Episode 5 for our long format, with Wingman Ventures! An insightful discussion with Alex Stöckl, Founding Partner and Édouard Treccani, Head of Partnerships.

From a financing point of view, the maturity of a tech ecosystem is not only measured by the depth of its investment solutions - in number and in the capacity to follow on important rounds - but also in the fact that a first generation of entrepreneurs would redeploy as Business Angels part of its capital resulting from exits or succeeding in federating LPs in more strategic investment vehicles on an investment thesis often built on an operator-investor model .

What are the particularities of this model? Does it exist in Switzerland?

In the United States, the first wave of this operator-investor phenomenon was manifested by now established funds such as a16z, Greylock and Sequoia which recruited former operators specific to a vertical, bringing entrepreneurial track records, relationships in industry and experience in the challenges founders face.

The second and most recent wave is that of operator-angels, networks appearing in each sub-category and region, allowing startup operators still working in their startups to help shape seed cap tables by providing “smart money”. The rise of AngelList or On Deck's Angel Fellowship has also enabled entrepreneurs to play a more active role in the startup ecosystem, even as they are still developing their own startups.

Today, it is a third wave, that of “(ex-) operator-fund managers” which is shaking up the landscape, bringing empathy to the cap-table. Investors who have founded startups and raised funds would bring an empathy that a consulting investor simply could not. The founders are increasingly aware of the strategic importance of the equity story from the early stage and attentive to the profiles of the very first investors from whom they raise funds.

But what about the operator-fund manager model in Switzerland?

Wingman Ventures is a pioneer in this understanding of the strategic importance that (ex-) operator-investors in raising a fund can bring more than just seed capital: their experience to take the first steps. Co-founded in 2018 by Pascal Mathis (co-founder of GetYourGuide, more than 880 million dollars raised according to Crunchbase), Lukas Weder (co-founder of Eat.ch, sold in 2015 to Just Eat) and Alex Stöckl (ex- COO of Gartnerei, ex- Creathor Ventures), Wingman raised in 2020 the largest pre-seed and seed fund in Europe for a maiden fund (first fund of a team) with more than 78.5 million Swiss francs - 70.83 million euros.

Wingman's ambition to finance from their very first only Swiss entrepreneurs with international ambitions, we wanted to know more about the team's investment thesis, its values and its understanding of the entrepreneurial dynamic between French-speaking French-speaking Switzerland and German-speaking German-speaking Switzerland.

In this episode we have the chance to go deeper in the investment thesis @ Wingman Ventures and their understanding of the Swiss Tech ecosystem.

Enjoy it!

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[Un podcast produit par La French Tech Suisse Romande (www.frenchtech.ch) et animé par Raphael Grieco]

#5 - Wingman Ventures, with Alex Stöckl, Founding Partner & Édouard Treccani, Head of Partnerships.

French Tech Suisse RomandeBy French Tech Suisse RomandeMar 16, 2021