Balderton Capital GP & Former GS Partner Rana Yared — Fintech Investing in Europe!
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I had the great pleasure today of sitting down with Rana Yared, Partner at Balderton Capital, one of Europe’s most storied venture capital firms. Balderton also used to be the international venture arm of Benchmark Capital, the legendary Sand Hill Road VC.
Rana is a former Goldman Sachs partner, and helped lead the firm’s principal strategic investments in the US and UK. She represented Goldman Sachs on the Boards of Tradeweb, NAV, Vestwell, New York Shipping Exchange, and Swapclear @ LCH. Rana joined Balderton as a General Partner in 2020, focusing on fintech.
Rana is a proud Wharton alum and was recently featured in Wharton Magazine as one of 7 alumni driving The Future of Finance (alongside former guest Jackie Reses of Square Capital!).
In today’s episode, we discuss:
Her long journey from Wharton to Goldman to Balderton, and a surprise stop for a Masters
“My career has been one of great serendipity, but also exploration. I took each step less because I had a plan but because I enjoyed what I was doing…you have to take the opportunity of a lifetime in the lifetime of that opportunity!”
“People say to me, Oh, you’ve got a master’s degree in stocks and bonds, and I go, No, I have a master’s degree in nukes and bombs!”
Balderton’s secret sauce
“It used to be the international arm of Benchmark, and so all of the ethos around equal partnership, equal economics, equal voting is the legacy that we have kept…
We see 4,000 companies per year…And I think that that reach is a function of the quality of relationships that my partners and principals and associates have built long before I joined, but also a function of having made the right choices in where to invest such that our founders recommend us to other founders, which is amazing!
…The reputation that Balderton has as a company builder, from cradle to exit, no matter what that exit is, even resonated with the companies that we have passed on in the Series A and they sought us back out, which means my colleagues were passing in the most respectful of ways possible.
…So myself and Tim are the two financiers among the six GPs. Functionally, the other four are operators, two were founders who IPO’d their companies…and then the other two were senior operators at Google and Yahoo. So when I compare us to other venture firms, most of them look like me coming from a finance background. But actually, we look very different. We look like operators who invest. And that’s part of the secret sauce of Balderton!”
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The two fintech verticals she’s most excited about
“There are certain trends in fintech that are extremely unique to Europe and should actually be addressed here. Redomiciling them to the US diminishes the insight that the companies continue to have.
For example, payments is a theme that I'm focused on. Europe is uniquely positioned — there are more cross-border payments here, the problems have been bigger, and more people cross borders with different currencies than the US.
The second one is insurance…pretty consistently, the view is that the market hasn’t really evolved. Whether it’s from the front end, there hasn’t been the Lemonade or Policygenius evolution here, or on the back end, like what Unqork is doing. However, there’s a lot of room for that”
The 3 key things on her investor checklist and what is an immediate dealbreaker
- “Number one on the checklist is the management team. And everyone says that but [I like a team that can] actually explain what you do. One of the deal-breakers is when the management team responds back to me, ‘it’s complicated.’ That’s both a sign of they can’t explain it, but also arrogance because the undertone is it’s too complicated for you to understand.”
- “I really like to invest in companies that have an industrial purpose or a reason for existing. I’ll probably never be the person who gets excited about a children’s video game…Companies that solve real problems are the ones that I connect with the most!”
- “Do they have the ability to be the market leader? Can they be the global leader out of Europe? We don’t want to invest in European-only winners, we want to invest in European companies that have the ability to be global winners”
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Why she’s so excited about Europe & the massive “bridge” opportunity she sees
“The reason I’m generally excited about Europe is that there is a barbell of capital here. There is a ton of early-stage capital, and a ton of late-stage capital, but nothing to bridge that gap. So there historically has been a need for companies to leave Europe to continue to grow, and that is obviously disappointing for the European ecosystem, but also represents a huge opportunity!”
What makes European VC so unique
“One of the big differences between Europe and the US is in Europe you really need to do the shoe-leather work. Boots on the ground in the location, versus what tends to happen in the US, where companies go to Sand Hill Road, University Avenue, and then maybe a stop in Union Square. In Europe, you have to go to Berlin to Munich to Dusseldorf, and then to Lyon!”
We also cover her investments in Unqork and Flywire, And a rapid-fire round including her best pastry, favorite restaurant in London (Core by Claire Smith & Ishbilia), and her advice to founders!
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Previous Episodes You May Enjoy:
Former Vanguard CEO & Chairman Bill McNabb: The Future of Finance, Leading in Crisis, & ESG
Y Combinator’s Michael Seibel & Dalton Caldwell — Lessons from 5000 Entrepreneurs
Jon Zanoff, Founder of Empire Startups & Stella Ventures — YOLO Fintech and the Get Sh*t Done KPI
B2B Venture Investing with Evgenia Plotnikova, Partner at Dawn Capital
Leading a Public VC with Tim Levene, CEO of Augmentum FinTech
Noah Kerner, CEO of Acorns — Leveling the Investment Playing Field
Frank Rotman, Founding Partner at QED Investors — Past, Present, and Future of Fintech!
Robinhood’s COO, Gretchen Howard — Democratizing Finance, Navigating a Crisis, & Embracing Change
ARK Invest’s Fintech Analyst Max Friedrich — His Square Thesis, US SuperApps, and Big Ideas!
Unqork’s Head of Solutions, Jane Tran — Leading The No-Code Revolution & Scaling a Unicorn!
Anish Acharya, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz — Doubling Down on Fintech
Mayor Francis Suarez — Bringing Silicon Valley to Miami!
Upstart CEO Dave Girouard — Revolutionizing Lending & Taking a Fintech Public!
11:FS Co-Founder Simon Taylor — NFTs, Clubhouse, & The State of Crypto
Lex Sokolin, ConsenSys CMO & Fintech Futurist — Fintech Trends, Defi, & Digital Collectibles
NFL Star & Penn Professor Brandon Copeland — Tackling Financial Education Through “Life 101”
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Ryan Zauk
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Ryan Zauk is an MBA Candidate at The Wharton School, where he runs the Wharton FinTech Podcast. He currently works with the US International Development Finance Corp looking at technology impact investments in developing markets. He has a passion for music, media, and all things FinTech.
You can reach him at rzauk@wharton.upenn.edu or on Twitter.
