Polytech Ecosystem Ventures

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Based in San Francisco, the Mulago Foundation is a philanthropic foundation designed to carry on the life work of pediatrician Rainer Arnhold who died in 1993 while working in the mountains of Bolivia. He originally set up the Mulago Foundation in 1968, naming it after a hospital in Uganda. His Jewish family, bankers for generations, continued to support the foundation for impact investing across diverse sectors and geographies, with scalable solutions to alleviate poverty.It has invested in 61 companies to date. Successful ventures include: Kenya’s Komaza that raised $28m in its 2020 Series B and Myanmar’s Proximity Finance, a fintech for small-holder farmers that raised $14m in 2020. Komaza helps poor families turn dry land into small-scale, income-generating tree farms, benefiting more than 2m farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa.

VNV Global was originally founded as Vostok Nafta in 1996, with its first investment in Russia. The investment vehicle initially focused on investments in agriculture and natural resources, but began to diversify into early consumer internet companies like Avito and Tinkoff Bank. Shares were listed on NASDAQ OMX and the VC pivoted to high-growth tech investments in 2007. In 2015, the name was changed to Vostok New Ventures and shortened to VNV Global in 2020 to reflect its international strategy to expand outside Europe.The mid-cap NASDAQ Stockholm exchange-listed VNV mainly invests in mobility, medtech and marketplaces. It currently has 31 startups in its portfolio and six exits managed to date. Recent investments led by VNV include the $43m Series B funding of London-based food waste app OLIO in September 2021 and the $1.6m seed round of Vietnamese dating app Fika in October 2021. 

Famous techpreneur Li Yinan (b. 1970) is the former CTO of Baidu and former CEO of Wuxian Xunqi, a China Mobile subsidiary. After Li graduated from Huazhong University of Science & Technology with a master’s degree in Optics Engineering, he joined Huawei and was promoted to vice-president of its Central Research Department in just six months; in 1997 Li because the youngest vice-president at Huawei. In 2001, Li quit Huawei and started his own data communication company, Harbour Networks, which followed the same structure of Huawei and soon became its main competitor. In 2005, Harbour Networks lost in its intense battle with Huawei and was acquired by the larger player. Even though Li rejoined Huawei after the acquisition, he was never able to re-enter the core management team because of his damaged relationship with Ren Zhengfei, the founder and president of Huawei. In April 2015, Li founded his smart e-scooter company, NIU Smart Scooters. Li began investing in 2010 and joined GSR Ventures in 2011. Up to June 2015, Li had invested in more than 10 companies from the TMT sector. Li stood trial for insider trading in March 2016, according to news reports.

Future Positive Capital is a Paris-based VC with a second office in London. Its investments cover deep-technology companies applying AI, biotechnology, synthetic biology, as well as robotics. Co-funded in 2016 by ex-Index Ventures associate Sofia Hmich along with Alexandre Terrien and Michael Rosen; it has made 18 investments to date. In 2019 Future Positive raised over $57m pan-European impact investment fund, claiming that most European VCs are continuing to staying focused on sectors, such as consumer, fintech, and marketing, or web and mobile technologies. Future Positive’s belief is that there is instead, a long-tail of investment opportunities to back businesses that actually tackle “the world’s most pressing problems”.Through this fund, it will back throughout Seed and Series A stages, with the possibility to follow up on Series B investing between around €300,000 and €5m. Since then the company has backed startups in the like of BioBeats, an AI company focused on preventative mental health, cell-based startup Meatable, and more recently NotCo, the Chilean unicorn disrupting the food and beverage sector with AI-enabled plant-based products.The team counts on an extensive network of mentors, innovators, impact angel investors and entrepreneurs such as F1 pilots Nico Rosberg, the MD of Alibaba France Sebastien Badault, the Omid Ashtari the President of Citymapper amongst others.

Aspex Management was founded in 2018 by Hermes Li Ho Kei who was previously the executive MD and Head of Asia Equities at Och-Ziff Capital Management, aka OZ Management. Prior to joining OZ in 2011 Li worked at Goldman, Sachs & Co in Hong Kong.The London School of Economics graduate is now the chief investment officer at Aspex. The Hong Kong firm focuses on equity investments in Pan-Asia, specializing in sectors with long-term market growth potential and companies undergoing structural changes.Aspex led the $64m funding round for South Korean fintech unicorn Toss in August 2019. The P2P money transfer service platform Toss is created by Viva Republica backed by PayPal. Other participants in the round included existing Toss investors Kleiner Perkins, Altos Ventures, Singapore's GIC, Sequoia Capital China, Goodwater Capital and Bessemer Venture Partners.In May 2020, Aspex also invested in another startup Market Kurly, a grocery-delivery service provider that became South Korea’s latest unicorn via the Series E funding round that secured $328m led by DST Global. In July, Aspex also joined the $900m Series C+ funding round of Xpeng Motors, Tesla’s EV rival in China.

Born in 1968, Jerry Yang is a Taiwanese-American billionaire computer programmer. After co-creating the Yahoo internet navigational guide in 1994, he co-founded the company Yahoo! Inc in 1995 with David Filo while both were studying at Stanford University. Yang did not complete his PhD in electrical engineering to become an entrepreneur “selling internet advertising”.Yang was Yahoo! CEO for almost two years until 2009, rejecting Microsoft’s takeover offer of $47.5bn in 2008. He eventually left the board in 2012 when he resigned due to strategic disagreements such as whether to sell all or part of the company. In 2016, Yahoo! completed the sale of its core operating business to Verizon for $5bn. Yang was also a board member of the Alibaba Group from 2006 to 2012. Yang met Jack Ma in 1997 when Ma was working as a government-employed tour guide. The former English teacher gave him a tour of the Great Wall of China. Ma went on to found Alibaba a few months after meeting Yang.After leaving Yahoo!, Yang founded AME Cloud Ventures to invest in multiple tech startups. As of November 2020, Yang’s net worth was valued at $2.3bn. In 2017, he and his wife pledged $25m to the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, the largest gift in the museum's history.

Startmate is an accelerator program for tech-enabled Australian and New Zealand start-ups. It also operates a seed fund backed by venture capitalists and established entrepreneurs. The organisation was established in 2011 by Niki Scevak, founder of Blackbird Ventures, and a team that included the founders of Australian enterprise software company Atlassian.  Since its inception in 2011, Startmate has invested in more than 150 startups with a combined valuation of more than A$1 billion. Startmate runs two accelerator cohorts a year, usually from January–April and July–October. This accelerator program is open to a wide range of entrepreneurs, from idea-stage groups and pre-Series A startups, to solo founders and complete teams. Companies participating in Startmate’s accelerator program each receive A$75,000 from Startmate’s community of mentors, in exchange for 7.5% equity. In 2019 Startmate launched a dedicated Climate Cohort, which runs parallel with the standard program and focuses on startups in cleantech and climate-tech. Startmate also runs a First Believers program twice a year, which trains future or aspiring angel investors from Australia and New Zealand by building their confidence and networks and refining their investment strategies. In addition, the organization runs a coaching and mentorship program and holds other networking programs, like a Founders’ Fellowship, Women Fellowship, and Student Fellowship, at various dates throughout the year.  

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