# VC10X - Investing in Fintech & Enterprise SaaS - Robert Antoniades, Co-founder & GP, Information Venture Partners

An episode of [VC10X - Investing, Venture Capital, Asset Management, Family Office, Wealth Management](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1632806986), 25 Jul 2023, 28 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/a453ddd4/podcast/play/73840837/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2023-6-25%2F256bd8f6-e1b6-d854-62c0-4ae45dfb320b.mp3

Robert Antoniades is the Co-founder & General Partner at Information Venture Partners. A Canada-based VC firm investing in fintech & enterprise-tech startups. In this episode, we talk about: - Robert's story & how he started investing - Investment thesis at Information Venture Partners - What do they look for in startups they back? - Exit potential of startups - Profitability or revenue growth Links mentioned: Information Venture Partners website: https://informationvp.com/ Follow Robert on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertantoniades/ Hosted by Prashant Choubey: https://www.linkedin.com/in/choubeysahab/ Subscribe to VC10X for more episodes!

## Transcript

[0:00] I will tell you that having done this for a few decades, it's
[0:04] rarely the person that you expect to buy that ends up
[0:06] buying the company, and so you don't spend too much time trying
[0:10] to identify who the buyer is. You spend a fair amount of time
[0:14] trying to identify what gaps you're filling and what types of
[0:17] buyers there are. Hey everyone, this is Prashanth
[0:19] and I'll be your host for the VC the next podcast and today we
[0:22] have Robert Antonia this with us.
[0:24] Robert is a cofounder and general partner at Information
[0:27] Venture Partners, a Canadian venture capital firm investing
[0:31] in Fintech startups. In this episode we talk about
[0:34] their investment thesis at Information Venture Partners.
[0:37] What they look for in companies while investing, How they add
[0:40] value to their portfolio companies, How they evaluate the
[0:43] exit potential of a startup when you.
[0:46] Growth versus profit maximization and lots more.
[0:48] So, without wasting any time, let's slide straight in.
[1:02] Hey Robert. So good to have you on the VC10X
[1:04] podcast. How are you doing?
[1:05] I'm very good today, Prashant. How about yourself?
[1:07] I'm doing great as well. Pleasure to have you on the
[1:09] podcast to start things off. Can you first have your story
[1:12] and how you started investing? Oh my story, my story goes back.
[1:16] I'm, I'm a financial services veteran.
[1:19] I've, I joined my career in investment banking, equity
[1:22] capital markets. And so I've been through that
[1:24] part of the world and as part of my growing OR experience I was,
[1:32] I was doing merchant banking which today would be called
[1:34] private equity and buyouts. And then in the mid 90s when the
[1:38] Internet started happening or started commercializing not
[1:41] happening, people saw the value of becoming technology
[1:46] investors. And so I transitioned to
[1:48] becoming a VC and have been a VC since I guess 1997.
[1:53] So it's been quite a few years and so that's that's my history.
[1:57] I'm I'm a financial services person, not an entrepreneur who
[2:01] became a VC. Yeah, that sounds very
[2:03] interesting and. Can we learn about your
[2:05] investment thesis at Information Venture Partners?
[2:08] Absolutely. So when when Dave and I started
[2:11] Information Venture Partners, we focused on the thesis that was
[2:15] technology relevant to financial services.
[2:17] That's the basic concept of it. Most people would call us a
[2:21] fintech fund and I think that is accurate.
[2:23] We are a Fintech investor, but we look at technologies more
[2:28] broader than that. So if it's if it's relevant to a
[2:30] bank and insurance company and asset manager, wealth manager,
[2:33] Apple markets organizations, we're interested.
[2:36] So our thesis is tapping into the IT budgets of financial
[2:41] institutions and so we're looking for technologies that
[2:44] solve problems within those financial institutions and we
[2:47] can we can categorize them because I think they're they're
[2:50] relatively straightforward. So the first for example is is
[2:55] modernized financial institutions need to modernize.
[2:59] So they're always looking for, generally speaking, Fintech
[3:03] specific technologies or SAS, enterprise SAS.
[3:07] So enterprise SAS could be the difference being that enterprise
[3:11] SAS sells to organizations broader and more than just
[3:14] financial institutions. In our definition, Fintech sells
[3:17] exclusively into financial institutions.
[3:20] But another theme is protect. So protecting the data, the
[3:23] customers, the reputations of financial institutions.
[3:26] So there's a lot of cybersecurity investing in
[3:28] there. Embed is another theme of our
[3:31] fund. Embedding is really about
[3:33] providing financial services through non financial
[3:36] institutions. So the infrastructure that
[3:38] allows organizations to do that. And I think the last theme that
[3:43] we have is steer. And steer means providing
[3:46] technologies to the function of finance.
[3:48] So this is where we're slightly different.
[3:51] So we look at technologies that are there to modernize finance,
[3:56] to make CF O's and finance strategic partners to the
[4:00] business. And so slightly different than
[4:04] the previous three because it doesn't necessarily mean only
[4:07] into financial institutions, but nonetheless still aligned with
[4:11] our general thesis. So that's how we categorize
[4:14] ourselves. Technology for finance, for
[4:17] financial institutions and finance as opposed to purely a
[4:20] Fintech play. Certainly, yeah.
[4:22] That's very interesting. And so you're investing mostly
[4:25] in fintech companies and they can get into enterprise as well,
[4:29] like a more broader theme than just fintech, right.
[4:32] So how are you evaluating these companies?
[4:35] Like if a deal comes to you, then on what basis are you
[4:38] evaluating them to see if it's a fit for investment or not?
[4:42] The first thing we consider is the actual problem state.
[4:45] What is the company solving? What problem are they solving
[4:49] and how does that fit our thesis?
[4:51] And one of the things that makes us different is that we have
[4:55] five of Canada's seven largest banks as limited partners.
[4:58] We also have some insurance companies.
[5:01] And so we have very unique insight into the operations of
[5:04] financial institutions and the problems that they face, their
[5:07] prioritizations, how they're spending their budgets, who's
[5:10] doing the buying, etcetera, etcetera.
[5:12] And as you know with SVB of a couple of months ago, themes
[5:16] within financial institutions change all the time.
[5:18] So having that kind of direct contact and access to
[5:22] organizations like that I think makes us a better investor and a
[5:25] better partner to entrepreneurs. But the fundamental question
[5:28] we're always trying to answer is what problem are you solving?
[5:32] Is that problem pervasive? Is it, is it common?
[5:36] Is it a problem for today or is it a problem from five years
[5:39] from now? And then ultimately does the
[5:42] technology work and is it the right technology to solve the
[5:44] problem at this time? But without having a clear cut
[5:48] answer to the problem statement, you know we would probably
[5:54] struggle a little bit as an investor.
[5:56] Yeah, that's a great approach. And also like how do you assess
[5:58] this scalability factor in these for tech startups like the
[6:02] competitors play a role, certain market size play a role.
[6:05] And what are like the one theme of startups that you personally
[6:09] like the most because of the incredible opportunity that
[6:11] there is? All of those things make it
[6:13] different and make a difference. And I would add many, many other
[6:16] things like management teams. That's an important thing.
[6:22] Globalized global exposure of global opportunity is is another
[6:28] one. Financial institutions as as you
[6:30] know are are regulated by region and certain certain regions have
[6:34] certain problems and others don't.
[6:37] Certain areas in the world have different prioritizations and so
[6:40] when we like to invest in companies that have a global
[6:42] mandate and global view of the world.
[6:45] So those things are all important and and so when we
[6:50] when we evaluate them for us it's it's the combination of of
[6:56] all of those things. Tam, you mentioned competition,
[7:00] you mentioned differentiation, I think you mentioned
[7:02] differentiation is is more than intellectual property, it's know
[7:05] how it's go to market, it's it's a lot of different things.
[7:08] And so we we like those the companies that have kind of a
[7:12] full package. How we determine whether or not
[7:15] the the the opportunity is scalable is interesting because
[7:19] we invest very early stage, very early stage to us means you know
[7:22] a few 100,000 in revenue, sometimes they have a couple of
[7:26] million in revenue. And So what we try to do is
[7:29] stitch together that thesis based on the customer feedback
[7:35] that we get as alongside the input that we get from our
[7:40] networks including our limited partners and trying to stitch
[7:43] together that investment thesis that says hey, here's here's
[7:47] that total opportunity that we have to address your tan here is
[7:52] the competitive landscape. We often get information and
[7:55] intelligence on who else is in the market through through our
[7:59] calls with customers and prospects in our networks.
[8:02] So always helps us kind of build and extrapolate that investment
[8:06] thesis and and and that's I think what we do well to to
[8:11] identify a few companies that I think are interesting in our
[8:14] portfolio which I think you you asked about here Prashant.
[8:19] I would, I would say Big ID is a very interesting company.
[8:22] It's all about PII personally identifiable information or was
[8:26] and and it's about general data monitoring and and and risk
[8:30] control and risk management understanding what data is where
[8:33] and how to control it and how to protect it.
[8:37] In our in our steer thesis we have a company called Purify
[8:42] which is all about spend management, procurement
[8:45] management. I think it's a very fascinating
[8:47] company from the very simple perspective that everybody
[8:51] attacks this problem as an after the fact problem Prashant.
[8:55] I've been in many board meetings where we've overspent and we
[8:58] only find out after the fact what what what Procure Fi does
[9:02] is allows the finance organization to prevent spend
[9:05] from happening and it it has that mid market opportunity
[9:10] which is below Koopa and above some of the competitors.
[9:14] And I think it's a very, very exciting company.
[9:17] I would probably point to in today's world another company in
[9:21] our portfolio, Imperion. Imperion is an asset liability
[9:25] management application for banks.
[9:28] We saw the challenges that we had with SVB and the challenges
[9:32] with SVB were really about asset matching.
[9:37] They had long dated assets in a short dated world and and this
[9:42] is what ALM allows you to do, it allows you to match.
[9:45] It's fundamental to any financial institution, any bank.
[9:48] And what they've done is they've actually evolved to provide
[9:52] because this is a key feeder feeding data to the budgeting
[9:56] and planning applications, they've now built the budgeting
[9:58] and planning application. So it's a very unique company
[10:02] and banks love it and we've got many, many banks as as customers
[10:06] from credit unions and regional banks to to larger super
[10:10] regional. It's a problem that's pervasive
[10:12] in the industry. And I and on that same theme of
[10:17] budgeting and planning, we've got a company called Giraffe
[10:20] which is tackling the mid market and lower mid end of the mid
[10:23] market for for that it does reporting obviously budgeting,
[10:28] planning, dashboarding. And what's unique about it is
[10:33] first of all it's the best product on the market and and
[10:35] and all the reviewers will tell you about that.
[10:38] But we also have a partnership with cpa.com that allows us to
[10:41] partner with CPA firms around the country.
[10:44] To us that's that's very valuable because we get direct
[10:47] feedback from the practitioners, they like the product and they
[10:51] introduce it to their to their customers.
[10:54] So we've got a broad set of companies, all of them are
[10:58] unique, all of them are special, you know So we we're quite happy
[11:03] with the portfolio that we've built.
[11:04] Prashant sorry, that might have been a long answer, but.
[11:07] No worries at all. Yeah, that's great.
[11:09] Like, there were some really interesting startups in your
[11:11] portfolio that you just mentioned there.
[11:13] And let's talk about the challenges that startups
[11:17] typically face when they're operating in the Fintech
[11:19] ecosystem. The biggest one is if you're in
[11:22] enterprise, stuff. In enterprise, it's a sale
[11:26] cycle, selling into a JPMorgan, a city, you know, RBCUBS,
[11:36] whatever it is, whichever bank you choose.
[11:39] If you're in the top 200 banks in the world, the sales process
[11:43] is agonizingly long and difficult.
[11:46] It is complex. It is a true enterprise sale.
[11:49] If you can get it done in 12 months, you're lucky, but you're
[11:51] probably looking at 18 to 24 months, which makes planning
[11:55] very difficult, makes as you know kind of capital allocation
[11:59] to each opportunity difficult and pipeline generation is, is
[12:03] is super important. So we often work with our
[12:06] portfolio companies to kind of create 2 tiers.
[12:09] One is credit union and community banks which have much
[12:13] smaller and easier sales cycles and then also large regional and
[12:17] superregional banks and and selling into those which is
[12:21] which is more difficult. So sales cycle very difficult
[12:25] credibility, no financial institution Prashant did you
[12:29] know of or ever want to be a customer of wants to risk your
[12:33] data, wants to risk your money. And so kind of they, they put
[12:38] all of our companies through through a torturous due
[12:42] diligence cycle whether it's security, whether it's
[12:45] scalability, functionality, usability, it's it's all there.
[12:50] So I think that's that's another difficult aspect of of selling
[12:54] into the market that we we sell into.
[12:57] And I think I would say the following is an important one,
[13:01] it's not the most difficult one, but it's an important one.
[13:04] Budgets change all the time. So the good news is IT spending
[13:09] in in financial institutions isn't shrinking.
[13:12] It's almost always growing at the rate of inflation or better
[13:17] and in in many cases much better.
[13:20] And so we've seen a big swing in IT spend by FI's over the last
[13:25] 20 years as a proportion of their overall spend.
[13:28] But they the priorities change and we saw with SVB very
[13:33] quickly. You know, I think the way a bank
[13:36] was thinking about risk changed overnight.
[13:38] And so there's now dollars being moved from one apparently lesser
[13:43] priority to one greater priority.
[13:45] So you always have to manage kind of the budgets of these
[13:49] organizations or understand the budgets of these organizations.
[13:52] And so I think another challenge that all of our portfolio
[13:56] companies face. Yeah, absolutely.
[13:58] And that is an important aspect about long sales cycles, you
[14:02] know, especially when it takes as long as 12 months, right?
[14:04] That's very long and like initially you're investing in
[14:07] early stage startups, right. And credibility.
[14:09] How do you build credibility? As a startup, at that stage, the
[14:12] first and foremost is just by talking to them, talking their
[14:15] language. So many of our founders,
[14:19] entrepreneurs and CEO's actually come from the industry and
[14:23] they've lived the problems that they're trying to solve.
[14:25] And that's that's very different than on the consumer facing side
[14:29] of fintech. You know, you can get young
[14:32] ambitious entrepreneurs out of college who, you know, have a
[14:37] problem that they can send money to their friends or they can't
[14:40] split a bill or whatever it is. That's very different than
[14:44] speaking the language of the the financial institutions.
[14:47] So that's the first, first and foremost.
[14:49] And even if you don't have that experience, surround yourself
[14:52] with a team that does advisors or board that does, I think
[14:56] that's that's the most important thing because nobody wants to
[14:59] lose their jobs buying your technology And so you you really
[15:04] have to be well versed in in what is going on in your, in
[15:08] your customers, in your ICP. Right.
[15:10] Certainly that's true. And while you're investing in
[15:12] these startups, like how are you balancing the revenue growth and
[15:18] the profitability factor, especially in today's market
[15:21] when like everyone wants profitability or to see money
[15:23] flowing in. So how are you balancing those
[15:26] two aspects, the revenue growth aspect and?
[15:29] You know the profit aspect, well it's Prashant that's that's I
[15:35] guess at the end of the day that's the the magic question
[15:38] for all these these obviously we want revenue growth, we want
[15:42] healthy revenue growth. Understand that in financial
[15:45] services you you sign 1 customer then you might sign 2 then you
[15:50] might sign 3. It's it's not exponential.
[15:53] It's very rarely exponential. And so if you understand that
[15:57] then you can probably put together a an appropriate cost
[16:01] structure for an organization. My my view is grow as fast as
[16:06] you can while maintaining control of the business.
[16:09] And so even in difficult situations or difficult times
[16:12] like we're in today, understanding what capital you
[16:16] have available to you with what milestones is really important
[16:20] because if you, if you understand that then you can
[16:23] work backwards and say this is how much we have to play with
[16:26] and this is our buffer to ensure that we get to those milestones.
[16:30] As you know, Prashant valuations are way down, raising money is
[16:33] much more difficult and and so we would be approaching it
[16:38] differently than we would have pre COVID.
[16:41] I mean, pre COVID, there would have been more aggressive growth
[16:47] expectations. Today, we're looking for
[16:50] reasonable growth expectations while maintaining control.
[16:53] In other words, don't run out of money.
[16:56] And if that means you've got metrics that allow you to kind
[17:00] of retrench internally and become profitable when you need
[17:03] to, that's terrific. Otherwise, you make sure you're
[17:06] hitting the milestones that allow you to raise additional
[17:10] capital at fair and reasonable valuations.
[17:13] Right, absolutely. And what's your recommended
[17:15] runway for startups especially in these times and how how early
[17:20] should they be start starting to raise their next round of
[17:23] capital? Is it like six months, 12
[17:25] months? What's that number?
[17:27] According to you, I don't think you should expect to raise money
[17:31] in less than six months. That doesn't mean companies
[17:33] can't do it, but you should at least give yourself six months.
[17:37] So if you're giving yourself at least six months with buffer,
[17:40] you should be in market at least nine months prior.
[17:42] I would tell you be 12 months prior.
[17:46] And I always view and that 12 month mark is, is really
[17:50] important because I view that is being in control or out of
[17:53] control of your business. So if you if you have capital,
[17:57] enough capital for 12 months, you generally have optionality
[18:01] if you start doing it too late, If you try to start trying to
[18:04] raise money too late, making cuts too late, you know at the
[18:07] six months mark you don't have optionality then you become a a
[18:11] price taker from anybody who provides you capital.
[18:14] If anybody will provide you capital because these C's are
[18:17] smart, they'll wait you out to get an even lower valuation.
[18:21] So again this is about being in control and understanding where
[18:24] you are and and so my I would advocate get in the market
[18:31] closer to the 12 month mark before you need the capital than
[18:34] the six month mark. Absolutely.
[18:36] Yeah, that's a sensible thing to do.
[18:39] And let's talk about value add. So how are you helping your
[18:42] portfolio company? You said that you have some Lps
[18:46] who are these like institutional banks, like biggest
[18:48] institutional banks in Canada. So are you like making those
[18:51] introductions to your portfolio companies?
[18:54] Or in what are the ways are you like trying to help your
[18:56] startups? Absolutely.
[18:57] I mean they're part of our differentiation and we do make
[19:00] those introductions. Obviously, we can't control what
[19:02] those institutions do and who they buy from.
[19:06] But we also use them for kind of product strategizing.
[19:10] If our companies want to think about new functionality, new
[19:14] products, we can introduce them to the right people within those
[19:16] organizations. But I think our, our, our most
[19:21] basic form of value add is, is, is being a trusted and
[19:25] transparent partner. We view ourselves not just as
[19:29] investors but builders and builders here doesn't mean
[19:32] running companies. That's not what we mean that's
[19:34] that's the management's role. What we mean is being there to
[19:38] help them build the companies in any way shape or form that is
[19:42] necessary, trusted and transparent.
[19:45] Partner is, is critical to that. Making the networks available to
[19:49] the is critical. Asking the difficult questions
[19:52] is critical to that. Making them better people and
[19:54] better executives and managers is critical to that.
[19:58] And so over the last 25 years of doing this, we have found that
[20:02] that's the best way to to win is to be a partner in the building
[20:06] process, not an investor that is passive, not an operator that is
[20:12] intrusive, it's about being. There's a balance there.
[20:17] It's and and it seems to work with our, with our CEO's.
[20:22] Yeah, certainly. And let's talk about the like
[20:26] the exit potential of these companies that you're investing
[20:28] in. So how are you thinking about
[20:29] the exit strategy? So while you're investing at
[20:31] that point, is it in your mind that, OK, how am I going to exit
[20:34] this this? Company, if I invest in this or
[20:38] is that a thought that you give later in the process when you
[20:41] already invested 2 to three years and then maybe you'll
[20:44] start thinking about that aspect and what's the typical return
[20:47] expectations for a fintech company.
[20:50] So to answer your questions here, yes, it is something that
[20:55] we think about at the outset. So we think about possible
[20:59] acquirers, we think about so that not only companies but
[21:03] types of acquirers. Obviously PE is always a
[21:06] potential acquire and IPO is always in a potential exit that
[21:09] we really think about kind of where they play in the ecosystem
[21:12] and who's most suited for them. I will tell you that having done
[21:17] this for for a few decades, it's rarely the person that you
[21:20] expect to buy that ends up buying the company.
[21:23] And so you don't spend too much time trying to identify who the
[21:28] buyer is. You spend a fair amount of time
[21:31] trying to identify what gaps you're filling and what types of
[21:34] buyers are as we progress through the development of the
[21:38] company. In your case, you you asked
[21:41] about two or three years in. I don't know when we start
[21:43] thinking about it, but we start thinking about more specifically
[21:48] who we should be partnering with because we fill a specific gap
[21:52] for them and that is often a way an acquisition is done.
[21:57] So we start kind of becoming a little more thoughtful about the
[22:00] ecosystem and and how we need to manage it and how we need to
[22:05] what role we need to play in it. And so that's kind of our active
[22:10] management of of an exit. We don't as a firm have a
[22:14] corporate development team that helps sell companies that's
[22:17] that's not we're way too small for that.
[22:20] We have a lot of friends in the investment banking community who
[22:23] could help us there. So that's not a role that we we
[22:27] play in terms of returns. Brashant, you know we we we go
[22:34] back and forth between IRR and and return on capital, how many
[22:39] how many turns on on on capital. Our, our expectation is if we
[22:46] can make five times our capital over a five to seven-year period
[22:51] even even and 10 times our capital over a 10 year period,
[22:56] we would be happy. I think every LP would look at
[22:59] that and say you guys have done exactly what you should be doing
[23:02] and they would be very happy to reinvest.
[23:04] Yeah, absolutely. You've been investing in
[23:06] startups for quite some time now, right?
[23:09] So what's been your biggest learning by investing in startup
[23:12] over the years, but something that you've learned now that you
[23:14] wish that you had learned earlier in this investing
[23:17] journey? Well, there's a lot of lessons.
[23:20] First, first of all is, is be patient.
[23:22] Great companies take a while to build and you got to find your,
[23:29] you got to build your foundation, get a solid footing
[23:31] and then you have to grow and you have to grow your team, you
[23:33] have to grow your your products suite, you have to grow your go
[23:37] to markets. There's a lot of building that
[23:39] needs to happen. You got to get pricing right,
[23:43] you gotta get your partners, your board and and Co investors
[23:46] right. A lot of things that have to
[23:49] happen in order for you to be successful.
[23:51] So be patient, that doesn't always happen overnight.
[23:56] The second thing is that it's hard work.
[24:00] Again we're not passive investors.
[24:02] We're active investors but not intrusive investors.
[24:05] And so we get involved in all this many decisions that are
[24:08] help companies make many decisions and and and that's
[24:11] difficult and sometimes we have to have difficult conversations
[24:16] with founders and entrepreneurs that's hard work that but that's
[24:21] our job that's our responsibility and and that you
[24:27] know and so that's another learning that this isn't easy.
[24:30] If you've gotten into VC because you think this is easy or every
[24:33] every company turns into a Unicorn, I think you're
[24:37] mistaken. Venture capital is very
[24:39] difficult, but it's it's thoroughly enjoyable because
[24:43] every day is different, every company is different.
[24:47] And so you get a sense of accomplishment when you look
[24:50] back after 5 or 10 years and say, hey, I was involved with
[24:53] that company or this company and this is where it's at today and
[24:56] this is who we sold it to or it went public, whatever it might
[25:00] be you. It's very gratifying to look
[25:03] back. And then the other thing I would
[25:06] say is be prepared. So I I think we've gone 1012
[25:14] years since the last downturn in venture and there's plenty of G
[25:19] P's and V C's out there who've never been through a
[25:22] downperturn. I think when we saw COVID hit,
[25:26] we prepared our portfolio companies for what we thought
[25:29] were going to be very difficult times Prashant.
[25:33] Another learning is we're, we can be wrong and in that case we
[25:37] were wrong. I mean we we the next 18 months
[25:40] in tech investing, we're the best 18 months in two decades.
[25:43] But our portfolio companies were prepared and so we felt
[25:47] comfortable that whatever happened we would be, we would
[25:52] be well positioned to survive whatever happened.
[25:55] So being prepared and that's our job, that's our job and it's our
[25:58] job to make all our portfolio companies, CEO's and companies
[26:02] prepared as well. Yeah, absolutely.
[26:04] Yeah, those are some great learnings out there.
[26:05] It will be very, very beneficial for like emerging managers out
[26:08] there just starting out in this journey and navigating the
[26:11] waters right now, let's move on to our last section for this
[26:14] episode, which is the rapid fire round, wherein I'll ask you 5
[26:18] quick questions about the fund and you have to give five quick
[26:21] answers. Sounds good?
[26:23] Perfect. Let's go.
[26:24] All right, the first one goes. What are the sectors and regions
[26:26] invested North America technology for financial
[26:29] services? What's the typical stage of
[26:32] investment? Early revenue?
[26:34] Few $100,000 of revenue, say half a million to a couple of
[26:37] million. Right.
[26:38] And what's the typical check size you put in on average about
[26:42] four million us for our first check.
[26:44] So could be as low as two, could be as high as six or seven.
[26:48] All right. And where can funders apply for
[26:51] funding in case there is a direct way?
[26:55] info@informationvp.com is the e-mail address that you can send
[27:01] things to or find out a way to get introduced to us indirectly.
[27:08] It's always better to find somebody in our network who can
[27:10] introduce you to us rather than coming to us blind.
[27:15] Absolutely. And where can our listeners
[27:17] follow you? Well, we're at Hashtag
[27:20] Information VP. I'm not a big Twitter user, but
[27:25] I'm Rant on V rant on VC. And ultimately, you can also
[27:33] come to, I guess, our website at informationvp.com.
[27:36] Absolutely. I'll make sure to put all those
[27:38] links in the show notes below. Thanks so much for coming on,
[27:41] Robert. It was a pleasure hosting you on
[27:42] the podcast and. Like getting all these learnings
[27:45] from you on investing in fintech.
[27:47] Thank you so much and happy investing, Rashon.
[27:49] Thank you for having me. Hope to speak to you soon.
[27:53] Absolutely. Thank you.

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