Martijn De Wever Founded London based venture capital firm Force Over Mass, and following this was inspired to build startup ecosystem Floww.
After making 160 investments in tech startups, De Wever had enough data to recognize a path to optimise the startup and venture capital ecosystem. Currently, Founders receive access to funding primarily through ‘warm introductions’ to investors. Meaning startups and Founders without existing connections to money, find it harder to get in front of investors who still rely on formal introductions to find their next unicorn. From the investor view point, the ecosystem is opaque without clean data or metrics. Again meaning that investors often rely on bias when sourcing startups and backing Founders.
De Wever saw the need to create a fairer ecosystem for funding and built Floww. Floww allows startups to meet investors based on merit and metrics, rather than warm intros within the old boys club of venture capital.