Go Beyond Investing releases 3rd investor report

In their 3rd investor report, GBI presents its achievements of its past eight years, highlighting the investments made by all investors. The report shows that taking a portfolio investment approach, investing in follow-on rounds and having mid-tail exits has delivered success to angels and the entrepreneurs using the platform.

Since establishment the GBI community has shown gradual growth. Last year alone, the community grew by 23% with 99 new investors. GBI currently comprises of 439 early stage investors of 38 nationalities from across 5 continents. 42% of these are women. Together, they have made 21,000 investment decisions which resulted in 143 rounds (with 80 of them in Switzerland), invested in 60 startups from 14 countries.

CHF 17.6m has been invested returning CHF 15.7m in cash, before fees, to investors up to December 2016. Of the 60 companies invested; 4 have exited positively and 51 are still active.

High share of investors with positive returns
88% of members who made at least one investment have a break even or positive portfolio return. 37% have annualized returns >= 20%. Investors with 5 or more investments have an average portfolio annualized return of 16%. The chances of achieving a positive return, in line with other high risk asset classes, are higher if an investor builds a portfolio of at least 5 to 10 curated investment rounds rather than taking a ‘one-off’ lottery approach.

Go Beyond investors tend to invest initially at valuations of a couple of millions. Successful exits have all been to corporate buyers, mostly at valuations between CHF 10m and 100m. This could be called the midtail of exits, resulting in very interesting returns. 

Go Beyond Investing allows its members to invest as little as CHF 4k, or even less for follow-on rounds, lowering the barrier for early-stage investors: with 30k-50k, one can build a diversified portfolio. It is interesting to see that larger investors also use these ticket sizes, along with the training curriculum as a way to learn, test the water and reduce risk by broadening their portfolio.

“This report provides much needed evidence that small and large investors can build successful portfolios. The Go Beyond Investing approach is THE model to unleash the 10X to 20X growth potential for angel investing in Europe and the US,” Say Brigitte Baumann., founder of Go Beyond Investing.

The report can be downloaded from the website of Go Beyond Investing.

Further achievements in 2016
In addition to their overall achievements of the past eight years, Go Beyond has particularly achieved more success in 2016. For the second year in a row, the company was named one of the top 10 FinTech companies in Switzerland. In addition, it launched a number of new features and products: GBI partnered with IM Capital to form an investor group with 26 members in Lebanon that pre-pooled $15k each, to make 4 investments together and learn via Go Beyond trainings and coaching. In partnership with EBAN and Next Wave, GBI launched and received an innovation award for a “learn by doing” angel investing program gathering 93 women investors who built a full portfolio of 8 European investments and created 8 educational videos adding to its webinars and in person training curriculum.

A new asset class
By taking an innovative Fintech approach to early stage investing, Go Beyond Investing (GBI) has successfully created a new asset class accessible to large numbers of individuals and to provide the best elements of professional angel investing using the latest on-line service technologies.

The GBI platform provides investors with tools for education both in a learning environment and “on the job”; ability to invest with small tickets; access to deals that have benchmarked valuations and terms; mechanisms to leverage the community intelligence and professional deal leadership certification and compensation which help investors make better and informed decisions about the investment they pursue.

(RAN /SK)