Investing beyond Seed: Maria Koletsou on syndicate investing in the AI era - Part Two

For years, many angel syndicates focused on a single moment in a company's journey: the first investment. But according to Maria Koletsou, that model no longer reflects how private markets operate. As startups remain private for longer and more value is created beyond the seed stage, investors need new ways to stay involved throughout a company's lifecycle.

In the first part of our discussion, Maria shared how her investment philosophy evolved through experience and why Blossom Ventures was built to support founders throughout their growth journey. Here, she expands on that vision, explaining why the future of syndicate investing goes far beyond writing the first check.

Investing through syndicates across the full lifecycle

Companies are staying private longer, secondary markets have become more sophisticated, and some of the most significant wealth-generation events are occurring long before a traditional IPO.

“The investment map today is completely different from what it was even two years ago. I'm not talking about ten years ago. If you are an angel investor today, the world is completely different, and therefore you have to adapt.”

For many investors, adapting means rethinking the traditional model of writing an early-stage check and waiting a decade or more for an outcome. According to Maria, years of capital remaining locked inside venture portfolios have highlighted the limitations of that approach. While paper valuations may increase, investors still need liquidity to continue participating in new opportunities.

“You want real cash returns, not just returns on paper. But even more importantly, you need liquidity to invest in the next generation of companies. If you don't have liquidity, you cannot participate in the opportunities that are being created.”

Most angel investors focus almost exclusively on the earliest stages. They write the first check, help founders get off the ground, and then gradually lose access as larger investors enter subsequent rounds. Maria believes that the approach overlooks where much of the value creation actually occurs.

“Most angel groups stop at seed. The economics of early-stage investing are brutal: most of the return concentrates in a handful of winners, and those winners create most of their value after the seed round, in the years when angels usually have no further access.”

That realization became one of the core principles behind Blossom Ventures. From the beginning, Maria wanted to build a platform that could support companies beyond their earliest stages and enable investors to participate in the full value-creation journey.

“If you only play the entry, you're funding the risk and handing the upside to whoever's there at Series B and the secondary. Lifecycle means we stay in the winners through pro-rata, follow-on, and secondary access. That's where the compounding is.”

For Maria, this philosophy is closely connected to a bigger trend in venture capital. Historically, many investors focused almost entirely on deployment. Today, liquidity is becoming just as important as access.

“One lesson investors have learned over the last decade is that a lot of capital became locked up. Liquidity is important not only because you want real cash returns, but because you need capital available to participate in the next generation of opportunities.”

For Maria, this is particularly important as artificial intelligence reshapes the technology landscape. New categories of companies are emerging at an unprecedented pace, creating opportunities that many investors may miss if all of their capital remains tied up in older portfolios.

“We invested in companies like Canva and other later-stage opportunities because the goal is to create liquidity that can then be reinvested into the next generation of startups. The world is being transformed by AI. New companies will emerge over the next few years, and investors need the ability to participate in those stories.”

In Maria's view, the next evolution of angel investing will not be defined solely by access to deals, but by access to liquidity. Syndicates that can combine early-stage investing, follow-on participation, secondary opportunities, and investor education will be better positioned to support founders throughout the entire company lifecycle while creating more sustainable outcomes for investors.

“The infrastructure is different now. Angel syndicates will evolve because they have to. The old model of investing at pre-seed and waiting fifteen years is becoming harder to justify in a market that moves this quickly.”

A better capital infrastructure for Europe

Over the past decade, Europe's startup ecosystem has undergone a remarkable transformation. While markets such as the UK and the Nordics developed earlier, Maria believes some of the biggest changes have taken place across Southern and Eastern Europe, where founders today have access to opportunities that barely existed a few years ago.

“I think what has happened over the last six or seven years is amazing across Europe. The European Union infrastructure has done amazing work creating opportunities and building ecosystems that simply didn't exist before.”

Yet for Maria, building a stronger startup ecosystem requires more than capital alone. It also requires diversity of perspectives, experiences, and backgrounds. Throughout her career, she has sat on multiple sides of the investment table and experienced firsthand what it means to be the minority voice in a room. Those experiences convinced her that diversity is not simply a social objective but a competitive advantage.

“I'm not even talking only about gender. Diversity is much broader than that. People sitting in a room with different backgrounds, different ages, different experiences, there's real magic in that. Different skills and different mindsets create better and more efficient businesses.”

For many aspiring angel investors, particularly women entering the asset class for the first time, syndicates lower the barriers to participation by allowing smaller investments across a broader portfolio of companies.

“A syndicate allows people to write smaller tickets into a larger number of companies, which is a prerequisite when you want to start building an angel portfolio. Instead of investing in one or two companies, you can potentially invest in four or five. That's a completely different risk profile.”

For Maria, investing is no longer about writing a single check and waiting ten or fifteen years for an outcome. Instead, it is about building a continuous cycle in which liquidity generated from one investment can be redeployed into the next wave of innovation.

“Liquidity is what fuels the spiral. If you don't have liquidity, all that theory doesn't work. The world is changing, AI is transforming industries, and new companies are constantly emerging. Investors need the ability to recycle capital back into the ecosystem.”

For Maria, liquidity and AI are closely connected. As new categories of AI-native companies emerge, investors need the ability to recycle capital quickly enough to participate in the next wave of innovation.

AI is changing how companies are built and operated

While public discussion often focuses on concerns about job displacement, ethics, and regulation, Maria believes investors and founders should spend just as much time understanding how AI is changing the way companies are built and operated.

“It's amazing what's happening with AI. I know there is a lot of discussion around ethics, security, redundancies, threats to labor, and everything else, and that discussion is understandable. But the bottom line is that it is happening. We have a lot of things to learn and unlearn at the same time.”

As someone who has spent decades building businesses, raising capital, and investing, Maria sees AI as a productivity revolution. In her view, experienced operators often have a unique advantage because they already understand the pain points that businesses face and can immediately identify where AI can create value.

“If you're in your forties, fifties, or sixties and you've had a corporate career, founded companies, or invested for years, you understand the pain. You know where the inefficiencies are. You can use AI to permanently solve those problems and massively improve productivity, efficiency, and decision-making. You know what to look for.”

Rather than resisting the change, Maria encourages founders and investors alike to actively experiment with new tools and integrate them into their daily workflows.

“What I tell all my friends, whether they're founders or investors, is simple: learn. Take courses, try things, embed these tools into your workflow. You can become a better investor, a better founder, a better professional, even a better parent by learning how to use the technology available today.”

As operational costs decline and productivity increases, founders are being forced to build more efficient businesses earlier in their lifecycle. In Maria's view, that trend creates stronger companies and healthier markets, even if it requires uncomfortable adjustments along the way.

“The whole AI transformation creates better and leaner operations with completely different economic models than we were used to. That's the magic. People can debate the consequences, but nobody can stop what is happening.”

Looking ahead, she expects the rise of AI, secondary markets, and syndicate investing to reinforce one another. As technology creates new categories of companies, investors will need more flexible ways to access opportunities and recycle capital. That is one reason she believes syndicates will continue gaining importance.

“Syndicates are institutional without being institutional. You have very experienced investors, operators, and founders coming together to create access, share knowledge, and invest alongside one another. I think syndication and SPV investing will continue to grow massively over the coming years.”

While markets will inevitably experience periods of correction and volatility, Maria sees those cycles as part of a healthy ecosystem. The underlying trends, she believes, remain firmly intact: more access, more liquidity, more collaboration, and a new generation of AI-native companies reshaping how businesses are built.

“I don't think anything that has happened recently will stop the evolution. The infrastructure is changing, and syndicates, secondaries, and AI-driven companies will continue to grow together.”

Connect with Maria & Blossom Ventures

Blossom Ventures is a European angel investing syndicate that provides members with access to private market opportunities across the full company lifecycle, from pre-seed startups to pre-IPO and secondary investments. 

Alongside its investment platform, Blossom Ventures operates the Blossom Ventures Digital Academy,  which educates and empowers the next generation of angel investors while supporting diverse founders across Europe. You can join the Blossom Ventures Digital Academy by using SEEDBLINK at checkout for a €100 discount.

Connect with Maria on LinkedIn

Build the next generation of syndicates with SeedBlink

As Maria explains throughout this conversation, the future of angel investing goes beyond writing the first check. Successful investors are increasingly looking for ways to collaborate, support companies throughout their growth journey, and access follow-on and liquidity opportunities.

SeedBlink provides the infrastructure to make that possible. Whether you're an angel investor, family office, investment club, or founder leading a round, SeedBlink helps you create and manage investment syndicates with professional tools for deal execution, compliance, portfolio management, and cross-border investing, so you can focus on sourcing great opportunities instead of managing operational complexity.

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