Press release

Angel Collective Opportunity Fund Announces Managers for 2022, Including Solo Capitalists: Anthony Pompliano, Kat Cole, Sriram Krishnan, and Timothy Chen

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Angel Collective Opportunity Fund (ACOF), a collaborative opportunity fund, today announced the fund management team for its second annual investment period, Vintage 2022 (ACOF II). The group of four solo investors will manage and invest up to $40 million this year. Kat Cole, President, COO of Athletic Greens and Timothy Chen, Managing Partner at Essence Venture Capital, have joined ACOF Vintage 2021 (ACOF I) managers: Anthony Pompliano, Co-founder of Morgan Creek Digital and Pomp Investments, and Sriram Krishnan, General Partner at Kearny Jackson.

Co-founded in 2020 by entrepreneurs Nick Candito and Sunil Pai, ACOF offers a unique platform for solo capitalists that is centered on a collaborative support model with pooled economics. Previously Candito and Pai collectively invested in more than 130 startups, including 13 unicorns. They bring operational and investment expertise to the fund’s governance. Candito was the Founder & CEO of Progressly, an enterprise automation startup acquired by Box in 2018 and an intelligent CRM known as RelateIQ acquired by Salesforce in 2014. Pai is a Leader at AngelList Venture and was previously an investor at Threshold (fka Draper Fisher Jurvetson).

“ACOF was conceived as a way to give lone wolf investors a way to maintain the advantages of solo-capitalist investing while sprinkling in some of the key benefits of a partnership. Capital allocation is decentralized and tied directly to sourcing, and collaboration comes without the baggage of politics, group-think, or having to give up competitive advantage,” said Nick Candito, ACOF Co-founder. “For LPs, ACOF provides the benefit of top tier manager selection and delivers a diversified portfolio of about 30 total investments each year.”

Micro funds are on the rise, with more than 300 first time funds emerging each year according to Pitchbook. In 2021 alone, $18.8 billion in capital has been raised by first time funds. “Many micro funds are becoming more specialized to show value as they compete for early-stage deals. ACOF strikes a balance as it is both specialized and general – managed by investors with clear domain expertise but pulled together via ACOF to invest across a broad spectrum of sectors. With the rolling fund structure, it also offers an attractive, flexible vehicle to LPs – fundraising commitments come in each quarter,” said Arjun Dev Arora, an advisor to the firm and Managing Partner at Format One.

The ACOF Difference: Capital Structure & Manager Selection

ACOF’s model brings together managers’ existing networks and offers a large follow-on vehicle for strategic investments. The structure allows capital to be concentrated into proven technology startup winners, providing economic upside into companies that the managers have developed strong conviction into. Annually, ACOF hand-selects fund managers with deep founder relationships and a track record of early investment into high-growth tech companies.

During ACOF’s inaugural vintage, Pompliano and Krishnan teamed up with Founder and General Partner of CapitalX, Cindy Bi and Founding Partner and CEO of Angel Invest, Jens Lapinski. ACOF I managers closed 33 deals investing across mostly crypto, FinTech, and B2B SaaS companies. Notably, Array.com, TaxBit, On Deck, QuickNode, and Cortex.

ACOF II’s investment strategy will continue the prior vintage’s vertical focus with particular interest in marketplaces, future of work, consumer social, crypto/web3, edtech, developer and infrastructure startups. Managers most commonly participate in Series A and B rounds, have most frequently co-invested alongside Tiger Global, Sequoia, and Andreessen Horowitz, with average checks ranging from $250,000 to $2.5 million.

So far in 2022, ACOF II has already deployed capital into the following investments:

ACOF II managers offer both operational and investment expertise. Cole leads rapid-growth global health company Athletic Greens and is an investor in over 70 early stage companies and on the board of Slice, Milk Bar, and HumanCo SPAC. Chen founded HyperPilot, which was acquired by Cloudera. Pompliano is an investor in Taxbit and Krishnan in SecurityPal via ACOF I.

“Each of the investors are truly experts in their industry and have invested in multiple high growth and unicorn companies early on, so they already know what success looks like,” said Co-founder Sunil Pai. “For managers, ACOF can replace Special Purpose Vehicles, which can be time-consuming, expensive to raise, and difficult to support over time as successful companies raise follow-on financing rounds. Our collective opportunity fund’s approach gives managers a powerful and seamless way to increase ownership into their best companies.”

About ACOF

Angel Collective Opportunity Fund is a generalist opportunity fund composed of thematic specialists. Managers are selected annually, so the fund is not anchored to any one player and the team consistently aims to achieve the best access across the venture ecosystem. For investors, this approach works with proven emerging managers and maintains steady exposure to the top technology sectors each year.

For more information, please visit: https://www.angelcollective.com/