Jaap Vriesendorp is one of the managing partners of Marktlink Capital, an investment manager from the Netherlands investing over $1b into private equity and venture capital funds. Marktlink Capital’s LPs are almost exclusively Dutch (tech) entrepreneurs from companies such as Booking.com, Adyen and Hellofresh. At Marktlink Capital Jaap focusses on selecting venture and growth funds across Europe and the US. Before Marktlink Capital, he spent the majority of his time at McKinsey where he was one of the leaders of McKinsey’s practice for Venture Capital, Unicorns & Startups in Europe. Besides work, Jaap enjoys sports, mountains, technology, comic books, music and art.
He holds an MBA from INSEAD and is a guest lecturer at the Rotterdam School of Management (Erasmus University). He occasionally shares his views on private market investing on Medium.
You can find Jaap on his socials here:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaap-vriesendorp/
Medium: https://medium.com/@jjjvriesendorp
And huge thanks to this episode’s sponsor, Alchemist Accelerator: https://alchemistaccelerator.com/superclusters
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also watch the episode on YouTube here.
Brought to you by Alchemist Accelerator.
OUTLINE:
[00:00] Intro
[03:04] The significance of Mount Pinatubo in Jaap’s life
[06:23] One Shell Jackets
[08:45] The entrepreneurial gene in the Vriesendorp family that dates back to Jaap’s grandfather
[14:32] The 1-year time constraint of starting Welt Ventures
[17:43] What did the transition to becoming an investor look like for Jaap
[20:28] The 3 traits that define a community
[24:03] How often does Jaap host events?
[25:30] How does Marktlink Capital have 1000 LPs?
[27:15] What was Marktlink’s pitch to their LPs?
[28:32] What is the typical individual LP’s allocation model to VC/PE?
[29:41] Why is VC/PE uncorrelated to the public markets?
[35:10] The 3 facts that define Welt Ventures’ portfolio construction model
[38:28] Exit windows matter more than entry windows
[42:15] Diversification in PE = Concentration in VC
[47:42] 3 types of emerging GPs that deliver alpha
[49:35] Which European fund has a really unique thesis?
[51:44] Which school did Jaap apply to but not get in?
[53:55] Thank you to Alchemist Accelerator for sponsoring!
[56:31] If anything resonated with you in today’s episode, we’d be honored to earn a like, comment, or share!
SELECT LINKS FROM THIS EPISODE:
- Marktlink Capital
- Why to Invest and Why Not to Invest in a Fund of Funds
- McKinsey & Company
- Peter Pan
- Mount Pinatubo
- INSEAD Business School
- One Shell Jackets
- Jaap’s Kickstarter campaign for One Shell
- Welt Ventures
- Bouke Marsman
- Fuel (A McKinsey Company)
- Winning formula: How Europe’s top tech start-ups get it right
- Sean Ellis
- How Superhuman Built an Engine to Find Product Market Fit (Sean Ellis inspired product-market fit question)
- Dutch Grand Prix
- Spiderman Pointing at Spiderman Meme
- Crisp
- HelloFresh
- Ticketswap
- Former McKinseyans start investment fund: ‘We are actually a tracker of venture capital’
- Andrew Chen’s tweet on 2021 seed rounds are basically 2015 Series As
- Chris Sacca
- Lowercase Capital Fund I returning 250X (said on the Tim Ferriss Show)
- Seedcamp
- Wise.com
- UiPath
- Revolut
SELECT QUOTES FROM THIS EPISODE:
“We set out to achieve three things with the community:
- We wanted people to have fun with each other. And when entrepreneurs meet entrepreneurs, good stuff happens even if you don’t bring any content.
- We wanted to bring the absolute best type of propositions. So in terms of sales, it means sales almost without being sales where you offer something that people really want.
- Organized knowledge in a way that nobody does.” – Jaap Vriesendorp
“85% of returns flow to 5% of the funds, and that those 5% of the funds are very sticky. So we call that the ‘Champions League Effect.’” – Jaap Vriesendorp
“The truth of the matter, when we look at the data, is that entry points matter much less than the exit points. Because venture is about outliers and outliers are created through IPOs, the exit window matters a lot. And to create a big enough exit window to let every vintage that we create in the fund of funds world to be a good vintage, we invest [in] pre-seed and seed funds – that invest in companies that need to go to the stock market maybe in 7-8 years. Then Series A and Series B equal ‘early stage.’ And everything later than that, we call ‘growth.’” – Jaap Vriesendorp
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