You hold an MA in Law from the University of Fribourg. Why did you choose to study Law and how has it shaped your perspective in your subsequent career?
I chose Law by default. It was between Law and Philosophy; I went for Law for pragmatic reasons, because I thought that it was broad enough not to restrict me to any field afterwards. It has helped me think about things systematically in a conceptual and organised way, which is helpful in different kinds of situations. I did not really practice Law after my studies, though. I am currently studying philosophy with a focus on philosophy of science “on the side”.

How did you start working in investment?
I was sure that I wanted to get involved in building a company in some way, either my own company or by joining a company, but I did not have an obvious entry point. I looked around to see who was building companies or who was financing them and came across Verve Ventures. I was really excited because I figured that I could learn quite a lot about how companies are built and financed. The founders had just started back then, so I decided to send them an email. I was sure that the learning curve would be steep because I would be working on both the investor and the start-up side. At the beginning, I thought it would be six months, but it has been many years now.

You joined Verve Ventures in 2012. How has the investment landscape evolved since then, in Switzerland and more generally?
When I started working at Verve Ventures, there was less early-stage funding than there is now. There was a funding gap in Switzerland – it was not easy to raise CHF 1.5 or 2 million. Raising a couple of hundred thousand francs from different business angels was fine, but there was much less capital available during the early stages. That has changed dramatically over the past ten years. There is now a lot of capital for pretty much every stage. Funding startups has become very competitive for investors. For entrepreneurs, it is probably the best time in history to start a company because capital is more freely available and there are more partners to work with and choose from.

How has this shaped Verve Ventures’ position on the investment market?
We have always asked: how can we best serve entrepreneurs? Our answer has been: leverage the network of private investors so that we can help accelerate the growth of the company. Over the years, we have become even more systematic when building syndicates that are relevant for each company in order to get the right expertise with the right network to leverage. Tapping into this network is even more powerful today and probably a reason why entrepreneurs choose to work with Verve Ventures in the first place. Moreover, our syndicate model provides flexibility in regard to investment time horizons that other investors can’t offer. We propose more patient capital and this is a dimension that is relevant for entrepreneurs who want to build large and enduring companies.

What does your role as Venture Partner involve, on a day-to-day basis?
I help convince companies to work with Verve Ventures, and with the Swiss Immo Lab, a vehicle we manage that focuses on the “built world” in particular. I help vet companies and try to add value before and after the investment. As I said before, there is an incredible amount of capital around, so today winning allocations in a company is crucial for success in venture capital. I act as a sounding board for strategic matters, help startups to hire and introduce them to potential clients. It is more of a horizontal role I have today. My recent experience as an operator at our ex-portfolio company Bring! (now sold) has helped me to better understand where support would be most impactful for the founders.

Verve Ventures acts as investment manager for Swiss Immo Lab (SIL), including the development and management of the portfolio. Could you tell me about the project?
The project came about because we believe that there is a very large opportunity in real estate, which has not really been transformed by technology yet, at least compared to other sectors. There are today 4 strategic investors backing the Swiss Immo Lab: two Swiss banks, a large real estate management company, and a building insurance company. The core idea is that we not only bring capital, but also facilitate the adoption of the solutions by the Swiss Immo Lab partners and the broader real estate ecosystem. For us, having strategic partners involved as investors is a way to have an impact and accelerate the adoption of technology in this space. Swiss Immo Lab covers every area of the value chain in real estate: energy efficiency, how to optimise space in a building, how to build more sustainably with different kinds of materials, and how to create a better experience for workers, tenants and owners.

What specific value does the Swiss Immo Lab offer investors?
We believe that having strategic partners adopt the solutions and technologies of the portfolio companies creates a positive flywheel for all parties involved. Strategic partners get more yield out of their assets and on the ones they manage, portfolio companies grow faster and more predictably thanks to privileged market adoption, ultimately delivering strong financial return for investors of the Swiss Immo Lab. All the investors who are in the vehicle are there because they believe that the adoption of technology in real estate will bring in a large amount of value and develop a more fruitful ecosystem for the built world. Bringing in technology, especially digital ones to an industry that has been relatively slow to adopt it in the recent year will generate value and create a large impact on many fronts.

How do you select the companies in the Swiss Immo Lab portfolio?
We want to invest in the best teams across sectors in general; those with insights into a particular problem and the best suited to tackle a given opportunity. When choosing companies for Swiss Immo Lab, we approach them with typical VC glasses and we get market expertise from our strategic partners. The specificity is that the companies we back need to be active in some way with real estate. We invest from Seed to Series B and our role varies depending on the stage of the company.

Is the Swiss Immo Lab something new on the Swiss or wider European real estate market? Are you seeing a lot of interest from investors?
There are some dedicated proptech or construction tech vehicles in the EU, UK and in the US. In terms of interest from investors – yes. Every investor is aware that even just moving the needle with technology in these sectors is significant given the enormous size of the real estate market. We plan to expand the first phase of the Swiss Immo Lab to a broader investment platform that can onboard more investors to leverage this interest, bring more strategic investors on board and ultimately serve entrepreneurs even better.

How does the Swiss Immo Lab fit into broader trends in real estate investment?
We fit into trends like alternative forms of ownership and financing, different ways to build and use space, reducing buildings environmental impact and the whole optimization of the building. We are building a portfolio of companies that touch on all these different trends. For example, we have invested in EstateGuru that has built a leading European marketplace for property-backed loans, Oper that is facilitating the digitalization of the mortgage origination process for banks, WeMaintain that takes care of the maintenance of the buildings by leveraging data and IoT, Comgy that digitizes the measurement, visualization and billing of heat, water and electricity consumption or QFlow that tracks constructions sites logistics to reduce waste during construction.

In your opinion, what are the developments to watch in this sector?
Generally speaking, we believe that value will be created along large shifts in the industry: moving from physical to digital, from brick-and-mortar to alternative high-tech flexible components, from fossil energy to renewable ones, from closed professional circles and intermediaries to more open platforms. Let’s take the workspace. Companies are now thinking “how do we think about the office differently?” or “what do we offer employees – where?”. Every company has to rethink the office to move it digitally. On the construction side, there are more and more tools for increasing efficiency, using less material and improving coordination between the multiple stakeholders involved. The whole environmental angle of this industry will also get enormous traction in the coming decade knowing that construction and buildings use a lot of energy and materials and we have to find ways to reduce these impacts at scale.

What projects are you especially excited about at the Swiss Immo Lab?
Our first vehicle, with the strategic partners, has been successful. We would like to expand it because we see many new opportunities and many new companies. The companies that we already have in our portfolio need more resources to scale faster. We want to build an investment platform for investing in real estate innovation and to broaden it so that more investors can participate in this value creation.

Finally, what is the most rewarding aspect of your work at Verve Ventures?
Working with entrepreneurs. It is a privilege to be able to work with brilliant people who have insights into a particular way of doing things differently and are passionate about it. There is nothing better than working with passionate entrepreneurs and having a second-row seat in these companies. This is what brought me into venture in the first place: building companies to invent different futures.