E191 | ACT | Deepali Nangia, Speedinvest

0:04Welcome to At The Cap Table Podcast, a new series that shines a spotlight on the investors who changing the VC industry in Europe. I'm your host, Savst Tan, and our next guest is Dupani Nangia, partner at Speed Invest. Speed Invest is a hands-on pan-European early stage tech investor, partnering with founders from their early stages and helping them grow game-changing businesses. The Speed Invest team was one of the most active investors in Europe and last year announced 500 million of fresh capital to invest in new ventures and to continue to back their existing portfolio. The firm manages more than$1 billion in AUM, and although it started in Austria, counts a team of over 40 investors based in Berlin, London, Munich, Paris, and Vienna.

0:49Depali joined Speed Invest as a partner with a focus on finding, funding, and supporting investment in underrepresented founders, but the majority of her time in venture capital has been as a super angel investor, supporting startups from day one. Before joining Speed Invest, Dupani was named 2021 Angel Investor of the Year. She co-founded Alma Angels, a community set up to increase the number of female angel investors in Europe, and she's mentored and invested in numerous female-founded startups in sectors that combine profit with purpose, areas such as healthcare, women's health, climate, education, and inclusive finance.

1:26She's part of the UK Government Task Force for High Growth Female Entrepreneurs and is a former Atomico Angel. Originally from Kolkata in India, Dipali has global experience in the US and Europe with a background in investment banking, private equity and operations. In this episode, we'll hear more about Dipali's journey into angel investing and the development of her investment thesis, how she made the leap from solo angel to working in one of Europe's most active VC funds, as well as why she thinks angels continue to add value on cap tables when companies have matured. Stay tuned for a great conversation.

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3:42Welcome Dipali. You know, I think I really feel like you're someone who needs no introduction. You know, if anyone is looking at venture capital and thinking about amazing investors to have on their cap table, you know, you're one of the best. And, you know, obviously you won an award. I'm going to embarrass you and say you won an award two years ago for being UK Business Angel of the Year, right? In 2021. Yeah, I do. Thank you. Yeah, exactly. No, no, no. I think it's amazing. But great to have you here and, you know, would love to kind of hear more about sort of your journey into venture. And particularly, you know, you've always championed female founders and would love to know sort of the origin behind that.

4:27I mean, you've done this before many other people thought it was kind of cool or necessary to do. Absolutely. And thank you for having me. So excited to be doing this with you because I don't know if you remember the first time we met, I told you that you share the same name as my mother, who is one of the kindest people I ever knew. So really excited to be here. My career started in investment banking and after which I did, you know, I was in New York, after which I did private equity for many years. So Series A and beyond is where I really started my career. Then went into the corporate world, working for large companies as office of the CEO and set up, you know, running operational businesses for them, which I learned an awful lot.

5:10Set up a back office in India as well for a UK company, worked in strategy and operations, after which I kind of went freelance. I felt like I had personally faced bias in the workplace, as in passed over for a really senior COO position when I was quite young. And to be honest, I was very successful, very young. So it was kind of like not expected. I wasn't expecting that I would be passed over for a role. And they offered me something else. And I kind of laughed. And I was like, this isn't for me. And I felt there was a lot of both unconscious and conscious bias. I had two little children then.

5:48And so I kind of left without knowing what I was going to do. Having said that, I have, you know, a boy and a girl and definitely want a very equal world for them, for both of them to grow up in. And besides that, my father always made me believe that I could do anything. He was, you know, a real role model for me. So lots of different reasons why I do this. But the real, you know, I felt it started with me and me feeling the pain of it. ended into venture because I after I left the corporate world I started really first worked for the local government setting up a credit union to really teach some of the women living in the social housing estates on how not to borrow from a loan shark and borrow at high interest rates and really did a lot of financial education work with them because they would borrow five ten pounds for school reforms and Christmas presents and end up paying like two, three hundred pounds and not realize.

6:48So that's how it started. And after which I also then helped the local government. This was the Kensington and Chelsea Council set up an angel syndicate to drive more capital into Kensington and Chelsea. And that's how I got involved in angel investing. And during that syndicate, really wanted to push female founders to the forefront, given what I had gone through, started advising many many women really started spending a lot of time with them understanding their businesses because I had the financial skills to be able to do it right and they would give me a little bit of advisory equity and then I also started putting in very small checks into female founders and that's how my journey started now seven eight nine years ago I've seen so many businesses you know born pre-birth you know when I would sit down with women and like I want to starts.

7:40So that's how my journey started. And then now at Speedinvest, partner at a large European, one of the top European seed stage funds, as you know, with a focus on female founders. It's amazing. I mean, you know, that kind of financial education piece that you talk about, I really associate that with you because even with, and you know, I'll get you to talk about Alma Angels a little bit. Even there, you run sessions like teach-ins from more experienced investors to kind of talk to the rest of the group about how they're diligent startups, how they think and, you know, really educating and arming a new wave of angel investors to come in and be helpful and savvy towards kind of what goes on in venture, right?

8:21Yeah. Yeah. And you know Alma well. So exactly that. I think that, you know, how Alma started, maybe I touched upon that a bit. You know, Ella and I were having a coffee at the Conduit. And at that point, I was advising lots of female founders. I think she was at the first generation of Zinc. And we would talk about women in her cohort and how we, you know, how we diversify cap tables. And I was like, every time I think of asking a woman to join a cap table, it's the same women that came coming to my mind. And of course, Sarah Turner at that point already started Angel Academy and there were a bunch of women working around this issue.

8:56They were like, you know, Chek was doing a bit of work on that as well. Obviously not from the angel side, but there were a handful of women already trying to target this problem. And Ella and I discussed this and I can't find enough women. And she was like, OK, let's do something about it. And we were like, OK, let's create a community where we can educate the next generation of female angel investor and teach them how to invest. I mean, it's not that we knew everything at that point. But I think it was like you say about bringing together the best and the brightest to teach people, to teach women, really, how to take that step.

9:31And the understanding, of course, there will be smaller check writers in the beginning. but over time they'll get more comfortable and do larger checks and bring, to be honest, a lot more value just beyond the capital because there are lots of women who will write a small check but then do everything possible under the sun to help the company, be it like you say, with fundraising or with corporate development or all the things that us VCs also claim to do. And we were talking just before we started recording a little bit about the role of of angels and the importance of angels and how often there's this idea to kind of clean up the cap table and get rid of your angels.

10:10And I'd love to you to kind of to speak a bit to that, because I think you've got some quite strong views on it. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, recently, we were going to do a deal and there was this question around how are these eight angels investing in the company? Are they investing through like a SPV or something? Because we don't have to then be chasing all these angels to sign and then we'll have an issue down the road. and these kinds of questions always come up. We at Speed Invest really value angels, whether it's me or other partners or people. I think angels are really like the lifeblood of what I called the early stage startup ecosystem, right?

10:51That's how I would really describe them. They bring capital, they bring their Rolodexes, they bring, and many times angels are investing, they're not just thinking about how to make money out of it you know I remember investing as an angel right I did invest because I fell in love with the founder and I was like you know what they will figure it out but I love this founder and I love the space they're building in and I probably thought less about business models than I do now but I have invested you know I have invested in women where I felt that if I didn't invest in this woman I wasn't doing my job right Right.

11:27So I think angels also think beyond monetary considerations and they often invest in things that they, you know, that they fundamentally want to change and can understand the problem that the entrepreneur wants to build for. And, you know, when it comes to those angel investments, you've made some that have become kind of really big companies. Right. So we were talking a bit about kind of PensionBee as an example. You know, you met those founders early on and, you know, identified their potential. What did you see? What was in front of you that made you think, oh, I'd love to invest in that company?

12:00I mean, it's funny because with Rami, I remember having my first coffee with her. And I still remember the table that I was sitting on in Karl Uthi. And I said to her, so I love what you're building. It's like a huge space. You know, solve this challenge. I understood the problem because I had several pensions at different companies. And I was like, I know what you're trying to build for. I said to her, so Rami, what is your valuation? And she was like, 21 million. And I was like, 21 million? There's nothing here, Rami. And she was like, well, this is it. You, you know, take it or leave it. And she always had that really big vision and really big self-confidence about what she wanted to build.

12:36Right. And it was it wasn't it was really her that I was investing in that point because there was nothing else. And the idea that she would build this big company, I mean, subsequent to Rami. And Rami, to be honest, has had, I think, three kids and taking the company public. and she's you know she's done a lot in this journey I recently ran into her maybe like two three months ago but if I look back to like all the women that I've invested in it's usually been you know I do like those large markets so I've invested in bioplastics or a flushable sanitary pad which is flus or shell works or carbon accounting and you know and these are like huge markets and obviously finding like really strong founders who have the expertise to build for those market so Rami did come from like a financial services background and understood pensions really well and understood had connections and then built like a really strong roster of angels around her who were city angels who not had just gave her the capital but open doors for her and Rami raised I think north of 30 million pounds from angels right so she never did a VC raise and she raised a lot of money from angels and then I look back to all the other women and I have 30 or 32 women that I've invested in over the years.

13:47And what I do like is I do like some technical expertise or background from, you know, which helps them build. And if not, you know, supplement them with that expertise, right? Because I think that is quite important to be able to sell authentically into an industry. You need to have that because it's not just into an investor because you can get the dollars, but it's the revenue that gets the multiple, right? So I want them to be able to sell into the industry and where that's where the industry knowledge becomes very important. And do you think, you know, for founders, there's, how can they best prepare to kind of pitch in front of angels?

14:26Do you think there's any difference between how they might pitch to a VC, for example? So any practical tips? Yeah, I mean, with angels, like I said, a lot of it is, you know, when I look at the angels in Alma, when I think about myself as an angel, I mean, I obviously look at it with a similar lens, right? Because I will say, is there a financial return to be made here? But angels also will invest for that social return and that gratification. Angels also invest to learn. You know, I learned so much about so many different sectors just by doing those angel checks. Of course, I had financial return in mind, but the learning journey through those deals has been phenomenal, right?

15:05So angels also invest, learn about sectors, angels invest because they want to make a difference angels invest because because they feel passionate about the topic it's they don't have any they don't have any return criteria you know unlike a fund right as a fund we have to think about oh is this business going to be large enough for us you know to make it interesting but for an angel that return criteria is less relevant because they're not operating under any fundamental fund model is what i'm saying so so when they're pitching you know I think it's about finding those angels who are interested in what you're building right because I get so you get so many things that I was like I'm so not interested in this topic right so it's about finding those angels because I remember that I did this deal called on I had an inbound code on LinkedIn from INSEA who founded Shellworks this bioplastics business and she wrote me a LinkedIn message she said hi Dipali I know that you have invested in Planera and I know you're interested in bioplastics and that's what I'm building for and I would love to talk to you.

16:08So she clearly had done the research to be like, yes, the Pali had made one investment in the space and another one could be interesting for her. That's why I spoke to her and did two, three calls and then ended up investing. Now she's raised obviously a large seed round from Local Globe, but it was really about doing the research and making sure that you're targeting because angels also get lots of decks, right? I also used to get pitch decks from men. And I was like, it clearly states on my LinkedIn that I'm investing in women. So I'm just like, are you not? And even as a fund, to be honest, we get so much inbound.

16:42And at Speed Invest, we're very driven on investment thesis and everything is on the website. It clearly states neither of the sectors we invest in, but we still get inbound and people have not read. You know, they've said, building for this and can you look at it? You know, I really think doing some background research is helpful, whether it's a VC or an angel. So background research, be targeted in your communication and kind of know your stuff about your business, right? And once you have one angel who's committed, ask them for intros to other angels because angels kind of club together, as you know.

17:16Yeah, no, no, that's fantastic advice. And I'm thinking just a bit about this idea of angels being impactful. What are the stats on Alma at the moment in terms of kind of the impact of the community, both from an investment point of view and number of members? Absolutely. So we have close to 200 members now. I think we have pared down some members because we felt like they were not investing because we put in so much work. As you know, it's a free community. So we are pared it down to people. And people go through their phases that they might not be able to invest. doesn't mean that they're never going to invest, but just want to make sure that we are engaging with people who want to invest because the women who are applying need to be able to have capital, right?

17:56That's the first thing. So we've invested lots of 5 million pounds in the last three years off of the community. It's almost like a mini fund, right? We also have had, we've also invested in funds. So Almas have invested in January Ventures or Passion Capital, you know, or the psychedelics fund. So we've also invested in funds. Lastly, I would say, and you know this, but there have been other funds that have been born out of Alma, whether it was Hermesa, the syndicate, or Sea Ventures, or, you know, Trin trying to create. She met Nicole on Alma, and Saloni met Samira on Alma. And so there have been other offshoots of Alma, which is super exciting, and they will go on to raise their own funds, as you know, so.

18:34That's really exciting. I mean, that is kind of that idea of value beyond capital, you know, real kind of friendships, partnerships, and building something together. I think that's amazing. And we have a lot of men, as you know, we have David of course but who is amazing he really is like the glue that puts it all together so many times but it is like a sisterhood and so many people reach out to us about even when we were like trying to be more conscious about the members that are in there so many people which is like I just don't I don't want to leave Alma can you just leave me in there you know they just didn't so many people wrote to us and said I haven't invested in six months but I really want to invest so please don't I really want to be a part of this is almost like a sisterhood or whatever you want to call it, a community that people, you know, want to belong to and feel like they want to belong to.

19:21You're clearly so passionate about being an angel and getting other people into angel investing. So what made you make the switch into VC? You know, we've mentioned Speed Invest. How did you find each other? Yeah, interesting because Speed Invest had one of the principles of the health team was Felix, who's no longer at Speed Invest. He's now an operator building his own company, hybrid healthcare business out of Austria. But he would reach out to me to get talk about female founders in the UK as an angel so he would be like so I'm looking at this business it's in London what do you think of it so that's how I met Speed Invest just like I met many other funds to be honest I met Octopus like that I met Connect I met funds because they would be like which are the female founders that you're investing in or give us your thoughts on this female founder and that's how I met him and one thing led to the other I don't know I would talk to him quite regularly on a separate occasion I was having dinner with one of my friends Steve and his wife Amy and Steve is now ex-DeepMind actually building a new company now but yeah he said to me why don't you join a fund as a venture partner given all the work that you do in the ecosystem and he was like oh I'm a venture partner and I think it was first minute or atomic oh he was a venture partner and he was like I think you would be great at it And to be honest, I had never heard of a venture partner before Steve told me about it.

20:38So the next thing I did was I was like, who are the funds that I really like? And let me ping them to see if they might. Because again, venture partner roles are not advertised, right? So it's something you have to find because it's not like a job spec that's put on a website which says you're looking for a venture partner. Or even recruiters really don't know why because it's like a quite opaque, right? So I think I reached out to Felix and two more funds, which I thought were non-UK funds. So I said, you're a US fund, you're a European fund. And I wrote to Felix and I said, Felix, if you hear of a venture partner role that a European fund is looking for a UK person, please let me know.

21:15Right. So I didn't even think of Speed Invest. I just thought he would be plugged into the European ecosystem more than me. Right. And the other, I exactly did the two American funds. I said, if you know American funds are looking for a UK venture partner, please keep me in mind. and so actually all three pinged me but Felix connected me immediately to the CEO of Speed Invest who I'm managing partner Oliver Holley and Oliver wrote to me right away and said I'd love to talk to you we had a call two weeks later and he was like I love what you're doing would you like to join Speed Invest with a focus on female founders and and I said absolutely to be honest I didn't even know what I was getting into it was supposed to be like one day a week and it ended up being to be honest three to four days a week at which point they said you know you're already spending so much time with us does it make sense for you to come on board as a full-time partner I think I was nine months into it and Phoenix has subsequently left he's still you know I'm still I just messaged him yesterday to see if I can see him in Vienna next week because I'm going to go headquarters in Vienna and and to be honest Oliver is so inspirational and I think he completely like buys into he's somebody who walks the walk and talks the talk and he's that person who will you know home a Ukrainian family he's the person who is you know I joined really for him and I work very closely with him and directly with him so I feel like he completely understands what I stand for because there are many funds in Europe who want to invest in female founders but you know they haven't created a position like I think I'm the only partner in any European seat fund love any size large that is not started by you know it's not a micro GP that where there's a focus there's a partner dedicated to female founders right so I think that's why I joined and I feel like I could continue to do what I did but on a larger scale so instead of writing smaller checks now I could write bigger checks into women and that's what I did last year I did a few deals last year into one of them is Eileen as you know one of them is Natasha Latanshi Stein at Surfboard she's building customer service scheduling software and then I was involved in a third deal with my fellow partner Fred in another female founder who's building in compliance but yeah I just felt I could write larger checks and and be a part of a you know bigger I guess and I made so many friends at Speed Invest it's been lovely.

23:37and and the the amazing thing about your role is this is not a separate fund this is this is your mandate as part of the the core fund right yeah it can't be a separate fund right it should be part of the it has to be ingrained in the dna of the fund everybody and not just me to be honest i sit across the sector teams we have six sector teams of course i probably not good enough to look at a deep tech team, but I look at health, I look at SaaS, I look at emerging market fintech, I look at, you know, I sit kind of horizontally. And that's the way it should be. It shouldn't be a separate thing. You shouldn't have just one person looking at the email fund.

24:15It should be just ingrained in the DNA of the fund. You know, thinking a bit about kind of some of the sectors that you're excited by, what are you drawn to at the moment that you think is really interesting? Yeah, I mean, we are quite specialized in terms of our investment thesis. So we go quite deep into each sector, right? So I spend a lot of time on the health side. I've done as an angel, I did a lot in health and climate, and I did some in fintech and edtech. And I'm spending a lot of time at the intersection of fintech and health. So verticalized SaaS with fintech solutions is what I'm looking at, spending quite a bit of time looking at something in Brazil right now, which I'm trying to close.

24:53So let's see what happens. But they're trying to build a verticalized SaaS solution for doctors to be able to manage their practices like businesses ultimately want to be able to plug a fintech solution in there, offer them financing and credit and insurance for those practices. So that's something I'm excited about. And separately, look at a lot of health. We had started also looking at tech bio. We were looking at a lot of digital health, but we also started looking at tech bio and how we can expedite drug discovery, R &D and drug discovery through technology. That's super interesting. Of course, everybody's looking at AI.

25:30We are also spending time on it. I think AI applications of AI in healthcare can be quite interesting, at least from an automation standpoint, not necessarily right now from a diagnosis standpoint, but there are like probably some tasks that you can easily make, you know, more efficient and freeing up clinicians time. So looking at some of that, I also spend time in Africa looking at female founders and fintechs. my mandate is so broad and lastly I also run a micro GP program which we set up where we're investing in 10 to 12 micro GPs sub 30 million 50 percent into female and diverse GPs so real you know we thought about a scout program and we were like why don't we just instead of doing scouts why don't we give money maybe slightly larger checks like 100 to 250k to people who we think are really smart who are building the next generation of funds and how can we empower them and do some ecosystem development work and and not just give them capital but we've also developed curriculum coming back to the learning we've developed curriculum to help them scale from a smaller fund to a larger fund so all that is you know things that I'm working on every day fantastic or you know if I don't know if you can announce any of those GPs that you've made investments into but would love to hear so we've obviously invested in fund dev which is female founder fund and we've invested in emblem in france i don't know if you know them one female and male gp we've done a few investments in africa already two i would say we closed just in i think now one in in in healthcare in germany i think i have five or six that i'm looking at right now that i've already allocated towards we just have to take them through investment committee but yeah very excited you're probably kind of one of the busiest people in everything that i know i mean if i had to kind of do a drawing of you it probably would be an octopus spinning a million plates with a big smile on your face obviously that's how i think you got me at a good day good well you know out of the 10 calls you got today i hope i'm i'm in the first half You were the most fun.

27:42Well, yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, I guess kind of I've got two more questions for you. You've been on kind of many different sides of the investing table. What are your key kind of learnings, would you say, either as an angel or as a VC? Yeah, I mean, one will never, never know as much as the entrepreneur. So, you know, we can analyze, overanalyze. And I learned this over time. you will never know as much as the entrepreneur and the entrepreneur many times if you're backing a first-time entrepreneur they are also learning at the same time as you they might have more technical knowledge than you but I think it's it's about fundamentally it's about investing in the right people because we are in a people business right it's about you want to be them not just you're not just on their board like a financial advisor or somebody open doors you're really like a spiritual advisor to them.

28:37That's the relationship you want to build with them, right? That they come to you with all their problems and you know about their problems before they become problems, right? And therefore, you need to build this really strong relationship. And for me, it's really wanting to become that person for the founders. So for me, it is all about the people and it's all about the relationship. Of course, business model is important. What we've learned from investing in so many companies is important. Large markets are important, but all those are given to me. Those are things that we know we need right ultimately it's about investing in people and building and empowering enabling them to build those businesses so so for me I have learned that over many many years and there's something else about a gut feeling about a person because I did some angel checks but I didn't feel like a gut feel like and I felt that something wasn't right now I don't know what that is you can call it superstition you can call it not very scientific but I feel in those cases I wasn't right in making those investments right because I felt I didn't listen to my gut right so I think that is very very important is to be able to listen to your gut feel if you have one and maybe it maybe it happens over the years as you learn more so so those are you know those are definitely things I've learned and obviously some businesses will take longer than others you can't just be like oh I'm not investing in this business because it hasn't made much progress in two years because you know we saw so many businesses COVID changed so many businesses right everything you don't know what changes but of course you as that person that spiritual advisor that financial advisor will know how to make that call when the time is right I think we've spent kind of quite a bit of our conversation talking about potential of people and also how influential angels and those early advisors and you know you call them spiritual advisors right in a way yeah they can be so my final question I'd love to know who's been the most influential person in your career I would say that it's my dad definitely no longer around but you know raised me fundamentally I was a daughter the youngest of four girls and he was an entrepreneur he was a scientist who built a commercialized business so he was clearly a very very self-made entrepreneur I learned so much just watching him grow as an entrepreneur and just the way he treated his employees and whether it was stock options you know very early in the day like he I literally discussed these things with him so I really saw how he treated people how he built relationships I feel like I learned so much about him because he was always like you should approach any relationship with a give first mentality and not get what do I get out of this but what can I give to this person and that's how he taught me how to build relationships.

31:26And I think that's, and fundamentally, it became a part of me. Do you know what I mean? It's not something I need to think about doing anymore. It just fundamentally became a part of who I am. And I think it's definitely helped me in many, many ways. More than one is when you have that approach to any relationship, especially because in VC, it's a very transactional business, right? It is about deals and it is about returns. And I think having that giving first mentality comes back and helps you in more ways than one. And he is definitely the most inspirational person in my life. Very grateful to have him as a father.

32:04Thank you so much for sharing that. I think that's such a wonderful way to end things. And, you know, thank you for taking the time today. Thank you for having me. Thank you for listening to this special episode on the European VC. If you love our show, join our community by subscribing at eu.vc. And now, some words from our beloved sponsors. Tactic is the leading forecasting and scenario planning software for venture capital funds. Tactic combines portfolio construction, portfolio management, forecasting, and reporting into a unified platform. Investors are empowered with data-driven insights on fund strategy, reserve allocation, exit planning, and fund performance.

32:46Tactic was built using quantitative techniques researched from hundreds of data-driven fund managers and is trusted by over 250 funds globally today. Tactic is a proud sponsor of the first season of the At The Cat Table podcast series. If you'd like to learn more, please check out tactic.io. T-A-C-T-Y-C dot I-O. Investors are turning to new relationships as we continue to face challenges in the downturn. Join Expand Northstar to discover Dubai, the UAE and the rise of the Global South ecosystems. Gain insights on market access opportunities and the latest on ADGM, Mubadala and Catalyst partners, as well as how DFDF are transforming the global investment landscape with a$1 billion target for assets under management by the end of 2024.