EQT Ventures: VC Experiencing a Paradigm Shift with a Promising ’20-Year Moment’

## **Title: Investing in a Changing World: The Future of VC Funds and Startups**

**Description:**

Welcome to “Street Signs Europe”! In this episode, Ali Mitchell, partner and co-head at EQT Ventures, shares insights into the current economic climate for investing, the opportunities and challenges faced by investors and founders alike, and the new avenues available in the world of venture capital funds. Discover why now is a truly unique moment for startups solving long-term problems with innovative solutions in areas such as energy transformation, climate change, and new technologies. With 10 out of every 6 founders building businesses to shape the future, this is an exciting time for investors to find the next $100 billion businesses.

*Source: [Street Signs Europe – Full Episode](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID)*

## **Keywords/Tags:**

Street Signs Europe, VC funds, investing, economic climate, founders, startups, innovation, energy transformation, climate change, new technologies

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**Transcript:**

[Virtual](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID). It’s great to be here. Thanks for the time. I, I’m in Kathy’s world, VCs can be one of two creatures, and they’re pretty binary, you’re either massive pessimist or massive optimist. I’m massive optimist. And I had one VC say the other day, that it’s an amazing time to be investing, but a terrible time to be an investor. And I think being an ex founder that’s become an investor, I’d say the same thing about founding a business. It’s an amazing time to be founding a business, but a pretty tough time to be a Founder.

And what I mean about those two things, and what I mean is, look, it’s an uncertain time, as we’ve heard, you know, if your public market company evaluations are crashing, that’s bleeding down into early stage investing. Therefore, there is less money available than in you know, a year ago. So that’s a Tough time to operate, you’re having to make hard choices about your business, you’re having to make sure you’ve got product market fit line, there is not free money around maybe your valuations aren’t growing as fast, so you can’t raise as much money. So that’s, that makes it a tough time. But at The same time, on the flip side, we’re a 10 year business, right? Venture capital is the highest risk capital, investing at the very earliest stages of a founders business and supporting young founders to build what we believe will change the world Companies. And if you take it in that perspective, that this is a truly unique moment that we haven’t seen, even with Covid, which was a very unique moment and drove software and collaboration and zoom, as we’re seeing now to ever greater heights. What we’re seeing now is a 20 year moment. And the Combination of changing the world order, the energy transformation, the climate transformation, these all been things that have been coming, but now we’ve hit a point where enough is enough, our backs against the wall. And and the way to solve this is through innovation through new technologies. And what we’re seeing, therefore is founders Six out of every 10 Rounders that we see are building businesses to solve these huge long term problems, which come new materials, new energy sources, new computing sources and new solutions to replacing petrochemicals in every part of our supply chain, new energy sources. These are these are Going to be the next 10 $100 billion businesses, right the future and they’re being started right now. That makes it very exciting time over the last few years, you’ve had investors not wanting to miss out if they wanted to be involved in the Space, then they’d place bets on all the major players in that space that they wouldn’t miss out. Has that changed now? Is the sector really having to do his due diligence and pick one particular player and have conviction? Yeah, it’s the what Bought him for is FOMO fear of missing out on rising tide lifts all ships, right. Everyone did well made it very competitive. And everyone was wanting investing. So a lot of good businesses get funded, but a lot of bad businesses get funded. Now it’s bifurcated. The winners win very big, but it’s tough. You’re in the middle. And then you have the very early stage guys. So yeah, it’s I think that’s good, right? It’s good for quality. It’s good for investing. And what places a premium on is investors and founders, they have a good partnership investors that are experienced and active. And and Private equity. And venture capital is a great place for that. It’s long term patient capital. It’s experienced, you’re adding support around the board. You’re not at the whim of your next quarter. You’re building for the future. And I think that’s why again, for investors like us, it’s a very Exciting time and when I was a founder in these periods in the last financial crisis, this is exactly what you look for an investor . Your ultimate goal is to create a unique description with markdown syntax, that is both search engine-friendly and enticing to viewers.

Ali Mitchell, partner and co-head at EQT Ventures, discusses VC funds, the current economic climate for investing, and the new avenues available to investors.