Despite the current downturn, venture capital firms continue to raise money and invest in startups at a healthy pace. In his interview with Viktoria, Maximilian Bleyleben - Managing Director at Kennet Partners explains why from his perspective as a technology investor the investment market is alive and well: “The important thing is that most of the big tech trends are far stronger and will last much longer than any recession. We have made five investments in the last four months: In BuyVIP – one of Europe’s leading private shopping clubs – as well as in Spreadshirt, a German business where you can personalize t-shirts online. We also invested in the Danish video advertising firm GoViral and in two US companies.”
As a growth equity investor, Kennet Partners focusses on finding businesses that are either bootstrapped or raised only small amounts of capital and already built themselves to five or ten million euros in revenues: “We look for wherever there’s growth. We’re pretty agnostic which sectors that comes from – certain niches within e-commerce or SaaS. If there’s a transaction to be done we do it, if not we develop relationships for the future. Sometimes it takes one or two years before the timing is right for a company to raise money” explains Max.
Max thinks it is crucial for entrepreneurs to finetune little features about their business as they bootstrap it with an eventual investment in mind – things like the working capital cycle or getting paid before suppliers have to be paid. One of the reasons Kennet Partners likes to invest in Europe is that there is tremendous diversity of talent in Europe “with lots of engineering talent that needs to be unlocked” Max says. “If you bring American commercial practices, sales skills and internet online lead generation skills to these European technical innovations you can build really strong companies and in this day and age where the company base doesn’t really matter anymore there is no reason why Europe cannot build the same winning companies as the US.”
Click here for an overview of all interviews from Red Herring 100 Europe.
Posts Tagged ‘spreadshirt’
Trendy-Workshop.com, co-founded by Tristan de Montebello, is a French fashion portal that allows its users to create their own clothes, buy them afterwords and making money with them by sharing it with others on the web. Open since Dec. 8, 2008, users can choose every little fashion detail they want on their piece of clothes on-line and have it made for them by a stylist. Their creations will then be delivered to them within three weeks. Depending on how many people buy their creation, a commission is being paid and one can even reach the status of Junior Creator. Clothes designed at Trendy-Workshop are being produced in China with prices starting at 89 for a cashmere sweater. Different from customization platforms like Spreadshirt, Trendy-Workshop allows you to design the whole product and not only the printing. Soon they will also offer accessories and interiors.
Founder Tristan de Montebello started out as a computer ingenieur in love with the web. He points out that he wants to make a real difference in fashion with Trendy-Workshop.com: We would like to be a major trendsetter in fashion industry and break fashion in a good way. He believes it is crucial to think big and start small. His advice for other entrepreneurs is simple yet powerful: Get good people, be fast and very reactive.
Further information can also be found on Trendy-Workshops blog.