1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Vinny Lingham of NewTown Partners (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 Vinny Lingham was recorded in November 2017.

Vinny Lingham, Co-founder and CEO, Civic.com, and Managing Partner of Newtown Partners, discusses his investment thesis in B-to-C seed ventures. We also discuss the role ICOs are playing in filling the gaps in certain seed-stage ventures.

Sramana Mitra: So you’ve hadn’t an interesting entrepreneur journey. Tell us about Gyft.

Vinny Lingham: Gyft is my third company. It was a mobile gift card company which digitized gift cards that allowed us not only to store gift cards in our wallet but also in digital wallets on your phone. I sold the company to First Data about three years ago. First Data went to IPO with them and then I left to start Civic which is my venture focusing on digital ID.

Sramana Mitra: What were your first two ventures?

Vinny Lingham: The first one was Clicks2Customers, which is a page search marketing company. It was back in the days when Google was launching and Google didn’t have the skills and tools to run campaigns. We quickly grew the business to quite a big search marketing company. It’s been merged a couple of times. I sold in 2007. Then I started my other company called Yola, which is a website application platform. We power ISP’s around the world. I still have a stake in that business. It’s still running in San Francisco.

Sramana Mitra: What about Civic?

Vinny Lingham: Civic is a digital ID platform. We’re trying to make it possible to not have to use usernames and passwords anymore anywhere you go.

Sramana Mitra: Tell us a little bit about your South African roots and then we’ll get to NewTown Partners.

Vinny Lingham: I was born in South Africa in 1979 during the peak era of apartheid. I’m very grateful to Nelson Mandela for freeing the country. I’ve been very interested in the democratic process and how democracy spreads around the world, which is one of the reasons why I started Civic. I left in 2008 to move to Silicon Valley.

Sramana Mitra: All your startup activity has been in Silicon Valley or in South Africa?

Vinny Lingham: My first company was started in South Africa. My second was started there, but scaled in San Francisco.

Sramana Mitra: Tell us about NewTown Partners. What is the focus? How big is the fund? What size investments are you making?

Vinny Lingham: It’s a private evergreen fund. We make investments anywhere from $25,000 to $500,000. We just backed a company called Wala recently. They’re trying to tokenize the banking system in Africa. You could use cryptographic tokens and make it cheaper for people to transact.

Sramana Mitra: How would you characterize the types of ventures that you like to focus on – industry sector, B2B or B2C, stage?

Vinny Lingham: We like very early stage. We don’t mind high risk. It’s always about the entrepreneur. First of all, we find entrepreneurs that we like. We like the sophisticated entrepreneurs. It’s early stage. Africa is one of those places where there’re a lot of oligopolies. I like the idea that two entrepreneurs can disrupt incumbents.

Sramana Mitra: You started talking about geography a few times. You’re focusing on South Africa, but you also do companies outside of South Africa. Can you elaborate a bit on your geographical boundaries or footprint?

Vinny Lingham:  I’m investing in a company in Germany. They’re a search engine for Airbnb types of services. You could effectively see what’s available in the country by looking at the sites that have inventory available. Another company is looking at doing cancer research using AI and machine learning. I also have investments in South America in the cryptography space. It’s all over the world.

Sramana Mitra: I’m going to flip the question now. What trends do you see in your deal flow? In particular, what are the trends in Africa? What kind of entrepreneurs are you seeing? What are they doing? What kinds of ideas are interesting in Africa?

Vinny Lingham: The most interesting trend right now is cryptotokens and ICOs.  People in Africa can use token sales and ICOs to raise capital from a worldwide audience. We’re seeing more of this happen across the board. Africa, in particular, is seeing entrepreneurs rethinking their business models to become more token-based business models.

This segment is part 1 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Vinny Lingham of NewTown Partners
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