by Carolina Santos | May 16, 2018 | Corporates, Investors, Startups
If you stop to think you’ll realize that life’s all about lists. You have the to-do lists, the supermarket lists, the pros and cons lists. Making lists make us feel we’re in control and that we are making the right decisions.
And because we know that, last week we gave you a list of 25 investors you couldn’t miss at Lisbon Investment Summit – or that maybe you’d like to reconnect with -, but the event has way more people and each one important on its own way.
So we decided to make an even bigger list focused, once again, on investors but dividing them according to their preferences when it comes to investment stages. Check their photos on the gallery, so you make sure you don’t reach out to the wrong person.
Institutional Investors
Patric Gresko – Head of Division – Innovation and Technology Investments at EIF
Angel Investors
Paola Bonomo – Non Executive Director & Angel Investor at Italian Angels for Growth
Pedro Bandeira – Founder CEO at Red Angels
Francisco Pinto – Executive Director at Busy Angel
Maurizio Calcopietro – Investor at Curitiba Angels
Early Stage Deep Tech
Gil Dibner – Founder Managing Partner at Angular Ventures
Stephan Morais – Managing General Partner at Indico Capital Partners
Ton van’t Noordende – Deeptech Investor & CEO at 01 Ventures
Liz Fleming – Principal at Adara Ventures
Pedro Ribeiro Santos – Partner at Armilar Venture Partners
Early Stage
Jaime Novoa – Investor at KFund
Pedro Falcão – Managing Partner at LC Ventures
Philipp Moehring – Venture Hacker at Angellist
Ben Marrel – Founding Partner at Breega
Laura Roguet – Associate at Korelya Capital
Pierre Yves Meerschman – Co-founder & investor at Daphni
Stephanie Hospital – Founder at OneRagtime
Andrew J Scott – Founding Partner at 7percent Ventures
Sean Seton-Rogers – Partner with PROfounders
Alexandre Flamant – Investor at Notion Capital
Prasad Vanga – Founder & CEO at Anthill Ventures
Joao Kepler Braga – Partner at Bossa Nova Investimentos
Daniel Ibri – Co-founder and Partner at Mindset Ventures
Javier Torremocha – Founding Partner – Kibo Ventures
Gonzalo Tradacete – CEO at Faraday Ventures Partners
Sector Specific
Alexandre Santos – Chief Investment Officer at SONAE IM
Maria Antonia Saldanha – Director of PAYFORWARD Innovation Program at SIBS
Richard Muirhead – Founding Partner at Fabric Ventures
José del Barrio – CEO and Founder Samaipata Ventures
Ellen Bark-Lindhout – Co founder at Collider
Celso Martinho – CEO and Founding Partner at Bright Pixel
Valentina Milanova – Venture Associate at Founder Factory
Ricardo Sequerra – Principal at Cherry Ventures
Roberto Saint-Malo – Managing Partner at BetaAngels
François-Xavier Dedde – Investment Manager at Omnes Capital
António Miguel – Managing Director at Maze Impact
Orson Stadler – Principal at Mustard Seed VC
Marco Fernandes– President at PME Investimentos
Henrique Gomes – Investment Analyst – Novabase capital
Walter Palma – Investment Direct at Caixa Capital
Later Stage Investors
Nicolas Debock – IDinvest
Felix Petersen – Managing Director Europe at Samsung Next
Tobias Schirmer – Managing Partner at Join Capital
Elliot O’Connor – Investor at Firstminute capital
Matthew Weigand – Principal at Accel Partners
Ashley Carroll – Partner at Social Capital
Make sure you get your ticket here.
by Carolina Santos | Apr 17, 2018 | Startups
The LIS Pitch Competition 2018 was announced alongside the rules and what the winner is taking home. The rules are simple: you have 3 minutes to pitch and 5 minutes of Q&A. The winner is taking home 1000€ (courtesy of Beta-i), two tickets for SingularityU Summit (courtesy of the José de Mello Group) and access to Grow by José de Mello Group (which includes a bunch of treats like access to a specialized mentors network, access to the Group’s companies and possible later stage funding).
Despite this being no small thing it’s important to say that pitching in front of startup-hungry investors comes with a whole lot of perks, like joining Techstars Paris, for example. Proof of that is Snapswap. They learned about the Pitch Competition when they were at SIBS Pay Forward and since they were actively exploring the Portuguese market at the time they thought it would be a great platform to showcase their solution.
Besides attracting a lot of interest during their pitch they also had a booth and ended up making valuable contacts with Portuguese financial institutions. According to Iaroslav Kovshikov, the Project Coordinator at Snapwap, “Denis (CEO) got challenging and smart questions during Q&A session”, what allowed them to explain well their solution and that happened because “the jury was well selected”.
Following that, Denis ended up having a series of meetings with Bertier Luyt, Managing Director at Techstar Paris – who’s going to be attending LIS again this year – the first one during Lisbon Investment Summit 17 and then things went from there.
When asked if LIS played an important role in the course of their startup’s life, Iaroslav said “definitely! Mainly because we were selected to Techstars Paris and also we obtained some prospects with whom we’re still discussing further cooperation with”.
Even though Snapswap is not attending this year’s summit due to a tight schedule, they say they “keep warm memories of LIS and Lisbon”, adding that they consider to come back in a few years to showcase their new products and meet other startups.
Applications close on April 30 and we’re waiting for yours. Like we’ll always be waiting for Snapswap return with open arms.
by Carolina Santos | Mar 22, 2018 | Startups
Lisbon Investment Summit is less than three months away and the excitement is growing by the day. After I spoke with Jenny Fielding, I interviewed Zach Coelius, the Managing Partner at Coelius Capital, an advisor and investor in early stage technology companies.
Zach is a first timer in Lisbon Investment Summit and besides talking about his expectations for LIS and his amazing 1B exit, we talked about the Republican Party and gun control. In the end I asked him to teach me in June how to be recommended for “general awesomeness” on LinkedIn, like he is.
Read the whole interview below and make sure you register here for the Lisbon Investment Summit 2018, on June 6-7.
It’s your first time as a speaker at Lisbon Investment Summit, what are your expectations?
I’ve heard great things and I love Lisbon. One of the things that as an investor I really look for are the opportunities to explore the amazing stuff that is happening outside Silicon Valley. If you look at the history of innovation and technology the real exciting stuff tend to happen on the edges, I think international problems, international startups and international teams are some of the most exciting edges in technology right now, so Lisbon is a great opportunity to go see some cool stuff.
Your sister wrote that you have “an amazing ability to understand and see markets emerge before they become obvious”. Can you tell us which markets are emerging that aren’t obvious?
I don’t know if I necessarily see markets emerging but I like to pride myself on getting to listen to entrepreneurs who have discovered an emerging market. Truly if I knew where those new markets were I would just go start a new company to do it. The secret to the investing business is that entrepreneurs are the ones who discover those things and then hopefully they’ll share it with me and hopefully I’ll be smart enough to listen to them and jump on board for the crazy ride that is building a company. Obviously there’s a ton of interesting stuff happening all over the world, there’s stuff happening in crypto, there’s stuff happening in every market in fintech, but the best opportunities are found underneath the rocks and I don’t know where those are.
You got a 1B exit, what did you feel?
When it happened I woke up and I was shocked, it’s a huge number I never would have expected that. As a matter of fact, I’m still in shock.
Do you still find it weird that people call you “unicorn whisperer”?
(Laughs) it’s super weird. I don’t know what to say about that, but it works, people think it’s funny so I don’t mind. I’ve had worse nicknames so I’ll go with what I can get.
To be a successful entrepreneur is it hard work or is it luck?
Both. If you don’t work hard as an entrepreneur you better be really lucky and hope that you can win the lottery. On the other hand if you work hard you probably don’t have to be as lucky and you can figure out how to get to the right place and do great things. I believe that 90% of success is finding magic, find a product that your customers are desperate for and you can solve their problems. It’s hard work to find that, it’s one of the hardest things in the world. Hard work goes a long way in making things happen.
There’s this recommendation on LinkedIn from a friend of yours that says: “You work mornings, nights, weekends and holidays”.
Now that I live a cushy and better life I don’t think I work nearly as hard as my entrepreneurs do by an order of magnitude. Being an entrepreneur is the hardest job in the world because you can work yourself to death and still not do enough, compared to those guys and young ladies I’m living a very cushy life right now.
If an entrepreneur wants to reach out to you at Lisbon Investment Summit what do you recommend?
The best way to get a hold of me is LinkedIn or just grab me when i’m walking around.
As an investor, do you keep in touch with the startups you’ve invested in?
Absolutely. I’m a 4 time entrepreneur, I spent 20 years as an entrepreneur and I love to pretend I’m still useful. My companies will call me up and I get to help out on fun problems and I can’t really do that unless I keep in touch and stay on top of what they’re up to. I get to pretend I’m still in the game even though I’m definitely not.
You tweeted “being a VC is like having hordes of people throwing rocks at you in terms of requests for your time. But some of those rocks are diamonds”. Do you speak with everybody who reaches out to you?
Obviously not. When you give away money for free a lot of people call you and they’re like “hey do you want to give me some money?”, there’s a lot of people who are always trying to raise money. I look for stuff that is not obvious, that’s exciting. I look for entrepreneurs who can communicate in a single sentence, something that catches my eye, that is unique and different. I look for new things. A lot of the startups that are trying to raise money from me I’m just not the right fit for, because I don’t know their market and I don’t get excited about the problems that they’re working on.
What would your advice be for startups struggling to find investment?
Finding the magic is the hard part. When the startups are struggling to raise money often times my suggestion to them is that maybe they haven’t found it yet, they got to keep looking to find the magic. A lot of entrepreneurs don’t want to hear that they think they know the right answer. I don’t think that’s always true, sometimes they haven’t found it.
Second thing is sometimes people don’t like your market for one reason or another and it’s actually really good for the entrepreneur when that’s true, because that means your competitors aren’t being able to raise money either so that means you get to go slower and be more careful. Sometimes it’s to your best interest when it’s difficult to raise money because your market is difficult.
Truth is: raising money is one of the hardest things in the world to do, you have to communicate what you’re doing in a very short period of time to people who like me tend to be ignorant about your market and don’t know as much as you do. It’s a challenge.
You’re pretty vocal on Twitter about the Republican Party and also gun control. What’s your take on that?
Actually I agree with a large percentage of the traditional republican position on economics. I’m a capitalist, I believe in the market, I believe in the power of companies to change the world, I believe in allowing the entrepreneurs to do great things and I think the Republican Party, at least historically, not anymore, used to really stand for that. So I think a lot of my frustrations with the current Republican Party is that they don’t stand for what I really thought they did and that makes me really angry. I think that their positions on gun control, and the environment and liberty, the rights of individuals to love who they want and to live the lives that they want are wrong, totally wrong.
In our country we sell weapons that are designed to kill people, their only purpose is to kill people and it’s easier to buy them than it is to buy a beer, that’s totally wrong, it’s totally silly, it’s stupid and it needs to stop. When you go hunting for deers in Minnesota where i grow up you’re only allowed to have 5 bullets in your gun because anything more than that would be unfair yet we are willing to sell people guns that hold 50 bullets and that makes me angry.
Could you teach me in June how to have “general awesomeness” as a skill on LinkedIn like you?
I can try. Everyday I just try to do a little better, it’s not clear I’m all that good at things. But I’m trying.
by tombento | Mar 7, 2018 | Investors
On June 5th 2017, a group of 30 aspiring angel investors sat in front of an improvised stage at Chiado 8 in Lisbon, waiting to hear the gospel from 7 experienced investors. The goal of this event, anti-climactically named Investors Academy, was to provide participants with the unique chance to learn best practices, first-hand experiences and receive concrete help on how to define their investment roadmap from seasoned players.
The idea was Beta-i’s brainchild. But the immersive, full-day program was co-designed and developed along with its speakers: Marvin Liao, David Haynes, Rodrigo Martinez, Ricardo Sequerra, Cristina Fonseca, Luís Roquette and Alex Hoye.
We’ve been in the event curation business for a while and, truthfully, there’s a lot stuff out there that is just plain vanilla (we share the blame on this as well). But what we’ve come to learn is that when you bring speakers on board and actually involve them in the process of designing the audience’s experience (a tough job because it’s a thin line between being inclusive and just plain bothersome) something magical happens.
And I believe that’s what happened at the Investors Academy in 2017. Speakers are present on stage at all times during each other’s presentations, and have carte blanche to intervene and share thoughts on what’s being discussed. The audience is heavily encouraged to do the same. As a result, when a participant asked “how hard is it to invest in startups?”, Marvin Liao’s answer was simply: “in this game, if you’re not willing to lose all your money, you should quit while you’re ahead.” That’s the kind of honesty that matters.
With a range of topics from Investment Lifecycle, Different Approaches to Investing, What Post Seed VCs Are Looking For, The Impact of Negotiating Terms and The Importance of Building Relationships with Founders, our goal is to increase the odds in favour of aspiring investors.
The Investors Academy will be back, with a new roster of speakers and a limited class, this time on June 5th 2018. If you’re looking to take your investor skills to the next level, make sure you get one of the 30 Ultimate Investor Ticket available.
