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Technology & Cleantech VCs join forces
to create The Founders Club

New business model for venture capital enables CEOs & founders to leverage equity to become investors in VC funds

London, 10 December 2009 - The Founders Club, (www.founders-club.com) announces the launch of the first reverse venture capital fund, enabling CEOs and founders to use their shares and stock options to become limited partner investors.

Members of The Founders Club agree to pay a small percentage of their personal cash exits from an IPO or M&A transaction into the fund which is then distributed to all the members in that specific fund. Each fund balances risks of 30 different VC-backed early and later stage companies to maximize returns and synergies among participating entrepreneurs and VCs. All participants must first be already funded by tier one VCs to qualify to apply to join.

Fourteen senior venture capitalists from Silicon Valley, Boston, New York, London, Paris, Munich, Stockholm and Tel Aviv joined forces to establish and launch the club, whose new model is one of the most significant innovations on the VC model in decades.

Andrew Romans, founder and General Partner, said: “A VC would never invest its entire fund into one company, but rather invests across a portfolio of different companies diversifying and balancing risk. By contrast, founders and hired CEOs have essentially invested their entire fund into one company and have all their eggs in one basket.”

Romans continues: “The Founders Club is a unique way of bonding elite entrepreneurs and investors together so that they help each other with each next key milestone. Members needing to raise additional VC funding can draw on the club’s collective global contact network and its official venture advisors providing unique access to capital. When it is time to sell a company the club unites to bring more buyers to the table resulting in fewer companies failing and exits coming in faster and bigger.”

Key benefits for CEOs & founders:

• Diversification
• Liquidity
• Incentivized CEO support network
• Attractive investments in a portfolio of strong VC-backed companies

Jonas Risberg, venture advisor to The Founders Club, and former Partner at 3i and InnovationsKapital, said: “The best VCs provide not only capital for innovation and growth, but CEO mentoring and strategic hands-on assistance for the management teams, which generates higher returns for fund investors. The Founders Club is a natural progression of the VC model to accelerate progress and success with each specific milestone.”

About The Founders Club

The Founders Club is a global venture capital vehicle where CEOs & founders of VC backed companies pool together a small percentage of their personal future equity upside in return for becoming limited partner investors in a ground breaking VC portfolio.

The Founders Club has hosted a series of 11 VC Entrepreneur Roundtable events on 3 continents bringing together over 600 VCs, CEOs and founders before launching its first Technology & Cleantech fund to be followed by the launch of its inaugural Healthcare & Life Sciences fund in 2010.

The Club featured Jon Moulton as a speaker today in London along with 100 VCs and entrepreneurs. Next events will take place in Paris on January 26 and 28, 2010. VC backed entrepreneurs and VCs may register at www.founders-club.com/events