Not All Capital Is Equal: Seven Founders Describe the Strategic Value Behind Their Rounds as Pairs Begins Investing Alongside Its Network
One family office connected by Pairs put $500K into Ethermed, brought it a paying customer and led its Series A with $3.5M five months later. Seven client stories on pairs.ai show what the right investor brought beyond money, and Pairs now invests its own capital alongside the investors it connects founders with, as it did in the Antaris Series A.
Jamal Chraibi and Vincent Possehl · Oct 8, 2026
Key facts
Pairs invested its own capital in the Series A of Antaris, led and anchored by WestWave Capital and Lockheed Martin.
A family office connected by Pairs put $500K into Ethermed and led its $3.5M Series A five months later.
Seven founders tell what came with the check at pairs.ai/customers.
Pairs has facilitated 3,500+ investor meetings.
October 8, 2026. Pairs (pairs.ai), the private capital network that connects leading startups with family offices and institutional investors, today announced that it has invested its own capital in the Series A of Antaris, the satellite software company. WestWave Capital and Lockheed Martin led and anchored the round. The announcement comes with seven client stories, filmed in New York, San Francisco and London and published at pairs.ai/customers in September. In them, founders and executives at Ethermed, Antaris, Laundry Sauce, Natrion, Payall, Applied General Intelligence and Orange Energy describe what came of the introductions. One came away with a paying customer, another with a bank opened within two weeks of meeting the investor. Across the seven, the companies met around 150 investors.
“Most founders ask how fast they can close. Very few ask who they are closing with,” said Vincent Possehl, co-founder of Pairs. “After 3,500+ investor meetings facilitated, I can tell you the seat on the cap table gets you the same capital from whoever takes it. But not every seat comes with doors to customers, partners and the next round.”
What do the best founders look for in an investor?
In a 2004 Journal of Finance study of 148 financing offers to 51 startups, David Hsu of the Wharton School found that founders were three times more likely to accept an offer from a highly reputed venture capitalist, and took a valuation 10 to 14 percent lower to get one. Founders do not need a study to tell them that a16z, Sequoia or Benchmark on the cap table makes the rest of the round and the next one easier. Several of the seven already had names like that on the cap table or in the round when they started working with Pairs. Payall’s investors include a16z, Antaris has Lockheed Martin, and Mark Cuban backed Natrion.
Farid Haq, a family office investor in the Pairs network who is based in London, recalls losing a deal to the Dolby family office because the founder preferred the Dolby name. “The best founders don’t have any shortage of money. Money is just a commodity. So therefore it’s more a question of, whose money will you take?” said Haq.
Across dozens of founder conversations a week, the Pairs team sees two camps. In the first, the raise is a chore to finish quickly before getting back to the company. The second treats it as one of the few moments a founder gets to choose who joins the cap table, since the right investor arrives with its own customers and partners. “We’ve ended up with several really amazing strategic investors who’ve been really helpful at unlocking technology, unlocking go to market, unlocking access to partners that would be a lot harder to do organically,” said Neil Joseph, CEO of Orange Energy.
Founders who have raised a few times get pickier once the big name is in. They look for investors who know the markets they sell into. For a family office, that is the industry it made its wealth in. UBS’s Global Family Office Report 2026, a survey of 307 family offices, found that 77 percent of the families behind them have an active operating business. The Pairs network includes family offices that run such businesses, corporate venture arms, single LPs and funds with little or no internet footprint. They lead rounds or invest alongside a lead.
Ethermed is the clearest case. John Cococcia, its CFO, had taken the company to market once, with one paying customer, and investors had sent it back to sell more. Ethermed automates prior authorization, the insurer approval step, for healthcare providers and payers, and its investor list was built for US venture. Through Pairs, Ethermed met more than 25 family offices, high net worth individuals and funds outside that list. One of them, a family office Ethermed had no route to on its own, run by entrepreneurs who had built and sold two healthcare businesses, took a first meeting. It already understood prior authorization, so the conversation skipped whether the problem was real and went to whether Ethermed had the better product and the team to pull it off. The family office put $500K into the angel round and, as part of its diligence, opened its own network to the team. An introduction from that network became a paying customer. Five months after the first check, the same family office led the Series A with $3.5M. “We got introductions to a number of really good investors that didn’t really overlap with our existing network,” said Cococcia. A family office whose publishing business includes Urology Times came onto the cap table of URO-1 Medical the same way, with a board seat, and that round closed oversubscribed.
Pairs also works with family offices in the Middle East, Europe and Southeast Asia, and they open doors to partners, banks and customers in their own regions. Investors Pairs introduced to Payall opened several banks to it in Central and Southeast Asia, and Natrion met investors in the European and Middle Eastern markets where some of its most important customers are.
Where is family office money going?
Family offices have been moving more of their money straight into companies. In the latest survey of North American family offices by RBC and Campden Wealth, direct deals made up 45 percent of the private markets book, against a third the year before. Deloitte Private counts about 8,000 single family offices worldwide and expects close to 11,000 by 2030, with some of the sharpest growth in Dubai and Singapore, where Pairs finds many of its investors. Family offices in Asia Pacific and the Middle East keep about half their portfolios in North America, according to UBS.
Many of these deals come through people the investors already know. When Citi Private Bank asked family offices where their direct deals come from, other families came second, behind only their own teams. In a study of 885 venture capitalists by Paul Gompers and colleagues, a fifth of closed deals had been referred by other investors. The British Business Bank found that a warm introduction is 13 times more likely to get funded than a cold pitch. “We have more capital than we have deals. Some of the best deals have come from sources like you guys,” said Charles Mayo, president of Vertical Capital, a family office in the Pairs network.
Investors join Pairs by referral, and the team screens them for what they bring beyond capital. Pairs only takes on a company it could see itself investing in, and that diligence happens before any connection is made. “Investors out there are already drowning in deal flow. The only way to build a strong network that trusts your judgment is through continuous discipline in only bringing on the highest caliber of deals that we would see ourselves investing in,” said Possehl.
What did the right investors bring to five more rounds?
When Gary Palmer, founder of Payall, mentioned he was in London, Pairs set up three in-person meetings there on 24 hours’ notice. Payall builds the infrastructure banks use to move money across borders, and Palmer had asked for investors with banks as LPs, people who had worked in or built banks, or a presence in the markets Payall is entering, family offices first. “I don’t need someone to carry our water and sell, but I want that investor to open some doors,” said Palmer. More than 30 investors met that brief, from London to Central and Southeast Asia. One family office invested with a strategic allocation that comes with bank connections, and investors Pairs connected with Payall have since opened several banks to it, the first within two weeks of meeting him.
Quorum Capital came into the round of Orange Energy through a Pairs connection and has since helped on recruiting and opened doors in energy and real estate. Orange Energy builds energy products for apartment buildings, offices and hotels, starting with EV charging. CEO Neil Joseph already had strong Silicon Valley investors in the round and wanted expertise in energy, infrastructure and real estate beyond that network and the US market, so Pairs built the lists against that brief and prepared him before each new meeting. Joseph says Orange Energy is now the fastest growing company in multifamily EV charging. “It’s not just about the cash, but it’s about the experience,” said Joseph.
About 90 days passed between the day Laundry Sauce signed with Pairs and the day the wire landed. The company makes designer laundry detergent and went into Target in 2026. CEO Ian Blair’s own network was tapped out. Pairs put more than 30 funds and family offices in front of him, among them a family office that had made its money in consumer, and within three calls it invested $1.5M. “The family office we got connected to was one that we never would have made the connection with had it not been for you guys,” said Blair.
The board of Applied General Intelligence (AGI) decided to bring in help once it saw the market feedback Pairs brought back before the engagement began. AGI is building a deterministic AI for mission-critical systems in defense, healthcare and finance. Pairs prepared AGI for every meeting and brought back investor feedback on the pitch after each one, which sharpened its story. When AGI’s main investor later came in through a trusted network, he committed a day or two after one call. “I don’t think we would have been able to do that had we not gone through the process,” said Kurt Bonatz, co-founder and president of AGI. One investor got through diligence in about a week. “It wasn’t just throw things over the fence and good luck. It was very curated, very qualified calls that we were having,” said Bonatz.
Natrion makes the separator film inside lithium batteries, in Buffalo, New York, instead of China. Co-founder Alex Kosyakov had a lead in place for its Seed 2 and one gap he could not close himself, the family offices, funds and corporate investors in Europe and the Middle East where some of Natrion’s most important customers are. Natrion met more than 20 investors across the US, Europe and the Middle East through Pairs, each briefed before the first call, and customer introductions followed. “It’s somebody who was warmed up and briefed and knew what we’re about going into the meeting,” said Kosyakov.
Which round did Pairs invest in?
Pairs co-invested into the Antaris Series A alongside one of its London-based family offices. The round was led and anchored by Lockheed Martin and WestWave Capital. Lockheed Martin had come in at the seed round and became a customer shortly after. “I could get to those on my own. What I couldn’t get to was the family offices that are interested in the space sector,” said Tom Barton, co-founder and CEO of Antaris. Barton said it in person to the Pairs founders in San Francisco, where the two meet clients on regular trips to the Bay Area. He met more than 20 investors through Pairs. One of the family offices invested, and the round closed oversubscribed.
Why does Pairs invest alongside its network?
Pairs screens every company before it makes a connection, and now invests next to the investors it brings in, as it did in the Antaris Series A. Investing next to people who know the sector gives Pairs a second and third opinion on every company. More investments are in progress and will be announced in early 2027.
“Not all money is green. There is more to it than the color, there is what it unlocks and what doors it can open,” said Jamal Chraibi, co-founder of Pairs. “Any founder we work with could find money somewhere. They come to us for the family office that built in healthcare or the investor with banks as LPs, and that is the introduction we make.”
“When we tell a family office a company is worth their time, they know we are willing to sit on the same cap table,” said Possehl.
Sources
1.
“What Do Entrepreneurs Pay for Venture Capital Affiliation?”, David H. Hsu, The Journal of Finance, August 2004.
2.
“Global Family Office Report 2026”, UBS, May 2026.
3.
“The North America Family Office Report 2026”, RBC Wealth Management and Campden Wealth, September 2026.
4.
“Defining the Family Office Landscape 2024”, Deloitte Private, 2024.
5.
“DIFC surpasses 10,000 active registered companies”, DIFC, July 2026.
6.
“Written reply on licensing of Single Family Offices under the Securities and Futures Act”, Monetary Authority of Singapore, February 2025.
7.
“Global Family Office Survey Insights 2023”, Citi Private Bank, September 2023.
8.
“How Do Venture Capitalists Make Decisions?”, Paul Gompers, Will Gornall, Steven Kaplan and Ilya Strebulaev, Journal of Financial Economics, 2020.
9.
“UK VC and Female Founders”, British Business Bank with Diversity VC and the BVCA, February 2019.
About Pairs
Pairs is a private capital network for leading startups and the investors who back them, and has facilitated 3,500+ investor meetings. Pairs is not a marketplace and not a broker. It is an invite-only network, and now invests its own capital alongside its investors. The team works globally across London, New York, Dubai and San Francisco. pairs.ai
Media contact: contact@pairs.ai
