Picture: our Paris office near BNF and the incubator 1000startups
I recently shared a post from Brad Feld on why he passes quickly on deals. The post was also features in Venture Beat
Last year when I was running AXA Seed Factory, I received 500 deals, made about 30 due diligences and invested in 5 of them before we launched AXA Strategic Ventures. So stats are hard to accept but I do pass on 99% of deals. Many of our quick passes are in the “it’s us, not you” category. Here are our rationale when we are asked for feedback:
1. Stage – too soon or too late. We have an entry point per investment domains or projects we want to invest in.
2. Focus – We must be selective because we focus on #fintech and #insurtech (technologies that will impact the business of insurance NOT insurance technologies only) and we must make sure that our investment can scale with our leverage of AXA Resources. We typically propose 3 ways with our limited partner: 1) AXA is a client, 2) AXA is a distributor or 3) AXA is a re-insurer.
3. Engagement – We also hate to play the slow roll game with entrepreneurs – one of our deeply held beliefs is to either engage or not engage quickly. Hence, we tend to invest closer our our office hubs. We created 6 offices : SF, NY, London, Paris+Berlin+Zurich.
I've been in the investment game since 1997. So, I think that it is pretty clear to me when a deal will not fly. With the approach, we do miss interesting deals but we cannot be everywhere, anywhere and with anyone. However, we need to provide values in #insurtech. Subsequently, we are working on strategic domains where we want to be. And in those domains, we must spend more time understanding dynamics, trends and startup ecosystem.
My ultimate goal is to run our investments the way we think we can be successful at them.
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