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1. It provides access to market insights
Start-ups are an important part of innovative technology ecosystems, and they provide entry points for Aegon and Transamerica to these dynamic and rapidly changing markets.
Transamerica Ventures has a systematic approach to open and establish permanent relationships to successful entrepreneurs and relevant venture capital investors.
Closer relationships and frequent interactions with start-ups help us understand market trends, alert us to new avenues of talent sourcing, and provide us with insights into what other investors are thinking.
In addition, these interactions highlight best practices in digital marketing and sales, fin-tech, analytics and enterprise IT – including security.
2. Primary focus - companies that help us innovate
Georg Schwegler, CEO of Transamerica Ventures, explains: "Our corporate venture fund's main focus is on technologies and start-ups that can provide value to, and fit within, Aegon's innovation roadmap.
"In addition we focus on: Digital frontend in marketing & sales (including channels), specific analytics for dedicated business areas, Enterprise IT solutions including security against cyber-crime and technologies that help to simplify processes and enhance our customer interaction."
3. Based in New York and The Hague
To ensure the team can best follow the markets and trends, Transamerica Ventures is based in both New York City (US) and The Hague (the Netherlands).
The Transamerica Ventures team currently consists of three industry specialists who work closely with colleagues across the company.
"We have to keep an eye on a broad range of topics in multiple countries, and this can only be done with the support of our internal experts who help us to evaluate companies and trends," says Georg.
4. The fund has both a strategic and financial focus
Although a big focus of the fund is to provide access to innovative areas of the markets that are most relevant for the various divisions, the financial part of the deal should make sense too.
Georg explains, "We have passed on many deals simply because they didn't make financial sense. If we invest in companies, we assume that a good team with a great product can achieve both benefits for our business units and financial returns for our fund.
Even if we cannot invest in every company, we always try to introduce the valuable ones to our counterparts in the organization and support the business relationships."
5. Eight investments and two fund investments
- NextCapital: A robo advisor for 401k solutions and wealth-advisory software for more than 400,0000 managed accounts
- CipherCloud: A provider of cloud access security for enterprises who run multi-cloud applications and have to protect the data in them
- 0xdata: An in-memory machine learning and predictive analytics application for big data
- InvestForward: A digital financial advisor focused on impact investing
- Quantemplate: A data warehouse solution and analytics platform for re-insurance
- Digital Currency Group: A conglomerate for blockchain and digital currency companies that also provides platform services and consulting for the ecosystem
- Auxmoney: A platform for alternative consumer lending
- PolicyGenius: A multi-product insurance aggregator/broker and provider to help consumers obtain the coverage they need.
Fund investments
In addition to the companies listed above, Transamerica Ventures also invested small amounts in two funds that give us access to market insights, a network of industry experts, and the funds' portfolio companies for potential 'deal-flow'.
- FinTech Collective; a Fin-Tech focused seed stage fund
- Lerer Hippeau Ventures; a leading seed stage fund for digital marketing and advertising, e-commerce and digital media on the east coast
"Both funds are based in New York and have been extremely valuable for us so far," says Georg. "Not only are they a good source of deal-flow, but we can discuss market trends with their partners, portfolio companies and investors."
