Blogs

Dear investors, advisors, IC members, founders, and friends of Investigate VC,

Hope you all are having a good ending to yet another ‘different’ year. Thank you for all your support in 2022 and I am looking forward to working with you in 2023 - Investigate VC is only here because of you!

I thought that I would make a short summary of some 2022 highlights for Investigate VC:

📌1 new investment and 3 follow-on, making up 13 portfolio companies in total

🚀3 portfolio companies did their Pre-Series A fund raise - Lendela, Salary Board, GrowthDesk

📈6 out of 12 companies have now done Series A fund raise, 1 has done Series B

✅Investigate VC Fund II had its first close on 20th May 2022 and is now up and running with full speed ahead

💲Our portfolio of 13 companies have an aggregated revenue of USD 60m (latest period annualised)

…highlights in the world of startups:

🦄There are almost 900 unicorn startups in the world by 2022 - how many will dissappear in 2023...?

🌏Green technologies & sustainable finance goes mainstream with industry professionals indicating their growing interest in energy-saving technologies, projects with sustainable impacts etc, and startups continue to enter into this domain to prove their positive social and ecological effects

🤖AI and ML has become increasingly integrated into business of all kinds, and the number of things that goes digital or connected to the IoT grows daily. We see more start-ups seizing the opportunities to capitalise on it - shoutout to StoryBrain for being in the hotspot of the hotspot; utilising “generative AI”

What about 2023?

🚀Portfolio expansion and more investments to come!

☝With persistent inflation and both the hard and soft landing are still on the table, the macro volatility remains. However, alternative investments like private equity are comparatively a safe haven during times of volatility

👂Rather than play the role of disruptor, crypto disrupted itself in 2022. The multibillion dollar collapse of FTX exposed its corruption and mismanagement. It is doubtful that those issues will be resolved in 2023, but it could still be a big year for the crypto industry

🦾Digital transformation will continue to accelerate with innovations and developments in AI, IoT, cloud computing etc. This will bring us closer than ever to the point where systems and processes support each other to complete mundane tasks efficiently

🌎The world is increasingly waking up to the fact that the climate disaster will pose many more challenges in the future, we will likely to see investors and consumers continue to move ESG to the centre of their strategy

Recommendations of what to do, read, and listen to from us:

📺Here is a great podcast I would suggest you to listen/watch. This one is about the 'climate' we are in, what investors will be gaining from it and how founders should be behaving now - a must listen/watch: How Venture Capital is changing

👂An interesting episode from The Hustle Daily Show titled ‘What’s driving the debt crisis? with Ray Dalio’. It covered a range of topics about the economy include:

• The growing wealth gap (and what we should do about it)

• Thoughts on inflation and an impending recession

• What to invest in during times of volatility

• Whether or not crypto can become a reserve currency

📰The Hustle provides short and sweet daily updates in the tech world and here is an example of one of the most-clicked emails in 2022. On this day, it talked about Amazon’s layoffs, the fake tweet fallout, Keurig’s coffee pots and more

Thank you all for your support and contribution in the year passed and I hope you all will have a great and peaceful 2023!

Did you now that Norway:

🏛️own 1.5% of all publicly listed companies (AVG)?

💰AUM of USD >1,200,000,000,000 - the largest SWF in the world?

📉lost USD ~170b 1H22 - the largest loss in the history of mankind (by a fund or individual) ...still great return over time USD >630b since 1996?

These were just a few takeaways from a meetup with the management of Norges Bank Investment Management (AKA the Norwegian oil fund). Nicolai Tangen, Trond Grande, Birgitte Bryne, Carine Smith Ihenacho, Dag Huse, and Sigmund Kyrdalen. Other even more interesting takeaways:

🔐cybersecurity is more crucial for the fund than ever, experiencing several hacking attempts daily (also driven by geo political tension)

🌳climate risk as a financial risk - their recently released "Climate action plan" is also driving their investment decisions today, the goal net zero by 2050 for all portfolio companies

😔only 10% of their 9k portfolio companies have a credible net zero 2050 goal, and actionable plan to get there...

📈USD ~15b of fresh inflow to the fund every month (tax of oil and gas production in Norway)

🪟no. 2 in transparency amongst SWFs in the world! "Trust earned with knowledge and transparency"

I might be from Norway, but I am a little bit more modest when it comes to AUM at Investigate VC - still aiming for high impact though...😅

Thank you to Anders Hegre and everyone else at NBAS - Norwegian Business Association Singapore for arranging!

Click the link to see the real-time value of the Norwegian SWF.

www.nbim.no

🐔 Just last month, Singaporeans were in a state of flurry as news streamed in that Malaysian authorities had introduced an export ban of up to 3.6 million chickens a month. The nervousness was shared by everyone, from everyday consumers to hawkers, as Singapore relied on Malaysia for one third of its poultry.

Situations like these underline the importance of innovation in #foodtech with alternative protein at the forefront of solutions that would have cushioned the impact of such a ban.

🤔 But what else is being done in the foodtech world? Join Mikael Krogh (Managing Partner and Founder of Investigate VC), Eugene Wang (Co-Founder and CEO at Sophie's BioNutrients), and Felix Collins (Founder of Full Circle Biotechnology) as they answer burning questions facing the foodtech industry at The DO Innovation Series.

🔎 If you want to learn more about the latest food innovation tech trends in APAC and untapped opportunities for traditional agrifood industries among other industry insights, mark your calendars:

📅 Jul 28 2022, 12PM - 1PM (GMT+8)

📍 Online

Sign up now 👉 https://lnkd.in/gRhmaNGQ

1️⃣ 🇷🇺Russia -15k 2️⃣ 🇨🇳China -10k 3️⃣ 🇮🇳India -8k 4️⃣ 🇭🇰Hong Kong -3k

...💸migrating to:

1️⃣ 🇦🇪UAE +4k 2️⃣ 🇦🇺Australia +3.5k 3️⃣ Singapore +2.8k. 4️⃣ 🇮🇱 Israel +2.5k

TLDR - do you see some trends?

➡️ millionaire's migration seems more motivated by 🗺️Geo politics and 😷COVID restrictions than 🪙taxes...!

➡️ 🇨🇳China manage to take 2️⃣ and 4️⃣ spot for most migrating from

➡️ millionaires seem to move, then disappear...? Is there an unknown moving tax? Or has the migration to Mars already started, but only for millionaires...?😅

➡️ what happened with 🇷🇺? I thought the millionaires were fleeing to the home country, or is that only their 🛥️yachts...? 🤔

Read a, maybe not so useful but, interesting article by Visual Capitalist

🌱critical topsoil is eroding, "catastrophic loss within 60 years"

💦 biggest filtration system on earth

💉 3/4 of our vaccines are derived from soil

Due to climate change and poor farming practices - our soil is disappearing. The United Nations declared soil finite and predicted catastrophic loss within 60 years.

The video mention studies showing that organic farming is MORE productive over time. This is something I have always said - using chemical fertilizers and pesticides is not and will never be for the better. Every time we do something where we 'fight' nature it comes to bite our butt - we need to work WITH nature, not against it. This problem gives Agritech a lot of opportunities, albeit for the wrong reasons. That is why we at Investigate VC have special attention on this space; looking for startups with strong network effects.

The impact of soil degradation could total $23 trillion in losses of food, ecosystem services and income worldwide by 2050, according to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification. According to the UN, soil erosion may reduce up to 10 per cent of crop yields by 2050. That’s like removing millions of acres of farm land.

Please watch the linked video from CNBC and buy organic food!

#1 Singapore ($695) [95% more than USA]

#2 Israel ($506)

#3 USA ($357)

To my Nordic friends:

#4 Finland ($232)

#8 Sweden ($157)

This is a testament to Singapore's and South East Asia's attractiveness for both founders and investors! SEA's digital economy is expected to grow 3x the next 5 years.

This is why we at Investigate VC have our main focus on SEA.

Article and data from Pitchdeck