D2F#16 - Montse Suárez (Iris Ventures) - Invertir en marcas que generan comunidad

This is Direct To Fan Podcast, a space where we talk to the people who are behind the brands that have fans and communities instead of customers, in the world of sports, entertainment and much more beyond. We seek to understand how they have been built, how they operate nowadays and how they want to continue to grow. Today, Guillem Grail and servidor Enric Ghiopard, co-founders of D2F Partners, we talk with Monse Suárez, founder and managing partner of Idis Ventures, an investment fund aimed at consumer brands with global focus. Monse tells us about the vision that feeds its investment thesis, based on supporting projects very focused on the creation of large brands that stand strong for product, content and community creation, how to select winners' projects or the challenge of maintaining the essence of brands in a context of scaling the business. Another key part of Monse and Idis is to support the female entrepreneurship that today only captures 2% of the total investment in venture capital. Monse is a real visionary in the world of investment and consumer brands, with whom we have enjoyed a great talk, let's hope you have a great time. Welcome to a new edition of D2Fan Podcast, how are you, Guillem? Very good, I'm happy to be back in a new course. Right? Let's go a little while, without doing one of these episodes, we have been, or we are, in very interesting, very powerful, very exciting projects that we will soon be talking about and sharing things. There is not enough time left, I think the next one is going to be about that. There is not enough time left, it is going to be very interesting, but today we have a guest who made us very, very excited to have him with us, we have been chasing him these last months because he is really a person with a very, very interesting trajectory, Monse Suarez from Idis Ventures. Monse, welcome to the podcast. Thank you very much, I am delighted to be here and to share a little with you. To start and to situate ourselves a little, because I do not know if our audience will be super familiarized with Idis Ventures, what do you do in Idis Ventures? What companies do you work with, what is your investment thesis? Well, look, Idis Ventures is a fund of 100 million euros, we are based between Barcelona and London and basically we dedicate ourselves to investing in new generation brands, brands that connect with the modern consumer and that try to give solutions to modern problems. As an example, for example, we have invested in brands like Holistic, which is a company based in Barcelona, which tries to solve the problem of hair loss for women in the UK and London, we have invested in a company called Biomell, which is a drink with probiotic benefits, in Milan we have invested in a company called Artemest, which is a digital platform that protects Italian artisanism with a very global audience, especially coming from the United States. Mamalie, which is a company based in Berlin, which makes products for dogs, supplements, so that I have a better life and live longer, and another, for example, the last one we have invested is Morten, which is a company based in Gothenburg, which is in Sweden, which makes products for sports nutrition for high-end athletes. Some hamburgers, too? Some hamburgers, we have also invested in Biccio, which also comes from Barcelona, a company with a very different aspect from the other types of hamburgers companies that you have found in the past, with a very strong element at the community level, where people don't come to Biccio to eat hamburgers, but rather come to Biccio to feel like part of a community in which people like to meet and like to share values, experiences, and above all, Biccio is a company that makes us laugh a lot. You already know that in Dito Efsomus there are more investors, but fans, especially fans of the brand. Totally. Tell us about it, because this investment thesis, this focus, seems super interesting to us. As we always say in the intro of the podcast, we talk here about brands that have fans and communities, instead of customers, and I think we share a little thesis and vision of where that comes from. Well, look, Ilys Benches is an evolution of another fund that I launched in the UK, which is called Voltia 7, which basically emerged in the evolution of another fund that I previously created for a corporate, which was the corporate venture of Boots, where I realized that, well, it was very evident that there were certain categories within the consumer world, especially that these categories such as beauty, health, well-being, nutrition, etc., that were not covered from the point of view of investment. The majority of investors in the consumer world in the past had invested a lot in fashion and perhaps they had been a little disconnected from the modern consumer, and it was very obvious that the market needed a fund that is led by a new generation of investors who connect much more with the modern consumer and understand that the consumer is changing, that the priorities of consumers are changing and that capital also has to do a little matching between the needs and the capital that is available. Many people ask me, "Did you already know that 10 years ago you ended up launching Ilys Benches?" Well, no, the truth is that no. And I didn't know either when I left the university, I started working in a bank of investment in Morgan Stanley, that really, to be honest, I entered without knowing exactly what I was going to do and what I was going to do, because 25 years ago, with less technology and less availability of information, you didn't know exactly what they were going to do. So I started working in London, with a lot of desire to start working, I started working in the energy department, imagine, and very quickly I realized that I wanted to continue within the world of investment, I had to go to something where I really had my passion and my passion has always been within the world of consumer, so I went to the Rital Consumer Records, there was 2002, and I really, well, I put the batteries on and I enjoyed a lot because it was a season where the, let's say, luxury masks were being created, we are going through, let's say, the Gucci's and the Louis Vuitton, the Gucci Groups, the LVMH's, TOTS, TOTS Group was being created, with which we are passing from a vision of monobran luxury to multibran, where I was involved, for example in the Gucci Group, in all the purchases of Alexander McQueen, Otega Veneta, Stella McCartney, we even had friends with Tom Ford, well, it was fascinating, at that time, and when I left the investment bank, I went more to Prevarakuti, which was also, let's say, a trajectory of my career where I learned a lot, they pushed me a lot because I always say that the Prevarakuti investment capital is of mental and physical athletes, and I think it also gave me the base to be able to combine my passion, which were brands, and luxury brands, with the most financial part and understanding of how to structure investments where you can protect your return, and well, joining the other two, let's say, merchants, we ended up coming out of what we ended up coming out of. It is interesting for many reasons, but especially for the only one, let's say, of the proposal. We who have come to take up a small round and such, we have seen that the investment texis are quite monolithic, they are like generalists, this is a guy, or a lot, a lot of money in texis, or all bitubisas, that it seems that all the entrepreneurs have to be launching the next bitubisas product, and we who know ourselves, let's say, as a ditueff and as professionals, it is another, which is that building brands and communities can end up doing super large and super profitable businesses, because they connect much better, let's say, with society, with people. Why do you think that your proposal, your proposal for a long time and such, is not mainstream? I mean, why do you think that capital percentage is so relative, there is money, obviously, but relatively small compared to technology, and how do you see this growing in the coming years? I think we are also at a point of inflection, for example, when I started investing in the beauty sector, which was in 2013, I could count with one hand the investors who invested in beauty, now I can tell you that there are at least 15 people investing in beauty, so I think that everything is also cycles, and where innovation goes, there is capital, so in the last few years, for example, we have seen a lot of innovation in the beauty sector, and that is why a lot of funds have come out, especially in the United States, where it is easier to scale beauty companies. It is true that at some point, we have mentioned in the past, technological funds entered in the consumer category, and especially entered at the moment where COVID-19 took place, because obviously consumer has become more digital, and perhaps the technology investors have confused a little with the SaaS models, with the online consumer models that have nothing to do with it, because in the end you cannot build a brand of what it is, of beauty, of nutrition, and spend it from zero to 300 million in four years, that is, it does not exist. There may be some case, but it would be a one-off, so the returns that the most technological funds look for are not found in consumer brands, so now that we have gone, let's say, to a more normal market dynamics, the technological investors have already left the consumer sector a little, and what has happened, what we have left with what was before or what has emerged during the last years. Most of these investors are in the United States, they have not yet arrived in Europe. In Europe, we continue to have, let's say, relatively smaller and local funds, which have local capital, with which in some way they are also forced to invest in local companies, and in the end I always say that brands, if really it is a big brand, you have to have this global mindset from the first day, and to have a global mindset you also have to have an investor who comes with the same mindset and the same values ​​as the founding team, and of that very few, because the majority of investors in Europe are either very local, or from my point of view, this is what I said at the beginning, they are a bit disconnected from what really is the modern consumer, modern consumer, they seek storytelling, they seek to be fans of brands, they seek to share the values ​​with the community, they seek a content that is relevant and is, well, to a certain point also engaged and fun, they are no longer the brands of the past that were a bit flat and that gave no importance to community content, these days, to really be a brand of success in the consumer sector, you have to have the three elements, product, content and community in a coherent way and acting very strongly, and I think there are some investors who may not have seen this evolution as quickly as maybe we have seen it. It is because they do not understand, that is, one of the things that we see, when we have helped, invested or been in companies, there are like two, we place two big groups, those who understand what we call the power of the brand and have seen and have seen, when you have a brand, let's say that it has that energy, that momentum, how it becomes a business of a thousand different forms and those who have not seen it yet and I do not say that the brands cannot be measured, that they can be measured, but that they remain in the number of drops of the app, you know, the open rate and I do not know what and there are people who have lived it because it is almost to live it and there are people who do not, therefore the internal belief of the potential of the brand, among other things, we have finished, let's say with the thesis that you have to have lived it because if you have lived it, you understand the brutal potential and if you have not lived it, even if you say yes, although you know, even if you invest, you will not really believe it, you see this that it may be a reason that the investment, how do I look at this or that, well, I think that it is a bit what I have been saying since the end of the year, I think that the best investors are the specialists, those who, like us, had a database in the CRM of 3,000 opportunities. I am constantly, every day, with co-founders of consumer companies and I can quickly see what can really come to the next level of what not, because we are specialists and we see patterns and we can identify at what time the companies are at a point of reflection to really give them capital and accelerate growth. If you are a more generalist fund and one day you are doing consumption and the other day you are doing, well, I do not know, building materials, you are losing a little the movie while the specialists are there day by day, meeting co-founders within, let's say, the same verticals, with which it is much easier for us to have investment conviction, that if you enter and leave the sector as an investor and I think this is what has happened a lot in the world of consumption, where the most generalist funds, because at times where consumption was there, they have dedicated teams to invest in the sector in a very opportunistic way and when there has not been, let's say, a market, well, they have left the market, so it is very difficult to create teams with a recurring track record, as in our case, I mean, I have been investing in the consumer sector since 2013, so it is more than a decade and I have seen quite a lot of cycles and if you throw me a little further back, I started my career more than 20 years ago in the consumer sector, from the point of view of investment, so the history, the track record, the years of dedication also helps you to feel more comfortable in certain situations where others may see more risk and you have already done it before, you know exactly what can go wrong and I always tell the founders, the best thing that you can have from us and from me personally is that I have an MBA on what not to do because I have seen so many things that have gone wrong that directly when I see that something is going to go wrong, I am going to tell you and this fits us very well with what we said before, how do you learn this and link us to the course and the sponsor of this podcast that is the executive master of SAVE, of what percentage goes from on the job training, intuition, nose and so on and what percentage there is to be able to study, I remember when I was in engineering, our audience does not know and one day I decided to go to marketing and at that time I worked at Proctor and Gamble, of course I asked them what do you think they study, where am I going to study? In that case they told me, don't worry, we created marketing, also for the company that was the one that trained you a lot, but in your experience for the founders and how do you learn this to identify that complex world of creating business based on brands? We have what we call an investment criteria that has different facets, we only look at the financial part, which is obviously very important, but we also look at the product that they have launched is unique, it is that there is Consimal Love by the brand, it is that the founding team has a very clear vision of what they want to be, there is ambition within the team, it is that they have the ability to recruit also people who can help them, that is, in the end it is a variety of criteria that we have a strategy, but there is a very clear thing and that is why I very few times invest in brands of less than 3 million sales, in 90% of brands before reaching 3 million they fall on the road and that is the reality, so if you want to undertake you also have to know that the probability of not going according to the plan is very high and that is why we in the end also as investors and as founders we compare a lot with assets because in the end the value that will help you to reach the end is perseverance, it is resilience, you know, it falls, it rises, it repeats, it falls, it rises and repeats and either as investors or as founders, this has to be very clear, if you really want to undertake and you know it, you have to have that physical strength, returning to what we talked about before the theses and such and that there are surely more popular theses in the market, how do you convince the LPs, the limited partners, the people who have to put money in your fund from this thesis, taking into account that surely as you said before there are investment theses in the technological world etc. where the returns are surely theoretical, surely on paper there are some x-counts on top, how do you convince them and in trying to negotiate that they surely have the same point of cooking slower, we were talking about the return is produced in more years from what the return of a purely more dedicated fund would produce, the technological fund. Yes, let's see, a technological fund, for example, makes 80% of the return with 20% of companies, because in the end it has a high percentage of companies that can make you 20, 30, 40, 50 times return that they compensate for all the others that may not make you any return, in the consumer sector very few times and perhaps it has happened to me once, you can make returns of 20, 30, 50 times with companies of consumption with which you have to be very careful and you have to take the companies really at that point of inflection and that from my point of view it goes back to track records and it goes back to years of experience because having that ability to identify brands that are relevant, that you can take them from 3 million to 50 million, you have to give me many opportunities, you have to have a method also and a very efficient work formula that you know what you are looking for and with a very identified investment thesis, very clear that you can also share with the selfies and ultimately the record track, that is, to show that you have done it before that you have been able to identify those brands that I call A-Class within different verticals of the world of consumption, that you do not get stuck in a single category, that is, that you not only invest in food or not only invest in beauty, you are also able to move in different verticals because cycles also change, when there is a cycle of beauty there is not a cycle perhaps of wellness or of health or whatever and you also have to identify which are the cycles that will take you now value creation in 4 years or 5 years or 6 years, those that you need to be able to create the return that you have somehow promised your investors and with which the blend, let's say between what you said, the return I have done with 28 or once is like your new inventors, it ends up being let's say the same level of the return that you can offer investors. Yes, let's see, in the end we hope to be able to create a return of about four times on the capital that we have invested, but the way we are going to arrive at those four times blended will be very different from a company or a technological fund where they hope that let's say the 20% believes in the return while in the consumption companies as you cannot have two companies that believe in a return of 100 times you have to have 10 companies for example 8 that believe you between 4 and 5 and 2 that maybe do not go according to your plan but almost that you turn the percentages and that is why let's say you have to have a very good eye because if not the risk that you do not get to that return blend is quite higher because you do not have business plans that pass you from 0 to 500 million in 4 years clearly and that good eye beyond to identify brands categories with potential let's say at the level of the person from when you sit down with an entrepreneur potential or someone that you look at what you are looking for in the person not so much in the brand because several things first is the why because that person has launched that business there was a season where it was all I have launched it because I have seen it in the United States function and I think there is an opportunity to start badly it has to be really authentic because you as a consumer have seen that there was a gap in the market and you have decided to launch a better product and that is where you connect with me if you do not connect authentically and we start with the authenticity of the founder of the story of the purpose why did you decide to launch these what is your purpose you know we identify the purpose and we say ok here there may be space for them so we always go back to the reason why the founder has really launched this company for example Allison Felix who is one of our founders who has launched a company that is called age of sports shoes she launched it because she was an athlete and she had a sponsor like when she got pregnant because night she cut the compensation and decided because openly write a letter where she tried to protect the rights of the pregnant woman especially athlete when he has a sponsor that cuts the compensation during that period decided to leave Nike and having his daughter had to compete in the Olympic Games of Tokyo and it was realized by doing research that most of them for not to say the total company of sports shoes had always taken the sole of the shoe according to the man's body and based on that they made a marketing of smaller shoes and colors a little more feminine for the woman so when realizing that she said here is a problem I am going to get my own company that is really going to be designed according to the shape of the body of the woman and the foot and from there she identified authentically a problem in the market and she had a very clear which was her purpose which was also to defend the rights of athletes women in situations such as the fall for maternity so there is a click with iris and we talk about purpose we talk about community but we also talk about climbing climbing in a way not talking about three million as we are going to 50 not of course the execution of that with going from 3 to 50 keeping the purpose that vision of community etc. I understand that it is complicated and above all for founders that many times they do not have the first time they do it that you have learned seeing those climbing processes that are so so so complex and almost sometimes even more when you want to maintain an essence as a brand when your consumers above all those from the beginning expect something from you but at the same time of course you have to scale the business I see a challenge and a strong tension there if it is true that there are brands that are lost on the way and most brands are lost on the way when the founder disconnects from the consumer and I always say the founder has to represent the consumer because if the consumer goes to the right the company has to understand that the consumer has gone to the right and if it goes to the left because we go to the left because in the end the advantage that we have as investors that we are so specialists is that at the level of advice at the level of work we are 100% consumer centric we think day and night about how to breathe the consumer how he wants to buy the consumer how he wants to enjoy the proposition of the consumer who is more looking for the consumer and I think there are many companies that at the moment where they enter capital and start to create a team there is a disconnection between the founder and really the reason why the founder launched the company that was to satisfy a consumer then this is a big watch out the second is also that it depends on the same between an investor specialist and a generalist is that the specialist knows exactly how to carry a company of 350 because you have done it before then not only do you know how to do it but that you also have an expert network with those who have worked before that you can connect them with the founding teams and be a little a plug-and-play to reinforce those needs that you have for a series A or a series B or whatever and maybe the third element and I will tell you that to see there are many founders who believe that to get from A to B it is a line because it is very linear it is not and the truth is that the journey of any brand is really not a line you have to understand that at some point because perhaps you do not have it clear how to grow and at that moment I always said cash reservation let's keep the box until we know how to grow nothing happens if a year does not grow so much because we will figure out in a few months how to grow and then it is time to invest and this is a little the risk of having investors who may not have seen it before if they say it doesn't matter you know how to grow just keep on putting cash keep on putting cash because honestly it can be game over if you are not able to demonstrate an efficient growth between a series A and a series B here one thing and I am very interested in that of consumers boss not that seems that many times you know we forget about the ABC to whom you serve you know to whom you are going to serve because in the end the thing about creating common brands is to serve them and it seems that the word serve you know has negative consequences when they have to be absolutely the mantra the mantra of all what we sometimes identify is that in an initial phase the intuition and the look of the founder of his world that is always by definition is partial you live where you live be it any of your surroundings your track record has lived in a country in 2 in 20 it has worked for let's say for the first phase but at that moment of growth that has to add layers and different clusters surely of new customers continue only with that look let's say itself of such that you don't have to lose because it is the one that makes it authentic but at the same time how do you do it so that it looks beyond what its look is and there I don't know if there is a trick but it is something that we see happening at that point of development that is ok let's say your core core where you have grown you no longer have coped ok surely it will not come out to grow with what you have to grow geographically without being that is how you do it so that that person in who lives and has that stomach feeling that it had at the beginning and does not lose it how have you solved it well it is a bit an art and it is a bit of experience in the end is how do you manage to satisfy the early adopters to be a proposition a little more and it has gone where because I always say having a marketing director that I have done before and that I have accompanied Malkas to be an early adopter to be more a mass proposition is fundamental because in the end you will never stop satisfying the early adopters and you cannot miss them but at the same time if you only talk to these you are losing the opportunity to really grow your business for example in the brands in which I invested just before starting cobit it is a brand that is called Gizu which is a hair brand that is the products are based on the properties of the honey a company very responsible that really seeks to use natural ingredients but with a more indulgent aspect the problems of honey more indulgence through the products that are initially in the company was targeting only to those beauty junkies super early brand adopters and we arrived to be able to grow the brand because to a brand that is now generating many millions of euros how do we get it we get that without losing sight of the ones who really made us arrive here was a brand that connected with the modern consumer the founder constantly representing this consumer but also supporting us in big retailers that have given us the distribution to be able to grow then at the level of online we always continue talking to those brand loyalties those who do not disconnect from the brand but at the same time we give input to new consumers through other distribution channels then it is an art and science there is no formula that can say applies the same playbook in each company but ultimately you have to go testing different let's say marketing strategies different touch points to see what works and where it works to invest more capital and in many of the companies in the end we have come together with different let's say distribution channels passing from a company initially to consume with holistic for example to become a company because now you can find it in more than 2000 companies we talked before starting to record Montse about your good and your particular interest in supporting women entrepreneurs and since sometimes it is difficult to find unfortunately women entrepreneurs and that the thing is a bit unbalanced what is your point of view about this topic and how you are trying to push to change it if this is a topic because I have talked many times and it is very relevant because in the end I think that the investor base would really have to do a mirroring of the demographic base of any company 50 50 is the way how we can really get to have more female founders that get to raise capital that become themselves in mentors of other female founders and start to change the chain a little bit because today only 2% of the capital goes to female founders so what happens that if you are a female founder you are pushing your proposal in 98% of the cases in names that surely they are interested but that they do not connect with what this person is trying to solve through their company that is launching and that is the main problem that exists the disconnection where the capital is and how this capital connects with the proposals a little more feminine so until there is no more equality of capital division we will continue having difficulty so that female founders really get to raise capital and then as you have already said it is a virtual circle when a founder arrives to raise capital and sells his company there is wealth creation that is circulated in the system and those female founders become mentors of other female founders because today in the end it is a voice club the female founders do not find their club of other female founders where they can go to ask today and now what do you think I have to accept the same with which it is a problem of the funding gap the mentoring gap the pay gap and it is something that because I openly speak about it because in the end there is no industry where 98% of my class let's say Morgan Stanley was guys and I managed to get where I wanted to get and I put a lot of effort into them with which well I think it is a subject that has to be talked about and it has to be solved and it has to be supported by female founders and I personally because sometimes when I do angel investing I also have to go to female founders to support them because this is the question surely if you look 10 years back and you say they have increased the percentage of women in the world of entrepreneurs or investment in a radical way the answer surely if today they are 2% it is that it is the same if 10 years ago one although it has been duplicated we are talking about that it is very far from such that it can be done in a pragmatic way to accelerate that because if not in the end the proposals that are already in the market and in our case in the world of the head of brands is to put that look in a masculine way, I think that at the institutional level it also has to be dedicated more capital to people like me for example to female founders of investment funds where I also have more capital to invest in situations like these and I think that also at the female level they have to launch a little more themselves to do more angel investing to also support other women who are launching proposals and it is a way of as I said recirculating the capital wherever you want because in the end who has the capital is going to dictate the innovation that we are going to see in the market and I personally want to see innovation that goes to the woman with which the more female founders for me better then I think there has to be a more institutional theme but also a more local theme more female angels investing in female founders making female founders not making copies of the male founder it is a small detail but let's say the woman's contribution has also changed in many ways to do not that the world has that I do not know yes no and I think that also in the end what happens very frequently is that you compare a business plan presented by a man and I am going to give it from 0 to 100 in four years then look at the same plan presented by the woman and it will arrive from 0 to 7 in four years and you will know how this is understood then I think that women also have to sell a little better and have more confidence and men also have to reduce the expectations a little and know really what it costs to build businesses then it is very interesting because this is a very good picture with an insight that we take and we will tell you in other podcasts but in a very hard one, okay, we are going to record a ultra button that we are talking about and that we are talking about because there were so few women and we interviewed an American ultra-fundamentalist and I asked him this and he was a person who had studied all the data, let's say description against finishing sense against people who had finished and he showed me that the percentage of women written was smaller than the percentage against inscribed in the case of women, he doubled men, much more men believed that he could do this ultra marathon of 20 hours running, I don't know how long it was worth that women but many more women when they said that they did it, it seemed like a super interesting insight that a lot of you also are saying that we have a problem more but for the other one not to sell so much smoke, yes, yes, yes, and I think that I always say to female founders is to have a little more of that confidence because really in the end when you look at the businesses that women launch, they always always always try to solve personal problems and these personal problems always exist because those solutions have not been created until today, so there is a reason why this product or this service has to exist, with which we return to the subject, it is that it is an authentic story, normally when there is a female founder, it is always very authentic, we can talk about sports, yes, of course, you know that I like it a lot, let's see, we are seeing a brutal eruption of capital, especially in the United States, under the purchase of rights and/or IPS/team, that is happening at a brutal speed at the level of the creation of brands beyond the teams is that they have a group of teams and such a dynamic that is surely different, but when we talk about brands of the world of sports or initiatives, technology of the world of sports, how do you see it because traditionally it has been a very inverted area, the next leagues, clubs, there are numbers that have been inverted, but capital had not inverted in these areas and we see that they are starting to have interest, you from iris or personally or from iris, how do you see it? Let's see, it is clear that it is not just a moment, that is to say that it is not just a punctual moment, but that we are seeing an eruption of capital entering the sports sector, as you have already said, either IPR, either teams, or more content proposals, etc. Everything is mainly happening in the United States, let's be frank, in Europe it is coming, but it is quite more complicated, we are behind the United States and our sport, in everything we look at, the United States has always been five years ahead, I have been two years ahead and then it will come to an end, it will come, it will come, it is that it is more difficult to run in Europe than in the United States, 100%, but I do not tell you about sports, but in any category, here in the end we have different countries with a scalability that is X, with regulatory problems that do not exist in the United States, with channels that are different in each market, etc. We are looking at it, if we are looking at it, but we look at it a bit from the distance. Entering in shopping processes of clubs is extremely competitive today, with more values ​​that we do not find comfortable and we are perhaps spending more time in propositions, brands that talk to that athlete or sportsman, and an example has been the inversion in Morton, another has been the inversion in Seix, and we will continue looking and seeing other investment opportunities, but more in that vertical, which is more a consumer brand proposition. At the end of the day, we think that we have to make our return in four or five years, we have to also be mindful of the ability to make an exit in those companies, with which it seems to us fascinating what is happening and we will link more and more through different, let's say, initiatives that we are going to launch through iris, but we are very rational about where we can really compete and where not. Yesterday in the program, in a session of the program with that one, we were just talking about the case of Europe, specifically about the world of football in Europe and investments, and how the complexity at an institutional level, that is, a football club has federations, there are leagues, there are a series of regulations that make it much more complicated to operate properly. In the United States everything is thought out so that the franchises, in this case they are already franchises, they change hands when they touch, when they want, and the red carpet is laid so that it is totally. Yes, these differences between the United States and Europe are also seen outside of sports, that is, in the world, consumer brands in everything else that you play, they are two very different worlds, they are approaching you, what do you see there? They are two quite different worlds, especially at the level of scalability, you can scale a business in the United States with access to whatever, 20,000 points of sale, because you have the ability to scale out, ultra, worldwide, worldwide, etc. In Europe it is the case, because once you get out of, for example, Spain and you want to go to Italy, then perhaps the dynamics of the channel are different, so you already have to start thinking what my playbook will be, because it will not be the same as Spain, the same thing in the UK, because it is a company from the UK and now if you want to go to Europe, good luck with the whole Brexit theme, because it already adds a complexity that is extraordinary, so in the end we always look for an IP, a European soap opera, and ultimately, in the, let's say, 60% of the cases take the United States, because in the end the US consumer is a consumer who likes to try, who likes to take risks, who likes to enhance innovation, so if I look at my portfolio companies, the majority of those who have quickly reached about 50 million euros is because 50, 60% of their audience has been US and we have been selling them in US, so we always try to compensate a little, as they invest in companies with a European base, with founders who have this global mindset and that there are also early signs that the US consumer is adopting this proposal, because once you can show that there is a proof of concept in the US market, we have already shown different investments that by investing more capital behind the team and so on, through the distribution channels that you have in the US, you can scale very quickly, and the US market values a lot European quality. This totally coincides with what we saw in Barça, as long as we launch any initiative product, we see that it is not purely a portfolio, but digital products, many of them, always in Spanish, the first up was the US and the majority of them were not the US of the world, they had their commercial and their costs, because there is a risk that it will cost to establish you or expand you there, linked to this, there is a discussion that appears in the last conversations that we had in the last weeks of starting what is very typical and I think that the world of SAAS is coming, right? I start in a country and then I grow, you know, and then I open Italy, I don't know what I open, I don't know how many. Of course, when you start globally, it directly comes out that it is more expensive, because you have to think about it, because shimmons, all the thousands of coins and languages ​​and so on and so forth, I mean, there is a theory that says they win in your market, in this case in Spanish, okay, and from here, other countries are already jumping, and there is another that we, every time we like more, is that although it has a higher cost or greater complexity of output, it begins globally, especially if your product is digital, another thing is if it is available, that there are restaurants and cooks, here I leave it a little apart, and the body asks us to go globally, because you do not know which country is going to attract better and although it has a better initial cost, the potential is so great and we have seen some cases of products very well done, failing because the market, especially in Spanish, is a market that is very fair to be able to acquire, being the eighth generation of piracy, we always had Sony Music, Iberia, horrified with the levels of piracy that are still there and free, you know, that they have streaming platforms, what would you recommend? Assuming that physics is not important, okay, because if it is physics, I think it is quite clear, but if you can send it, you know, or it is a digital product, what would be your drawback? Let's see, if you can start with a direct-to-consumer strategy that I always, always, always recommend, because it is the format where you can prove that it works, that it does not work, and really have the direct feedback of the consumer, I would say global start, global start because you will see where your product sells better, in which market it sells better, and depending on that data you are going to have, use the data to dictate your strategy, that is, if you launch a product, and I put myself from UK, for example, or from Sweden, which are smaller countries, and you see that it is attracting US in an organic way, is that the data is already telling you that you have to go to US, if you do not open your direct-to-consumer channel to all countries, in the end you will go a little bit with your gut feeling, so if you can have the data, because it is a direct-to-consumer company, open it to different countries, see where, in an organic way, your product is penetrating, and you can invest in this. This is a new point, and point number two, I have realized, especially in Spanish companies, that they want to satisfy the local market, and there is no longer the point of purchasing from Spain to other countries, but that they also create very local teams, that then take out and change the culture to be a global company, it is such a difficult cultural change that they end up saying "you know what, we are going to stay local". We are also very interested in understanding your point of view of where the market is today, the market of investment, there were moments where it seemed that any company was raising a round, with a powerpoint, then the thing dried up, now if you put that I.I. to the powerpoint you have an option and it seems that the thing goes a little up, of course, you move us, I understand that the I.I. is the same, well, it is fine that there is I.I. but it would not be what moves you the most, at what point are we and also at a macro level, I think it is a macroeconomic and socio-political level, very complex in the world, evidently I understand that this impacts you a lot, your decision-making and thesis and everything, what is your point of view of where we are and where things are going? Well, let's see, it is true that we are in a pretty complicated market, in a very complicated one, it is clear that if you look at the statistics of how much capital has been raised in the last two years, well, it is a fraction of what was raised in the pre-COVID and COVID period, many funds are sitting on capital to be deployed at the right time, with which they have been much more, let's say, conservators at the level of capital deployment, this has also affected valuations, I think there was a moment when the valuation was not met in the past and now the investment committees are becoming much more critical at the level of valuations discrepancies, with which we are seeing valuation adjustments, however, for the good assets, the valuations continue to be quite patchy, because while in the past it was mainly at a consumer level, a lot, a lot of innovation, a lot of brand that with a powerpoint raised capital for those generalists who will be a little more difficult to differentiate what is good from what is bad, everything was financed, now the brands that get something good or do not finance themselves, with which it is much easier to differentiate the good from the bad and when something is good people pay the price, because it has capital to deploy, so it is a bit of this dichotomy that we are seeing in the market, we have continued to invest and I keep repeating, we have the advantage that we are a consumer fund that knows how to invest in different verticals in the consumer world, with which we are not focused on only a vertical where if the cycle is good it invests and if it is not good it invests with which your investment strategy can be quite patchy, we look for a type, a class type of investments and if I see the trajectory of the sales increase of my company in portfolio, the truth is that it is very healthy, we are growing between 50 and 60 percent of the average among all portfolio companies, with which even though the economic situation is difficult, we are talking about companies that are still so small that they can find that demand because the impact they are going to make on the market share even of a category that is flat is so small that you can get it with which we can still get the returns that we seek for our investors and in different settings I can give you examples from well obviously if we look at more global themes of these last years where we are investing it is clear that the consumer is going through physical experiences, then company that we have invested more in luxury travel experiences through a digital platform we see those growths, the modern consumer is much more mindful, aware of what is put in the body, then we have invested and in the last investment in the company that makes the panels, let's say, cleaner than the planet where it has published a psychological analysis of the product, you see that there is still demand because the consumer that is more aware goes from a product more than the whole life where they do not make an ingredient disclosure to a company that is 100% transparent, the same thing happens with collective investment, the modern consumer is realizing that we are continuing to contaminate a lot of the planet with fashion, with which we are going to recirculate luxury goods with a platform with a collective investment where they buy and sell second hand items, the consumer is also betting on this, health and wellness, the same thing, with which we are investing in themes that are very, very relevant to the modern consumer, with which, although the industry does not grow, there is a shift of consumption of what it has been years ago, it was relevant for the consumer to what it was today relevant for the modern consumer. Before I finish, I have the doubt that I do not know if you have any female founder that you recommend us to continue, that you do not recommend us to interview or continue because the same thing, but I do not know, I think it is good that we take advantage of this so that you do not talk to us if you have any in mind. Yes, yes, the first one that comes to my mind is Alison Felix, an Olympic athlete, in fact the athlete who has more Olympic medals enters Canfield, more than Usain Bolt, but everyone knows him and he does not know him. During the Olympic Games in Paris he was appointed member of the Olympic Committee, he has a story that people have to know, with which she would be one of the potentials to interview and Polita Rostanio, who is the founder of Artemis. The artisan herself has realized how the Italian artisan has been disappearing because artisans do not know how to digitalize their go-to market, which created the first digital platform for artisans to be able to sell their articles through this platform to a global audience. It would be very interesting, it is based between Milan and New York. Who else is the founder of Bestias Collective? Also pioneers in all the movement of going from fast fashion to low fashion and recycling them, recycling or giving circulation to luxury goods. Cagol Jut, who is the founder of Jun, who is the company of products for babies, who is the most clean company in the market, penny based in the UK, who has taken out products that they do at Thrust and Female Incontinence, another one too. To talk to you, Female Founders, I have a list here and each one is more interesting. Yes, yes, yes, because it interests us a lot also to contribute, let's say to put our little grain of sand to contribute to the mission that I have talked about quite a few times, which I think is very important. I do not know Guillaume if you have any other question, but it has been a huge pleasure, a very, very interesting conversation and I think it is also very refreshing your vision, your mission, your point of view, we will really follow you closely. I think it would be interesting in a couple of years to do another one again, because I am sure you have super cool and super powerful cases to tell us. Yes, yes, we are about to sign something that will also be very different from what we have done in the past and very fun. What a cool space. Thank you very much Monce. Thank you very much. All those who have listened to us and even another edition of Direct with Fun Podcast, thank you.