Thomas (00:00) of 100 companies you invest in, will have 80 % that will return less than 1-2%. And that's okay. The goal is really to find this one unicorn that will reimburse everything and even more. And then the additional startups that will make it will be in a way your bonus. Let's put it that way. Now how to make sure to spot the good ones. When you analyze the success of all of the companies in the world that make it to unicorn, they did not... have such red flags and the ones that fail generally had these red flags. So this is how we think, right? And this is how we de-risk because the venture capital game is already super risky. ICEO (00:40) Thomas B. Gaghi has invested in 200-plus startups from pre-C to Series A as venture capitalist and angel investor, helping them scale and achieve key milestones. Thomas (00:49) Can you answer like the basic questions or how much I am raising? At which range of dilution? To achieve what and when? And where I'm gonna spend that cash effectively to reach those milestones? And what's gonna be my runway? Don't make me cry, that's not fair. Listen, I mean, during COVID, for instance, I was so frustrated. I've been missing like four unicorns in one like specific field. ICEO (01:16) Thomas is a partner at Plut Gam Play, one of the world's most active venture capital funds with 2 % of global unicorns in its portfolio and the largest open innovation platform. He oversees investments and empowers teams across 30 Plut Gam Play locations in EMEA. Thomas (01:32) This year, we've been screening more than 5,000 startups, out of which we've done more than 350 due diligence, and we've been investing in more than 60 companies. That's only in EMEA. We are backing innovators. So more challenges, more opportunities, and more startups to potentially look at and invest. Diego Calligaro (02:22) Thomas, I'm so glad to have you here today. You have an impressive career as an investor, innovator, working in four different continents. Tell us, what drives you as individual and as a leader? What keeps you motivated? Thomas Bigagli (02:37) Thanks a lot, Diego. Yeah, indeed, I've been working in the venture capital game for quite a while now. What keeps me motivated, listen, is to see all of these great entrepreneurs, great minds building the companies of tomorrow, building the future economy, and taking a lot of risks in order to innovate and try to make the world better. I've been really fond of innovation since my young age. I've been an entrepreneur myself, but now my role is more to identify the ones that could make it and be more successful, right? To bet on the right horses, let's put it that way, and to support them to grow. Diego Calligaro (03:17) Amazing. talking about this identifying the right companies, what was the process you're using to really bet on the best horses, as you said. Thomas Bigagli (03:27) I think you have two questions here, right? The first one is how to find the best companies and the second one is how to make sure that you will have in your portfolio some that will become successful. The first one is, I mean, in order to find the best companies alone or when you work at a VC firm, I mean, you need to build your network. I won't lie. when you are an entrepreneur and you fundraise, you diversify the different investors that will invest and back you, right? They all provide a different set of added value. And so for us as investors, you can imagine that we keep on networking and exchanging deal flow with our peers. So network is undoubtedly one of the first thing I would advise anyone who wants to enter this scene to start doing. But also you can be proactive when it comes to finding interesting companies on the web, social network, professional social networks such as LinkedIn. You can also go on specialized databases like Crunchbase, that is one of the most famous ones, but you have a lot of other ones as well. Media are also really active, they do a bunch of rankings on newsletters, etc. where you can also spot some new potential gold nuggets. So yes, you can proactively scout on publicly available... information from the web, social network, medias, etc. And network with your peers of professional investors, but also potentially business angels that can be entrepreneurs. When it comes now to making sure you are building a strong portfolio, let's put it that way, when you enter the VC game or if you're a angel, you need to understand that there is the J curve, the power law distribution. So not all of your companies will make it and that's okay. That's the game, right? Like generally out of 100 companies you invest in, you will have 80 % that will return less than 1 or 2 % and that's okay. The goal is really to find this one unicorn that will reimburse everything and even more and then the additional startups that will make it will be in a way your bonus. Let's put it that way. Now how to make sure to spot the good ones? I mean it depends on where the companies are operating, their business model, their industry, depends on many things. But we kind of have a checkbook, right, where we analyze all of the key pillars of what could make a startup successful, ranging from the teams, who are they complementary, where did they meet, what they've done before professionally or during their studies, blah, blah, blah. Also, their first employees, which market they are playing at, what's the market opportunities at the moment, what's the size, is a market that will potentially grow. Same with their product, their solution, their pain points, et cetera, et cetera. So we kind of check everything, and of course, we don't have all of the information. We don't have a crystal ball either, so it's risky. But by analyzing ... you know, all of this information and asking potentially some external people you know that have more insight on specificities, you can reduce your risk. But again, if the startup won't make it, it's not a big deal, it's part of the game. The goal is really to be able to bet on the right horses and hope to have one or several unicorns, at least when you invest at early stages, right? Diego Calligaro (07:03) And you mentioned many areas that you look at. What would you say is the top one to identify the best company? Thomas Bigagli (07:11) That's a really good one too. I feel like the world is evolving quite fast and technology as well, and you have new trends all the time. What is important to mention is that the trends can sometimes create bubbles, and that can be as well risky. At Plug & Play, are... really, you know, journalistic. We have been investing since the 90s and we invest across the globe in any industries. And we can tell you by a sense, thanks to the insight and data that we have been analyzing over the past few decades, that sometimes investing at the top of the wave, so when the bubble is already there, is extremely risky. The best is to come prior. While I'm mentioning all of that, you can imagine that that's a linked to AI. But, all of the stats are also to be taken with a pinch of salt. Why I'm telling you this is because you can imagine that the startups are also opportunistic. and they also want to market themselves in order to raise the most of interest. So if you check the statistics about startups nowadays, they are all in AI and sustainability and all that jazz. And all of the main verticals that used to be really successful back then, the most common one like FinTech and ShortTech, all that jazz, we see them a bit less. And why so is because a lot of startups decided to shift the market positioning and be like AI first with use cases in FinTech rather than FinTech company using AI technology. So that's also to take into account. I'm setting the scene and giving you the context before answering the questions that you asked me. But all in all, why I'm telling you all of that is you can invest at the beginning of a big wave in AI and of course if you bag the first movers, mean, God bless, you may have really big returns on investments but bear in mind that all of the ones following generally they are overpriced and a lot of them won't make it. Sometimes you can invest against the wave in other disciplines which is a bit more risky as well but this can help you be a forward thinker and to also generally invest at lower valuation. Nowadays, what I can tell you is, of course, like you have big trends, like the ones I mentioned before, so AI and sustainability, but you have other ones. You have, for instance, biotech, deep tech, the web 3 is coming back. And all of these trends, they have been identified are really promising simply because you have more and more startups being launched and you have more and more capital being injected. This is why they are really famous and they will continue to grow. Now, again, more vertical is raising interests, more startups are being launched and more the supply and the demand can be on the... advantage of the entrepreneurs and thus what's happening is that the valuation are going really up and as an investor You need to always think about how you can return money to your LPs when you work for a VC firm so what I can tell you is you need to watch out all of the different trends and identify bubbles and make sure that You know, you won't pay always the high prices. Sometimes it's worth it, sometimes it's not. So you need to really make your own thesis and not be a sheep and follow every trends and every big VC firm, right? So make your own thesis, try to have access to the best entrepreneurs, best deals, and have access to it by having a strong market positioning and strong added value. And this will always help you, but... Trends some are trendy and some are not and that's okay I think the most important thing is to find great entrepreneurs that are complementary and that are Driven and willing to solve the pain points that get tremendous market opportunity Diego Calligaro (11:08) Once you find them and the metrics prove it, you probably want to double down with follow on. Can you imagine? How do you decide that as the time to follow on in the right company? Thomas Bigagli (11:16) Indeed. Indeed. Yeah, that's a really good question. mean, most of the VC firms, generally speaking, we have a percentage of our funds that is, you know, focused and kept for follow on investment right? So we tend to double down on the best performing portfolios. It depends a lot if you are early stage investors, later stage investors, if you are a lead or if you are a follow, the strategy may differ. But generally speaking, all of the VC firms tend to double down again on the best performing companies. they have in their portfolio. How do you do that? First, you can negotiate that prior. So when you invest, you can negotiate pro-rata rights, which will enable you to reinvest an amount of cash to retain the same amount of ownership. You can negotiate a ro-fo, right of first offer of X amount that will ensure you to be able to invest this amount for the next round as well. Of course, the entrepreneurs and the board needs to agree to give you the search rights when you invest. It's not granted. But, know, plug and play, tend to, because we know that we want to follow on, we tend to negotiate search rights, of course. And it's also generally a good time, right? Because it's showing that you have capital and you are keen to continue investing and thus continue supporting, right? So, generally speaking, it's a good time. Now, how do you identify the best performing portfolio companies? mean, you see that with all of the metrics, And their respective growth, and sometimes they tend to fundraise far before what they would have expected. So if they raise the seed, generally they would expect to raise a Series A 18 to 24 months after their Series A. Sometimes after six months, they already raise it, which is unbelievable, but it happens. And so you need to make sure you have access to that deal and you will be able to invest. For the companies that are doing a bit less good, mean, generally, strategic investors, tend to follow on less, while lead investors, I mean, they've been putting a big chunk of cash. So if the portfolio company is not doing well for, you know, cause of their operations or something that happened, but it can be macro as well, it can be linked to a crisis or whatsoever, the lead investors, they will tend to continue backing them and supporting them more. It's not 100 % sure, but most of the time, lead investors will do it. Diego Calligaro (13:45) Can you share some numbers about your investment? How many companies you screen per year? How many investment in general? Maybe some names of unicorns that you've been investing successfully. Thomas Bigagli (13:58) Yeah, mean, know, plug and play, we again, we've been investing since the 90s, we were the early investors in Dropbox and PayPal, et cetera. We have more than 35 unicorns. So 2 % of the world unicorns, we were one of the first investors in that, is pretty amazing. What I can tell you is now we are, you know, big institution, big firm, we are more than 900 people. more than 1 billion AUM VCFM. What I can tell you is my mandate is Europe, Middle East and Africa. So we are divided in three main geographical zones, the Americas, the MEA and APAC. My mandate, EMEA, this year we've been screening more than 5,000 startups, all of which we've done more than 350 due diligences, and we've been investing in more than 60 companies. That's only in EMEA, you will need to multiply that by three roughly to have these statistics on a global basis for plug and play. When it comes to unicorns, mean, you know that the market is relatively tough at the moment for all of the tech scene. The last unicorn was a European one, was Enride, which is the equivalent of Tesla, but for freight. It's basically a transportation truck that is fully electric and autonomous. It's a company from Gothenburg. We were also one of the first backer and we've been investing from the family office originally and then we've been following on with our supply chain logistic firm which is a good example of a following tickets from one firm to another in one specific firm. So that's the last one that we've been backing, all of the 35s to date. And I'm pretty sure that next year we'll have a lot. Just this year in the MEA we had like eight subsequent rounds in our portfolio. I'm pretty sure that in a year year and a half you will hear from me to announce some good news. Diego Calligaro (15:59) Amazing. then another point you were mentioning before about the importance as well of the network as investor to really deal sharing. Of course, from a founder perspective, it's a lot about cold reach outs as well because only maybe a few can have that specific network. How much, what percentage do you think on average you get the deals from compared to between reach outs, cold reach outs? from founders and network? Thomas Bigagli (16:23) That's a really good question actually. I would say it's not so... I will turn the question differently. What I can tell you is generally the deals that you have from your network and better is your network, better are the deals, are generally the most qualitative ones. You can have of course exceptions, but generally if you have a good network, you will have access to really good deals. If you scout proactively, always without exchanging deal flows with people, you will generally be a bit too late. Or you won't necessarily have access. And be something in mind as well is because we exchange deal flows, if you reach out to an entrepreneur and you are the first one as a fund to reach out to them. Generally, they are not so sure of how much you want to raise, etc. You're up on a call. Let's assume you're an investor and you're super pumped and you would like to support them with that deal and make it true. Generally, if you are the first one, you want to prove your added value and your network to the entrepreneurs. Thus, you will start sharing this deal and doing some introductions to help them. Right? So if you cannot do that, it will look a bit weird. Correct? So it's always a balance between the two. I will tell you that generally speaking, you will have the more qualitative deals thanks to your network. Though proactively when you scout, you can find them sometime beforehand. But bear in mind that you will need to also leverage your network. to have access to the deals and show value. So I think both cannot work without the other, frankly speaking. And when it comes to entrepreneurs, sometimes if you are an entrepreneur and it's your first time, you don't have many people in your circle that have been launching startups. I would say try to connect with the ecosystem. You always have like startup programs, et cetera, that can support you. I think in the innovation scene, you always have also people willing to help and share insights or contact other founders, et cetera. And last but not least, bear in mind that... Investors, we tend to like receiving deal flows from other professional investors rather than being called enriched by an entrepreneur. So try rather to build your network to then hook the right investors thanks to other entrepreneurs whatsoever and these investors will spread the word rather than you spending ages sending thousands of emails with a conversion rate of less than 1%. Diego Calligaro (18:49) Makes sense. And then before you were mentioning as well about the wave, the hypes in the market, of course, on the other side, they found that they need to sell their company. And this creates as well, I believe from an investor perspective, a FOMO as well, fear of missing out. How much do you think it plays like fear of missing out on specific deals when you invest? Thomas Bigagli (19:10) Often, but you know, at one point, you live with it. You live with it. You always have deals that you did not see. And you were like, how come I didn't see that deal? How come no one shared it? How come, how come, how come? My business is business, right? Like you cannot be so mad of these investors who didn't share that deal because the deal was so hot and so hard to have access to, know. That's part of the game. Sometimes you can share some deals with your network, but you keep some of them really closely in your heart. Secondly, I think... You know, you will have deals that you would have not seen, you will have deals that you would have seen, and you will have said no, and they will be successful. We call them the anti-portfolio, and you need to follow them really quickly, because in the future, it's good to analyze why you said no at this specific time to try to learn. So that's really interesting as well. And then you have the ones that you backed yourself, but you you need to have fun. that you do that by passion as well. Of course, we are all stressed and we work really hard and we want to make really good returns. But I mean, we know we cannot back all of the unicorns in the world. It's impossible. the goal is to be to be the best at what we do and to try to invest as many as we can and try to understand when we don't see them or when we actually pass when they are early and then they became successful. this. Diego Calligaro (20:35) me share an example around this. Thomas Bigagli (20:37) wow, have so many. Don't make me cry. That's not fair. Listen, mean, during COVID, for instance, I was so frustrated. I've been missing like four unicorns in one specific field. And you cannot imagine. And some of them, I was too late. I didn't see them. they didn't go through IC. So I was not a partner back then, right? So back in 2020, summer 2020, there was a new field that was raising a lot of interest and awareness was the revenue-based financing. How startups can raise debt on a specialized platform so that they can finance, for instance, their marketing expenses to do SEO, et cetera, for instance. And I found that super interesting and you know as much as me is when you raise cash, like you dilute yourself to give out some equity, but this cash is limited, right? Well, if you can raise debt and there is a smart way of raising debt that is not that risky and that is really specialized in one single thing and that is relevant to your business, let's do it. And so there was one company called Pipe that was really, really successful and I missed it. And I did not see it coming and I was like, damn, I love this model. I don't understand how I missed that. And then right after I found like some... some Spanish slash American people that dropped out their MBS from Harvard and in Seattle and decided to do exactly the same, to build the cap shares. And I hope one day they will listen to this video and say hi to them. And we're super pumped. We have access to the deal. We negotiated super hard, et cetera. And the IEC didn't work. The IEC did not want to invest. And I was like... So we are missing that deal where the direct competitor like raising like, I don't know, 18 months, 60 million. Like, I don't understand. And they saw it was a hype, et cetera. And then you see captures nowadays and I mean, they were like this. Right after, there was an equivalent in Europe, in France called Silver. And we reached out when they were basically closing the round. Like it was insane, one after another, I missed them all. That's the game, it happens. You learn and you smile from it. But again, I was not a partner back then and it's good to reflect and try to understand why it did not occur and try to limit the same scenarios in the future. Let's put it that way. Diego Calligaro (23:02) And then maybe some example on the other way around in which you were sure that you were really betting on something that would explode and scale, but then it turned out completely wrong call. Thomas Bigagli (23:14) Yeah, as well. mean, so many, right? You never know. And sometimes, again, it can be linked to a macro environment. It can be linked to so many things, right? But yes, I I would say the fourth or third of our portfolio is like this. You have a lot of startups that they won't die directly. They kind of stagnate. Like generally at the beginning they raise because they have a good team or they start having good traction, et cetera. And then they are struggling to find their product market fit and they never go out of this death valley, know, pre-product marketing kind of like generally pre-series. And then you see a lot, I mean, check, can check on LinkedIn, a lot of startups, they've been here for five, six, seven years. They are less than 15 employees. 99.9 % of the time these companies are, they could not find their product, I mean they cannot find their product market fit and they are still surviving thanks to one or two or three customers that believe in them, et cetera, that may buy them but for a really small amount of cash in the future or more to acquire the talent than anything else. That's part of the game, it occurred Diego. This is the VC skin. Diego Calligaro (24:25) And maybe, yeah, that's the game. And if we look at red flags, in which you're saying like, okay, this is definitely a no-go for an investment, even though the startup is good, but these red flags, we need to stop it there. Thomas Bigagli (24:40) That's a really good question as well. Listen, think the red flags, so all of the answers that I'm providing to you, you always need to contextualize them. You need to contextualize them based on, again, the stage of maturity, the markets they are at, their business model, et cetera, et cetera. So the playbook, it's really different from all of these different categories that I just mentioned. Red flags at early stages, they are generally orange flags because you can still solve them. Red flags at Series A is going to be really hard. What I can tell you is I can share a lot to you, but you have startups that get solo founders, like typically we don't like that, we're rather, you know, tell the solo founder, try to find another co-founder that is complimentary. Even if you are, you had the idea, you built everything, you put more resources, you can still keep more shares, but you need co-founders. This is really important. The second one is when the cap table is really messy, right? Like if a... Founder again 95 % the other one get five for instance or stuff like that or even like a heavy dilution at the beginning with you know investors that invested a really small amount of cash and and took like 35 % of a company for instance We can see companies that pivoted too much. I mean, we have many, right? But again, I think you have red flags you can work on. Like for instance, a messy cap table, can revamp it, you can buy back some shares, you can do a lot of things. The fact that you are sort of founder, you can still find another founder, et cetera, et cetera. But if you don't solve them fast, I'm not telling you that for sure this red flag will limit you in your growth, but generally speaking, when you analyze the success of all of the companies in the world that make it to Unicorn they did not have such red flags. And the ones that failed generally had these red flags. So this is how we think, right? And this is how we de-risk, because the venture capital game is already super risky. additional risk. We can make exceptions, don't get me wrong, we've been investing sometimes in Soto founder and some startups are doing extremely good but we tend to limit it as much as we can. Diego Calligaro (27:00) Okay. And before you were mentioning a metrics, so you did more than 300, due diligence is around 60 investment. I think it's around those numbers. So what happened in those situations? Like why only one fifth of those passed? Like is something wrong within the company? What do you find out that makes you back up? Thomas Bigagli (27:23) Yeah. I think so when you have the investment process from like scouting to first call to first analysis to short due diligence to longer due diligence to IC presentation to post IC presentation, you it's like kind of a funnel, right? You funnel down. When I say due diligence is not because you do a due diligence that we present it to the IC. And sometimes we can ask you to do further research to bring some experts that can provide insights to calls to do additional reference calls, etc. And so sometimes we realize we can be super pumped about the team, etc. Even though we are really pumped about the team, the market they are playing at, we've seen a lot of companies failing in this particular use case in other geographies that may be more mature. And we are like, we love the team, but the market is really not something we like. we try to convince ourselves, but at the end, we decide to drop, for instance. That's a good example. Another one can be everything is on the green light. The post investment committee, we start our legal due diligence and then we realize that some stuff are bit shady or some informations were not really shared prior. And we see some red flags and thus we pass. And then sometimes we can lose deal as well, you know. We are in a super competitive scene and even plug and play with 35 unicorns and doing 200 investment per annum, sometimes we lose deals. It happens. So all of, I would say all of your ratio, this is the smaller part of course. Generally, it's more the fact that we found some stuff that we did not really like and convinced us in proceeding further with the investments, but it can occur as well. Diego Calligaro (29:08) And if you look at from a founder perspective, of course, the first impression as well is very important, building the right deck, as well as the follow on sometimes. So if you have a maybe or no, also following up with investors and providing and nurturing them. How would you say these two areas play along in your investment decisions? Like the first impression, but also some of the nourish you effectively. Thomas Bigagli (29:34) Yeah, that's a tough one. think honestly it's a case by case, right? It's a case by case because you can be super pumped at the beginning and then realize that actually it's not worth it. And sometimes you are not pumped at the beginning and then you realize it's a big gold nugget, right? So it depends who scout, if this person who scout the company is the expert directly, or if you bring in the expert after, you know what I mean? I think it depends. It really depends. I don't want to give you a ratio here. I think it's really case by case, frankly speaking. Diego Calligaro (30:11) Let's imagine that you have aside 100 million now and you want to them all in one specific technology area for 2025. What would it be and why? Thomas Bigagli (30:22) I can tell you that I'm getting more more bullish on Deep Tech. That's for sure. I can tell you why. I mean, I'm super bullish about AI as well and sustainability and all of the key trends. Don't get me wrong. But why I'm so bullish about Deep Tech opportunistically versus all of the other ones is simply because we've been... I think the digital era reaches peak. What I mean by that is, even if you were a super technical guy, engineer from Stanford that worked at Google or whatever, 15 years ago. You will have launched a company like a marketplace 15 years ago and everyone will have told you even the best VCs to launch this because this is fast adoption, fast traction, fast growth, et cetera, et cetera. Back then was what to do because it was easy to strong traction and you could make it, right? After we were like, no, you should not do that. You should more launch a FinTech or whatsoever. But no one was doing deep tech because the go-to market was too slow and was far too costly. So it was a bit like at the antipode of the VC game, correct? Well, nowadays what we see is rather the other way around, is we have been smashed by digital solutions that all reached their peak, right? And now we are looking for other pain points that get huge market opportunities where the go-to market has been far reduced thanks to AI. So deep tech companies know that they can go, they can sell and produce generally in a shorter period than five years ago, right? And last but not least, because not many entrepreneurs are doing deep tech, you don't have many competitors, right? So you have strong unique value propositions and bias to entry. So if you think about it that way, it makes so much sense. The only thing that is harder with deep tech is generally you need super strong technical talent, for sure. That's something to keep in mind. But otherwise, I mean... I would say if I would raise 100 million tomorrow funds opportunistically versus if I will need to be specialized in something, I will put it in Deep Tech. But you will ask me this question in 10 years from now, I will answer something different, right? Don't get me wrong. But I think next year, Deep Tech will continue to strive and grow and we'll see more and more success stories. Diego Calligaro (32:47) Great. And let's look now at the VC industry itself. What would you say are the main trends impacting your industry? And also from a technological perspective, what is changing that industry? Thomas Bigagli (33:00) I mean, so many. So many. They can be economical, can be political, they can be... I mean, the world is complicated. We've been living, you know, post-pandemic, some geopolitical conflicts, some shortage of resources, some monetary problems, some energy issues, even some compute that is not as fast, some problems linked to the cloud. Yes, you have a lot of pain points that are sometimes making... know market opportunities a bit harder simply because they can be more costly or they may you know the growth may take longer than expected but who is saying challenges is also saying opportunities so it means that you may have new entrepreneurs trying to solve these pain points too which is what I love so frankly speaking I mean We are backing innovators. So more challenges, more opportunities and more startups to potentially look at and invest. So that's my passion. I actually love challenges. Diego Calligaro (34:01) Amazing. And if you look at how technology innovation is actually impacting your job, how you are using it, like technology innovation, how you're integrating it in your maybe deal flow, evaluation. Thomas Bigagli (34:15) Yeah, good one, good one, good one. I mean, we have seen so many technology solutions that can help you better scout companies, better analyze companies, better manage your portfolio. Yes, like... from our work, from A to Z, from scouting to monitoring and supporting your portfolio, basically. that's our goal, besides operating the fund and returning returns. All of the key steps, you have solutions that can support you. We have been using a lot. We have been developing some as well, internally, at Plug and Play. And yes, mean, this is easing our job. I would say that you cannot replace the VC job fully with technology yet, or I'm not sure you will even be able to do it one day. Maybe you will. I think everything is possible. But I think today you cannot because you still have a lot of... We are betting on innovators and the innovators are human. And we need also personal feelings. We need to speak to entrepreneurs. We need to advise them. We need to make sure that they can double down on their strengths and try to solve their weaknesses, et cetera, et cetera. I think all of these, you know, solutions in the market, they can help you go faster sometimes, be more efficient, save some time and resources, sure, but they cannot replace our job fully. That's for sure. Diego Calligaro (35:39) In terms of automation, if we look at the parts that can be automated, what would be the parts that can be automated or the one that you really are... Thomas Bigagli (35:51) Yeah, mean, automated, I mean, when comes to scouting, you can automate most of it, right? The thing is, do you have access to the deals that are not publicly available, right? So you can automate, you know, try to have a super machine screening the whole publicly available information and putting your right mandate, what you are looking for, and even training the model to... to spot what's qualitative or not and create kind of an evaluation model for you. I mean, we've done that even ourselves, right? Like we can do that, but that's not all. So as you would say, 80 % of the job can be done, but then the 20 % still need to be inputted from you. And secondly, again, it's okay when you have access to the data, sometimes you don't because you have a lot of great entrepreneurs that are building things in submarine in stealth and you have no So I will say all of these parts from scouting to analysis, 80 % kind of can be done. And again, it depends. You need to contextualize, but you still need us. Portfolio management and monitoring. The monitoring, I mean, if the entrepreneurs are sharing their insights, of course, like you can have a machine automatizing and all of the monitoring, but generally we need to be, you know, behind them to ask them to share all of the insights on time. When it comes to the support, I think you cannot automatize them because you need like... like generally human resources to support, right? You need experts, need to sometimes be on the ground. So I don't think the portfolio support can be automated, think. It's more like 20 % automated for portfolio support and 80 % that cannot be, while from the scouting to the analysis, the Pareto is in reverse. It's more 80 % that can be automated and 20 % that cannot, in my opinion. Diego Calligaro (37:41) Okay, let's try to stretch our imagination a in the future here. And let's imagine we are in 2040, you are a VC, and how does it look like to be a venture capitalist in 2040? Thomas Bigagli (37:51) Thank That's a really good question. That's a really, really good question, my friend. I think everything is possible, but I don't know when things will occur. You know, I do believe in crazy innovation. It's a really good question, my friend. I don't know. I think the VC game will continue. I think you will have new ways of doing that and... it will be democratized and it's already becoming democratized more and more. I think as people invest in the stock market, we will be able to back innovators. It's going to be really easy and people will love doing that. The way it will be done, I cannot tell you. And the... major trends or how startups will look like in the future, I have no clue, but I'm so excited. I would love a crystal ball and see that. Diego Calligaro (38:39) Okay, and let's move it a bit more like personal. know, Thomas, you have been also selected Forbes 30 under 30. Well done for that. And tell us, know, from what's next for you personally speaking, like what's your next milestone or missions that you look for you in the future? Thomas Bigagli (39:01) I mean, continue doing what I've been doing for some years now, but trying to back even more entrepreneurs and more successful ones so that the poor distribution will be even more in our favor and also launching some funds. Right? So to date, I've been mostly managing the family office of Play and Play in Europe, Middle East and Africa, but no... you know, main ambition is to launch a lot of funds with different mandates in these geographical zones, right? So they can be later stage forms that can be potentially specialized geographically or industry-wise, knows? But we have a bunch of fund opportunities in the making, but hopefully we'll be able to concretize some in 2025. And we can do another session so that I can tell you more about all of them. Diego Calligaro (39:48) And then tell me instead, you know, regarding a startup or entrepreneur person that completely shift your perspective, you know, regarding business or life. Thomas Bigagli (39:59) I will mention one to you. I'm actually seeing him tomorrow. I'm going to Morocco and I'm visiting him. An entrepreneur I bagged that became a really good friend of mine who has been disrupting something that was, that did not, like a process that did not... changed since more than 100 years, which is really crazy. So DeepTech company. This company is basically spotting harmful pathogens in food, liquids, or cosmetics in one second versus five days, which is insane. So basically, if... you are Nestlé or Danone or L'Oréal or any of the large companies that I mentioned in these fields, you need to do some testing in order to make sure that there is no harmful pathogen in your product. And to do that, you have a petri sample where you put basically a small sample in it of your product and you wait five days. But five days in an industrial scene, it's a lot. It's a lot of stock. It's a lot of money lost or, let's say, frozen. And this what this company is doing is that they are using the same Petri sample, but they put it in their machine and in one second, they can give you exactly the same results than in five days. So you save five days, basically, which is unbelievable. And why they've been impressing me is because they found this pain point thanks to their previous job at Nestle. And they thought this was insane that there was no innovation. here and that the process will still be done that way and they decided to really you know really find the as we say in French the crème de la crème so the best of the best the best in class people pair main pillars of activities that they require for their for their business right so the best scientists etc in order to build this solution and which they've done In 18 months, they've been raising their series already. So they raised more than 35 million in 18 months for a deep tech company, which is pretty awesome. And last but not least, they don't even have a salesperson. So they don't have because they are one of the only companies in the world doing that. So basically, As soon as one of their potential customers is aware of what they do, they take the phone and call them directly. I'm oversimplifying it, but you understand what I mean. So why I'm so impressed about them is with one... great pain points and a huge market opportunity with the right talent. It sounds like basic science, but at end of the day, this is what you need to do in this tech scene. You can build great things and sometimes you don't even need to do sales because you have your market positioning and your unique value proposition. And for that, if you are good at marketing yourself, you will have enough inbound to not do upbound. Diego Calligaro (42:55) Can we know the name of the company? Thomas Bigagli (42:57) Sport Biotechnology. Diego Calligaro (42:58) Okay, and then great, Thomas, amazing conversation. Few last questions. So tell us in terms of advice, what's your piece of advice for investors from one side looking to reinvest on the best of the best and on the other side for founders? Piece of advice for them really for them looking for to raise funds. Thomas Bigagli (43:22) I would say for investors, mean the best advice that I can give them is really try to build your own thesis, right? I mean, I say that as Play and Play doing so many deals, right? 200 deals, so it may sound contradictory, though. We have been developing our own thesis pair, main verticals or business geographies, and I think this is really important. Besides building your own thesis, you need to build a strong market positioning because your market positioning will be unique and will help you to promote what you are good at and also win the best deals and become legitimate. So have some credibility. And I think this is one of the most important thing because a lot of funds are lacking that. them like why you are best at what you do, why you invest specifically in these startups and which support you can provide to them. And a lot of them cannot answer these basic questions. So it's hard for you to win the best deals. Thus, you cannot start first the race. You are already behind simply because... The best entrepreneurs won't pick you because you don't have a clear market positioning. So I would say for investors, that's my two main advices. When it comes to entrepreneurs, again, something really basic, that unfortunately I'm lacking most of the time that I'm having discussions with early stage founders is why are you raising? Like, can you answer like the basic questions of how much I am raising? at which range of dilution to achieve what and when, and where I'm gonna spend that cash effectively to reach those milestones and what's gonna be my runway. And it may sound so simple, many entrepreneurs can answer that, right? And you are an entrepreneur and you raise, I don't know, like. to 2.5 million to have a runway of 24 months for around 20 % dilution and in 12 months and 24 months you will reach this recurring revenue by investing the cash you are raising doing XYZ. Of course, it's a bit more complex than that but you need to be concise and that's the... most important question to answer in my opinion. And then of course why you are good at it, that's the rest. But first that's the core basics and this is what I want to hear from you. Diego Calligaro (45:38) Thomas, me, looking back at your career, what would you have done differently? Thomas Bigagli (45:43) What would I have done differently? Many things. Many, many things. It's a tough question. It's a tough question. I would have loved to learn about what I'm doing a bit earlier on, though I've been quite early in this scene. But I would have loved to learn earlier on. I would have loved to... you know, launch other companies that have been launching even myself, but being aware of all of these key advices that will help you, you know, the risk and ensure potential successes, think, you know, all of the, my VC I would have loved to get that as an entrepreneur. Does that, does that make sense? And as well, not least, I would have loved to know. that bitcoin would be worth that much. Otherwise I would have bought far more. Diego Calligaro (46:35) Very nice. Yeah. And one last question here, Thomas. Looking at the accelerating pace of change that we have in the world due to technology innovation, what concerns you most regarding the digital future and what also are you excited about? Thomas Bigagli (46:55) What I'm excited about for the future, speaking, that's our question. Diego Calligaro (46:57) Yes, even the changes due to technology innovations that we're having in the world. Thomas Bigagli (47:03) Yeah, mean, I'm excited, but I'm also scared sometimes, I must say. No, I'm excited that, know, overall, we are trying to solve pain points and we are trying to be more efficient. We'll just, and, you know, with my capitalist eyes, of course, I'm seeking progress and growth and... But I think sometimes we need to think twice about why we building something and what could be the impact. I think regulations are also really important when comes to play on both sides to sometimes help innovators and sometimes slow down other innovations that might not be, that should not be prioritized versus others. I'm really excited. mean, nowadays, since two years, we are seeing a huge shift. I was too young when we had the dot-com bubble, but I think it was as exciting or even less exciting than what we living nowadays with AI. So... I have no clue what the world will be in five, 10 years, and what we will be doing. This is what I can tell you. But the good thing is by working in innovation, might be one of the first ones to know that versus the rest of the population. And you as well, Diego, right? We are part of this field, so we will be aware of it. But currently, I cannot tell you. where we will be and what will be the segmentation of jobs in the near future versus right now. That's sometimes scary, I must say. Diego Calligaro (48:24) but the change is good at the same time we know and Thomas thanks a lot for this amazing conversation very inspiring valuable as always and definitely we're gonna have a more conversation probably next time to dig more on your funds and meanwhile I wish you a great day and let's speak soon then Thomas Bigagli (48:27) Of course, always. Thank you so much, Diego Have a good one. Diego Calligaro (48:47) Bye.