With a corpus of $45 million, AngelList India's Utsav Somani has launched a vehicle called Galaxy that will enable early-stage startup founders, typically at the seed to series-A stages to invest in young companies, at a time when a growing number of established entrepreneurs are setting up their own investment funds to back startups.

Once selected in the programme, each founder will be handed out $1 million to invest in startups and if the first few bets are promising they will have access to $2 million each, Somani, founding partner of Galaxy, said.

Jake Zeller, of Spearhead and Naval Ravikant cofounder and chairman of AngelList, are advisors to Galaxy.
Somani said the founder-led funds as a concept hasn’t taken off yet in India but Galaxy will look to drive the momentum. “Founders want to raise capital from other founders. Founders are the most helpful startup advisors. With Galaxy, they can also provide capital to get early-stage companies off the ground,” Somani said, adding that founders also have empathy for fellow entrepreneurs.

He said Galaxy will operate independently with no affiliation with AngelList India and founders participating in it can invest in startups at their own pace.

“The value proposition to raise from a founder is also the operating experience. For example, a founder having raised from Tiger Global can advise on how to negotiate a deal with them, terms in a term-sheet etc,” Somani said.

Somani said, when asked about entrepreneurs who will manage running their company and investing, "there is no pressure from us... Most founders already help out by investing their time.... Now with Galaxy, they have capital to invest too for better alignment of incentives on all sides.”