Kiyan Zandiyeh, CIO of Sturgeon Capital, explains how tech venture capital mitigates political and governance risk compared to traditional private equity.
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“The difference is that you have a tangible asset that it relatively is operationally simple to run. There's a positive correlation between the success of it and the willingness of the government to ultimately want to take it off you at some point in time, because there is a real underlying tangible asset that they can take. It's pretty easy to install someone that can run it and generalizing. You can have governance concerns. If you translate it into on a technology side, one, you're not dealing in tangible assets. There's intangible assets. There's no land. There's nothing really to take to their operationally complex businesses to run”
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More from Kiyan Zandiyeh
Opinion
Zandiyeh: VC fixation on product-market fit ignores underlying business economics
“For many years now, what I think has been a disservice to the venture industry is this concept of product market fit. What it effectively has entailed from an investment strategy perspective is that when a company reaches or sees some level of demand, Irrespec…”
Kiyan ZandiyehMay 25, 2023▶ 46:48Kiyan Zandiyeh – Empty Rooms: Venture Capital on the Emerging Frontier at Sturgeon Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.317)
AssertionNot checkable as stated
Zandiyeh: Major fashion brands quadruple volume with Bangladeshi portfolio startup within year one
“Now, in this case, and specifically, the company has already the relationships of the likes of the Inditex, the H&Ms, the large brands of the world, where what we see is basically in the first year, as soon as these brands start working with them, they almost …”
Kiyan ZandiyehMay 25, 2023▶ 22:41Kiyan Zandiyeh – Empty Rooms: Venture Capital on the Emerging Frontier at Sturgeon Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.317)
AssertionContradicted
Zandiyeh: Average upper-quartile venture capital DPI is only 1.76
“I think it explains why the average upper quartile DPI is 1.76. The fund sizes cannot even cope with generating that much enterprise value.”
Kiyan ZandiyehMay 25, 2023▶ 30:51Kiyan Zandiyeh – Empty Rooms: Venture Capital on the Emerging Frontier at Sturgeon Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.317)
AssertionPartly supported
Zandiyeh: Bangladesh has 170M people, 8th largest smartphone base, only 2 VCs
“So you take a country like Bangladesh, hundred and seventy million people, eighth largest smartphone user base in the world. As I said, GDP per capita higher than India. You only have two VCs in the whole country.”
Kiyan ZandiyehMay 25, 2023▶ 32:21Kiyan Zandiyeh – Empty Rooms: Venture Capital on the Emerging Frontier at Sturgeon Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.317)
AssertionPartly supported
Zandiyeh: Uzbek banks ignore SMEs despite driving 60% of GDP
“If you look at the banking sector, effectively, 80% of that banking sector only does corporate and government lending. There's no real retail banking. There's no real banking to small to mid-sized businesses. Small to mid-sized businesses are about 60% of the …”
Kiyan ZandiyehMay 25, 2023▶ 33:09Kiyan Zandiyeh – Empty Rooms: Venture Capital on the Emerging Frontier at Sturgeon Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.317)
Disclosure
Zandiyeh: Raised approximately $3M from three investors as a teenager
“It was around three million actually, which actually came from basically free investors, which were largely Individuals that had known me since I was a little kid”
Kiyan ZandiyehMay 25, 2023▶ 5:12Kiyan Zandiyeh – Empty Rooms: Venture Capital on the Emerging Frontier at Sturgeon Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.317)
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