BIZBarcelona - Salón Emprendedor

Straight to the point. Jerry Engel asked the participants of the first round table of the day one idea about where Capital Risk is moving to.

David Berry, from Flagships Ventures, pointed out the need to focus on “where the next disruption comes from”. Garret Gruener, from Alta Partners, underlined that even if Venture Capital is getting “more ambitious”, “VC projects are taking longer to complete“. Some, more than 10 years. Randy Komisar, from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, enhanced that “Venture Capital is still about people” and he stressed that “to do great things you need to work with great entrepreneurs, who are efficient and focused“.

On the other hand, Phil Sanderson, from IDG Ventures, denied there is another tech emerging bubble, and he emphasized there is “a huge opportunity for investors and entrepreneurs in the gaming area“. “The revenues of Zynga [the company which has developped Farmville on Facebook] are very real”, he said.

Eventually, Joël Jean-Mairet, from YSIOS, and Jim Hornthal, from CMEA Capital, highlighted the opportunities in the cleantech and biotech sectors. In that sense, Hornthal underscored the need of “finding a needle in a haystack versus finding a haystack of needles.”

To close the round table, Engel asked the participants to tell the audience where to place their bets. The majority agree that cleantech and biotech are good shots, but Komisar insisted on that the most important thing is “finding what makes sense to you and follow your passions“.

Jeff Bussgang (Image from: flybridge.com)

Jeff Bussgang knows the secrets of the world of Venture Capital (VC) and the insights of entrepreneurship. He has played on both sides and writes about it in his blog, Seeing both sides. His book Mastering the VC game gives more details on this high-stakes game with interesting interviews to successful entrepreneurs, including Twitter’s Jack Dorsey and LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman. Jeff has kindly answered to HitBarcelona questions.

- Seeing both sides… to stay where? Which one of them do you prefer?

I love doing what I am doing today – I enjoy working with my partners to help build numerous great companies in parallel rather than one at a time in a serial fashion.

-The VC game is much more established in the US than in Europe… Do you think VC is essential to be more effective in financing and launching startups?

I wouldn’t say VC is essential, but it helps! It helps to have more financial resources and it helps to have experienced board members and advisors who have “seen the movie before” and can provide invaluable advice along the way.

-Randy Komisar says web startups might not need VC. What do you think about it?

It all depends on the type of start-up and the situation. If the company can get their product out and build revenue quickly and focus on a small niche, perhaps he is right. But if the business is ambitious and is pursuing a large market opportunity, then even so-called capital-efficient businesses tend to raise capital in order to scale quickly and build distribution.

“It is the perfect blend of our proven company building experience and the capital we provide that will turn medical innovations into commercial successes within the smallest timeframe possible”.

Michiel de Haan is the founder of Atlas Venture, a venture capital company currently managing USD 2.2 billion, from offices in Boston, London, Paris and Munich. Atlas has been involved in more than 300 venture-backed companies. From 1980 to 2000 Michiel served as managing partner of Atlas Venture. His personal venture management involvement within Atlas was focused on Life Science companies in which he held numerous board seats.

As General Partner of Aescap these are their goals:

“We believe that we can accelerate the value creation of medical ventures by:
•    Providing capital and planning and arranging future investment rounds
•    Being a trusted sparring partner in all business disciplines
•    Helping to build strong management and solid teams
•    Determining the best strategic partner or first customer for the business
•    Opening up our comprehensive network in biomedics, venture capital  and other sectors
Putting the highly relevant real-life experiences that our team members have, to use for the entrepreneurs we work with. At Aescap Venture, our partners have extensive experience and proven performance to help create successful businesses. As a result of our focus and dedication in the medical market we fully understand the opportunities and threats within this challenging arena. Yet the most valuable asset is our multi-disciplinary team approach. This allows us to be a trusted, solid sparring partner on all topics of entrepreneurship.

Companies are judged on the following criteria: key personnel, uniqueness/patents, product/market combinations, time-to-market, and envisaged exit opportunity.
We invest in companies active in the most promising segments in the medical industry. Companies using technologies that are sufficiently mature to yield realistic product-opportunities as well as cashflow from licensing deals. These technologies include, but are not limited to:
•    use of existing drugs/biosimilars for ‘new’ indications
•    personalised medicine and its screening devices
•    new antibiotics
•    advanced drug supply of existing compounds
•    gene delivery for vaccines and gene therapy
•    implants for the treatment of handicapped vision, Parkinson’s, etc.

‘Right now, Europe has a strong scientific basis, however, with insufficient commercialization,’ said Michiel de Haan. ‘Europe’s promising biomedical investment climate convinces us that our next investments will be just as lucrative as our previous ones. Aescap’s investments spread their risk over multiple products / market combinations through which they can create substantial market value. We sincerely believe that we will generate the same top quartile profits for our investors as we have done in the past.’
In 1974 Michiel received an MBA from Erasmus University in Rotterdam. From 1974 until 1980 he worked at NMB (now ING). He represented the bank in the earliest Dutch Venture Capital Funds and started NMB-Participatie, which he later bought to create Atlas Venture.

Gina Domanig is the Conference Chairperson of the CleanTech Innovation Marketplace, a combination-day of global conference, exhibitions and unique business tournament to give investors and entrepreneurs high-value insights into the very latest ideas and drivers behind clean technology innovation around the world.

Gina Domanig is responsible for the venture capital activities of Emerald Technology Ventures AG in the fields of energy, materials, water, and nutrition. As the Managing Partner, she is based at the firm’s Zurich office, formerly SAM Private Equity which was spun out of SAM Sustainable Asset Management in 2007.

Emerald Technology Ventures AG is a venture capital firm specializing in early and expansion stage investments. The firm seeks to investment in companies in the clean technology sectors with a focus on energy, materials, and water and nutrition sector. It invests in companies based in Europe and North America.

She has over 20 years of international business experience including banking, M&A, strategic development, and venture capital. Mrs. Domanig’s industry experience includes medical technology, environmental technology, industrial electronics, advanced materials, and power generation.

Gina. Domanig received M.B.A. degrees from Thunderbird in Arizona and ESADE in Barcelona and holds an M.I.M. and a B.A. in Finance.

The CleanTech Innovation Marketplace will be held next June 18th, 2009, incide the internacional congress HiT Barcelona.