The Best of Both Worlds: What an Accelerator gives an Investor that a Fund alone can't
Two ways to invest, and the false choice between them
There are two usual ways to get exposure to early-stage Asia, and most investors assume they have to pick one.
You can do it yourself. Find the founders, run the diligence, negotiate the terms, sign the paperwork, and build enough of a portfolio across enough markets that the misses do not sink you. That is real work, and it is most of someone's week, every week.
Or you can hand your capital to a fund, take the diversification, and accept that you will hear how it is going once a quarter, if that. No founders, no influence, no view of the thing you own until a PDF arrives.
One option is all access and no leverage. The other is all leverage and no access. Put plainly, neither is a good deal.
"I have the best of both worlds"
Jens Wilke did not want to choose, and he was well placed to know the trade-off. Jens is a software engineer who has spent years as an active angel, with around ten direct startup investments across the EU, Asia, and Australia. He invests in real-world problems rather than tech for its own sake, and he likes being close to the people he backs. He is also a Limited Partner in Fund 2.
So why does an active angel, who is perfectly capable of finding and signing his own deals, also invest through a fund?
"It's a lot of work for a business angel to look at all the new startups out there and find a good match," he says.
"It's much easier to invest in a fund that already gives you connections and exposure everywhere. The fund is doing all the hard work. But with Accelerating Asia I can still get involved if I want to, help with the selection process, and mentor specific startups. So I have the best of both worlds."
That sentence is the whole case for what an accelerator-VC actually is.
The heavy lifting
Because Jens still invests directly, he knows exactly what the fund takes off his plate.
Sourcing across the region is the first job. There are far more interesting markets in Asia than any one angel can cover. "There are so many regions that are interesting to invest in, like Vietnam, Bangladesh, Thailand," Jens says. "With Accelerating Asia you can tap into that team and have an idea what is going on in each region and which startups make sense." We read 724 applications this cycle alone, across 20 countries and five rounds of evaluation, to land a single cohort. We have written separately about how that filter works and what it is built to catch.
Then comes the part most investors underestimate: the diligence, the legal work, and the paperwork. "It's great to have Accelerating Asia do the heavy lifting on the legal side, bring the startup, and make everything ready to invest," Jens says. An angel does all of that themselves, one company at a time. A fund LP has it done across the whole portfolio.
And underneath both is diversification, which is the part that actually makes venture maths work. A single angel writing ten cheques is exposed to all ten. An LP in our fund sits behind more than 100 companies across 16 markets and 13 cohorts, where a handful of outliers carry the return and no single market shock can take the portfolio down. That construction is also what produces the results: against the most recent Carta benchmarks, both Fund 1 and Fund 2 currently sit in the top 5% of VC funds globally.*
This is the leverage side of the deal. You get the reach, the rigour, and the risk-spreading of an institutional seed portfolio without doing the sourcing, the diligence, or the legal work yourself.
But never the back seat
Here is where a normal fund relationship stops and ours keeps going.
For Jens, the single worst version of investing is the passive one. "The worst thing that can happen for an investor is to sit in the back seat, with no influence over what happens with their money, and not know what's going on," he says. A quarterly PDF is exactly that back seat.
The accelerator is what removes it. As an LP, Jens can do the things a passive fund investor never gets to do. He can sit inside selection week and help decide who makes the cut. He can mentor the founders he finds most interesting. He can reach out to any company directly, and co-invest into the ones he wants more of. "I don't need to deal with the paperwork," he says, "but I have the direct connection to the startups when I want to. It feels like I'm involved, not just passive with my money."
None of that is a special arrangement we made for Jens. It is how the model is built. Our LPs see the portfolio in real time through their dashboard rather than waiting for a quarterly report. Several of them treat selection week as their own deal flow, meeting 50 of the region's strongest startups in five days with our team coordinating the diligence. The access is the product, not a perk on top of it.
That is also why Jens came to the retreat and stayed on as a mentor. The involvement is the reason he is an LP, not a footnote to it.
Why this is structural, not a sales pitch
Put the two halves together and you have something neither of the usual options can offer.
A pure fund cannot give you the access, because there is no program to step into. There is nothing to mentor, no selection week to sit in, no cohort to meet. Pure angel investing cannot give you the diversification or take the work off your plate, because you are the sourcing team, the diligence team, and the legal team, one deal at a time.
The accelerator is the thing in the middle that makes both possible at once. It is where the heavy lifting gets done, and it is the door that stays open for any LP who wants to walk through it. That is the accelerator-VC advantage, and it is why an investor like Jens, who could simply keep angel investing, chooses to do both through one vehicle.
It is worth being honest about what this is not. It is not a promise that you will be hands-on. Plenty of our LPs are happy to stay passive and let the fund do its work, and that is a perfectly good way to use us. The point is that the choice is yours, week to week, rather than decided for you the moment you wire the money.
The five companies of Cohort 13
Govaly - the largest fashion and beauty marketplace in Bangladesh, with GMV up 27x in eighteen months and nothing spent on paid acquisition.
Meza AI -a Cursor for customer success that has converted every pilot it has ever run into a paying customer.
Driftly - an AI operating suite for consumer goods distribution built by an early Airlift operator.
meed - wallet-native retail loyalty with more than 700 merchants signed across 85 countries, every one of them organic.
DIGIBOX - Bangladesh's first shared delivery-locker network, already carrying roughly 1% of the country's Daraz orders.
Join them as they pitch live in Singapore on Wednesday, July 15, and online on Thursday, July 23. Every one is already in market and earning revenue.
COME SEE COHORT 13 PITCH
🇸🇬 In person, Singapore, Wednesday July 15
Join us in Singapore for an exclusive, in-person experience where investors, ecosystem leaders, and partners gather to meet eight high-growth startups solving critical problems across South and Southeast Asia.
💻 Virtual, Thursday July 23
Accelerating Asia is hosting a virtual edition of Cohort 13 Demo Day live for our global community of investors, founders, and partners. This is your chance to experience the pitches, meet the founders, and explore investment opportunities.
Invest with us
These five startups join a portfolio of over 100 companies in the Accelerating Asia Ventures family. These five, including many already in the portfolio, are at various stages of fundraising right now. You can choose to invest in one, or in all of them through the Fund.
Fund 2 is in final close.
Start with the fund deck. Choose your path at acceleratingasia.com/investors and we'll send access.
Ask a question first. Email team@acceleratingasia.com and we'll get back to you.
Ready to invest? Book a call here with a partner.
See the portfolio. Check out acceleratingasia.com/portfolio. Filter by country, sector, or fundraising status. Request an introduction directly to any CEO.
For investors and partners. Choose your path at acceleratingasia.com/investors. Whether you're looking to co-invest in individual startups or invest in the fund, the next step is there.
* Carta Q4 2025 VC Fund Performance. US benchmarks used as Asian fund comparables remain limited.
About Accelerating Asia Ventures
Accelerating Asia Ventures is an independent accelerator and venture capital fund investing in early-stage startups across Southeast and South Asia. Founded by operators, the organisation is committed to supporting founders with capital, credibility, and a long-term community.
For interviews, data requests, or portfolio introductions, contact: team@acceleratingasia.com
