A former Deloitte partner with three decades of experience across consulting, entrepreneurship, and corporate transformation, Andreas Harting had already built a career out of digitizing other companies' business models before turning those same skills toward angel investing. After spending time at Venture University to formalize his approach, he joined the board of NetSymphony, a Swedish startup streamlining IT and OT network management for large-scale operations, and led a group of fellow angels into the company's pre-seed round through Roundtable.
Coordinating a predominantly German investor group into a Swedish deal could easily have meant added legal complexity, extra paperwork, and delays. Instead, Roundtable's international experience and Luxembourg SPV structure meant the cross-border investments, from currency conversion to local share registration, were handled without requiring any additional legal support. Combined with a simple, intuitive platform and a responsive team always available to help, the entire process moved quickly and smoothly from start to finish, an experience Andreas has since recommended to fellow angels and founders across his network.
Key takeaways:
- A former Deloitte partner and Venture University alumnus, Andreas Harting brought a structured, professionalized approach to angel investing into his first SPV with Roundtable.
- Roundtable made cross-border investing simple: coordinating a predominantly German investor group and a Swedish startup required no extra legal or admin work, thanks to Roundtable's international experience and Luxembourg SPV structure.
- Roundtable's clean, intuitive platform paired with its responsive team made the entire process fast and efficient. Whenever a question came up, Andreas Harting could reach the team directly, keeping everything moving smoothly from start to finish.
- Thanks to the ease of onboarding and the trust gained by the investor group, the SPV structure can be replicated with minimal friction in the future, securing lasting efficiency gains for future rounds.
Roundtable: Could you tell me about yourself and your background?
Andreas Harting: I've been in business for 30 years, across three main building blocks: consulting, entrepreneurship, and a corporate career. I thrive on variety and change, so I've stayed in each role for three to four years, sometimes less, before moving on to the next challenge.
I started in consulting in the 90s with BCG, then moved into industry on the consumer goods side, always in marketing and sales. After a few years at Johnson & Johnson, I founded United Screens, a digital out-of-home TV platform. We digitized advertising, working with Shell as our key partner in gas stations, streaming content overnight via satellite. This was VC-funded and gave me invaluable experience with a digital business model.
One of our investors sat on BBDO's worldwide board. Through him, I moved into BBDO Consulting, where one of my last clients was Unaxis, a Swiss industrial conglomerate (now OC Oerlikon). There, I became the VP of Marketing, rebranded the company, and led its transformation, including major buy-and-build activity and a shift of production to Asia. It was a traditional B2B manufacturing business, and I brought B2C and marketing skills into that context.
When I turned 40, I asked myself what I really wanted to do. Startups had always been where I had the most fun, so I went back to building them with an ex-colleague from BCG. One of our projects was Deutsche Messe Interactive, where we digitized their business model using a database of nearly 3 million visitor records from Hannover Messe and CeBIT to generate leads.
That work caught Deloitte's attention, and they asked me to help found their venture business and digitize other companies' business models. I joined Deloitte and built their digital venture practice, digital studios, and customer experience offering. I ended up staying almost 12 years, the longest I've ever stayed anywhere.
That's how I got to NetSymphony. I met Dennis Jansson on the East Coast back in the early 2010s, during a program at Harvard, and we stayed in touch. He's a tech geek, but also has a very sharp business mind. Last year he asked me to join NetSymphony's board.
They'd started by helping a large Swedish enterprise from the construction industry run their IT and OT networks more efficiently across construction sites, cutting setup time from three months to three days. From there, they realized the orchestration layer they'd built could be applied much more broadly, which is what sparked our conversations. I had already been doing some angel investing, fairly opportunistically, and had done training at Venture University to professionalize that approach before leaving Deloitte.
That's how I became aware of Roundtable and ended up organizing an angel group into an SPV for what was technically NetSymphony's second, but still pre-seed, round. We were the official lead investors, together with the Swedish Chairman who was also investing for the second time.
Roundtable: Before we speak about your experience with Roundtable, could you tell me more about Venture University?
Andreas Harting: It started with two GPs, Andrew Zalazin and Skyler Fernandez, who'd both done successful exits. I think the model of Venture University is really smart: essentially, you get on-the-job training as a venture capitalist.
You sign up for a quarter (or longer) and effectively act as a venture partner in the fund, sourcing deals, doing due diligence, meeting founder teams, scoring opportunities, and sitting in on investment committees. You can co-invest and go through the entire process, including the financing side; Roundtable has worked with them in the past too.
Most participants are senior people moving into or aiming to professionalize their angel or venture activity. For example, when they did due diligence on a patent platform, they brought in people from the program with decades of relevant experience: someone who'd led the patent office at the Max Planck Institute, someone from NASA, someone with 30 years in pharma. Whatever industry you're looking at, you get access to a network of people who know it inside out, which really helps on your learning path.
They started in the US and then Andy Goldstein (my co-founder at Deloitte Digital Ventures) co-founded Venture University Europe with his son in Germany. Since then, they've expanded into the Middle East and set up in Switzerland.
It's structured as a venture capital accelerator with real on-the-job training. In the 2nd week after the first content modules, which they call "Startup Madness," you look at 60 to 70 different pitches. It runs on San Francisco time, so it can be a bit demanding, but you build real due diligence experience: running meetings, presenting to the investment committee, seeing how decisions get made. Excellent learning, backed by strong content. I'd highly recommend it.
Roundtable: How did you get introduced to Roundtable? Was it through Venture University?
Andreas Harting: Yes, it was through Andy Goldstein, who already knew the team. The timing was perfect: I was doing my Venture University quarter, from late September to December, right as the NetSymphony investment came together. We invested through Roundtable starting in January, and it was fully closed by February once all the funds were received. Andy made the introduction, and from there I started evaluating the opportunity and building the SPV with my angel group.
Roundtable: How was your experience with Roundtable?
Andreas Harting: Very smooth. Whenever I had questions or needed more information on something, I'd just send a WhatsApp message to the team, and they'd reply very quickly, guiding me through different processes. The platform itself is very simple and intuitive, too.
The combination of a genuinely great user experience and a responsive, reliable human team made the whole experience really positive.
I've made other investments where you need notaries, powers of attorney, and other paperwork, which adds a lot of complexity. In Germany, for example, pooling angels through a GmbH requires appointing a managing director for that entity. With Roundtable, all that is handled for you, so the admin work (that would normally take a lot of time and effort) is automated and fully digitized. It's simple, even for first-time investors. And for any future round, whether the same investors stay in or we set up a new SPV, everyone already knows the process, so things move quickly.
Roundtable: Have you received any feedback from investors?
Andreas Harting: The feedback from other investors was always consistent: the platform is easy to use, with a clean UX and a simple interface. The entire process is very straightforward: you set up your account, transfer funds, and get updates with all relevant materials on the platform. From an angel investor's perspective, Roundtable really makes the standard investment process a lot easier.
Recently I saw an email from Roundtable about expanding your Data Room capabilities, meaning that the whole due diligence process can be managed professionally within the platform, rather than through separate tools; I'm really looking forward to that.
Roundtable: Before choosing Roundtable, did you evaluate other platforms?
Andreas Harting: For NetSymphony, I took a pragmatic approach: I already knew Roundtable, spoke with the team, and was able to evaluate it directly. It was exactly what we needed, so there was no need to look elsewhere.
From a cost perspective, it wasn't a matter of finding the cheapest option, it was about value for money, and Roundtable ticked all the boxes I needed. It felt right and fit what we were looking for, so we went ahead. If any key functionality had been missing, I would have looked elsewhere, but everything was there and it worked great.
Roundtable: What would you say are the main operational benefits of Roundtable?
Andreas Harting: You offer a very simple end-to-end process that's almost fully automated: setting up the SPV, organizing the investor group, keeping everyone informed on where things stand, tracking who has wired funds, and handling onboarding, KYC, and KYB.
We had a mix of people investing personally and through legal entities, and I actually did two investments myself; I was directly on the cap table with my legal entity and also invested through the SPV. The KYC and KYB process was quick; for legal entities, submitting an annual report and other documents digitally usually took just a few hours.
I've also had to set up shareholder votes a few times, and one is currently running as we extend our board of directors and grant options to new board members. That process runs through the SPV to get everyone's approval.
Roundtable: NetSymphony is based in Sweden, while you're based in Munich. Did Roundtable help with the international aspects of the investment?
Andreas Harting: Yes, this was genuinely an international deal. We invested in EUR, but the transaction was converted into SEK, and some of the legal documents and share registrations had to be quoted in SEK, involving the local Swedish registry. Roundtable had that international experience and lawyers who could handle it, so we didn't need any additional legal support beyond what we arranged with the company itself, and none of the other angel investors in the SPV needed extra support either.
Going through the Luxembourg SPV structure was also straightforward from a tax perspective, and it works well across a European scale, so there was nothing extra to worry about. Everything besides the Swedish-specific elements was handled in English, which made things easy.
Roundtable: Would you recommend Roundtable to other founders and investors in your network?
Andreas Harting: Absolutely, and I already have. It's a great platform and business model. Sometimes I think, "that's something I wish I had built myself". The team executes everything in a very professional way, they're committed to the success and positive experience of their clients, and they're growing fast. I really appreciate all that.
Based on our experience, for our next SPV we'll use Roundtable again to keep a clean cap table, and I'll keep recommending it, not just within Venture University, but to other angels in my network as well.
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