

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