Why did you decide to pursue a degree in European Studies?
Actually, I started my higher education with law but found it to be too focused. I like the big picture and European Studies is a very interdisciplinary program encompassing political science, international relations, law and economics, and focuses on the interdependencies between these elements as well as countries. I wrote my bachelor thesis on political reforms in Turkey and the way the state tries to align its domestic regulations with European law. The master’s degree in Middle Eastern Studies was closely related to my bachelor’s one and a logical continuation.

Why did you choose Sweden to do your master’s studies?
During my studies I discovered a profound interest in the Middle East. Having lived in Istanbul and written a thesis on Turkey I started searching for a program which would deepen my knowledge on the region. This is how I came across Lund University which is one of the most prestigious universities in Scandinavia. It offered a very international setting to study with professors from all over the world, the US, the Netherlands, Sweden,Turkey, Iran or Greece, to name a few countries. The same was true for my peers – we were 35 students coming from 17 different states.

What is the best learning from these studies?
It is a diverse cultural environment as it shapes your soft skills more than your hard ones. In Lund, for every class you needed to go through assigned readings, connect the dots, and then be ready to engage in a critical discussion and defend your point of view. Diverse backgrounds of students altered how I perceived different topics and taught me tolerance for different opinions. Tolerance and acceptance are separate things, however.

You also lived and studied in Turkey and Israel. How come?
I like living abroad and the excitement and challenges that everyday life in a foreign country brings naturally with it. My first time in Turkey was tied to my bachelor’s studies while the second spell was linked to my scholarship which I was awarded after I defended my master’s thesis. As for Israel, part of the master’s program was to do an internship or study abroad, which I gladly did. Bearing in mind the field of my studies and the topic of my master’s thesis, Israel was an obvious choice.

How many languages did you learn with all this hopping around?
Next to my native Polish, I speak English, some Turkish and German, which I am currently learning, and a little bit of Hebrew and Swedish.

After your studies, you started to work at a financial institution in Warsaw that belongs to U.S. Bank. Why that choice?
Working at a financial institution had been in my mind for a while already as it seemed to be an excellent place to combine my education, interests and skills. I also like interacting with others and it turned out that I wasn’t too bad at it since I got promoted shortly after joining the company. I was then also offered a move to Dublin, which I politely declined because of the weather there.

You did move eventually, to not-always-sunny Switzerland, and joined Verve Ventures. Why?
Honestly speaking the weather in Switzerland is far better than in Ireland or Poland. However, the move itself was planned for personal reasons thus I started to look for a role at a financial institution that would be similar to what I’d done before. I had been responsible for international institutional clients from an operations side. I was also specifically looking for something closer to a startup environment that would challenge my skills, give me more freedom to operate and allow me to develop.

What is important for operations work at Verve Ventures?
The challenge is that our work requires a lot of attention to detail at every single step. We work mostly with various investment documents and tight deadlines. We handled 1000 investments in 2019 and want to double this number this year, but with every investment goes a set of documents that needs to be processed in one way or another. Sometimes it happens that we either receive incomplete sets or nothing at all, which creates more work.

If this happens, how do you navigate the delicate line between being friendly to our clients but also making sure that stuff gets done?
That is why soft skills matter! There is no problem in being both friendly and explaining the importance of the matter at the same time. It is essential to note that if the documents are not properly executed we will not be able to make the investment happen. Our investors understand this, yes, but we are also aware that these are independent, successful and busy people with ample business and leisure activities. Therefore, it’s normal that not each of our requests is immediately answered. Also, we always try to accommodate their preferred way of doing things, be this sending documents by post or allowing to sign digitally. Some even come to our office to complete the paperwork which is great!

But if someone goes on a sailing trip and still wants to invest in a specific deal, it is their job to think ahead, right?
Thinking ahead is part of our daily tasks as investing in startups is more complicated than investing in stocks, even if we try to make it as simple as possible. If someone already knows they want to participate in a specific financing round and gives us a heads-up as early as possible, it then makes it easier for us to plan certain things ahead and ensure the investor is satisfied with the outcome. In this case even a month-long sailing trip will not be an issue, we just need to be made aware of it. Moreover, although we interact with a number of investors on a daily basis, we have learned to identify our new clients. We know that it is natural for them to have questions about the investment process and next steps they need to take thus we try to address them before they are even posed.

What are the typical questions you get from investors?
I think that the most common question is when a specific round will be closed. This is especially relevant for our more active and larger investors who want to know their liquidity needs in advance. Then there are also quite some very deal-oriented questions where we need to engage our analysts and investment managers.

How intense is your interaction with the investors?
Some investors are very active and often ask challenging questions about specific details. Some are very diligent and are quick to point out issues when they discover them, which is great for us because we can then address these problems early. Others are more restrained and reach out to confirm having completed a step in the investment process or do not engage at all. This is perfectly fine as well. On a side note, I enjoy meeting our investors in person at our investor meetings as it allows me to put a face to a name.

What do you like about working in operations?
There are many reasons for it. We have a great investor base of intelligent people who keep us busy and alert. I’m also in daily contact with colleagues from the investment team who assess our investment proposals as we need to be on the same page in terms of coordinating financing rounds. I’m also in constant touch with our investor relations team to ensure our investors get very personal treatment and all of their questions and needs are answered.

What keeps you busy at the moment?
The new fiduciary we’ve established has us pretty occupied. In the past, we worked with an external one that would deal with all of the paperwork. Now, this all goes through us thus we have to double- and triple-check everything to make sure investments can be finalized. We also need to keep in mind various regulations and processes which the new structure needs to comply with. On a personal level, I have a keen interest in compliance and regulatory topics, and have already started working towards earning a certificate in the field of anti-money laundering.

Why?
Our investor base is growing incredibly fast and having more and more international investors means that we have to make sure we do all the checks required by law when we onboard them. Every financial institution, among others, must ensure it knows its clients which requires us to ask to collect various, sometimes sensitive, information. This is also a question I receive a lot, i.e. why we have to gather all this data on a new or existing investor when their bank verified them already. The reason for it is that we need to do our own compliance checks and cannot rely on the work of third parties, such as banks, because we have no access to their documents. It is worth pointing out that we only want to know what we are obliged to know about our investors.

You administered quite a few financing rounds already. What did you observe?
I’ve seen that some investment proposals attract way more interest from our investor base than others. We still need to better understand what drives that interest in specific cases. I’m particularly happy about Verve Ventures internationalization and that we do more and more investments in other European countries. Furthermore, I’ve already seen several financing rounds that were quickly oversubscribed. This is because in some cases, we’re strictly limited in how much money we can bring. In one case, investors wanted to invest CHF 450’000 more than we could place.

That’s unfortunate.
In financing rounds that fill quickly, it’s obviously better to indicate an investment interest early and sign the term sheet to secure a spot in the round. Otherwise, we can’t know that someone is considering investing in a specific case. Even if you have not made up your mind completely and there are several questions you want to get answered before deciding, reach out to us as soon as possible. Not only does it give us a possibility to address your questions but also still gives you enough time to make up your mind.