Venture Capital in FinTech: Hugo Bongers from ABN AMRO Ventures

In this series of articles, I give the stage to my investor network. We're talking about FinTech investment, their Venture Capital firm, and investment appetite during the worldwide COVID-19 crisis.

Last week we kicked off with Devin Kohli from Outward VC. Today we follow up with Hugo Bongers from ABN AMRO Ventures.

What is your full name? 

Hugo Bongers

Where do you work? 

I head ABN AMRO Ventures – we are the corporate venture arm of ABN AMRO, the European bank, and our mission is to make strategic investments in early-stage (series A and onwards) tech and fintech companies which are relevant for the bank.

What is your key USP? 

Whenever we invest in a company, in addition to the financial investment which all VCs can bring, we work hard to deliver a partnership with ABN AMRO. This can take numerous forms: delivering the bank as client, our clients (where we can act as a distribution partner), our balance sheet, our relationship with regulators, … you name it. Our key differentiator is that we have a very good relationship with senior stakeholders across the bank and can execute. The vast majority of our portfolio companies have an active partnership with the bank.

What market (specific FinTech niche?) do you target? 

We work across the bank, eg retail, commercial, private, corporate, financial crime, infrastructure, data etc. In line with your previous question, we do not have a specific niche or topic. We strongly believe that the days are gone for corporates to try to build everything themselves. Our job is to scout for founders of innovative companies and connect them with relevant stakeholders within the bank. Through the investment and the business partnership, we truly have “skin in the game” and interests are aligned. 

What’s your sweet spot?

Our sweet spot is to invest in companies from Series A onwards – this is linked to the nature of the partnership we are offering to founders and management teams. Since we deliver ABN AMRO, teams need to have the resources to deal with such a business relationship. So, by default, we are investing in teams with a certain level of maturity.

In what region(s) do you invest? 

Geographically we focus on Europe, the US, and Israel.

Can you name a few big names/success stories from your portfolio? 

We are very excited about for example some of our more recent investments as they address key strategic themes around the whole data value chain (from upstream to downstream). But it is still too soon to categorize them as success stories. However, one stands out in our portfolio: Tink, the open banking player. We invested in the company back in 2016, in sync with a signed business partnership. And Tink is today one of the European open banking success stories! Very proud that we could be part of this journey.

What region do you foresee most of the innovation coming from? 

Over recent years, Europe has really been working hard on developing its ecosystem. It is surely not an easy market. Europe is very complex with all individual regulations... 

How do you keep up to date (what news sources for example) on the FinTech industry? 

Aside from the obvious Techcrunch, CB Insights and Crunchbase, etc. We prefer to have close personal & video conversations with founders, VCs, advisors and other stakeholders in the ecosystem. On top, we set up daily Google alerts on topics of interest or linked to our portfolio companies.

What FinTech events do you normally attend? Can you give a recommendation? 

Money 2020 and Paris Fintech Forum would be my favorites. But even more important: I prefer to get in touch with founders and other VCs prior to the event and schedule a meet-up. Those gatherings are a good opportunity to connect! But you need to make the most out of it. In the end personal contact and a relationship really matters. This is made more difficult due to Covid-19.

What do you look for in a FinTech startup before you invest? And can you give an example? 

As a team we are trying to answer amongst others, the following questions: Do we believe in the trends of the market? Is this company going to be a category leader? Is there visible (commercial) traction? Will this team succeed? How is this relevant for ABN AMRO?

What is an important skill for a FinTech startup founder? 

A startup is never built on your own… being able to attract talent is probably one of the key skills founders need to have.

On the COVID-19 crisis:

Many VC’s say that deals that were in the works are still closing, but it’s harder for new relations/startups to get funding. Do you agree with this? 

Indeed, this year we have announced 4 new deals: Fenergo, Penta, Privitar, and OpenInvest (announced last week). And one follow on investment: Tink. But we were already following them for quite some time. Deals that were in the works do close but it is true that starting discussions have been quite a challenge. I would also add that for the moment, VCs are providing as much support they can to their portfolio companies, making sure that they have sufficient runway and taking the right strategic directions… Slowly, they will get more bandwidth to deal with new deal-flow.