VCC meets Project A – Operational VC
On April 26th Project A Ventures in person of Andreas Helbig came to Leipzig to visit HHL Venture Capital Club. As an investment manager he is working directly with the partners and supervises the entire deal flow. In case of Project A it’s around 1,500 proposals which boil down to approx. 10 investments per year.
Project A takes a slightly different approach compared to many other VCs by employing around 100 experts from different fields that are available to the ventures for operational support and advise. They build up expertise especially in those areas that are most crucial for the foundation of digital and tech start-ups: business intelligence, engineering, marketing and many more. With a quite young team, they transport not only financing, but also human capital, knowledge, experience and learnings into their ventures to help them to grow on solid grounds.
Additionally, he gave some insights on the approaches for start-up valuation that are used in practice. There, especially run-rates and offered shares play an important role in the seed and series A funding. Theoretical approaches including discounted cash flows or multiples play a minor role in seed and series A investments.
Finally we discussed the implications VC money has on the start ups. Andreas elaborated on topics like the importance of financial cases, inflationary Series A valuations and finding the right investor for your firm.
„Getting the best and most well known investor and the highest possible funding into the company has to be thought through as it comes with great responsibility.“ summaries Adrian Borst, member of the VCC, as learning for the start-up world. On the side of VCs he mentioned, „having a certain industry focus does not make all companies worth investing. In the end business models count“.