Tag Archives: Venture Capital

German Startups Group KGaA – Where Deep Value meets Venture Capital

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Disclaimer: This is not investment advice. Please do your own research !!!

Management summary:

Despite many issues in the past, I do think that German Startups Group, a stock listed VC investment vehicle, represents an interesting “deep value” situation, where one can buy 1 EUR of underlying value for less than 50 cents. A lot of things have changed into the right direction and there is the chance for some (soft) catalysts in the relatively near future. On the other hand, the unusual corporate structure in combination with a small market cap (EUR 15mn) and relatively illiquid trading also clearly makes it a risky investment.

“Never say never”

Some of my readers will ask: What did make my opinion change on this ?

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My 10 Cents on the WeWork IPO – The “AWS of Commercial Real Estate” or a “Double Hype” ?

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WeWork as the AWS of Commercial Real Estate

A lot has been written in the past few days about the upcoming WeWork IPO. I had linked to a few articles on Saturday and FTAlphaville has some pretty sarcastic but good coverage as well.

Yesterday then the always brilliant Stratechery came out with in interesting post. Ben Thompson thinks that WeWork could develop into something like AWS (for real estate) which now is repsonsible for most of Amazon’s profits. But he clearly acknowledges there are a lot of governance issues etc. etc.  The “WeWork is like AWS” story is nothing new and is mostly pushed by WeWork itself and combined with what they think is the adressable market (hint: all commercial real estate globally) could justify almost any valuation.

WeWork’s actual product: Open Plan offices (for start-ups and wannabes)

What I have been missing in the whole discussion so far is a look at WeWork’s actual product which in my opinion is the following:

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How to invest into Venture Capital – Listed Vehicles (part 1)

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One upfront remark: I do not recommend to invest in Venture Capital right now. The market is clearly overheated and the asset class is known to be very volatile although Warren Buffett’s Todd Combs seems to just have discovered Fintechs.

This post is ment as a “long-term perspective” view on the sector and not a buy recommendation in the current environment.

How to invest into Venture Capital as a Private Investor

Famous VC funds

Venture Capital, i.e. the industry funding (technology) start-ups is known that almost everything depends on relationships.

It is no secret that a few funds like Sequoia or Kleiner Perkins have produced outstanding returns but these funds are “invitation only”, there are little chances even for larger institutions to invest in them and for individuals without direct connections it is more or less impossible to get in.

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