{"id":9227,"date":"2026-07-03T01:54:46","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T22:54:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/handoli.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/03\/exclusive-no-more-side-hustles-why-ai-startup-omnea-will-give-employees-250k-to-openly-plan-their-next-startup\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T01:54:46","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T22:54:46","slug":"exclusive-no-more-side-hustles-why-ai-startup-omnea-will-give-employees-250k-to-openly-plan-their-next-startup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/handoli.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/03\/exclusive-no-more-side-hustles-why-ai-startup-omnea-will-give-employees-250k-to-openly-plan-their-next-startup\/","title":{"rendered":"Exclusive: No More Side Hustles: Why AI Startup Omnea Will Give Employees $250K To Openly Plan Their Next Startup"},"content":{"rendered":"

Omnea<\/a>, a London-based artificial intelligence software company that helps businesses manage their supplier spending, is challenging traditional venture models with the launch of the Omnea Future Founders Fund.<\/p>\n

Created in partnership with the European angel fund Firedrop<\/a>, the initiative gives Omnea employees who have completed five years of service a chance to pitch for $250,000 in seed funding to launch their own companies.<\/p>\n

The initiative doesn\u2019t just aim to discourage employees from hiding their entrepreneurial ambitions from leadership but actively supports them.<\/p>\n

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Ben Freeman, founder and CEO of Omnea. (Courtesy photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cStarting a business, you don\u2019t want to speak to investors who you don\u2019t know. You want to speak to people you know and trust, who want you to succeed and know what they\u2019re talking about,\u201d said Ben Freeman<\/a>, founder and CEO of Omnea, in an exclusive interview with Crunchbase News explaining why the company decided to start the initiative. \u201cAnd ideally, you want to get the advice of your colleagues. But it\u2019s always taboo \u2014 telling your colleagues you want to go start something and quit your job. I don\u2019t think it needs to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eligible employees present their concepts in a single 30-minute pitch meeting to Freeman and Firedrop founder Pietro Invernizzi<\/a>, with final investment decisions delivered within 24 hours. Alongside capital, accepted founders receive dedicated office space, operational support and ongoing coaching from Omnea\u2019s executive team.<\/p>\n

How the funding works<\/h2>\n

To keep the process simple for first-time business owners, the fund avoids strict, rigid formulas. Omnea has set a rough guidance benchmark of $250,000 against a $10 million valuation \u2014 which would convert to a 2.5% equity stake \u2014 giving new founders a sensible baseline so they aren\u2019t left guessing about early-stage pricing.<\/p>\n

However, the program is built to be highly flexible. Founders can instead opt for an uncapped, discountless Simple Agreement For Future Equity (SAFE<\/a>) note. Under this structure, Omnea provides $250,000 upfront with a valuation to be determined, leaving the final equity percentage open until the startup raises its next major round of capital.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only reason I\u2019ve set guidance is so people know roughly where to start,\u201d Freeman said. \u201cFor 2.5%, we\u2019re not causing dilution issues, and then the rest is up to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The initial $250,000 is intended as a \u201cfirst check\u201d or seed funding. It provides just enough runway for teams to build an initial product and establish a personal salary, removing the financial fear of how to pay bills the day they stop working at Omnea.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fund is set up to be able to write lots of checks, and they don\u2019t all need to land,\u201d Freeman notes. \u201cI suspect Omnean founders will raise big seed rounds of a few million dollars. So the initial $250,000 is just to get them on the journey there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eliminating the \u2018side hustle\u2019 friction<\/h2>\n

The structural flexibility mirrors the program\u2019s primary cultural goal: removing the awkwardness of the hidden corporate side hustle. Traditionally, employees with entrepreneurial ambitions secretly grind on side projects, creating an environment that is healthy for neither their current job nor their future business.<\/p>\n

The Future Founders Fund replaces that secrecy with transparency, allowing employees to openly discuss their ideas with leadership, set a clean transition timeline, and map out their launch.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomebody wants to start a business, but they can\u2019t tell their employer or their team, so they\u2019re awkwardly trying to have side hustles, and it\u2019s not good for their business or their job,\u201d Freeman said. \u201cThat\u2019s not a good outcome, and this will solve that, because they can talk about it, they can have a timeline, they can plan.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sourcing capital from a network of elite operators<\/h2>\n

Rather than drawing on traditional institutional capital, the fund is fueled by a specialized pool of more than 150 angel investors, tech founders and executives who have backed the project individually.<\/p>\n

The advisory and investor network features prominent global tech executives, including former Stripe<\/a> COO Claire Hughes Johnson<\/a>, former Asana<\/a> COO Anne Raimondi<\/a>, Sana<\/a> CEO Joel Hellermark<\/a>, and Wise<\/a> CTO Harsh Sinha<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese people aren\u2019t doing it for money \u2014 they\u2019ve made their money. Many of them are billionaires already,\u201d Freeman told Crunchbase News. \u201cThey do it because they enjoy it and want to give back and help the younger generation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Omnea chose to partner with Firedrop to ensure the fund received dedicated, professional management, leveraging Invernizzi\u2019s existing network and infrastructure designed to support founders at the earliest stages of ideation, before business concepts are even fully formed.<\/p>\n

While no employees have formally entered the program yet \u2014 as the 4.5-year-old startup approaches its first cohort of five-year veterans \u2014 four employees have already signaled their intent to leverage the program to launch future ventures. Two of these individuals have run businesses before, while two are first-time founders. According to Freeman, \u201cbased on their profiles, they\u2019d have no difficulty raising money anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n

An internal ecosystem of \u2018future founders\u2019<\/h2>\n

The fund serves as an aggressive recruitment and talent-density strategy, signaling that the company takes its team\u2019s long-term career arcs seriously.<\/p>\n

\u201cPersonally, if I thought that I wanted to be a founder in the future, I would want to join a company that shows it is going to support me as a founder,\u201d Freeman said. \u201cShowing that we will invest time, energy and money is a pretty strong signal that we\u2019re serious about our people.\u00a0 I think it also shows that we take a long-term view on things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Currently, roughly 15% of Omnea\u2019s 200-person workforce across London and New York consists of former founders, including executives who previously built venture-backed startups like WiredScore<\/a>, Fygo<\/a> and GoodCourse<\/a>. The company\u2019s rigorous talent screening process historically involved interviewing over 10,000 applicants to secure its first 50 hires. Freeman believes it doesn\u2019t make sense to wait until the company grows to 1,000 employees to launch this initiative, as early-stage environments are precisely where great founders are built.<\/p>\n

By openly incentivizing employees to eventually leave and build their own enterprises, Omnea is explicitly optimizing for high-autonomy, founder-type personalities.<\/p>\n

\u201cFuture founders work harder, care more and think outside of the box,\u201d Freeman said. \u201cI think these founder-type folk have the mindset that they will do whatever is needed to get to a successful outcome. Normal people may quit when things get tough; founder-type people lean in. They are energized by solving hard problems. Many of them actually like chaos.\u201d<\/p>\n

This mentality manifests in Omneans catching flights on short notice to assist clients with key meetings and building deep, authentic relationships that cause stakeholders to maintain ties with the team even after leaving their respective companies. Internal operations are structured to mirror this entrepreneurial friction.<\/p>\n

The organization maintains a flat meritocracy in which product managers pitch roadmaps to cross-functional internal teams, engineers set their own deadlines based on direct commercial context, and go-to-market teams operate as localized chief executives.<\/p>\n

From the Tessian blueprint to the McKinsey Model<\/h2>\n

The inspiration for the program stems directly from Freeman\u2019s personal experience as part of the founding team at email security company Tessian<\/a>. When he left Tessian to go out alone, he found the transition significantly more complex and isolating than necessary. While Tessian\u2019s founding team supported him as angel investors, the lack of formal structure meant he had to figure out the mechanics of quitting, fundraising and building pitch decks in an unstructured environment.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe same was true for Piotr Dabkowski<\/a>, co-founder of ElevenLabs<\/a>. And Harry Wetherald<\/a> (Maze<\/a>), Andy Smith<\/a> (Tracebit<\/a>), and James Evans<\/a> (Platformed<\/a>). All of these founders came out of Tessian,\u201d Freeman pointed out. \u201cWe should have made it easier for people to found their own things. That\u2019s why I\u2019m doing it at Omnea.\u201d<\/p>\n

Freeman is entirely unconcerned about losing top talent to this pipeline, noting that if an individual is committed to entrepreneurship, they will inevitably leave anyway. The fund simply captures and backs that drive rather than fight it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf people are going to build a business, they\u2019re going to build a business. My setting up this fund isn\u2019t pushing them out by any stretch,\u201d he said. \u201cIn fact, if you\u2019ve done five years at Omnea, the reality is that you\u2019re highly paid and have lots of equity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ultimately, Freeman emphasizes that this initiative is absolutely not philanthropy, but rather a strategy designed to deliver exceptional financial returns by backing elite operators. He points to McKinsey & Co.<\/a> as an architectural parallel, noting how it invests heavily in its thriving alumni network.<\/p>\n

\u201cMcKinsey has a similar view with their alumni. They invest heavily in them, and people are part of that McKinsey network for life,\u201d he said. \u201cThey have some business objectives there, but actually, a more buoyant entrepreneurial ecosystem helps everyone. I\u2019d be so proud if Omnea can fuel that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Illustration: Dom Guzman<\/a><\/em>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Omnea, a London-based artificial intelligence software company that helps businesses manage their supplier spending, is challenging traditional venture models with the launch of the Omnea Future Founders Fund. Created in partnership with the European angel fund Firedrop, the initiative gives Omnea employees who have completed five years of service a chance to pitch for $250,000 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9228,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[1,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-explore","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/handoli.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/handoli.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/handoli.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/handoli.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/handoli.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9227"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/handoli.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9227\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/handoli.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/handoli.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/handoli.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/handoli.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}