If you are launching a fintech company, there is a new, tiny early-stage fund seeking investment opportunities. Founded by Anthony Danon (above), Rerail can be called a micro-fund, a solo GP fund, or an angel fund.
Anthony Danon has been an investor for the past 10 years. He began his work with Anthemis Group in London back in 2014 and worked on some interesting rounds, including the seed round of TrueLayer.

He quickly ascended the VC ranks to become a partner at Speedinvest with a specific emphasis on fintech. The first investments were made on promising startups - Primer and Wayflyer .
"I like this concept that fintech is horizontal, not vertical. It's the back office function of all markets. So rather than thinking neobanks, lending, and payments, think about health and insurance, logistics, and trade," Danon said in TechCrunch.

In 2021, he began speaking with Carmen Alfonso Rico to co-launch a fund. "Carmen and I were friends because we started in VC around the same time," Danon said. "And we realized we had seen the same thing as collaborative investors. On the one hand, all these VCs are friends of ours that we've kind of grown up with.". And they're collaborating quite intensely the moment we're not competing with them … And on the other, we could leverage that to the founders."

They set up Cocoa around three years ago as a small early-stage fund that invests like an angel investor — Cocoa is never the lead investor but it can bring other investors to help you get your startup off the ground.

After 35 investments, the team thought the best time for the two of them to go out and raise separately was now. Cocoa's investment thesis isn't only focused on fintech, so that wasn't a perfect fit for Danon; he would want to even more specifically focus on fintech and fintech-adjacent firms — and also not only in Europe.

"Our strategy focus was a bit diverging, and so we said: 'Look it's a tough decision but let's decide to do the next one separately,' " Danon said. He did not want to say more about Carmen Alfonso Rico's (and Cocoa's) future. "Carmen's in the process of her next thing," he said.

A person working with Alfonso Rico on TechCrunch said she remains a founder of Cocoa and is actively investing and building the firm further.
That leaves us with Rerail, a fund targeting $20 million. Danon has already done a first close just over that target at around $20.5 million. He's going to raise a bit more than that so the final number is going to be a bit above that number. "The majority of the LP base is founders and operators, which is very core to the DNA and all of the value I bring to the table," Danon said. "But then I also have some institutions."

The amount he plans to invest will range from $200,000 to $500,000 in relation to the size of the funding round. His first investment was with Rerail, although he is not ready to share the name of the startup.

Aside from Danon's network of founders and the capacity to bring investors to the cap table, he is also hoping that he might be able to give some useful advice to a founder who is just starting.

"I never pretend that I know better than the founders. I learn from them, but they speak the same language," he said. "And when it comes to network and concentration, I hope we can open almost every door."