We’re the investors who don’t leave you to figure out deployment alone.
A capital-only round buys twelve to eighteen months of runway. Hiring a product and engineering team takes several of those months, and the people who arrive still have to ramp up. Lots of companies never make it to the next round.
We have been building a team in the Philippines since 2010 and investing it since 2020. That means the specialists joining your company have already worked on our clients’ teams for us, so we have first-hand experience of their great work.
We invest in software and connected-hardware companies, B2B and B2C, Seed to Series A, in Europe and Australia. We are sector agnostic, and most of our portfolio sits in health and medtech, fintech, commerce and industry. You need a product in market and real traction.
How investing a team works
You apply
A human reads it and comes back to you either way. If it does not fit our mandate, we tell you straight.
If it fits
A 30-minute call with a member of our team, then a short round of follow-up questions.
The review
Code, architecture, backlog, prioritisation, delivery workflow and finances. You get the findings whether or not we invest. Very few investors diligence the tech at all.
The offer
The team spec and a term sheet. Exactly who you get, what it costs, and what it means on your cap table.
Embedded
In your standups in weeks four to six if the right specialists are already with us. Then a project coordinator, weekly reporting and quarterly reviews.
“I don’t see them as an agency or an offshore team. I see them as an extension of our team. They just don’t sit in the same office.”
Our people are our superpower
The partners you deal with have built and sold companies themselves, with 350+ engineers, product specialists and fractional leaders behind them.
Built and exited IGE, which raised US$80M at a US$220M valuation backed by Goldman Sachs.
Came out of Swiss private banking and fintech, then built Arcanys commercially. Built from 0 to 350+ people, self-funded.
We’ve been founders ourselves for 25 years and we’ve worked with 200-plus startups. That means we can often see a problem before a founder and help them fix it fast.
We built a great place to work so your team sticks with you
The competition for great engineers is brutal, and ours stay. That is why our culture awards should matter to you: the person who learns your business is still there when it counts.
Companies we’ve backed
See the full portfolio
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Two people to twenty, and US$70M to US$6B a year in payments.
We built the core engineering, QA and analysis at Payment Logic while their team with us in the Philippines grew from 2 people to 20.
The Elita team with us: a software architect, a project manager, three engineers and a QA engineer.
“We interviewed every developer on our team. Arcanys matched us with our software architect, who is based in Ukraine. He has three dogs and goes to dog shows on the weekend, and when we wouldn’t post him a T-shirt he asked for the design so he could print one himself. He loves what we are building and he just gets it.”
What founders say about us
“They are investing rather than invoicing us. If they undermine what we are building, it is their problem too. The incentives are aligned, and when something goes wrong we are far more likely to fix it together.”
“Arcanys is a great strategic partner; having them invest as well as develop the software has helped us grow quicker, to be honest.”
“Our working partnership has been impressive, so at the point of raising funds it made perfect sense to collaborate through investment.”
Questions founders ask us
How is this different from hiring a development shop?
A shop bills you monthly, so every month the work takes longer they earn more, and they are not on your cap table. We take the work as equity in the same share class your investors hold, and 15% of that stake is paid in cash to all 350+ of our staff at exit. When a deadline is looming, nobody here is earning from the delay. We are in the trenches with you to help you meet it.
What is your position on AI?
We build enterprise-grade software with AI-augmented engineers. AI has sped up the rate of writing code. It has not taken the cost out of shipping the right product, or out of building something that survives contact with real customers, real data and real security concerns. Our teams build with AI at full speed, with a senior architect and a QA function overseeing what is produced.
“Arcanys are now running AI training, and the difference shows. We’ve given our engineers Claude Code access, and the one who has been through the training is writing more code, his notes are clearer, and he is doing a great job.” Paloma Newton, Co-founder and CEO, Elita
Who manages the team, and who owns the code?
You manage them day to day. We employ, pay, train and retain them. You hold 100% of the IP.
What if someone leaves?
Usually replaced within a week if the specialist is already with us, four to six weeks if we are hiring for your stack. Handover overlap is at our cost, on 30 days’ notice. Our annual attrition is around 3%.
How much overlap will we actually get?
At least four hours daily with European business hours, and effectively a full working day with Australia.
Who do you invest in?
We invest in software and connected-hardware companies, B2B and B2C, Seed to Series A, in Europe and Australia. We are sector agnostic, and most of our portfolio sits in health and medtech, fintech, commerce and industry. You need product already in market and real traction. We are not the right investor for founders shopping for an agency or a one-off project, for founders who want cash only, or for companies that already have the engineering team they need.
If you’re looking to raise AND build a great team, we’d love to find out more about you.
Start with a short application and tell us where your roadmap needs more hands.