Fundraising Vehicles

🏎 Roll Up Vehicles (RUVs)

What is an RUV?

At the early stages of a company, the most supportive investors are often customers, angel investors, and other operators. Despite having dozens of value-add investors eager to participate in a financing round, founders often have to turn away smaller checks because of legal costs and increased cap table complexity.

With Roll Up Vehicles (RUVs), founders get a private special purpose vehicle through which up to 250 accredited angels and operators can invest. AngelList will handle the RUV formation, collection of capital, accreditation, KYC, and signatures.

Specifics: More about RUVs

Close Investors With a Single Link

Traditionally, to close a round, founders either spend time chasing down signatures and reconciling wires or pay their law firm to manage the process. With RUVs, founders get a single link that allows investors to commit and send funds online. Once the RUV closes, AngelList sends one single wire to the company.

Streamlining Cap Tables

Adding dozens of small-check investors makes a company's cap table harder to manage over time. While SAFEs and convertible notes have made it easier to raise capital, companies still have to manage a complex and expensive conversion process of getting signatures from each shareholder when they convert to equity. Even after the conversion, founders still end up with a complex cap table.

A larger cap table increases the complexity of future financings, corporate actions, and exits. RUVs allow founders to raise from the angel investors they want with just one new cap table entry.

Cost Savings

Each additional investor in a round results in increased costs for the company. For a round with 40 individual checks, managing those investors’ direct administrative costs over the company’s lifetime could be as high as $95,000.

With RUVs, there is no cost to the founder aside from state filing fees (typically $1k). AngelList oversees all filings, tax documents, and distributions over the vehicle's lifetime.

RUV Basics

How is an RUV different from an SPV?

Roll Up Vehicles are a type of Special Purpose Vehicle designed for founders that want to efficiently raise capital from individual operators and angels with a single cap table entry.

Traditional SPVs often require a stand-in investor to take on additional duties by acting as the GP or Fund Lead to avoid conflict of interest issues for the founder. Roll Up Vehicles are designed to not need a stand-in investor and can be created by the founder.

Can I find investors through AngelList?

AngelList Venture is a platform to help fund startups, but it's not intended for founders to use directly to raise money—it's a marketplace for fund managers (or syndicate leads) and investors. People who have allocation into a company can manage their investment via the platform by raising capital from their own LPs, and in certain cases get access to AngelList capital and platform LPs.

If you have connections who have an LP network, they could run a syndicate on AngelList Venture to manage the raise. If you already have all of the capital soft-circled and are looking for a solution to manage the cap table complexity, you can look at the RUV product.

How many investors do I need to make an RUV worthwhile?

This is a personal decision for each founder. An RUV can close with as few as two investors and $40k. Some founders may want to run an RUV for five investors; others may want to take those investors on directly.

In general, the choice to use an RUV comes from an interest in closing investors with a single link, streamlining your cap table, and saving costs.

How do I apply for an RUV?

You can apply for an RUV by going to ruv.new. Your application will be reviewed by the RUV team within 48 hours of submission.

For more details on RUVs, see our RUV Guide for Founders.

What is the closing process for RUVs?

Close Your RUV

Who should I email with questions about my RUV?

While the Stack team can help with many RUV-related questions, your RUV will be managed by the RUV team. You can reach out to them with questions at [e-mail].

🚙 SPVs

What is an SPV?

Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) are legal entities that are created for one specific purpose. In venture, SPVs are used to pool money from a group of investors to make a single investment in a startup.

As opposed to an RUV, which is run by the company founder, an SPV is run by a General Partner (GP). AngelList hosts lots of SPVs and GPs. If you want an AngelList GP to run an SPV for your company, you should reach out to them directly.

What is an SPV? | AngelList Venture