More collaboration was the aim when Keva invited a group of US venture funds to meet Finnish start-up and growth companies.
Keva and Tesi organized a side-event together for the second time in connection with Slush. The event, titled “Dare to Grow!”, was an invitation-only networking lunch and panel discussion with four US venture capital funds.
Top panelists from the US
With over 15 years of experience in investing in US venture capital funds with Boston-based Grove Street Advisors, Keva invited a group of US venture funds to join the event while Tesi brought along several Finnish start-up and growth companies.
“The idea was to set the scene for more collaboration between Finnish technology companies and top tier venture capital funds”, says Markus Pauli, Head of Alternative Investments at Keva.
Panel “Globalization of tech start-ups as evidenced by unicorns emerging globally” was moderated by Grove Street Managing Partner Bruce Ou and panelists were a group of seasoned investors: Co-founder and partner Toby Coppel of Mosaic Ventures, partner Katherine Boyle of General Catalyst, partner Christian Leybold of e. Ventures and partner Rytis Vitkauskas of Lightspeed Ventures.
The panelists touched on several topics during their discussion.
Here are some of the key takeaways:
- Number of tech start-ups has grown considerably globally, and a huge amount of capital is looking for investment opportunities and pushing valuations high.
- Many technology companies have grown very rapidly and have reached high valuations. On the other hand, valuation of the unicorns raises some eyebrows. Venture capital has become more established and thus the panelists expect growth companies with high valuations to exist in the future as well.
- Venture Capital funds tend to hold good investments for longer time and IPOs are postponed. At the time of public listing, the companies have higher enterprise values compared to the past.
- The US has been leading technology market, but Europe has been improving during past few years and has even more developers and interesting start-ups now. The importance of China as a fast-growing and important tech market was also highlighted. In fact, during the last year, five largest exits were in China and Europe. Investors’ focus is coming back to the quality of businesses, revenue and profitability.
“The attendees seemed to enjoy the event and we hope they found the lively discussion as interesting as we did”, Markus Pauli and Jan Sasse, Managing Director of Tesi, say.