Investor & Startup News from Dealum

​[[{"value":" A practical guide for active angels managing multiple portfolio companiesBy Victoria Brock LinkedIn TL;DR Most active angel investors don't have a shortage of portfolio information. They have a shortage of usable portfolio information. Updates, contracts, founder asks, and their own notes are scattered across email threads, decks, PDFs, and follow-up replies from a dozen different senders. Investor Plus from Dealum is a single place where every update and document for every company sits together, with new updates summarised so you can see what changed, what's slipping, and which founders may need follow-up. The result: less time digging through your inbox, more time on the decisions and conversations only you can have. A quick question before you read on When did your most recent portfolio company last send an update? Don't open your inbox to check. Just see if you can answer from memory. Now think about what that update actually said: the KPIs, the team news, the ask at the bottom. If you're...

​[[{"value":" On April 9, we brought together Ashok Kamal from NuFund Venture Group and Sigvards Krongorns ex-Verge HealthTech Fund to talk about something everyone's discussing but few are doing well: using AI in fundraising. We talked about real workflows, real tools, highlighting how investors are already integrating AI into sourcing, evaluation, and decision-making. TL;DR: AI is already embedded in investment workflows, from research and deal intake to screening and expert matching, but it's augmenting decisions, not making them. The sheer volume of deal flow has made automation necessary. Key takeaway for founders: AI has raised the bar on material quality, but fit and relationships still matter most. The future isn't AI replacing investors; it's allowing investors who use AI to outperform those who don't. Want the full conversation instead? Scroll to the bottom for the webinar recording The scale problem: why AI became a necessity On the webinar, both investors opened with the same basic reality: the...

​[[{"value":" Investor groups often hesitate to switch platforms because of one concern: data migration. Moving deal history, portfolio records, documents, and member data can feel risky and time-consuming. When NuFund Venture Group decided to move its reporting from Seraf to Dealum, the migration involved transferring an entire group portfolio. They also had to integrate it with the existing deal flow and member management that were already running on Dealum. Their experience highlights why it's beneficial for the investor groups to consolidate their tech stack and how a structured migration process helps keep the transition predictable and manageable. NuFund Venture Group at a glance Location San Diego, CA Member count 330+ Annual investment volume $10M+ on average Focus Technology and life sciences startups Founded 2019 Website nufund.com Using Dealum since 2024 NuFund operates a “Venture Group” model, combining a community of active investors with structured funds that invest in early-stage startups...

​ That’s why we created Investor Plus – a solution to make collecting, tracking, and managing company updates simple and standardised across the entire portfolio. Below, we offer some useful tips and tricks for both investors and founders on how to make post-investment communication smoother and more useful for everyone involved. Portfolio overview Here’s the problem: most startups don’t send regular, structured investor updates. As a result, investors lack visibility into performance, risks, and support needs, and often only hear from founders when a new round is being raised. This damages trust and reduces the likelihood of follow-on funding. Often, founders don’t want to give updates when the news isn’t good. Also, they may not know what to report, which KPIs to use, or how to structure the update, so the whole task seems daunting. Without a clear format, it’s easy to report hopes instead of reality. And once the report goes out, the founder has to deal with the investors asking questions – especially if...

​[[{"value":" Dealum is excited to announce a new partnership with the African Business Angel Network (ABAN), a pan-African association dedicated to building and connecting early-stage investor networks across the continent. Founded in 2015, ABAN connects more than 5,000 business angel investors through over 75 member networks spanning 37 African countries and the diaspora, making it one of Africa’s most influential early-stage investment communities. By supporting collaboration between investor groups, promoting best practices, and strengthening cross-border investment activity, ABAN plays a central role in developing the continent’s early-stage financing infrastructure and expanding access to capital for high-growth startups. Africa’s startup ecosystem has grown rapidly over the past decade, driven by rising cross-border investment and an increasing number of angel networks backing early-stage founders. However, many investor groups still rely on fragmented tools and manual workflows, limiting...

​[[{"value":" ICAN, the International Collegiate Angels Network, connects investors with campus-born ventures. This means startups founded by current students, faculty members, or recent alumni, where the idea emerged through coursework, research, or campus activity. ICAN operates globally and mobilizes capital for this promising – but often overlooked – asset class.  The network aims to solve two problems at once: founders can access early capital from investors who understand university innovation, and universities can participate in long-term value creation without directly holding equity. As a way to keep the flywheel turning, ICAN returns 10% of any realized gains to the campuses where the ventures originated. A path to campus innovation “that just kind of happened”  ICAN was founded by Tom Duening, an entrepreneur and educator with more than 35 years of experience in early-stage startups and university innovation programs. Tom’s path to founding ICAN was neither planned nor conventional. He started...

​[[{"value":" On 29 January 2026 at Startup Day in Tartu, Kerli Luks (Muun Health) and Terje Eichelmann (Lightcode Photonics) discussed one of the hardest problems in fundraising: how to explain highly complex, science-heavy products to investors. The seminar was moderated by Seren Rumjancevs (Dealum).  Kerli and Terje both represent deep-tech and health-tech companies where the technology is novel, the timelines are long, and the risks are high – exactly the situations where founders most often “lose” their audience. Through practical experience, the speakers showed how to simplify without dumbing down, how to adapt to different investor profiles, and how to shift the pitch from explaining how something works to proving why it matters.  5 things most new founders get wrong Kerli didn’t start with a business idea but a clinical frustration. As a medical doctor, she saw in everyday practice how little real-time data exists about female hormones and how under-researched and underfunded women’s health still...

​[[{"value":" The partnership brings together Dealum's community of early-stage startups with Freshmango's expertise in startup acceleration, offering founders structured learning and mentorship without equity dilution. Freshmango and Dealum are joining forces to give early-stage founders more options when it comes to accelerating their businesses, on their own terms, without giving up equity. While traditional accelerators have long been the go-to path for early-stage startups seeking structure, mentorship, and investor access, many founders are now looking for alternatives that don't require them to trade ownership for guidance. This partnership addresses that gap by connecting Dealum's community of founders with Freshmango's proven acceleration methodology. Through this collaboration, founders using Dealum's platform will be able to access the knowledge and structured learning typically available through traditional accelerator programs, while maintaining full control of their equity and moving at a pace...

​[[{"value":" Founders pour countless hours into preparing for investor conversations. They polish their pitch deck, refine their one-liner, and rehearse answers to every possible question. But one critical asset is often treated as an afterthought: their Dealum profile. What many founders miss is how investors actually work. When they look for new opportunities, they don’t start with meetings. They start by scanning startup profiles on Dealum to research, shortlist, and decide which teams are worth a closer look. Even investors who never meet you in person may still evaluate your company based solely on what they see there. Your profile isn't just a form you filled out to get accepted. It's your pitch to investors who are deciding right now whether to book a meeting with you, or skip you entirely. Most founders treat their Dealum profile like paperwork. One-sentence answers. Copy-pasted buzzwords from the pitch deck. Submitted just to check the box. Then comes the frustration when follow-ups don’t happen....

​[[{"value":" Angel group name: Daring Capital Region: United Kingdom Founded: 2023 Member count: ~30 Using Dealum: since September 2025 Website: https://www.daringcapital.co.uk/ The challenge: one too many tools and too much friction  Daring Capital is a two-year-old angel syndicate bringing together impact-driven investors and underrepresented founders. With almost 30 active members and around £2.5M raised across 16 companies, they focus on backing startups that make the world a better place. They’re growing quickly – but their workflow wasn’t keeping up. They used Airtable for startup-related processes and another platform for investor management. This meant keeping data in two places and needing to update both tools manually, which took time and created mistakes. Investor experience was the biggest headache. The investor management platform’s interface was clunky, and even logging in was difficult – the investors couldn’t use their email and had to remember a username. If they forgot it (and often did),...