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2022 statistics of Pinto Ventures:

  • we received 300 qualified leads; 
  • spoke with 65 teams;
  • took forward conversations with 15 of them;
  • took a closer look and did DD in 5 (less than 2%);
  • and did only one new investment (to be disclosed soon).

Why did we do all this work? 

Selecting startups to invest is just 1/5 of our time. The rest is spent supporting teams throughout the ups and downs of building new profitable growing tech businesses, which is a very different approach from other early stage investors.

How do others work?

A typical early stage fund needs to create results after 10+ years for their investors or LPs. Investments are done in the first 1 to 3 years across ca. 20 to 30 companies. Portfolio construction is about maximising the chances of having at least one winner in each fund. The rule of thumb is that the “winner” investment will need to yield at least 1.5 times the size of the fund. Assuming an investment in equity of 20% and dilution until exit to 10%, this implies that even a small 50 million fund would need to have at least one investment worth 750 million at exit. This is the reason why the "VC industry" speaks about unicorns. It has little to do with founders. It has to do with the mathematics of being a VC. What this means, is that the job of the most VC partners is investing and less building.  

The Pinto Ventures way

Our portfolio construction is different. We make a diversification across the life cycle of the startups we invest in: from angel, seed, A, B, C, D and beyond. That means being a long term investor, working on continuing “graduating” the companies we invest in, and adding one or two new teams, every year. 
This is gives us a unique position compared with other early stage VCs and Angel Investors and makes us much more aligned with founders than any other investor. We believe Small VCs as Pinto Ventures with clear focus and long term investing strategies can deliver the best results in Early Stage Tech investing. 

Our goals for 2023

2023 will mark the first 10 years of our investment activities. We have invested in teams in Europe from Tallinn to Turin from Barcelona to Berlin. Yes, along the way we paid our "learning money" and lost a few investment. But we did have a good share of great results. Our main goal, besides keeping a strong TVPI (16x currently), is to start managing for a strong DPI at the levels of the best quartile of VCs. 
Because we are funded with permanent capital, it means being able to achieve this not only by exits, but also dividends and share price growth of the companies we supported, keeping our long term investors profile and close alignment with founders.
The focus of our work in 2023 will be with newer Pinto ventures family members getting them to reach good market traction and attractive unit economics; for the teams in Series B it is to reach breakeven; and reaching self-funding of growth for C and beyond companies. Maximising funding is for us not a goal. If a company can go all the way with only a few rounds of funding, great!

Our philosophy

We truly believe in an "investing" mindset and oppose a "trader" mindset. Value does not come from funding round multiples and markup of values based on private capital rounds (the "trader" mentality). The ultimate test of "entrepreneurial" success is simply growth and dividends. This something I learned from Mr Michael Kuehne and Kuehne + Nagel. 
It is a long journey to get there but the one that we feel is right and that we want to be part of.

We look forward to working with our teams & friends in 2023!

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