Overview of Investor

Paper Plane is an early stage venture capital firm based in South Africa.

Paper Plane Ventures was founded in late 2014 by Stuart Van der Veen  and Michael Stannard, initially as an advisory firm. Using surplus cash from consulting, the firm took options in various local startups and even in a Finnish startup, converting the options to equity in the 2017, the same year that the VC was acquired by Platform Investment Partners..The firm offers investors access to an innovative telecom and technology focused investment team with an “excellent” track record in capital deployment, merges and acquisitions (M&A) advisory, and capital raising. The core investment thesis as “value investing” and added that his team has a strong track record of monetising investments.

Paper Plane Ventures portfolio consists of:

  • Centbee: The bitcoin wallet provider received investment in 2017. The startup was subsequently funded by nChain, an advisory, research, and developer of blockchain technologies (See this story). Centbee founder Lorien Gamaroff today declined to reveal how much the company received in funding, when contacted by Ventureburn by telephone. He said Centbee is “about to raise its Series-A” round.
  • Click2Sure: Paper Plane Ventures invested in the digital insurance platform in 2017. The startup was subsequently funded by Greenlight RE, a Nasdaq-listed reinsurer (see this story). Click2Sure founder Daniel Guasco today declined to reveal how much the funding was that the company received, citing a confidentiality clause signed with the funder.
  • Touchsides: The consumer insights and brand management platform received investment in April last year from Paper Plane Ventures, with the investor having exited the company in January. Touchsides co-founder Gary Kaplan would not disclose the value of the acquisition. However, he did say that he and co-founder David Fraser would be staying on and retaining a minority stake in the company.
  • Senzolive: This Finnish office occupancy platform received investment in August last year.
  • Howler: Paper Plane Ventures invested in this RFID cashless events platform in October last year.
  • Aerobotics: The investor committed R29-million to the aerial-data analytics startup in February.
Type of investor
Venture Capital
Preferred investment stage
Post - Series A
Sector/s of Interest
Agriculture, forestry and fishing
​Information and communication
Telecommunications
e-commerce
Big Data
Financial and insurance activities
FinTech and InsureTech
Country/s of interest
South Africa