Angel Investors for Early-Stage Startups in Europe: 25 Angel Networks You Can Actually Pitch
Business angels are usually the first outside investors a European startup meets: they write the cheques that come after friends and family and before venture capital, at pre-seed and seed. The fastest way to reach many of them at once is an angel network, where you apply once, pitch to a screening group and, if members like the deal, several angels invest together. Most "top angel investors in Europe" lists, including the 2025 version of this article, are lists of famous names with personal websites that no longer load and no way to pitch. This guide does the opposite: 25 angel networks and associations across Europe, each checked on its own website in October 2026, with where they invest, the ticket sizes they publish and how founders apply.
Quick answer: pitch the network in your own country first, because most angels invest locally. In the UK start with UKBAA's directory, Angel Academe (female founders) or Cambridge Angels; in Ireland HBAN; in France Paris Business Angels or a France Angels network; in Germany BAND or BayStartUP; in Switzerland Business Angels Switzerland or SICTIC; in Belgium BeAngels or BAN Flanders; in the Nordics and Baltics FiBAN, DanBAN or EstBAN. Anywhere else, find your national network through EBAN or Business Angels Europe.
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European Angel Networks Compared
Sources: each network's own website, checked 31 October 2026. Ticket sizes appear only where the network publishes them; read the criteria page before you apply.
The 25 Angel Networks for Early-Stage Startups in Europe
Pan-European associations
1. EBAN. The European Business Angel Network in Brussels calls itself Europe's largest association of business angel networks and other early-stage investors: a network of networks that shares deal flow, training and best practice with its members and speaks for angels to governments. EBAN does not invest itself; for a founder, its value is the membership directory, which shows the angel networks in your country.
2. Business Angels Europe (BAE). Business Angels Europe is the Brussels federation of national angel associations. Its 30+ members represent more than 40,000 individual angels, and its BAE Club is a small group of leading networks that share opportunities. Like EBAN, it does not take pitches: use its member list to find your national association.
United Kingdom and Ireland
3. UK Business Angels Association (UKBAA). The UKBAA is the trade body for angel and early-stage investment in the UK. Its membership directory lists angel groups, syndicates and early-stage funds, its regional angel hubs are open to members and non-members, and TechInvest, run with the British Business Bank, holds pitch showcases for regional tech companies.
4. Angel Academe (female founders). Angel Academe has backed female founders since 2014 with a mainly female angel network and an EIS fund that invests alongside it. Its criteria for founders are published: a female founder or co-founder with at least 20% of founder equity, a UK company eligible for SEIS or EIS, a working product with traction, a pre-money valuation of £1m to £15m, and a priced round of £250,000 to £5,000,000 (not a SAFE or ASA). Applications go online; promising companies join a Thursday screening call with about 10 lead angels before an online pitch event.
5. Cambridge Angels. Cambridge Angels has invested since 2001 and supported more than 150 companies. It is an invitation-only group capped at 65 members, most of them exited entrepreneurs in tech and healthcare. It charges companies nothing, no pitching or carry fees, and offers free one-to-one office hours with an investor.
6. Archangels (Scotland). Archangels in Edinburgh invests only in technology and life science companies that are based and registered in Scotland, with a B2B model, defensible IP, an EIS-qualifying sector and an initial funding need of £250k to £2m. Its team reviews about 200 investment enquiries a year.
7. HBAN (Ireland). HBAN, the Halo Business Angel Network, covers the whole island of Ireland and reports more than €200M invested, 700+ investments and 1,000+ angel members. Its angels typically invest at pre-seed and seed in ICT, greentech, fintech, medtech, life sciences, food and more, and founders start with a short online application.
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Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg
8. BAN Nederland. Business Angels Netwerken Nederland represents the main Dutch angel and financing networks and lists them, with their pitch events, on its site. It does no matching itself: founders apply to the individual member networks. According to the Dutch government's business.gov.nl guide, angel investments in the Netherlands usually range from €50,000 to €750,000.
9. Business Angels Oost NL. The regional development agency Oost NL runs a network of more than 160 (former) entrepreneurs for companies in Gelderland and Overijssel, mainly in food, health, energy, tech and the circular economy. Investments range from €50,000 to €350,000; founders send a pitch deck, Oost NL prepares them over 2 to 6 months and then introduces them to five relevant investors.
10. BeAngels. BeAngels selects and supports startups in Belgium, Luxembourg and France and connects them with its angel members. It held 88 fundraising events in 2025 and also runs an academy and a Women Circle for investors.
11. BAN Flanders. BAN Flanders has matched entrepreneurs and private investors for more than 28 years with support from the Flemish government. Its site lists 224 business angels, 136 pitches a year and 564 financed deals. Founders get business plan screening and training and pitch at monthly events, with deals managed on the Dealum platform.
Germany and Switzerland
12. BAND (Business Angels Deutschland). BAND is the German national angel association: it counts 11,000 active business angels and more than 40 angel networks and clubs, publishes the GESSI standard contracts and explains the INVEST grant for angels. Founders can submit a pitch deck through its website, and the Deutscher Business Angels Tag is the main yearly meeting of German angels.
13. BayStartUP (Bavaria). BayStartUP coordinates an investor network of angels and VCs and says it accounts for an annual early-stage investment volume of more than €50 million. The way in is its Bavarian business plan competitions: submit a plan or deck, get expert feedback and access to the network.
14. Business Angels Switzerland (BAS). BAS invests only in Swiss-based startups and publishes unusually clear terms: a valuation limit of CHF 5 million, tickets from CHF 10,000, rounds of CHF 250,000 on average and usually CHF 50,000 to 500,000 across several members. A jury picks three startups a month per region to pitch at one of its 20 yearly dinners in Zurich and Lausanne/Geneva; the dinner costs CHF 100 per person and there are no other fees.
15. SICTIC. SICTIC, the Swiss ICT Investor Club, calls itself Switzerland's leading angel investor network, with more than 500 investors and 2,500 startups screened. Tech startups apply to pitch at its regular investor days, held online and across Zurich.
France
16. France Angels. The national federation brings together more than 5,500 active business angels in networks across France and is now a member of EBAN. Its advice for founders: pick a regional or thematic network, apply on that network's website with an executive summary, business plan and two years of monthly projections, and expect an answer within 3 weeks.
17. Paris Business Angels. Paris Business Angels has invested €60M in 210 startups since 2004 with about 200 active angels. It invests €150K to €1M per deal (€350K on average), mostly in first rounds from pre-seed to Series A, across France, with a process of about 3 months from application to investment. It says 40% of its investments go to startups co-founded by women.
Italy and Spain
18. Italian Angels for Growth (IAG). IAG is a community of more than 300 business angels, entrepreneurs and corporates investing in innovative Italian startups, and it now offers pre-seed investment too.
19. IBAN. The Italian Business Angels Network has been the reference association for Italian angels for more than 20 years. Founders can propose their project on its site, and its own survey says Italian angels invested about €920 million in 2025, alone and alongside VC funds.
20. AEBAN (Spain). AEBAN, the Spanish association of early-stage private investors, brings together angel networks, clubs, family offices, accelerators and crowdfunding platforms. Its founder form takes about 10 minutes and sends your project once to every member investor interested in your sector.
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Nordics, Baltics and Central Europe
21. FiBAN (Finland). FiBAN has 660 angel investors and says its members have invested €526 million in 2,100 startups. Applications are open all year, and the median funding round is up to €300,000.
22. DanBAN (Denmark). DanBAN calls itself Denmark's leading network of professional business angels: more than DKK 3 billion invested in more than 1,300 startups. About 400 to 600 startups go through its deal flow each year, and it runs more than 80 events a year. Founders apply through the "Søg funding" (apply for funding) page.
23. EstBAN (Estonia). EstBAN presents itself as the bridge between friends-and-family money and VC funding. Its 220+ members invested more than €14.1 million together in 2025, and it also runs syndicates in which newer angels invest alongside experienced leads.
24. LatBAN (Latvia). The Latvian Business Angel Network has more than 75 members who have invested more than €30M in more than 150 startups, in Latvia and abroad.
25. CRANE (Croatia). CRANE, the Croatian Investors and Business Angels Association, is Croatia's oldest investor organisation and has connected investors since 2008.
In Sweden, SweBAN is a non-profit that helps Swedish angel networks form and grow; it is not a funding route itself, so use it to find the regional network near you.
Individual Angels: Why We Removed the Old List
The 2025 version of this article listed 25 individual angels. We checked each one and removed them all except one:
- 16 of the 23 personal websites it linked no longer load (for example the addresses given for Charlie Songhurst, Verena Pausder, Ralf Dümmel, Alex Chesterman, Ben Holmes and Jitse Groen), and xavierniel.com is a domain-for-sale page.
- Wrong people or wrong firms: josefhuber.com belongs to a retired dictionary author, inesnandi.com redirects to an unrelated site, and Zeev Ventures is a US venture capital firm, not a European angel.
- Names we could not confirm at all: Ines Nandi, Michele Lanza, Lina Tsao, Georgina Giddings, Henry Moser, Tanya Pritchard, Julian Dyer, Sophie Kahn, Michael Burch and Anca Munteanu, together with the "notable investments" attributed to them.
- Kept: Xavier Niel, through Kima Ventures. Kima Ventures calls itself the most active business angel in the world and links that phrase to Xavier Niel. It invests one-off tickets of 150k in about 100 new deals a year, at any stage and in any sector.
- Networks removed: TIIN Capital (its domain now shows a domain-auction page), Lewiatan Business Angels in Poland (lba.pl now hosts an unrelated service), and BANC in Catalonia (bancat.com now redirects to Quatern, a support and financing service). Portugal's FNABA and APBA merged into Investors Portugal, according to Forbes Portugal; we could not load its website, so it is not listed.
Famous founders rarely answer cold pitches anyway. A warm introduction from a portfolio founder, or a network application like the ones above, works far better.
How to Pitch a European Angel Network in 5 Steps
- Find your network. Start in your own country and region: the national association (UKBAA, BAN Nederland, BAND, France Angels, AEBAN) lists the local networks, and EBAN's directory covers the rest of Europe.
- Check the criteria. Location rules are strict (Archangels: Scotland only; BAS: Swiss companies only; Oost NL: Gelderland and Overijssel), and some networks publish valuation caps or round sizes, such as BAS's CHF 5M limit or Angel Academe's priced rounds of £250,000 to £5,000,000.
- Apply once, properly. Prepare a deck, an executive summary and monthly projections for two years, as France Angels advises. A deck that tells a clear story matters more than design: see our guide to a fundraising pitch deck that tells a story.
- Pass the screening, then pitch. Expect a short screening call or jury, then a pitch evening, dinner or online event in front of members. Some networks charge for this (BAS: CHF 100 per person); many, like Cambridge Angels, charge nothing.
- Due diligence and close. A lead angel usually negotiates for the group and members invest individually or as a syndicate. Read up on term sheet negotiation and avoid the classic pre-seed fundraising mistakes.
Which Angel Network Should You Choose?
- You are a female founder in the UK: Angel Academe, plus the tips in our guide to angel investors for women founders.
- You are elsewhere in the UK or in Ireland: UKBAA's directory, Cambridge Angels, Archangels (Scotland only) or HBAN.
- You are in France: Paris Business Angels for €150K to €1M first rounds, or the closest France Angels network; Kima Ventures for a single 150k ticket.
- You are in Germany or Switzerland: BAND and BayStartUP; BAS or SICTIC for Swiss companies.
- You are in the Netherlands or Belgium: a BAN Nederland member network such as Oost NL, BeAngels or BAN Flanders.
- You are in Italy or Spain: IAG or IBAN; AEBAN's single form in Spain.
- You are in the Nordics or Baltics: FiBAN, DanBAN, EstBAN or LatBAN; in Sweden ask SweBAN which regional network fits.
- You build deep tech: see our separate guide to deep tech angel investors in Europe, which also explains the UK SEIS/EIS and German INVEST tax breaks for angels.
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How Founders Combine Angel Money With Other Funding
Angels want proof that customers care, so validate first: our 30-day validation sprint shows how, or you can validate your startup idea with our content-driven service. Non-dilutive money stretches an angel round: see our lists of grants for early-stage startups in Europe and grants for female entrepreneurs in Europe. Once angels have led your first round, the next cheque usually comes from a fund: compare early-stage VC firms and deep tech VCs in Europe.
Angels meet founders at pitch events and competitions, so check our guides to startup competitions in Europe, fundraising and investor events and startup events for female entrepreneurs. Still choosing a base? See the best countries for startups in Europe and startup incubators in Europe. Raising outside Europe or in AI? Our guides to angel investor groups in North America and angel investors for AI startups list the networks there.
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FAQ About Angel Investors for Early-Stage Startups in Europe
Who are the best angel investors for early-stage startups in Europe in 2027?
For most founders, the best angels are the organised networks in their own country: UKBAA members, Angel Academe and Cambridge Angels in the UK, HBAN in Ireland, Paris Business Angels and France Angels networks in France, BAND and BayStartUP in Germany, BAS and SICTIC in Switzerland, BeAngels and BAN Flanders in Belgium, FiBAN, DanBAN and EstBAN in the Nordics and Baltics. EBAN and Business Angels Europe point you to the rest.
How much do business angels invest in a European startup?
It depends on the network and how many members join. Published figures include €150K to €1M per deal (€350K on average) at Paris Business Angels, €50,000 to €350,000 at Business Angels Oost NL, a median round of up to €300,000 at FiBAN, average rounds of CHF 250,000 at BAS and one-off tickets of 150k at Kima Ventures. The Dutch government says angel deals in the Netherlands usually range from €50,000 to €750,000.
What is the difference between an angel network and a VC fund?
Angels invest their own money, usually at pre-seed and seed, often alongside each other and with hands-on help. A VC fund invests other people's money from a fund, typically in larger, later rounds. Networks such as BAS and BAN Nederland do not invest themselves; their members do.
Do European angel networks charge founders to pitch?
Most do not. Cambridge Angels charges no fees to companies, while Business Angels Switzerland charges CHF 100 per person for its pitch dinners and nothing else. Always check the network's own page before you apply.
Can I pitch an angel network in another country?
Sometimes, but many invest only locally: Archangels takes only companies based and registered in Scotland, BAS only Swiss companies and Oost NL only companies from Gelderland and Overijssel. Pan-European bodies such as EBAN connect networks across borders.
Are there angel networks for women founders in Europe?
Yes. Angel Academe in the UK invests in female founders through its mainly female angel network and an EIS fund, Paris Business Angels says 40% of its investments go to startups co-founded by women, and BeAngels runs a Women Circle. See also our guide to grants for female entrepreneurs in Europe.
What happened to the angels in the old version of this list?
We removed the individual names because most of their linked websites no longer load and several people could not be confirmed at all. Xavier Niel stays, through Kima Ventures, which publishes how it invests.
What should I prepare before applying to an angel network?
A pitch deck, an executive summary, monthly projections for two years, your cap table, how much you are raising and at what valuation, and proof of customer demand. Angel Academe also asks who your lead investor is and how much is already committed.
How long does it take to raise from business angels?
Plan for about three months. Paris Business Angels says about 3 months from application to investment, BAS says 2 to 3 months when it leads a round, and Oost NL takes 2 to 6 months of preparation before introductions.
How can I get my startup in front of more angel investors?
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About the Author
Violetta Bonenkamp, also known as MeanCEO, is an experienced startup founder with an impressive educational background including an MBA and four other higher education degrees. She has over 20 years of work experience across multiple countries, including 5 years as a solopreneur and serial entrepreneur. Throughout her startup experience she has applied for multiple startup grants at the EU level, in the Netherlands and Malta, and her startups received quite a few of those. She’s been living, studying and working in many countries around the globe and her extensive multicultural experience has influenced her immensely.
