Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.
Today, we travel to London to talk with someone who has seen the evolution of the European tech ecosystem up close.
We discuss the rise of Europe with
Isomer Capital’s Co-Founder and Managing Partner
Joe Schorge. Isomer is a pan-European fund-of-funds, co-investment, and secondaries platform that is on its way to €1B AUM. They’ve invested in 70 VC funds, including the likes of Seedcamp, Hoxton Ventures, Atlantic Labs, and leading European companies like Sorare, Refurbed, Zenjob, and more.
Joe has a fascinating perspective on European’s tech ecosystem on a number of dimensions. He’s an American who moved to Europe in the late 1990s to work in tech before moving to the allocator and investor side. He worked as an investment consultant at Cambridge Associates, where he advised institutional investors in Europe and MENA on strategy, planning, and implementation that amounted to over $2B of capital across 75 transactions in private markets. He was then a Managing Director at Pomona Capital in Europe, where he focused on secondaries, fund investing, and co-investments, which paved the way for him to found Isomer as one of the early institutional pan-European fund-of-funds based in Europe.
Joe and I had a rich conversation about the past, present, and future of the European tech ecosystem. We discussed:
- Why Europe is a great place to invest right now.
- Perspectives on how to build a tech ecosystem, given Joe’s deep experience and history in Europe.
- How they uncovered two local funds which invested in one of Europe's biggest tech successes, UiPath.
- The biggest opportunities in the ecosystem.
- Why availability of capital is not the issue for the European ecosystem.
- Why local funds will still win in their respective regions at pre-seed and seed.
- Why there are different skillsets that both investors and founders need to have to succeed in Europe.
- What the current market environment means for European venture.
- Why more institutional investors should be allocating to European venture.
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Alt Goes Mainstream podcast is the place to turn to for interviews with some of the brightest and most experienced minds in the world of alternative investing, private equity (PE), venture capital (VC), real estate, crypto, collectibles and more. For anyone looking to invest into alternative assets (from experienced wealth managers to family offices to the individual investor looking for a more diversified investment portfolio), you’ll hear inside stories from executives and founders at some of the world’s largest financial institutions, alternative investment firms, and FinTech startups. More than a personal finance podcast, Alt Goes Mainstream dives deep into trends, investment strategies, firm building lessons, and innovative technologies that are enabling investors to access private markets and invest into alternative assets.