Oskar Hartmann describes himself as one of the most successful angel investors on the planet: the 18th most successful, if you’re counting.
It’s a claim that’s hard to fact check, as most angels tend to be secretive. But one thing is measurable: Hartmann enjoys the kind of social media presence fellow investors can only dream of. He’s got half a million followers on both YouTube and Instagram (as a benchmark, that’s more than double Harry Stebbings’s YouTube following.)
If you haven’t heard of Hartmann, it’s probably because his posts tend to be in Russian. Born in Kazakhstan and brought up in Germany’s Black Forest region, he spent a chunk of his professional life in Moscow, rising to the board of Russia’s Alfa Bank — a position he says he stood down from two days after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Hartmann’s well off, but his $100m+ fortune doesn’t all come from a high-powered career. A lot of his money comes from early bets on European unicorns — and he’s got a plan to add more to his roster.
Banking on Auto1 and Flaschenpost
Hartmann apologetically joins our call from the back of a car driving through Dubai, where he’s been based since leaving Moscow.
The money he used to get into angel investing came from a series of online businesses, he says. “I created 20 companies over 25 years,” Hartmann says. “Obviously, half of them went bankrupt.”
The Hartmann playbook is all about spotting a business model that works in one country and then replicating it across others or backing companies doing so.
He started out doing that in online fashion, cofounding KupiVIP in 2008. The company secured backing from Accel, Bessemer and Balderton and became one of the top e-commerce companies in Russia, before sales dwindled and it shut in 2021.
Hartmann also cofounded another fashion retailer, Sapato, which was acquired by Ozon for $60m.
Next, like almost everyone in the world, Hartmann got caught up in the fervour of online food delivery — cofounding Onigo in Japan and investing in a host of others, including Germany’s Flaschenpost.
He says he put €10m into the company. “I was one of the biggest, first investors in Flaschenpost,” he says. “We sold the company for €1bn to Dr Oetker at the end of 2020.”
Flaschenpost gave Hartmann his biggest windfall, but he says the biggest multiple came from an early bet on used-car dealer Auto1. “I was basically the first money in Auto1, which was worth €12bn at IPO.” Auto1 confirmed Hartmann’s investment.
Although a lot of Hartmann’s recent focus has been on German companies, he’s also well connected in the UK and hosts an angel investor event in conjunction with Brent Hoberman’s Founders Forum.
The WHU effect
Hartmann says the key to his success at picking companies is WHU, Otto Beisheim School of Management in Berlin, the university he attended.
The university has long been at the centre of Germany’s tech ecosystem. The Samwer brothers behind company builder Rocket Internet went to the school, as did the founders of online retailer Zalando, climate startup Enpal, food delivery company HelloFresh, speedy grocery startup Flink and supply chain company Forto.
“I checked my inbox, and if I had invested in every introduction that I received from WHU, I would have been a seed investor in 25% of all German unicorns,” says Hartmann.
As it stands, Hartmann says he’s backed 10% of German unicorns, equating to 30 companies, including speedy grocery startup Flink and logistics company Sennder. He typically invests cheques of $300k — though some companies receive significantly more — and he’s backed 120 companies in total.
“Isaac Newton was an angel investor”
In Hartmann’s view, angel investors are firmly under-appreciated by the tech ecosystem and he’s keen to bolster their reputation by reminding me of their historical significance.
“Isaac Newton was an angel investor,” he says, adding that Christopher Columbus’s voyage to the Americas was financed by two merchants we might today describe as angels. (Post-interview, I fall down a rabbit hole about Newton’s failed investment in the South Sea Company, a slave-trading enterprise.)
Modern day angel investors aren’t a group I typically reserve sympathy for, but Hartmann says it’s a more trying endeavour than people realise — and that’s the thinking behind his new project, Accumulator.
“It’s a very lonely activity,” he says. “You’re a lone ranger in this big world, you’re trying to find these extraordinary success stories, unicorns, but it’s extremely difficult, unicorns are so rare.”
A few years ago, Hartmann created an index to calculate the top 1,000 angels in the world (the index he’s 18th on). He then chatted with 750 of them and came up with the idea for Accumulator, based on their pain points. Top of the list is Elad Gil, who made bets on companies including Airbnb, Gusto, Instacart and Stripe.
Accumulator is a US-registered fund which pools stakes in top tech companies. Angel investors with stakes in strong companies can add their holding to the fund in exchange for a stake in other angels’ companies.
Hartmann says Accumulator now has 43 participants signed up and has amassed stakes in companies such as SpaceX, Notion, Discord, Rapyd, Monzo, Miro, Figma, BlaBlaCar and TravelPerk.
“The idea is to share upside and to share downside,” Hartmann says. “A lot of angels have just one success story in their portfolio and 20% of the time it will wipe out. If it does, it takes out 80% of the angel’s net worth because their portfolio is so concentrated.”
This is all the more important in today’s environment, where IPOs are infrequent and investors are waiting far longer for liquidity. “I’m very passionate about protecting angels’ wealth and giving them more liquidity,” Hartmann says.
Hartmann is joined in the mission by German entrepreneur Roman Kirsch, who also made his money from online fashion businesses, before becoming a seed investor.
Kirsch explains to me over email that the end goal for Accumulator is to list the fund on a public market, creating a ‘private market ETF,’ allowing investors to take a stake in a fund which tracks a broad spread of tech companies at once.
Those World Records
My call with Hartmann wraps up with one significant stone unturned: the world records he holds, which I’ve seen much-discussed online.
Hartmann scored a record for 100 metre sprint rowing in 2019 at a St. Petersburg stadium, watched on by packed crowds, and attempted another for the world’s longest domino chain made of books (intrigued readers can watch that one here.)
As for what adventures lie ahead, Hartmann is soon moving to the US, with his eye on accumulating stakes in more American AI companies. But if you’re Europe-based and keen to get Hartmann to open the purse strings, you’ll find him mingling at Soho Farmhouse for Founders’ Forum this summer.
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/oskar-hartmann-accumulator-angel-investor/
