1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Harald Nieder of Redalpine Venture Partners (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Can you double-click down within the geography? How do you go about finding these teams?

Harald Nieder: You have to have a lot of tools available if you have a certain topic that you’re looking after. If you already know what you’re looking after, it’s relatively easy to go out with the databases that are around, with our own database, with our network that we have in that area.

It’s fairly easy to get a comprehensive list of people who are working at the early stage in certain topics. Obviously, that’s facilitated by the fact that we have these geographical focus areas. We don’t have to look throughout all the world. That makes it easier for us to find these deals. That’s one of the core theses that we have.

The early-stage investment is so much different from anything out there, or let’s say after Series B. You really need to develop that as a core competency so that you have a good overview over your geography and have the touch points where you can find out who’s working on what.

Sramana Mitra: What percentage of your portfolio is you going out and finding a company in a particular team that you’re interested in?

Harald Nieder: I’d probably say somewhere around a third is coming from a proactive approach. Two-thirds is coming through network.

Sramana Mitra: In that network where it’s coming from proactive searching and scouting, what are the key themes that you’ve gone after?

Harald Nieder: We had a couple of teams like the mobile banking. We had another topic which was the art market where we looked at what’s actually happening in the art market and if there’s any technologically-driven disruption.

JUNIQUE for instance is also based in Berlin. They’re a curated art platform. The pieces of art are valued by the artists. You can consume, if you wish, that art in a variety of ways. You can print it on wall art. You can print it on other stuff.

It’s mass curated marketplace for art, but also for the mass market which was, for us, a very interesting thesis because they’re in the art market. You have the range from the IKEA posters which aren’t really art up to the unique art that you have at the high end galleries.

There’s not really anything in between where you solve the problem that people know it’s art. It’s curated, but it’s still at a price point which is appealing for the mass market. That’s another example where we had the topic.

Sramana Mitra: In this case, you have the thesis and then you went and found the company that is executing on this.

Harald Nieder: Exactly.

Sramana Mitra: What other teams have you run after in this manner?

Harald Nieder: There are also a variety of themes that we went after, which is more on the healthtech side because we have this broad range of sectors that we invest in. That shrunk from health tech.

Our healthtech side can be quite heavy on the IP side. There are a lot of topics that we’re looking after. There’s a range or overlap between life science healthtech and ICT which is more personalized and digital health.

There’re a lot of topics where you need very specialized knowledge. We have that knowledge. One of our founding partners has a PhD in life science. So we have that expertise in the team. If you can combine it with tech knowledge or the traditional ICT knowledge, there’s a lot in that range.

This segment is part 4 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Harald Nieder of Redalpine Venture Partners
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