Читать книгу Transactional to Transformational - Christer Holloman - Страница 34

‘If I were to do it again, I'd spend more time understanding the venture capital sector, and meeting with partners in venture capital firms across industries. By doing so, we would have better understood the world of fintechs, venture capital and funding, which may have helped us understand how to set up a firm that would be immediately well received in those circles.’

Javier Rodríguez Soler, CEO, BBVA USA

Propel was created from BBVA Ventures to solve for the dual problems of flexibility in the amount of investment and the challenge around being tied to a corporate investment arm, and the perceived lack of independence in that. Of course, hindsight is 20/20 and launching as an SBIC initially would have been the best course of action.

This leads into one of the most surprising elements of venture capital funding, which is that fintechs and venture capital funds run in a tight circle. The setup, as they had with BBVA Ventures, was outside of that circle, given its direct tie to BBVA. As a result, they missed out on some funding opportunities in which they might have otherwise engaged.

Managing partner for Propel, Jay Reinemann, also made it clear that it is not just about funding fintechs. For as brilliant as fintech founders may be, Jay says it is critical that we remember these companies are startups, and as such money is just one thing they need, the other being support and understanding when it comes to running a company. Not only can the partners at Propel provide that, but, as their strategic partner, BBVA is well‐situated to be a key element of their success through the resources they can provide.

Another lesson learned from the Propel experience was the evolution from a ‘pull’ model to a ‘push’ model for collaborations between the bank and startups. When the fund was started and the investments in the startups had been made, an effort was made to establish connections between the bank's business areas and the new emerging companies, but it was complicated. When it came to moving forward in the collaboration, problems often arose from both the bank and from the startups themselves. In the end, this model was eventually challenged because it was not giving the expected results. The initial objective for the creation of the fund was to have a radar on the latest fintech trends and have access to the knowledge that could be applied to the bank's transformation and strategies. The way of provoking this talent interchange evolved towards a ‘push’ model. The first step is now to identify BBVA team's specific needs and analyse which of the startups could help and is keen to resolve concrete business challenges and then a possible collaboration is studied. With this new focus, Propel became a very interesting source of knowledge for BBVA business areas.

Finally, the need to keep abreast on new and global ecosystems of interesting startups is also relevant. With Propel, BBVA started out with a strong focus on Silicon Valley, but over time it began to work on investments in other ecosystems around the world that also offered good opportunities.