My First Cheque

My First Cheque

My First Cheque was started by Firat Isbecer in London as an angel syndicate designed to solve the asymmetric information problem facing individual angels: sourcing quality deal flow across fragmented European startup hubs, standardizing diligence, and allocating capital at the pre-institutional stage. The firm's thesis rests on the observation that many of the continent's strongest technical founders raise small, informal rounds before Y Combinator or a local accelerator structures their cap table — and that acting deliberately at that first-check stage produces concentrated ownership at the valuation step where multiple expansion is steepest. The firm targets enterprise software, AI/ML, and consumer internet companies across the UK, Germany, the Nordics, and Central and Eastern Europe. Stage coverage is tightly bounded — pre-seed and seed, with ticket sizes typically EUR 25K–EUR 200K. Structure varies by jurisdiction: direct equity with standard SAFE or ASA instruments in UK and EU deals, occasionally via SPV aggregation for syndicate members when the round size exceeds the firm's own allocation. Confirmed portfolio positions include rounds into companies that later attracted follow-on from Index Ventures and Cherry Ventures. The geographic footprint covers London, Berlin, Stockholm, and Tallinn as core sourcing cities — reflecting the thesis that technical talent is distributed but venture capital attention still clusters in a small number of postcodes. The syndicate model allows co-investment from LPs who bring operational background as exited founders or senior operators. This group often supplies the first commercial references, pilot customers, or hiring introductions that pure financial angels cannot. Team size and deployment totals are not publicly disclosed. The firm does not publish a track record in fund format; returns data is not independently verifiable. The structural differentiator is a deliberately unbundled approach to the angel-to-fund continuum. My First Cheque does not raise blind-pool vehicles, does not charge management fees on committed capital, and closes each investment as its own discrete syndicate. This architecture means LPs choose per-deal exposure rather than committing to a full portfolio, a stance that preserves selection discipline and sidesteps the return-dilution dynamics of 2/20 fund economics at sub-EUR 50M AUM scale.