Archives: Laurent Hengesch in the podcast of FinanceForward, Aug. 2022

https://financefwd.com/de/podcast-hengesch/

(Translated from German) Last year, a new investor emerged who is now involved in numerous German fintech hopefuls. Laurent Hengesch invested with Ilavska Vuillermoz Capital in N26, Solaris, Penta and Element. He talked about how the portfolio was built up and which business models the venture capitalist is looking at in the crisis in the podcast.

The investor wants to seize the opportunity: New investment opportunities would arise towards the end of the year, says fintech investor Laurent Hengesch. Together with Alain Wildanger, he founded the young venture capital fund Ilavska Vuillermoz Capital. Just in the past year - since Finance Forward's first report on the venture capitalist - Ilavska Vuillermoz Capital has increasingly focused on banking business models, including banking fintechs N26, Solaris as well as Penta, which was just sold to Qonto.

Now in a difficult market phase, the investor and his team would increasingly look at credit business models, on which many other financiers look rather skeptically. A first investment in this segment was made in the Swiss credit platform Teylor. Hengesch says that the approach is rather anti-cyclical.

Relying on proven business models

In contrast to many of the early-stage investors, Ilavska Vuillermoz Capital tends to focus on later financing rounds. The company's value will probably only triple or quadruple, but the risk of default is also lower, says Laurent Hengesch. In later phases, the shares can be traded more easily in case of doubt via so-called secondary deals. The fund itself has bought into some companies in this way.

An asset value of around 100 million euros is not the end of the story. After building up a fintech portfolio, the Luxembourg fund wants to see how it can find other investment themes, for example, in the healthcare sector.