From Bloomberg, August 31:
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European venture capital investment at its highest since 2008
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Under-30s on course to be promoted younger, at earlier stages
At the age of 27, Andre de Haes raised 30 million euros ($36 million) for his London-based venture capital fund, Backed VC.
Now
30, he and his 29-year-old business partner Alex Brunicki are among a
cohort of young investors who are having a greater say in how the
billions that have flowed into European venture capital in recent years
are spent.
But while younger investors argue that youth gives them a better
understanding of what startups might resonate with their age-group, some
founders, who recount frustrating meetings with inexperienced venture
capitalists, fear an over-reliance on millennial investors’ intuition at
the expense of know-how.
Last year venture capital investment in Europe reached its highest level since 2008, at 4.3 billion euros, according to Invest Europe.
Karen McCormick, chief investment officer at Beringea LLP, says the
industry has recruited “pretty aggressively” in the past two years as
money has flooded in, and that has brought in far more young workers in
junior roles as analysts and associates. Venture capital firms are
likely to promote those people “at earlier stages and earlier ages,” she
says.
Those already in senior positions include 29-year-old Katie Leviten, a partner at JamJar Investments; Uwe Horstmann, who co-founded Project A at 25 in 2012; James Wise, who became a partner at Balderton Capital
at the age of 29 last year; 25-year-old Abbas Kazmi, co-founder and
managing partner of Collegiate Capital and Jonathan Becker, who became a
principal at e.ventures last year, at 28. In the U.S., 23-year-old Adam Goldberg is a partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, an early backer of Snap Inc.
Young
venture capitalists say the phenomenon is a sign that their generation
is interested in alternatives to the career paths pursued by their
predecessors, such as law and banking....MUCH MORE
HT:
Alpha Ideas
