Using AI to Build Your VC Fund
In an upcoming study by Amrop’s Global Digital Practice, we will explore differing approaches to leadership, and the ability to derive competitive advantage, with respect to the application of AI.
In preparation, we have been speaking with leaders of midsized companies, venture businesses and larger corporations who have all shared their experiences in leveraging AI strategies for their organization and customers.
Among our interviewees is John Sharp, the founding Partner at Singapore-based Hatcher+ which is a company whose AI-based product has been and continues to be disruptive in the VC market.
"Hatcher+ evolved out of a very manual VC operation," Sharp explains. "When we started to manage all these venture capital funds we realized that there was a giant market potential for ways in which you could do the things for the VC fund that people have been typically doing for public equities for over the last 20 years. And, as we looked around the world, we realized there weren’t really any technologies available to help you build a venture portfolio, do due diligence on deals, manage the back-end portfolio report to all the investors and so on. So, about six years ago we launched the company and today we have a fantastic library of AI and blockchain-based AI capabilities and various tools that we’ve licensed and that we work with to create this really powerful platform that we now call FAST – Funds As A Service Technology platform. Our emphasis today is on the technology that you can apply to creating and managing a venture fund."
Luke Henningsen, the Technology Partner at Amrop Carmichael Fisher in Australia and a member of Amrop’s Global Digital Practice, who conducted the interview with Sharp, asked him about what sets the customers who are embracing AI apart from those who are more reluctant.
"In every new technology wave there are early adopters, there are those in the middle and then there are laggards,” Sharp said. "The way we see it, it’s the very large companies who will be the laggards in this case because they have massive numbers of human resources that they can throw things at. So, if you’re a very large valley-based VC with hundreds of employees, you can consume an unlimited number of business plans through humans. The problem is, there is no one informing the partners of any exciting deals that come through the door except those humans, so a great idea can get binned by a junior level person before it makes it to the top. On the other end of the spectrum, guys that we see rapidly adopting the technology are those who want to become larger and competitive with the large existing VCs. They don’t have the human resources and the management fees yet, but they want to be able to consume deals and invest, they want to be able to manage things in a way that’s competitive and become even better than “the big guys”. Therefore, what we see as our main target are smaller, early-stage emerging fund managers. There are hundreds of them emerging every year and they need the kinds of tools that we can give them to massively increase their capability, plug them into an amazing deal flow, give them reporting capabilities and everything they need to become a world-class VC fund - and we can do that literally within a day."
To find out more, reach out to Luke Henningsen or the Digital Practice members in your country!
Our upcoming AI study will include analysis, conclusions and recommendations in the context of Amrop’s Digital Competency Model and the Chief AI Officer profile in the coming months.
