1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Harald Nieder of Redalpine Venture Partners (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: B2B versus B2C, what’s your comfort zone?

Harald Nierde: We’re, in general, open. We don’t have a focus on either. So, we invest in both. If you look at the portfolio, we have both cases in there. We actually do like to have a mix in there.

We’ll probably be a bit more B2B. But that’s a general phenomenon with a lot of other VCs as well. Because on the B2C side, we have powerful platforms like Amazon and Facebook, which in some cases just makes it a bit harder on the B2C side. But in general, if there are opportunities, we do both.

Sramana Mitra: Now, I’d like to do a few examples of what you’ve invested in. As you take us through some of those case studies, help us understand when did you first encounter the founders and the deal. What is it about this particular deal that convinced you to write a check?

Harald Nieder: We can look at N26, which is fairly well known as one of the leading smartphone-based banks. We invested in the seed round. First of all, we got in touch with the founders. So, we found them to have, what we call, a proactive approach. That’s one way that we access our deal flow – starting topics that we’re interested in.

At that time, we were looking at mobile banking. We’re looking at the pieces that are active throughout our core geography. The founders of N26 were one of the teams that we were looking at. There were a couple of others that we looked at, but in the end we went for N26 for a variety of reasons.

One was the fact that they had been working together and they had been working together on a similar product. They had another project before. That was a bank account where parents could control the finances of the kids. It was very well-received in the market. They proved that they can build a very good product.

As the next product, they built the full bank account for adults, which is still the N26 core product. We also liked a lot that they’re really on eye level. We like to invest in founding teams that are bailouts. They’re usually two to three founders.

We have much better experience with that setup than with single founders. It’s one of the cases where we actually invested before they had the first metrics. It was effective for the reasons that I said before. It’s one of the examples where we use flexibility. That’s one way how we approach or how we find our founders in the early stage.

Sramana Mitra: How did these people find you?

Harald Nieder: We found them. That’s one of the big advantages that we have when we have a topic which was, at that time, mobile banking. We can focus on and select the geography.

When you look through the core geography, in particular, we look at Germany, Switzerland, and UK. We didn’t cast the net too wide. So it makes it easier to find the best teams in that geography for us to invest in.

This segment is part 3 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Harald Nieder of Redalpine Venture Partners
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