A year ago, Ruben Dominguez and I said we were building the Cluely of angel investing.
Cluely had made going viral its entire growth strategy. Our idea was to bring that distribution mindset to investing: back exceptional founders, then help them reach millions of potential customers and investors.
Twelve months later:
→ A portfolio that has raised $1.2B+.
→ Companies including HappyRobot, Replit, Nozomio, Throxy, Apollo Atomics, Gru Space and QFEX
→ Alongside investors including a16z, Sequoia, Founders Fund and General Catalyst
→ 1 Exit: Portco went from $10Kmrr to 7M arr in close to 1 year
Today, we’re publicly introducing what we’ve been building: GR Angel.
Here’s how it started, what we’ve accomplished and where we’re taking it.
Building something exceptional or want to co-invest with us? We read everything.
Rubén and I came to angel investing after working in venture capital.
I had been an M&A lawyer at PwC, founded a B2B SaaS company, and worked at GoHub Ventures. Rubén had worked at Mundi Ventures before leading investments and media at Itnig Capital.
Alongside those careers, we built our publications and audiences. Through that work, we developed relationships with founders, operators and investors across the startup ecosystem.
When we started writing angel checks, we put those assets to work for the companies we backed.
We shared their launches, featured their products, and introduced them to people who could help. One newsletter feature led to a $1 million investment offer for a founder. A single post from Rubén helped another startup double its ARR.
Founders noticed. They started making room for us in oversubscribed rounds because they wanted that support.
As we shared our investments and the companies’ progress, several private investors approached us. They wanted access to the opportunities we were finding and asked to invest alongside us.
We opened the door to a small group. That was the beginning of GR Angel.
The founders we want to back often have several investors competing for a place in their rounds.
Our job is to give them a compelling reason to choose us and deliver after we invest.
We bring two things.
I write Product Market Fit and AI Market Fit. Rubén writes The VC Corner, The AI Corner and The Founders Corner.
We both have 2 of the biggest Linkedin accounts in Europe + now some of the fastest growing X accounts.
Together those publications reach hundreds of thousands of founders, operators and investors, generating tens of millions of impressions every month.
For a portfolio company, that creates an audience for product launches, a way to reach potential customers, and visibility with investors ahead of its next round.
We can help a founder explain what they’re building and get it in front of people who could buy it, work on it, or invest in it.
Our work in venture capital, our publications and our investments have built relationships across the startup ecosystem.
We use those relationships to make targeted introductions: a potential customer, an experienced founder who has solved a similar problem, or an investor who could be relevant for the next round.
We’re also expanding that network through Compound, our podcast, with guests including Mark Cuban, Substack co-founder Chris Best and Creandum founding partner Staffan Helgesson. Ruben is also an official scout for a16z Speedrun.
The value is in connecting founders to the right people at the right moment and giving those people a reason to pay attention.
Distribution and network access help us earn allocations. After we invest, we put both to work for the founders.
Our investing now focuses on the top AI companies coming out of Y Combinator. YC gives us a concentrated place to look. Our relationships and reach help us compete for the opportunities we want.
Across our personal angel investments and GR Angel, we have backed 53 companies, including 42 from Y Combinator. Together, those companies have raised $1.2 billion+.
These figures cover our combined portfolio, including investments made before GR Angel existed. Here are some of the founders and businesses behind it.
Pablo Palafox, Luis Paarup and Javier Palafox are building AI agents for logistics—the calls, emails and messages that keep freight moving.
The company reached a $1.2 billion valuation following its $150 million Series C. Its customers include DHL, Kuehne+Nagel and Uber.
Amjad Masad and Haya Odeh built Replit to let anyone create software. Its AI agents have accelerated that ambition: describe what you want, and the platform helps build it.
Replit grew ARR from $10 million to $525 million in 18 months, passed 50 million users, and raised a $400 million Series D at a $9 billion valuation in March 2026.
As people move from searching Google to asking AI, brands need to understand whether they appear in the answers.
Marius Meiners, Tobias Siwonia and Daniel Drabo built Peec AI to solve that problem. The company reached $10 million ARR in 16 months, with 3,000+ customers, including Zalando, Hugo Boss and Chanel. It raised a $21 million Series A in November 2025.
Annanay Kapila and Joshua Wharton are building a trading platform for continuous global markets.
QFEX raised a $9.5 million seed round at a $95 million valuation before generating revenue, with General Catalyst and Paul Graham among its investors.
Arlan Rakhmetzhanov, one of the youngest founders we’ve backed, is building infrastructure that helps AI coding agents access the information they need to work effectively.
Nozomio raised a $6.2 million seed round led by CRV, with Paul Graham and Gokul Rajaram investing alongside us.
Skyler Chan is pursuing one of the most ambitious ideas in the portfolio: building the first hotel on the Moon.
The company reports $500 million in letters of intent and has attracted 1 billion+ views. It’s an early, highly speculative bet—and an example of the scale of ambition we’re willing to back.
The portfolio also includes:
Quiver AI:an$8.3 million seed round led by a16z.CodeWords (Agemo):****€7.6 million raised, with the CEOs of Miro, ElevenLabs, Personio, Zalando and Supercell among our fellow angels.Momentic:AI-powered software testing, with a$15 million Series Aand General Catalyst among its backers.Throxy:****$6.2 million raised with Base10.
Apollo Atomics:an MIT nuclear spinout that raised a$31 million seed round.Karumi:personalized product demos, backed byRebel Fund.
Across the broader portfolio, our co-investors include a16z, Sequoia, Founders Fund, Coatue, General Catalyst, Peak XV, Lightspeed, Khosla Ventures, CRV and Kfund.
A year after our first private investors joined us, they wanted to increase their commitment.
They had seen the companies we could access, how we supported founders, and how the portfolio was developing. They encouraged us to grow GR Angel and bring in more capital.
That is why we’re taking this next step.
We’re raising. We’re opening conversations with additional private investors who want to invest alongside us, allowing us to write larger checks into our highest-conviction opportunities.
We’re hiring. We’re looking for exceptional people across sourcing, content and operations to support the investment activity and the distribution behind it.
We’re meeting founders. If you’re building an exceptional AI company, we want to hear what you’re working on and where our audience and network could help.
We started by investing our own money. Investors asked to join us. A year later, they pushed us to think bigger.
Today, we’re launching GR Angel publicly, with the same commitment that got us here: invest in founders, put them in front of millions, and open doors that help them grow.
Building something exceptional or want to co-invest with us? We read everything.
Hope this was valuable!
Cheers,
Guillermo
Portfolio figures combine our personal angel investments and investments through GR Angel. GR Angel is a private investment company, not a fund. This newsletter is for information only and is not investment advice or an offer to sell securities. Past performance is not indicative of future results.
