SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders 827: VC: $140m FinTech, InsurTech Fund on How They Invest
Oct 29, 2017
20:19
Andrew Pitz. He's an investment manager at Transamerica Ventures, the global venture capital fund of Transamerica that specializes in investing in insurtech, fintech and enterprise software companies. There, he has led the firm's investments in PolicyGenius, Digital Currency Group, Everplans, SmartAsset and Hixme.
Famous Five:
- Favorite Book? – Venture Deals
- What CEO do you follow? – Jonah Goodhart and Vinny Lingham
- Favorite online tool? — Fortunes Term Sheet, Mattermark Daily, Crunchbase Daily
- How many hours of sleep do you get?— 5.5
- If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Andrew wished he had understood domain names and technology
Time Stamped Show Notes:
- 01:42 – Nathan introduces Andrew to the show
- 02:16 – Transamerica and AEGON are global investment and insurance firms
- 02:56 – $140K is the fund size they're currently working with
- 03:04 – The fund was already set-up from the beginning
- 03:25 – Their first fund was in 2014, in the European market
- 03:47 – They had 17 unique companies with 23 investments
- 04:25 – They don't share company information with their parent company
- 04:39 – They don't want the corporate parent to be involved in the business
- 05:25 – They haven't had any exits yet
- 05:39 – Andrews shares fund-to-fund deals with FinTech Collective
- 06:38 – They put in a $2M check and the total funds raised were $75K to $100K
- 06:55 – They put in $1M to another fund to fund the deal they had
- 07:00 – Their first fund was around $10M
- 07:28 – FinTech Collective is based in New York
- 07:38 – Some of the fintech companies they've invested in are Art Invest, MoneyLion, 401k and Elephant Tech
- 08:24 – Andrew gets his salary and bonuses from the deals
- 08:50 – Andrew shares how their boss missed deals that are worth billions now
- 09:30 – There are instances where they need to let some deals pass
- 10:00 – In a week, they're receiving hundreds of newsletters from different companies (around 5000 in a year)
- 10:13 – Andrew studies 500 deals and meets with around 250
- 11:10 – Initial check size was $1-5M as a follow on investor
- 11:34 – Andrew chooses PolicyGenius and Hixme
- 12:40 – Andrew thinks PolicyGenius will have a good exit
- 13:07 – H2O as an open source
- 13:33 – Red Hat pioneered the open source
- 14:36 – The goal is to invest in direct technology and create partnerships
- 14:54 – Andrew shares the kind of partnerships they're looking for
- 15:14 – Andrew wanted to do work in Asia because of the many opportunities
- 17:05 – The Famous Five
3 Key Points:
- There are thousands of companies created daily—you have to research and choose which one to invest into wisely.
- Forming partnerships is MORE important than monetary gain.
- Technology can take you anywhere.
Resources Mentioned:
- Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
- The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
- GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
- Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
- Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you're doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
- Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
- Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
- Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he's driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
- Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives