The Exchanges

Q Good, man. All right. What is, so what is global venture capital kind of mean when you're, especially when you're doing it in a corporate environment?

A Right, so our, our parent company, Transamerica in the U.S., and, and Agon globally, um, is a global asset management firm, or global, uh, insurance and investment firm, and so we act on behalf of the whole group. We have investments in, in India, we have investments in Germany, we have investments, our, our, our headquarters in the Netherlands, so my, one of my teammates sits there, and we look at, uh, deals for Agon UK, we're looking with our Asia group, uh, and then obviously in the U.S. and Canada as well, and we're doing just a little bit so far, starting with Brazil, Um, because we have a group down there called Monjural Egon. Um, they're starting to spin up operations there. And then again, there's all kind of, they're nothing in Africa yet, but they're, they're starting to look at expansion. And so we kind of act on behalf of all of them.

AI assessment note: “we act on behalf of the whole group. We have investments in, in India”

Q Got it. And so, how are you thinking about the investments? Is it more about getting information rights to help your parent company stay agile, or is it truly like a typical VC, you're trying to get that big hundred-x return to, to make the rest of the portfolio look good?

A Yeah, for us, it's, it's, it's both. Um, I think if, if I had to lean a little bit, I'd probably lean from the corporate perspective a little more strategic. Um, although when it comes to information rights for companies, we don't share company information with our parent company. We share industry trends. We share what they're doing. We share learnings from them. Um, but we won't share, we refuse to share revenue numbers, uh, with our parent company. They don't, they don't need that stuff. We don't want, um, the, the corporate parent to be, uh, too involved in the business because we want our portfolio companies to work with us and then without us Go be successful with everybody else, too, because to the other side of the coin, we're looking at chasing returns as a venture fund, and so the best way for that is not to take, you know, majority stakes and be the sole investor in a company and have them kind of build custom software for us. That's not a venture deal. It's to take minority stakes, just like any other VC, and, you know, work with a startup, create those partnership opportunities that can be valuable, but help them grow to the point where they can be, you know, hopefully somewhere between a, depending on the stage, a 10 to Or maybe a five to a 50 or a hundred X. I mean, a hundred X is a pretty lucky shot, but, uh, uh, it would be certainly a welcome lucky shot if we …

AI assessment note: “Yeah, for us, it's, it's, it's both.”

Q Tell me what those deals look like. Like, what does a fund to fund deal look like for you?

A Yeah. I mean, it was, it was pretty simple with FinTech Collective, which was one of our, I think our first deal, it was just, you know, we, we invested in their first fund. It was a very small fund because Brooks and Gareth are experts in FinTech and they're great at the New York seed stage FinTech market and now kind of the U S FinTech market. And so, uh, it was really to kind of back them to kind of get access to their knowledge and their experience. And then also to, um, their, their deal flow. And they see sort of everything in that early seed stage FinTech space, which is relevant to us as well. And so, Um, they can do whatever deals they want, but eventually, you know, some of those deals become relevant to us. Um, we're co-investors in Next Capital together, for example, um, and they've put others on the table, and occasionally we'll, we'll shoot deals we're looking at by them for their insights, because we respect their opinion, and so, um, the same thing was done with Lear Hippo Ventures, um, because my boss knew Eric Hippo, and Eric was at SoftBank. My boss was running Deutsche Telekom's Venture Fund, uh, and they just have a good relationship, and Lear is kind of experts in digital marketing, and that's highly relevant for a big insurance company trying to figure out how to Attract customers of tomorrow.

AI assessment note: “we invested in their first fund... it was really to kind of back them”

Q you know, football on college, clearly competitive hustler, uh, great, great kind of getting people connected. You sent off many intros for me, which, which were super helpful. Um, why do you do this? Like, like, are, do you see the, do you get the potential upside just like a typical LP at a regular VC fund would like a two and 20 model? Like how do you get paid?

A Yeah, so I mean, I get a salary, and then we get bonuses, which comes with the corporate structure. If we hit a Facebook-type deal, we'll have some type of long-term incentive plan. Because we're not investors in our own fund, we don't get carry in the traditional sense, and that's fine. To be honest, I'm not sure I would invest in my fund right now, just because we do a lot of good deals, but it's occasionally have to miss them because they're not strategic enough. You know, the funny story we always tell my boss's previous life is, you know, he missed Be Around Facebook and Seed Stage Ways. And a round Skype because Deutsche Telekom said these aren't strategic enough to us. I mean, if you had an independent fund had done all three of those deals, you'd be a billionaire. Uh, you know, you'd have your IRR would be like a billion percent or something, you know? And so, um, but occasionally we have to miss deals like that. And so I had my first one, uh, recently I, we had a company called Moat that I really loved, but it wasn't strategic enough. And they sold that for the reported price was eight 50 to a billion and it was a lot less than we had a chance at it. And so, Um, founder was incredible there, and so I just, yeah, that's one that I wish we could have done, but we couldn't, and so would you invest in your own fund when you don't have complete control over which deals we d…

AI assessment note: “I get a salary, and then we get bonuses... we don't get carry”

Q How many deals do you look at in a given month?

A Given the month, I mean, if, in a month, I mean, I can do, like, for, like, per year, I'll see, essentially, when you, when you add in, I'll probably see somewhere like a hundred different opportunities per week, just reading newsletters and stuff, um, so I'll see, say, 5000 a year, I'll, like, actually look at maybe 500 of those, like, a little bit deeper, like, do a little homework on each one, that's, like, 10 a week, and then from that, I'll probably meet with two 50, sorry, not two 50, I'll probably do a little bit deeper dive on, like, two 50, meet with, Um, well, yeah, I'll do calls with maybe five a week. That's about right. Maybe, maybe five to 10 a week. So somewhere between two 5500 deeper meetings with maybe a hundred to one 50 per year, uh, where we kind of do multiple meetings and then, you know, we'll, we'll deep due diligence on maybe, uh, 25 and then we'll do like five investments.

AI assessment note: “I'll see, say, 5000 a year, I'll, like, actually look at maybe 500”

Q And so, um, what are the top two U S regions you want to go into that you're not in yet?

A That, for, for us, for the fund, or, I mean, I'd like to start doing more in Asia, just because our Asian group, we have a new CEO of Agon Asia, and a new, like, um, head of strategy there. The head of strategy is a startup guy, uh, and so he, he's really, really progressive, and the head of Asia is really open to working with us, so there's a lot of good opportunities that can be done there, and again, there's, like, kind of that consortium of, like, 10 countries, Malaysia, and I think the Philippines is part of that, and Indonesia, where you have, like, hundreds of millions of people that you can reach, um, Uh, with, with tech products. You know, the Singapore government is really big on kind of creating startup opportunities there, because you have so many people you can reach so quickly, and so there's, there's huge opportunities for quick scale that are more difficult in the U.S.

AI assessment note: “I'd like to start doing more in Asia, just because our Asian group”