Antony is an Associate at Claret and has been a part of the team for over 4 years, and whilst he sits in the investment team and has completed multiple deals, he has also been involved in various activities across the business, from fundraising to portfolio management.
You’ve been with Claret for 4 years – what’s been the most rewarding ‘accomplishment’ thus far?
There’s been lots of things over the last 4 years that have been rewarding, but one thing that stands out recently has been the opportunity to work on fundraising for Fund III. It’s great to take a step back and see how I’ve been truly involved ‘end-to-end’; not only in the traditional sense of deal origination through to due diligence and portfolio management, but also helping to raise the capital from our LPs that we’ve then physically deployed into those portfolio companies. It’s been interesting to be on the other end of the due diligence!
What’s one trend that excites you at the moment?
The level of VC funding in the first half of 2021 has been incredible and Europe has been the fasting growing region globally. I read a report recently that VC funding for European start-ups was nearly €50bn in the first half of the year and up almost 3x on H120 – this is great for us and the growth debt market in general as it swells the addressable universe for our capital.
What do you think investors will look for as we emerge from the pandemic?
Investors have placed a huge amount of focus on hot sectors and trends during the pandemic, and similarly a lot of attention on understanding how long term the impact might be for some of the “losers” from COVID-19. However, one thing we are now only just starting to understand is how temporal some of the winners have been – I think there will be a really interesting period as the world unlocks and returns to normal where we’ll get to see how well businesses in particular sectors manage coming out of a pandemic, just like we focused on how well they adapted going into one.
What do you think makes the best pitch from a potential portfolio company?
Obviously demonstrating the business fundamentals is always a given – and, whilst it sounds like another incredibly basic thing to say, it’s very helpful when a company quickly communicates the problem it solves and how it solves it, without being unnecessarily complex (“explain this to me like I’m a six year old”…).