Managing a single family office for two decades has given us the opportunity to co-invest alongside prominent figures in the international investment scene. Beyond the financial benefit, co-investing with key players in each sector provides continuous and highly valuable learning.
An exhaustive analysis of various sectors, an extensive international network, and a structured, professional wealth management approach are key factors in accessing early-stage investment opportunities. This strategy allows participation in projects that, typically, are not considered by most investors until more advanced stages of development. What are the elements that facilitate this access? Below, I outline some fundamental aspects:
1. Commitment to the project and financing for all phases
One of the great advantages of co-investing with the world’s leading investors is access to capital and their commitment to the projects. A lack of resources will never be a problem because they believe in long-term and patient investments. Moreover, they ensure the survival of new companies by repeatedly investing in the different rounds these companies close.
2. Credibility
Prestige and reputation are powerful intangible assets, providing credibility, which acts as a privileged gateway to new investments, new investors, or even clients. As investors and clients of their own company, they open opportunities as diverse as conducting pilot tests of technology within their portfolio companies, thus helping to improve the technology or opening key opportunities for that technological development to reach the market.
Reputation and credibility directly influence an increase in a company’s valuation. Techstars conducted a study showing that companies backed by renowned investors had an average valuation of over 85% more compared to other companies.
3. The importance of contacts and networks
My experience as CEO of Kiatt has shown me that without an international network of partners and necessary contacts, it is impossible to reach truly innovative projects, strategic partners, and top-tier co-investors. As an example of the value of networks, we can mention our relational capital in Asia, which allows us to increase the opportunity of selling a company successfully by more than three times.
4. Unique opportunities
Only by investing with the best can you gain access to exclusive investment opportunities in the market that are not available to every investor. And the more you invest in these groups and the more value you add to the investments, the more you get invited to closed rounds, exclusive projects, and technologies that their corporations support as the new market standards. Sometimes, it can take more than a decade to establish your value within these investment groups. Our work with the University of Oxford over the years led many of these investors to welcome us and invite us to their closed rounds.
5. Education as a key to access
Another lesson I fully agree with is their love for knowledge and education. When we invest, we can only achieve the highest returns the more we know about a market, a product, a sector… We need to be hyper-specialists, especially in sectors like technological and scientific venture capital. And this is only achieved through continuous education and with the best. In a society where products and services become obsolete in a matter of days, knowledge, experience, critical thinking, and deduction will be key. This way, we will invest in products that are truly important for society and be able to anticipate any trend.
6. Investments with values
Lastly, investing with values allows us to give back to society and be more just. Private equity has great transformative power, and precisely for this reason, we must bet on projects that place humans at the center and genuinely help them develop, create a better and fairer world. It is our responsibility to infuse investments with values, ethics, and meaning.
In an environment where, on many occasions, the focus is on regulation, the security of invested capital, or proximity when investing, we believe that one of the differentiating factors in putting family wealth to work is to seek the company of those partners who stand out for their vision, their clarity in strategy, their ability to anticipate the uses of technology, or even their ability to create secure standards that generate trends in society and, therefore, new markets that have never existed before.
