How did you get into the world of venture?
I studied biotechnology, biomedical engineering, nanoscience, a bit of everything. After graduating, I was sure that I didn’t want to go into research – it wasn’t fast paced enough, and I was looking for more entrepreneurial opportunities. In 2014, I met Verve Ventures’ co-CEO Steffen Wagner at an event at ETH Zürich where he gave a presentation on venture capital and it was very eye-opening for me. There were smart people working in an interesting and entrepreneurial environment, and they got to work with entrepreneurs. It was perfect for me. I joined Verve Ventures for the first time in early 2015 and I stayed for more than a year. I started as an intern and then was promoted to analyst, but then left to finish my master’s in the US. When I got back, I was looking into different venture capital opportunities, and I found Creathor Ventures. They were one of the few firms investing in digital health and health-tech, and I found that really appealing. I joined them in 2017.

What brought you back to Verve Ventures?
I was working with Creathor in Frankfurt, and that was a bit boring for me, as there wasn’t really a startup ecosystem. I then went to Berlin for them, and I wasn’t really connected to the rest of the team. Creathor has existed for almost 30 years in some form or another, so there were established processes and it wasn’t a young, dynamic company like Verve Ventures. I went back to Verve Ventures firstly because of the team, but also, I believed more in our model.

How does the established model measure up to Verve Ventures?
The VC fund model was established in the Silicon Valley in the 60s and 70s and has pretty much stayed the same ever since. You have your ten-year fund lifecycle, you have your 2% or 2,5% management fees, and you have your 20% carry. This is all really optimized for certain types of companies. I believe it’s not the perfect model for today. Over the last decades there was hardly any innovation in how a venture firms works. I believe the whole model needs to be broken up and rethought from scratch to make it more appealing for a broader set of founders and that’s what we’re doing at Verve Ventures. If you start thinking about these established models in more detail, there are aspects that really don’t make sense.

What sort of aspects do you mean?
Most funds are focused on a certain stage, where you need to go into fundraising again after 18 months. Ideally, you should have the same fund or the same investor double down in the next round and increase the stake. That’s something we can do. Then there’s the ten-year fund lifecycle. A typical fund thinks about divesting after about six to eight years, which isn’t very long-term. We can really remain in the company until the value is maximized for all shareholders.  Also, with most funds, startups can’t really access the network of investors behind the fund. We, however, are facilitating access to the value-adding investors on our platform. Lastly, we invest heavily in our own tech team which improves our digital platform and tools over and over again, that’s something funds usually don’t have.

What would you say are the differences between the Berlin and Zurich ecosystems?
One advantage in Zurich is the ETH, so there’s so much tech talent there. But a disadvantage is that you don’t have too many role models of people building billion-dollar companies. There are a lot of founders coming out of ETH, but often they’re building tech companies without the ambition to go global. In Berlin, people typically have a bit more of a global mindset. They want to grow faster. We bring a bit of this Berlin spirit to Zurich, but also this Zurich spirit into Berlin. We still focus on sustainable companies and not founders who are ambitious but don’t have a solid foundation.

What kinds of investments are you hoping for in Berlin?
We like to finance startups that are based on true technological innovation. We’re focusing on our three pillars: health & bio, tangible, and digital. In the digital space, we’re mostly focusing on B2B SaaS companies. Germany has a lot of solid technology and good founding teams. I’m looking for a proof of concept and like to see first revenues, but I’m open to discussions.

What do you bring to venture from a background in healthcare?
In healthcare, you have a very complex ecosystem with different stakeholders, so it doesn’t work like other more typical venture investments. It’s very hard to be disruptive in healthcare. If you want to bring a product to market within the healthcare sector, you need to take care of insurance companies, patients, and physicians. You need to understand all the stakeholders and gatekeepers. It’s very important to understand them and their incentives. We are good at investing in companies in very complex industries, and I think that gives us a lot of great opportunities that other investors miss out on.

Is there a specific portfolio startup you’re excited about?
I’m excited about Sympatient, who are digitizing anxiety therapy. Anxiety disorders and mental health are huge topics that have gotten more important during Covid, and they are the only company that’s treating patients with a product comparable to the standards of therapy. Sympatient is doing this with virtual reality. Users get a headset and get exposure via virtual reality, coupled with tele-psychologists. A study found that their product is comparable to the gold standard of care, which is a huge achievement. It benefits all the stakeholders in the system, and it’s cheaper for insurance companies, more convenient for the patients and a new form of work for psychologists. And anxiety disorders are the second largest cost block for insurance companies after depression.

Do you have any entrepreneurial side hustles?
A friend and I started a company producing leather bags during our studies. I worked full-time on it for some time. It was super fun, but the drawback was that we had to design the product, buy the leather, supply all the accessories, produce it, and market the product ourselves. The company still exists, but as it goes with startups, a new, more successful business came out of it. The company sells rugs in a store in Zurich and over the internet. It makes a lot more sense from a business perspective since it’s simpler and there’s not much competition in Switzerland. It’s growing pretty fast, but I’m only a shareholder, I’m not operationally involved. Although on a moderate scale, I learned a lot from being on the other side of the table.

What do you find unexpected in the venture world?
In the very beginning, I was a bit intimidated by all the finance and business lingo. But then I learned that there are many people with business education in venture that still don’t fully understand what a cash flow statement is and how it’s linked to a balance sheet or profit and loss statement. With an open mindset, you can learn all this stuff pretty quickly. I think it’s easier to have an education in science and technology and learn the business part than the other way around.