Fede Pirzio-Biroli
Founding Partner & Chairman, Playfair Capital. On 1 show, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
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Fede Pirzio-Biroli founded London-based pre-seed venture firm Playfair Capital in 2013, backing technology companies including Stripe, Thought Machine, Andela, and DueDil. After handing day-to-day fund operations to partners, he relocated to East Africa to mentor and angel-invest in startups across Sub-Saharan Africa.
1shows
1appearances
13statements
2resolved
2supported
0contradicted
100%fully supported
Everything Fede Pirzio-Biroli said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Pirzio-Biroli: NGO jobs siphon talent away from entrepreneurship in developing economies
“Every single one of them that gets kind of attracted to going to work for an NGO comes at the opportunity cost of not becoming an entrepreneur. And actually, small business and entrepreneurship is what grows an economy. That's what contributes to GDP. That's w…”
Pirzio-Biroli: SEIS tax relief flooded London startups with unsmart capital
“SEIS has, you know, has really come into its stride since 2011, and basically, you know, created a whole new pot of capital, which is you know, sometimes not motivated to deploy the capital for the right reasons. They're seeing it as a de-risked investment. An…”
Playfair Capital is structured with founder Fede Pirzio-Biroli as sole LP
“So when, so today, Playfair Capital is a limited liability partnership. So it is a venture capital firm in every sense of the word, legally speaking as well. But it's a venture capital firm which doesn't have the usual motivations and incentives of venture cap…”
Playfair Capital allocates 80% carry to Pirzio-Biroli and 20% to team
“And I think, you know, if we look, if kind of, if I changed my thinking from that of an angel to thinking about things more within the fund structure under the current arrangement, just like a standard fund, which has, you know, 80% of the carry going to LPs a…”
Pirzio-Biroli: VCs do just as much operational work for smaller checks
“Practically speaking, we always end up doing just as much work for smaller Ticket sizes. So, so it really doesn't make sense to do things kind of below that.”
Pirzio-Biroli: Co-working spaces stop making economic sense beyond 15 employees
“It makes sense until, you know, you're about 15 people, roughly. And then it becomes kind of, you know, and then organically it starts making sense, economically, to move into a space of your own.”
Pirzio-Biroli: VCs pay higher valuations for serial entrepreneurs
“Investors often pay more for serial entrepreneurs, people who have been through kind of ups and downs, hiring, firing you know, the pains of having to Having to wind a company down.”
Pirzio-Biroli: Converting leads without capital signals post-funding success
“Versatility and demonstrating kind of demonstrating, you know, Kind of effectively outreaching to people and converting, converting leads with no money really translates as something positive once funding comes around.”
Pirzio-Biroli plans to expand Playfair Capital into Sub-Saharan Africa
“I started deploying capital here and not in, in the, kind of, in, in emerging economies, but that was more, kind of, to cut my teeth with a view to go and become operational in Sub-Saharan Africa later on.”
Playfair Capital writes average seed checks of £200,000 to £250,000
“So the average ticket size is somewhere between 202 150 K.”
Playfair Capital provides portfolio startups with a free in-house technical recruiter
“We've taken on a head of talent who was formerly at Facebook and Google before that, who's a technical recruiter. And we are deploying them amongst portfolio companies to hire CTOs, front-end, back-end, full-stack devs entirely engineering-focused at our cost …”
Playfair Capital holds active investments in two Kenyan and two Nigerian startups
“We, I, so we now have two companies in Kenya two companies in Nigeria And we're looking at more and more.”
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Fede's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 20VCLEDGER | Founding Partner & Chairman, Playfair Capital | 1 | 13 | 100% 2/2 | full record on 20VC → |