Our Investment Thesis

At OneRagtime, we invest in early-stage tech start-ups in Europe and Israel. Our standards are high — in fact, we select less than 1% of the thousands of start-ups that we screen every year. So, what is it exactly that we’re looking for? Let’s go into a little more detail…

The start-up DNA ⛓

• First things first, we look for start-ups with exceptional entrepreneurs and a top team at the helm. We love entrepreneurs who have a big vision but who keep their feet firmly on the ground, having laid out a clear path to achieve their goals. As part of this, we look for leaders who are both highly focused on execution and open to feedback. Read more about what we look for in our Founders. It’s important that we feel we are well-positioned to help the start-up (that a start-up is at the right stage, and targeting the right market), and that the start-up is able to accept our support too… it’s a two-way relationship from start to finish
• We prefer software start-ups to hardware start-ups, but we are open to software that requires hardware to be enabled. It’s primarily B2C and B2B2C models that we go for, but we do look at B2B too, especially those with short sales cycles
• We look for start-ups founded in Europe or Israel, but with the ambition to grow internationally. A global outlook is a must, and cross-borders with the US or Asia a strong preference
• We are looking for the best start-ups across a wide range of tech verticals, including but not limited to: Content and Entertainment, Gaming, Fintech, Insurtech, Communication, Mobility and IoT…
• We invest in horizontal technologies too such as Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality
• There’s one last thing that is absolutely key — we require our start-ups to be deep tech at the core, or tech enabled, and demonstrate a scalable business model. We want them to be ready to rocket to new heights

The timing 🕰

• As the first professional investor, we usually come in right after love money and the business angels. We are proud to be a VC able to invest pre-revenue — we’re not as common as you’d think!
• While we love to jump in early-stage, we tend to do so only once there’s an actual product or service with high growth potential, and preferably some traction. We look for a company with a technology or product that is ready to sell and scale, and be profitable at scale, but whose team could benefit from business development and funding to grow

The funding 💸

• We invest in equity, and want to lead or co-lead the round
• Our tickets are typically between €500k and several million
• We stick by our start-ups, and are able to complete follow-on rounds
• But funding is not all we offer, you can read more about what we provide our start-ups, here. Our motivation for building OneRagtime was to really empower exceptional entrepreneurs to succeed, and we believe that money alone won’t make that happen! Capital, contacts, knowledge, experience and operational resources are just as (or if not more) important than funding, and we built the OneRagtime model to provide all this

Of course, this is not a rulebook, but rather the adaptable guidelines that we bear in mind when we’re reaching our investment decisions. While we leverage all of our data processing capabilities to analyse start-ups and complete close due diligences, the bottom line is that the human element is what is most important. We like to think of it as being “people first and data driven”. We use all the data available to us to help inform our decision, but in the end, it really is just how well we feel the entrepreneurs fit with our values that counts, how much we can trust each other, and whether or not we think we will achieve great things together ☺️.

One of the advantages of our flexible model is our ability to respond to rapid changes that are intrinsic to the field of technology. We remain open minded. Simply, we are driven to support the most promising tech start-ups and offer exceptional investment opportunities to our community of investors. Nothing less!

Like the sound of the start-ups we invest in? Head to our Platform to apply to join our Investor community and invest in our one-of-a-kind start-ups.
Or do you have an exceptional start-up we should know about? Our Platform is also the place to pitch us and apply for funding, contacts, operational resources and so much more.