How a Roll Up Vehicle Allowed Arrows’ Co-Founders to Build With Their “Friends”
”Most of our investors said the process was too easy.”
Jun 28, 2021 — 5 min read
Written by
(Roll Up Vehicles have moved to Rollups.com, AngelList's new brand for startups).
Daniel Zarick and Benedict Fritz have large professional networks—a byproduct of spending a combined two decades working in tech.
When the duo co-founded Arrows—a collaborative customer onboarding tool—in early 2020, they found their networks became their biggest boosters.
“We called them the ‘Friends of Arrows.’ Most were just people we knew personally or had met through work,” said Zarick. “They were always reaching out to see how we were doing and asking for updates about the company. It was nice in those early days to have that support while Benedict and I were building the product.”
After launching publicly in March of 2021, Zarick and Fritz decided to raise their first round of financing to help scale the business (they had bootstrapped to that point). Among the interested parties were the Friends of Arrows.
The Problem: Arrows Wanted to Offer Allocation to Their Friends Without Overcrowding the Cap Table
Zarick and Fritz had about 50 friends who were interested in investing. However, many had never angel invested before and couldn’t write a large check. Zarick and Fritz didn’t want to add a lot of small investors to their cap table, nor did they have time to handle the logistics associated with raising from many investors.
“It was tough because there were so many people in our corner that we looked up to and admired. By including them, we could benefit from their advice and experience,” Zarick said. “But since many of the checks our friends could write were between $1k and $5k, it just wouldn’t be possible to bring them all onto the cap table.”
The Solution: Allow All Small Investors to Come in as a Single Line on the Cap Table Using a Roll Up Vehicle
Zarick heard about Roll Up Vehicles (RUVs) when they , and it immediately piqued his interest. He reached out to AngelList for more information and learned that an RUV would allow him to raise from up to 250 accredited investors via an , with just one new entry on the cap table.
