1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Frank Malek of Impacteo (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: We have a lot of activity right now in Europe. Recently in the last Fall, we announced a partnership with EIT Health. These are all healthcare IT companies. That’s probably aligned with your investment thesis. How about a few examples of deals that you have invested in and a little bit of a commentary on what is it in those deals that spoke to you? At what stage did you encounter them? How did you encounter them and why did they speak to you?

Frank Malek: Let me start with the trends that we’re seeing because we are looking for trends where we see opportunity. As I mentioned earlier, we love healthcare. We have had several exits around healthcare. The trend that we’re seeing right now is around AI and machine learning (ML). For example, we like where AI and ML technologies can be applied to healthcare and also to improve customer engagement or workflow automation around clinical trials. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Daniel Keiper-Knorr of Speedinvest (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s double click down on your portfolio. In what shape did they come to you? What stage? What is it about them that attracted you enough for you to make the investment?

Daniel Keiper-Knorr: Typically, we try to be the first institutional investor coming on the cap table. However, we don’t see ourselves as a typical institutional investor because we run a very specific model that differs significantly from the standard two and twenty VC model. Apart from managing €50 million as supported by two to three principals and double the number of analysts and associates, our model is different. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Frank Malek of Impacteo (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s say we send you a company. You will figure out from your network who is the likely investor that you want to do the deal with and have them price the deal and lead the deal. Is that what you’re saying?

Frank Malek: Yes, we prefer that. That’s right.

Sramana Mitra: You said you invest all over Europe and North America. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Daniel Keiper-Knorr of Speedinvest (Part 1)

Responding to a popular request, we are now sharing transcripts of our investor podcast interviews in this new series. The following interview with Daniel Keiper-Knorr was recorded in January 2019.

Daniel Keiper-Knorr is Founder and General Partner at Speedinvest, a venture firm based in Vienna. It’s great to see exciting energy and activity in Vienna, one of my favorite cities.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by getting you acquainted with our community. Tell us about you. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Frank Malek of Impacteo (Part 1)

Responding to a popular request, we are now sharing transcripts of our investor podcast interviews in this new series. The following interview with Frank Malek was recorded in January 2019.

Frank Malek is General Partner at Impacteo, an impact investment fund that invests in companies in the US and in Europe. This includes companies in digital health, climate change, FinTech, etc.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to you and to Impacteo. Tell us about your background. What is the investment thesis of Impacteo? >>>

Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: Brock Blake, CEO of Lendio (Part 1)

Small business lending is an extremely important finance function that is full of sand in the gear.

Lendio is working on smoothening the process and adding velocity into the ecosystem. We discuss the future of this corner of FinTech in this fascinating conversation.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself and to Lendio.

Brock Blake: I’m the founder and CEO of Lendio. Lendio is a small business loan marketplace. We are helping small business owners across the United States get access to capital. We’re like the Expedia or the Kayak for business loans, which means we’re not a lender ourselves. We have 75 lenders on our platform. We’ve created an opportunity for a business owner to go and come to one place so that one application can get access to many loan options. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Navid Alipour of Analytics Ventures (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What do you want to convey to the audience as your parting thoughts?

Navid Alipour: We’re getting the word out about what Analytics Ventures is doing. Geographically, all our current companies happen to be in San Diego but our hands aren’t tied. We could launch a company in Berlin, London, or in Des Moines, Iowa.

Sramana Mitra: You’re worried about geography given your high touch venture studio model? >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Navid Alipour of Analytics Ventures (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Are you shooting for unicorns?

Navid Alipour: While we certainly wouldn’t shy away from getting home runs with unicorns, our business model is to stay with that baseball analogy. We want to be able to make money for ourselves and other co-founders by hitting singles and doubles. Your traditional venture fund invests in 20 deals knowing that 10 of them will likely fail and they’ll have a couple of 1x, 2x, or maybe 3x return. They’re betting on one or two home runs to make the fund. >>>