Exclusive: No More Side Hustles: Why AI Startup Omnea Will Give Employees $250K To Openly Plan Their Next Startup

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 in seed funding to launch their own companies. The initiative doesn’t just aim to discourage employees from hiding their entrepreneurial ambitions from leadership but actively supports them. “Starting a business, you don’t want to speak to investors who you don’t know. You want to speak to people you know and trust, who want you to succeed and know what they’re talking about,” said Ben Freeman, founder and CEO of Omnea, in an exclusive interview with Crunchbase News explaining why the company decided to start the initiative. “And ideally, you want to get the advice of your colleagues. But it’s always taboo — telling your colleagues you want to go start something and quit your job. I don’t think it needs to be.” Eligible employees present their concepts in a single 30-minute pitch meeting to Freeman and Firedrop founder Pietro Invernizzi, with final investment decisions delivered within 24 hours. Alongside capital, accepted founders receive dedicated office space, operational support and ongoing coaching from Omnea’s executive team. How the funding works 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 — which would convert to a 2.5% equity stake — giving new founders a sensible baseline so they aren’t left guessing about early-stage pricing. However, the program is built to be highly flexible. Founders can instead opt for an uncapped, discountless Simple Agreement For Future Equity (SAFE) 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. “The only reason I’ve set guidance is so people know roughly where to start,” Freeman said. “For 2.5%, we’re not causing dilution issues, and then the rest is up to them.” The initial $250,000 is intended as a “first check” 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. “The fund is set up to be able to write lots of checks, and they don’t all need to land,” Freeman notes. “I 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.” Eliminating the ‘side hustle’ friction The structural flexibility mirrors the program’s 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. 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. “Somebody wants to start a business, but they can’t tell their employer or their team, so they’re awkwardly trying to have side hustles, and it’s not good for their business or their job,” Freeman said. “That’s not a good outcome, and this will solve that, because they can talk about it, they can have a timeline, they can plan.” Sourcing capital from a network of elite operators 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. The advisory and investor network features prominent global tech executives, including former Stripe COO Claire Hughes Johnson, former Asana COO Anne Raimondi, Sana CEO Joel Hellermark, and Wise CTO Harsh Sinha. “These people aren’t doing it for money — they’ve made their money. Many of them are billionaires already,” Freeman told Crunchbase News. “They do it because they enjoy it and want to give back and help the younger generation.” Omnea chose to partner with Firedrop to ensure the fund received dedicated, professional management, leveraging Invernizzi’s existing network and infrastructure designed to support founders at the earliest stages of ideation, before business concepts are even fully formed. While no employees have formally entered the program yet — as the 4.5-year-old startup approaches its first cohort of five-year veterans — 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, “based on their profiles, they’d have no difficulty raising money anyway.” An internal ecosystem of ‘future founders’ The fund serves as an aggressive recruitment and talent-density strategy, signaling that the company takes its team’s long-term career arcs seriously. “Personally, 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,” Freeman said. “Showing that we will invest time, energy and money is a pretty strong signal that we’re serious about our people. I think it also shows that we take a long-term view on things.” Currently, roughly 15% of Omnea’s 200-person workforce across London and New York consists of former founders, including executives who previously built venture-backed startups like WiredScore, Fygo and GoodCourse. The company’s rigorous talent screening process historically involved interviewing over 10,000 applicants to secure its first 50 hires. Freeman believes it doesn’t 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. By openly incentivizing employees to eventually leave and build their own enterprises, Omnea is explicitly optimizing for high-autonomy, founder-type personalities. “Future founders work harder, care more and think outside of the box,” Freeman said. “I 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.” 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. 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. From the Tessian blueprint to the McKinsey Model The inspiration for the program stems directly from Freeman’s personal experience as part of the founding team at email security company Tessian. When he left Tessian to go out alone, he found the transition significantly more complex and isolating than necessary. While Tessian’s 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. “The same was true for Piotr Dabkowski, co-founder of ElevenLabs. And Harry Wetherald (Maze), Andy Smith (Tracebit), and James Evans (Platformed). All of these founders came out of Tessian,” Freeman pointed out. “We should have made it easier for people to found their own things. That’s why I’m doing it at Omnea.” 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. “If people are going to build a business, they’re going to build a business. My setting up this fund isn’t pushing them out by any stretch,” he said. “In fact, if you’ve done five years at Omnea, the reality is that you’re highly paid and have lots of equity.” 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. as an architectural parallel, noting how it invests heavily in its thriving alumni network. “McKinsey has a similar view with their alumni. They invest heavily in them, and people are part of that McKinsey network for life,” he said. “They have some business objectives there, but actually, a more buoyant entrepreneurial ecosystem helps everyone. I’d be so proud if Omnea can fuel that.” Illustration: Dom Guzman Stay up to date with recent funding rounds, acquisitions, and more with the Crunchbase Daily. 67.1K Followers