Taavet Hinrikus, Ian Hogarth, Khaled Helioui and Sten Tamkivi have unveiled Plural, an investment platform for the next generation of tech founders with global potential.
Plural will lead early-stage rounds between €1 and €10 million, focused on acting as a more workable investor for new startups.
Plural is targeted for “unemployables” as Hogarth calls them – experienced founders who have built a project from the ground up and worked for themselves and find it challenging to work under anyone else. Plural is a platform for these ‘unemployables’ to channel their entrepreneurial spirit.
“Founding a company is a craft and the best way to learn that craft is to work alongside those who have done it before,” expresses co-founder of Wise, Hinrikus. He believes that Plural will be “the investors we would have liked to have when we were building our own companies.”
Through Plural, Hogarth, Helioui, Tamkivi, and Hinrikus have already invested in 14 tech companies, including metaverse firm Ready Player Me, NFT infrastructure platform NFTport, and student banking app MOS.
Hogarth, Helioui, Tamkivi, and Hinrikus are founders of multiple successful startups - including Wise, Songkick, Teleport, and Certific. They also contributed to building Skype, Bigpoint, and Topia. All four angel investors have sponsored numerous well-known companies such as Deliveroo, Uber, Bolt, Chorus, and Pipedrive.
Helioui notes: “So much opportunity is left untapped today as exceptional founders often fail to meet standard investors’ pattern recognition criteria. Sadly, investors lack the risk appetite needed to fulfil founders’ ambitions and consequently, the full impact founders seek cannot be realised. By changing the funding mechanisms that act as conservative gatekeepers today we can unlock so much potential.”