If you’re starting a fintech company, there’s a new, small early-stage fund looking for investment opportunities. Founded by Anthony Danon (pictured above), Rerail could be called a micro-fund, a solo GP fund, or an angel fund.
Danon has been an investor for the past 10 years. He started his career with Anthemis Group in London back in 2014 and worked on some interesting rounds, such as TrueLayer’s seed round.
He quickly climbed the VC ladder to become a partner at Speedinvest with a specific focus on fintech. He invested in promising startups, such as Primer and Wayflyer.
“I like this notion that fintech is a horizontal, not a vertical. It’s the support function of all markets. So instead of thinking neobanks, lending, and payments, think about health and insurance, logistics, and trade,” Danon told TechCrunch.
In 2021, he started talking with Carmen Alfonso Rico to launch a fund together. “Carmen and I were friends because we started in VC around the same time,” Danon said. “And we realized we had seen the same thing as collaborative investors. On the one hand, all these VCs are friends of ours that we’ve kind of grown up with. And they’re collaborating quite intensely the moment we’re not competing with them … And on the other, we could leverage that to the founders.”
They launched Cocoa around three years ago as a small early-stage fund designed to invest like an angel investor — Cocoa is never the lead investor but it can bring other investors to help you get your startup off the ground.
After 35 investments, when it was time to decide what to do next, the duo decided to part ways and raise separate funds. As Cocoa’s investment thesis isn’t exclusively around fintech, it wasn’t the right fit for Danon; he wanted to focus even more on fintech and fintech-adjacent startups — and also not just in Europe.
“Our strategy focus was a bit diverging, and so we said: ‘Look it’s a tough decision but let’s decide to do the next one separately,’” Danon said. He didn’t want to say more about Carmen Alfonso Rico’s (and Cocoa’s) future. “Carmen’s in the process of her next thing,” he said.
A person working with Alfonso Rico told TechCrunch she continues in her role as founder of Cocoa, actively investing and further building the firm.
And this brings us to Rerail, a fund with a $20 million target. Danon has already done a first close just above that target at around $20.5 million. He’s going to raise a bit more than that so the final number is going to be a bit above that number. “The majority of the LP base is founders and operators, which is very core to the DNA and all of the value I bring to the table,” Danon said. “But then I also have some institutions.”
Danon plans to invest anything from $200,000 to $500,000 depending on the size of the funding round. He has made his first investment with Rerail, but he doesn’t want to name the startup just yet.
In addition to Danon’s network of founders and ability to bring investors to the cap table, he also hopes that he can give some useful advice to founders who are just getting started.
“I never pretend I know better than the founders. I learn from them, but they speak the same language,” he said. “And when it comes to network and concentration, I hope we can open almost every door.”
