Removing Operational Friction to Scale: Collective Ventures

Founded in 2020 in Berlin by Julian Kappus, Nicolaus Berlin, Cecil von Croy, and Caspar von Hodenberg, Collective Ventures leverages investor network knowledge and entrepreneurial expertise to support and accelerate founders in their seed and early growth stage. 

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The team sources and invests in early-stage startups, scaling their own investments by enabling co-investors to tag along. Starting as a dynamic angel club, Collective Ventures has since evolved into a regulated fund manager, managing both unregulated club deals and regulated SPVs through a unified platform.

Collective Ventures started as a dynamic angel club, completing small to medium-sized club deals within their private network. After 11 successful investments structured via trust, the limitations of their operational setup became clear. Juggling multiple bank accounts, onboarding investors manually, and coordinating across fragmented systems created unnecessary friction that slowed their pace.

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For a team focused on sourcing deals and supporting founders, every hour spent on administrative coordination was time lost. As deal flow increased and their investor network expanded, the operational burden became unsustainable. They needed infrastructure that could match their ambition: moving fast, executing cleanly, and scaling without adding headcount.

At the end of 2022, Collective Ventures began using bunch to manage their club deals. They opted for the full-service structure, leveraging all of bunch's core modules: Launch Pad, Onboarding Suite, Investor Portal, Compliance Hub, Treasury, and Tax & Accounting. bunch provided strong legal templates for club deal formation and connected Collective Ventures with partner networks for banking, tax, and accounting—eliminating the need to coordinate multiple service providers independently.

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The impact was immediate: timeline from idea to investment dropped to two weeks. Contract generation, capital calls, and investor reporting became fully automated, freeing the team to focus on deal sourcing and founder support.

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After strong success with unregulated club deals, Collective Ventures took the next step: becoming a regulated fund manager. bunch supported the transition by connecting them with legal advisors, tax and accounting specialists, AML providers, and ESG/SFDR experts—all at partner pricing. The platform now manages both unregulated and regulated SPVs in one unified dashboard, giving Collective Ventures complete visibility across their entire investment portfolio.

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Collective Ventures selected bunch for three core reasons:

1. Speed and automation for club deals
bunch eliminated manual processes across contract generation, investor onboarding, and capital calls. What previously took weeks now happened in days, enabling Collective Ventures to move at the pace their network expected.

2. A clear path to becoming regulated
bunch didn't just provide software—the team guided Collective Ventures through the regulatory transition, connected them with specialist partners, and ensured operational continuity across both unregulated and regulated structures.

3. One platform for the entire lifecycle
From initial club deals to regulated SPVs, from onboarding to distributions, Collective Ventures now manages everything in one system. No fragmented tools, no switching platforms as they scaled.

All of bunch's core products, plus regulated-specific functionality, now power Collective Ventures' operations:

• Investor Portal: Capital calls are calculated, approved, and sent; making sure all historic and future fund data is stored securely. LPs access everything through public and private data rooms.
• Compliance Hub: European regulatory obligations are handled proactively and continuously, all driven by structured, centralised data.
• Treasury: operations such as payments, invoices and transaction categorisation are facilitated across the platform and supporting channels.
• Transfer Agency: bunch generates compliant, investor-specific notices and institutional or side-letter-relevant documents. All capital-call data, notices, and transactions remain within a closed-loop system - no exposed PDFs, no email risks. 
• Fund Accounting & Reporting: bunch's accounting engine, combined with partner tax advisors integrated into the workflow, generates reporting outputs and financial statements for both regulated and unregulated structures.
• Fund Admin Service: Investor admission is fully digital and automated, enabling Collective Ventures to onboard co-investors at pace without manual follow-up or document chasing.

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Together, these capabilities enabled Collective Ventures to transition from a manual angel club to a regulated fund manager without operational disruption—scaling efficiently whilst maintaining full control and visibility.

With all investments, from the earliest club deals to regulated SPVs, now consolidated on bunch, Collective Ventures operates with infrastructure that supports continued growth. 

The platform is designed to scale with the firm, ensuring that new deal structures, expanded co-investor networks, or additional regulatory requirements can be managed without adding operational complexity.

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As the venture landscape continues to professionalise and regulatory expectations increase, Collective Ventures is positioned with a modern operational backbone built to handle both today's requirements and tomorrow's ambitions.

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