Did you always dream of studying science?
Yes, because I’m fascinated by how our world functions and questions such as: How can some variants of grass grow 2 meters high when their leaves are just 2mm thin? Nature’s ingenuity is astonishing, and my curiosity to learn more about it drove me. However, I also wanted to do something technical, so I chose to study biotech instead of biology. Due to my broad interests, I decided to switch the topic after my bachelor studies and learn more about economical aspects. So I did a master degree in management, technology, and economics at ETH. Ultimately, I worked on a thesis in the field of sustainability, which was the perfect topic for me.

Where does that interest in sustainability come from?
I’m into mountaineering and regularly do high alpine ski tours on glaciers. If there is some vantage point in Switzerland from which you can unmistakably see what climate change does to our world, it’s from the mountain summits. My mother used to remind me every time we were in our mountain lodge how much farther glaciers reached down the valley when she was young.

When did you first come into contact with entrepreneurship?
It was during the master studies. I participated in Climate-KIC, an initiative from the European Institute of Technology. We developed the concept for a startup in the circular economy, the idea was to recycle food waste and producing biogas. On top of that I did two other similar projects and even received some prizes, that was my first contact with the startup world. Unfortunately, I didn’t pursue the projects further.

Would you want to finance such a fine idea now that you’re an investment manager?
(Laughs). I’d probably say what on earth are you guys thinking? Do you even know what type of gas can be used for cooking? Do you know how much capital you need to build a biogas plant? We were quite naive at that time, even if I still like the idea.

What did you do after university?
I started working. I didn’t want to do a Ph.D. and spend 5 more years at university, I wanted to be as efficient as possible.

How did you find out about Verve Ventures?
A friend of mine told me about it. He said I should check it out, I would be able to read business plans the whole day. That sounded interesting enough, so I started to work as an intern with Michael Blank.

Did you already know a lot about venture capital then?
No, I didn’t, I had to read a lot to get up to speed. I’d recommend the book “Venture Deals” by Brad Feld if you want to learn about venture capital. But I also quickly realized that while there are recurring topics like valuation and metrics, many of the startups we finance are quite unique in their approach, so you can’t generalize much.

You did the classic Verve Ventures career track: from intern to analyst to investment manager. How different is the work these different roles do?
It is a very interesting track: As an intern, you’re here to learn and should be able to absorb knowledge like a sponge. An important part of the job is to screen startups and respond to case-specific investor questions. This is a valuable help for the investment manager who has to prioritize his time. Just recently, one of our interns was praised by a potential investor of a case because he answered all the question the man had so diligently.

What does an analyst do?
While the intern learns, an analyst does market research, competitive analysis and writes reports. And they are able to do so without supervision. While doing their job, they’ll get introduced into the work an investment manager does, for example conducting negotiations with entrepreneurs. Michael always took me to all the important meetings right from the start, he said you might as well begin early to learn about these things.

Can you tell me a bit more about this relationship between the investment manager and the entrepreneur, are you more like friends or foes in these proceedings?
My role is to establish and nurture the relationship with the entrepreneur. From an operative standpoint, this means guiding him through our process and do project management. Emotionally, we’re in the same boat up to the decision by our investment committee, because both the entrepreneur and the investment manager want to bring the case to our investors. From the moment the investment committee approves the case, the investment manager represents the interest of the investors. This is a transition, and it should be smooth. But in the end, we need to make clear that we’re building a business relationship, not a friendship, even if it can resemble the latter when you’ve worked together for months and years.

You meet with entrepreneurs that are in different stages of development of their company, some of them are already wildly successful, others are just getting started. How do you handle that?
It’s true, we also have a lot of different channels how we meet startups, from visiting fairs to getting approached by mail. Many of them have good ideas but they aren’t at a point where they can be financed yet. We try to give clear, honest answers. If we tell somebody that we find his idea cool, we mean it, and most of the time we then say let’s talk again in a few months or so. Other cases are a clear no from the beginning, not because their idea is bad but because it’s simply not a venture capital investment case, for example, because the market is not big enough.

You mentioned project management. What do you do on a typical day?
As an investment manager, you work on half a dozen cases or more in parallel. I need to have an overview where we stand with each case and what we have to do, and what timelines need to be respected. Since we have established this division of work between interns, analysts, and IMs, I have to coordinate and guide them as well. It’s a lot of interactions with them and with different entrepreneurs every day. This means that work like responding to emails and reading reports gets pushed to off-peak hours, either you start early or stay late in the office. It’s clearly not a 9-to-5 job here.

Is it useful to have a scientific background as an investment manager?
I was among the first in the team with that background, now with the new hires, it has almost become the rule. I think its good to have a team with diverse backgrounds. But because we finance high tech startups it certainly helps with understanding a case when you know how semiconductors function or signaling pathways in a cell work.

Speaking of background, you had a very particular job as a teenager. You played Santa Claus for children and people in nursing homes. What was that about?
I was engaged in the “Jungwacht” for a long time, a form of boy scouts. I enjoyed the magic the role of Santa confers, and honestly, sometimes I felt that old people seemed to enjoy that magic even more than children. But I think it’s good to teach children early on that their actions have consequences. It’s important to live according to certain values, and transfer them to the next generation.

We talked a lot about one side of the Verve Ventures platform, the startups. What about the other side, the investors, what is the involvement of the investment team with them?
We have two different types of contact I’d say. A part of the investor base relies very much on the work we do and trusts our analysis. They know that we do an in-depth due diligence, that we talk to experts and that internally, as many as a dozen experienced people are involved with deciding if we should finance a given startup or not. This process gives them confidence enough to trust our judgment.

And the other category?
For them, our work is just a first step, they want to come to their own conclusions and they don’t shy away from asking a lot of questions. That’s one reason why we organize investor meetings where they can quiz the entrepreneurs, but we also respond to their questions ourselves. These people can be very demanding, especially if they have sector knowledge. But they are very important to us. First of all, it is Verve Ventures’ model has the advantage that our investors can decide on their own if they want to invest or not and don’t have to blindly trust a single fund manager. We aim to get to a “Yes”, but an informed “No” from investors is a positive outcome in the sense that they sharpened their own judgment. The second reason why critical investors are valuable is that we appreciate getting challenged. This sharpens our perception because we need to anticipate those questions even as we prepare a deal.

Do you sometimes get naive questions from investors?
Our investors aren’t naive, they want to learn about a startup as we do. Nobody should be afraid to ask basic questions. We do the same when we meet an entrepreneur for the first time.

Speaking of questions, are there questions from entrepreneurs that you can answer better now with the experience you gained?
Last year we’ve started a systematic program for our portfolio companies which helps with topics that are essential for startups. I personally can still learn a lot from my work. The toolset is the same but the cases differ. One domain where I see that I have acquired experience that is valuable for startups is everything related to go-to-market strategy. This is a critical point for startups coming out of academia. They need to think about how to industrialize, how to sell, which customers to approach first, identify the market niche where they can get the best margins and grow fast. For scientific founders, these are new topics, and a good VC should be able to help and challenge them with these questions