UPComingVC: A Venture Capital Investment Challenge.

Pitch contests, hackathons, startups Demo Days and the likes are all the rage in the startup ecosystem. Put aside any immediate product development, fundraising, branding or sales objectives, they definitely contribute to nurturing an innovative & entrepreneurial mindset, fostering a community of doers as well as raising the awareness of the profane. That is fair enough and their occurrences should grow.

Common tech-related events usually are mostly geared towards the benefits for startups themselves. One-sided.

Yet, as useful and essential as these conventional formats might be, they do not address one particular set of interests: how to become a VC?

Tech, startup events in current formats are essential but becoming too conventional.

There is no event that actively focuses on the investment side, those face-to-face meetings (startup-VCs) that are peculiar to any fundraising round.

On that score, this situation changed on April 27–28, 2017 in Geneva, Switzerland.

UPComingVC was born with a cornerstone ambition. Invest Better. Raise Better.

The concept genuinely relies on three observations:

1. Startups and (first-time) entrepreneurs are not trained to enduring the one-on-one meetings with VCs, especially those occurring during the due diligence phase. Even seasoned entrepreneurs always dread answering the VCs. How to throw relevant yet concise responses, what are the KPIs that accurately illustrate the pertinence of any value proposition etc.
2. Forget about becoming a VC if you’re not already connected to that sphere. Venture Capital is (utterly) a matter of connections between people. If you are contemplating a career path in VC, then if 1) you’re not yourself a former entrepreneur, or/and 2) you do not know a Partner to a VC fund, or/and 3) you’ve not graduated from a top-notch school/university -all that naive this may sound-, you will not step into that league. No matter if you (think you) have the skills or at least pretension. No open job offer.
3. VCs will tend to hire too conventionally, and miss out on true talents, because of above point 2. Many promising “aspiring VCs” out there, not complying with point 2. don’t get the chance to showcase their aptitude, worship or at least inclination to start-up investing.

UPComingVC is an event that helps startups Raise Better, and VCs Invest Better. And we’re unpretentious.

50+ participants gathered over two highly-paced days in order to conduct more than 90 simulated due diligence meetings (over 2'250 minutes in total, ie over 350 minutes per team in 12 hours) as part of hypothetical, life-size fundraising rounds, in order to iterate about Venture Capital, Vision, Team, Mission, Problem, Execution, Product, Technology, PMF, TAM, Timeline, Beta, Traction, Users Feedback, KPIs, Cohort, Churn, Run Rate, Pivot, Hiring, Fundraising, Valuation, Pre(post)-Money, Option Pool, Dilution, Board Seats, Control…

14 Startups. 14 Aspiring VCs. 8 Jury Members (7 established VCs and 1 prominent M&A boutique).

Challengers (aspiring VCs), gathered in teams, met each Startup (like a dealflow) in a one-on-one meeting, throughout day 1 and day 2 am.

Eventually, Challengers were asked to deliver their investment recommendations, ie the startups they would select to “invest” and submit to the “investment committee”, ie the Jury Members composed of international, seasoned VCs and genuine fundraising professionals, during the Challengers DEMO DAY at the end of day 2 pm.

Each team would come on stage to submit their recos and rationale as well as to answer the harsh, merciless questions from the Jury. The Team of Challengers having produced the most persuasive, close-to-life, relevant and likely recos would be elected by the Jury.

“Thank you all the team for this great event. Worked hard and played hard. Well done! […] It was absolutely amazing because we had so many different companies and we have the chance to interact with all of them […] and learn about the role of a VC, understand what they do, how they make a valuation, have a real-life test.” Dominique, Challenger member of the winning team.

“We never had an event that was that closely related to VCs, a workshop between VCs, startups and students. […] It comes at the right moment as we are fund raising right now, so having the whole due diligence and VC-type question process before, falls a the right time. […] Everyone has been very into the event and pumped up about it. […] The feeling is very much positive.” Alexei, Startuper.

“A unique event concept. […] Three years ago, I was in the same shoes as the Challengers, looking for a VC role. I really wanted to help them and show how it is to work as a VC.” Moritz, VC, member of the Jury.

“It is a very interesting event as the format is not formal and very different from any other event.” Stéphane, Challenger.

“You test your skills very well, you get insights from real VCs.” Tom, Challenger.”

“You can be in the mind of VCs for two days, discover how to set up an investment agreement in the big lines. […] There is a lot of discussion and sharing of ideas going on here. Very great initiative with a lot of actors of the ecosystem.” Lucas, Challenger.

“A great event to train and to learn how to talk with a Venture Capitalist and understand what type of questions they are asking, and to understand exactly what they want to understand about my company. […] I am here mostly to train to become a better candidate for VCs.” Edouard, Startuper.

“It is a really great event, […] it gives you the opportunity to really get to know the companies much more in details than other events, because you spend so much time with them. […] You get to know the people better than usual.” Ravi, VC, member of the Jury.

“Great opportunity to put a foot on this startup ecosystem, to challenge my skills, and of course extend my network.” Xevi, Challenger.

“UPComingVC is a well organized event. As a fund, we get to know quickly the startups in very concise event format. […] Free spaces help you network with other investors and meet potential analysts” Moritz, VC, member of the Jury.

“I met a lot of upcoming VCs, […] it is interesting to see how they approach your project, they have different questions than the regular VCs, […] they tackle different topics and we have very interesting conversation.” Edouard, Startuper.

More about…

the Startups that participated

• 60+ applications
• 14 startups from 3 different countries
• 8 sectors (fintech, community, market-place, SaaS, ad-tech, drone, bot/machine learning, cleantech)
• median size of the co-founding team: 2
• 53% were raising fund, > € 18 mio collectively.
• median round size: € 560 K
• 53% having already raised funds, on average € 100 k

the Jury Members that participated

• 7 VCs and 1 M&A boutique, all coming from 3 different countries, collectively:
• 400+ investments made in
• 300+ startups with
• 60+ exits (Wunderlist, Trivago, Withings, LinkedIn, Carpooling.com, DailyDeal…)

the Challengers that participated

• 100+ applications
• 14 challengers, of 7 different nationalies
• from 5 different countries
• median age: 24
• graduated(ing) mostly with MSc and MBA from 14 different universities and schools (University of London, Ecole Hôtelière de Lausanne, ESADE, ESCP Europe, GEM, HEC Lausanne, ISM Köln, ISEG, Sorbonne Paris-Dauphine, Ruprecht-Karls University of Heidelberg, UNIGE, Skt Gallen Univ…)
• 61% being students (over 50% of these students having also a job)

To stay tuned for UPComingVC second edition, follow on Twitter YouTube Facebook LinkedIn and on our Website.

THANKING OUR HOST

UPComingVC “first edition” was kindly hosted by Fintech Fusion, being Switzerland’s largest Fintech Accelerator and expanding into PropTech, LifeTech and Social Enterprises.

THANKING OUR MEDIA & INNOVATION PARTNERS

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