Private Equity & Venture Capital Conference in Prague

Over 150 high-profile decision-makers and professionals in the CEE private equity and venture capital industry assembled on the 16th of October 2019 for 0100 Conferences Prague.

Event website:
When:
Where:

PE&VC Conference by 0100 Conferences, Prague
16 October 2019
Grandium Hotel, Prague

The one-day event was packed with condensed expertise from real-life PE/VC practitioners, both on stage and in the audience. It was like a mini executive MBA course with a focus on PE/VC:).

We’ll share just a few pearls of hard-earned wisdom and witty remarks that are good take-aways.

On CEE:

Everybody agreed the CEE region is very fragmented, with every country having its own legal system and based on various models: French for Romania, Austrian for the Czech Republic, etc.)

From all EU Hubs, Berlin is said to be the most important, US funds base there and cover Europe, next city Probably Barcelona. CEE is just around 1,5% of EU investment volume, so the perception is that CEE can be covered from Western EU HQs.

CEE doesn’t ‘produce’ too many good products so sizeable VCs look at it only from an opportunistic angle. What they see is a few targets for investment, little ambition and lack of global potential. The best way to generate your deal-flow is by actually making deals. This, among others, attracts the advisors: “Now that you’ve done that, why don’t you do that”.

A very positive trend has been gaining momentum: Raising more and more local LP money. Everybody agreed that ‘Smart money is local money”.

On building value:

VC (provocative thought): Positive cash flows mean the concept is proven already, so hard to get 100x growth
PE: The goal is to invest in already strong companies, usually they don’t actually need money. How to make them accept our investment? A good approach is the nurture relations with a Target for a couple of years. A PE investor helped a Target with recruitment (CFO), organized workshops for specific skills, suggested alternative investments, even if entirely aligned with the investor’s interest. That approach gives a pretty high conversion rate, the investor mentioned.
PE: There’s a high demand for big tickets and the supply is very low in the CEE region. A PE investor is usually the first institutional investor in a startup. They help with governance, help them to create proper reporting, management culture. So the next investor knows what to expect.

Future trends:

More unicorns will rise in the CEE region
More grown companies stay here in the region
Some companies come here from outside of CEE

Twitter-storm:

[easy-tweet tweet=”How do you spot a private investor in the room. First thing he does is look for the Exit sign:)” usehashtags=”no” template=”light”]

[easy-tweet tweet=”In CEE startups, the usual buzzwords are actual features of products” usehashtags=”no” template=”light”]

[easy-tweet tweet=”
Moderator: Big tech companies are buying companies to ‘kill’ them.
PE Investor: Well, I wouldn’t mind to be bought by Google.” usehashtags=”no” template=”light”]

[easy-tweet tweet=”The Rule of 40 should be The Rule of 60 in the CEE region” usehashtags=”no” template=”light”]

[easy-tweet tweet=”M&A always boring, lots of work and when it’s done you’re too exhausted to celebrate” usehashtags=”no” template=”light”]

Read up

We were right when we recommended CEE PE&VC Statistics Report 2018 as part of the preparation for the event. The research was quoted and referred to so many times by PE/VC community, we now think if you haven’t read it you’re missing on something important. Don’t.
Have you heard of The Rule of 40? If not, just like us, here’s a good intro by Thierry Depeyrot, and Simon Heap, both Silicon Vallery Partners for Bain&Company:Article: Hacking Software’s Rule of 40

Complete Speaker Line-up:

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