Klarna, Transferwise and Checkout.com execs to join new investor platform Cultivate

Cultivate is the brainchild of Blossom Capital’s Ophelia Brown and has described itself as “the first-of-its-kind investor platform.”

The new platform hopes to “kickstart an angel ecosystem in Europe”, similar to that in Silicon Valley in the US.

The angel investor network is backed by several European founders who are looking to support “industry-defining startups” and help foster the next generation of unicorns.

Top executives from some of Europe’s fintech unicorns, such as Guillaume Pousaz CEO of Checkout.com, Nilan Peiris VP of growth at Transferwise and other execs from companies like Klarna and Spotify, are involved in the platform.

Over the next year, Cultivate aims to invest $5m pre-seed and seed funding rounds for 20 startups across Europe, with each startup receiving $250k.

Ophelia Brown, founder of both Blossom Capital and Cultivate, said: “We set up Cultivate with the aim of giving founders as much access to capital and experience in Europe as they need to scale.”

“Our ambition is to democratise this access and continue to help tech founders punch well above their weight on a global scale. Even in these uncertain times, there are visionaries in Europe doing groundbreaking, fundamental work and this is not the time to be scaling back on innovation,” she added.

Guillaume Pousaz, CEO and founder of Checkout.com, said: “As CEOs, we’re keen to find and develop the next generation of business leaders, but we don’t have time to search for and uncover these hidden gems.”

There will be a total of 30 angel investors in the programme who will mentor successful startups in their first 12 months.