Andrew Pitz. He’s an investment manager at Transamerica Ventures, the global venture capital fund of Transamerica that specializes in investing in insurtech, fintech and enterprise software companies. There, he has led the firm's investments in PolicyGenius, Digital Currency Group, Everplans, SmartAsset and Hixme.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – Venture Deals
What CEO do you follow? – Jonah Goodhart and Vinny Lingham
Favorite online tool? — Fortunes Term Sheet, Mattermark Daily, Crunchbase Daily
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 5.5
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Andrew wished he had understood domain names and technology

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:42 – Nathan introduces Andrew to the show
02:16 – Transamerica and AEGON are global investment and insurance firms
02:56 – $140K is the fund size they’re currently working with
- 03:04 – The fund was already set-up from the beginning
03:25 – Their first fund was in 2014, in the European market
03:47 – They had 17 unique companies with 23 investments
04:25 – They don’t share company information with their parent company
- 04:39 – They don’t want the corporate parent to be involved in the business
05:25 – They haven’t had any exits yet
05:39 – Andrews shares fund-to-fund deals with FinTech Collective
- 06:38 – They put in a $2M check and the total funds raised were $75K to $100K
06:55 – They put in $1M to another fund to fund the deal they had
07:00 – Their first fund was around $10M
07:28 – FinTech Collective is based in New York
07:38 – Some of the fintech companies they’ve invested in are Art Invest, MoneyLion, 401k and Elephant Tech
08:24 – Andrew gets his salary and bonuses from the deals
08:50 – Andrew shares how their boss missed deals that are worth billions now
09:30 – There are instances where they need to let some deals pass
10:00 – In a week, they’re receiving hundreds of newsletters from different companies (around 5000 in a year)
10:13 – Andrew studies 500 deals and meets with around 250
11:10 – Initial check size was $1-5M as a follow on investor
11:34 – Andrew chooses PolicyGenius and Hixme
- 12:40 – Andrew thinks PolicyGenius will have a good exit
13:07 – H2O as an open source
- 13:33 – Red Hat pioneered the open source
14:36 – The goal is to invest in direct technology and create partnerships
14:54 – Andrew shares the kind of partnerships they’re looking for
15:14 – Andrew wanted to do work in Asia because of the many opportunities
17:05 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

There are thousands of companies created daily—you have to research and choose which one to invest into wisely.
Forming partnerships is MORE important than monetary gain.
Technology can take you anywhere.

Resources Mentioned:

827: VC: $140m FinTech, InsurTech Fund on How They Invest

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders