Round Table - 9 June 2022

We held a round table yesterday, generously hosted by Optimal Compliance, with a mix of start-ups, investors and partners yesterday. Thank you to everyone attending.

Also a particular thank you to James Swanston of Voyage Control, which he founded to solve problems in the logistics industry - from container shipping to site management. In just over a decade, Voyage Control has become one of the leaders in their field, with offices on four continents, thousands of construction sites using their solutions and 5% of containers in the US managed on their platform. We are thrilled to accompany such an innovative business solving such critical issues.

The subject was "Demystifying Venture Debt in Europe: Opportunities abound in a new asset class".

Three Key Take-Aways:

1) Venture Debt is in its infancy in Europe, with many participants pointing out that many entrepreneurs did not know it existed and what the different forms of debts are, e.g.: R&D and grant loans, revenue based financing, bullet or amortizing structures. The market can be confusing but offers extraordinary flexibility to entrepreneurs trying to balance their cash flows.

2) Avoiding dilution has become "front of mind" with entrepreneurs. $14 billion: that’s the cost to Zoom shareholders for choosing equity versus debt in their last round.

3) With a 0.5% Loan Loss and mid-teens IRR (NightHawk’s book), the segment offers a very attractive risk-reward for Limited Partners.

Slide deck here:

RoundTable 09 June 2022.pdf

Download PDF • 1.08MB

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