Technology & Cleantech VCs Join Forces to Create The Founders Club

New Business Model for Venture Capital Enables CEOs & Founders to Leverage Equity to Become Investors in VC Funds

LONDON, December 10 - The Founders Club (www.founders-club.com) announces the launch of
the first reverse venture capital fund, enabling CEOs and founders to use
their shares and stock options to become limited partner investors.

Members of The Founders Club agree to pay a small percentage of their
personal cash exits from an IPO or M&A transaction into the fund, which is
then distributed to all the members in that specific fund. Each fund balances
risks of 30 different VC-backed early and later stage companies to maximize
returns and synergies among participating entrepreneurs and VCs. All
participants must first be already funded by tier one VCs to qualify to apply
to join.

Fourteen senior venture capitalists from Silicon Valley, Boston, New
York, London, Paris, Munich, Stockholm and Tel Aviv joined forces to
establish and launch the club, whose new model is one of the most significant
innovations on the VC model in decades.

Andrew Romans, founder and General Partner, said: "A VC would never
invest its entire fund into one company, but rather invests across a
portfolio of different companies diversifying and balancing risk. By
contrast, founders and hired CEOs have essentially invested their entire fund
into one company and have all their eggs in one basket."

Romans continues: "The Founders Club is a unique way of bonding elite
entrepreneurs and investors together so that they help each other with each
next key milestone. Members needing to raise additional VC funding can draw
on the club's collective global contact network and its official venture
advisors providing unique access to capital. When it is time to sell a
company the club unites to bring more buyers to the table resulting in fewer
companies failing and exits coming in faster and bigger."

Key benefits for CEOs & founders:

    - Diversification
    - Liquidity
    - Incentivized CEO support network
    - Attractive investments in a portfolio of strong VC-backed companies

Jonas Risberg, venture advisor to The Founders Club, and former Partner
at 3i and InnovationsKapital, said: "The best VCs provide not only capital
for innovation and growth, but CEO mentoring and strategic hands-on
assistance for the management teams, which generates higher returns for fund
investors. The Founders Club is a natural progression of the VC model to
accelerate progress and success with each specific milestone."

About The Founders Club

The Founders Club is a global venture capital vehicle where CEOs &
founders of VC backed companies pool together a small percentage of their
personal future equity upside in return for becoming limited partner
investors in a ground breaking VC portfolio.

The Founders Club has hosted a series of 11 VC Entrepreneur Roundtable
events on 3 continents bringing together over 600 VCs, CEOs and founders
before launching its first Technology & Cleantech fund to be followed by the
launch of its inaugural Healthcare & Life Sciences fund in 2010.

The Club featured Jon Moulton as a speaker today in London along with 100
VCs and entrepreneurs. Next events will take place in Paris on January 26 and
28, 2010. VC backed entrepreneurs and VCs may register at
www.founders-club.com/events

    Contact details:

    Richard Botley, Chameleon PR
    Tel: + 44-207-680-5500
    richard.botley@chameleonpr.com

    Andrew Romans, General Partner, The Founders Club
    Silicon Valley: +1(650)209-6677
    London: +44-7815-901-066
    ar[at]founders-club.com
    www.founders-club.com

Contact details: Richard Botley, Chameleon PR, Tel: + 44-207-680-5500, richard.botley at chameleonpr.com; Andrew Romans, General Partner, The Founders Club, Silicon Valley: +1(650)209-6677, London: +44-7815-901-066, ar[at]founders-club.com