Top 100 Women in Finance List - Just One For the VC Crowd
Nov 5, 2007
Top 100 Women in Finance List - Just One For the VC Crowd
Triangle Venture Capital's founder and general partner Ulrike W. Fricke was named one
of the Top 100 Women of Finance in Europe in this year's round up in Brummell magazine.
She's the only early stage VC who we eyeballed in the list.
(Published semi-regularly by efinancial news Brummell is a bit like Vogue
magazine-for-financier types in that the ads are almost as good as the content.)
We always try to scan the names of investment allstars, or envy lists, and other high-flyer
rankings that financial publications over here put out each year to see how venture capital
is faring. We figure if early stage VC fund managers make a strong showing compared to
investment bankers and private equity firms then it's a sign that the asset class is on
the upswing.
However, for the past five or six years European VC typically only gets a token winner or
two. As we've said before it's one of the least loved asset classes institutional investors
can buy into (although it may have moved up a few rungs by now, replaced by funds that
invest in financial instruments for less than AAA debt).
Enough of the sideline kibbitzing. We think one reason this early stage, German-oriented
fund founder made the list is that last year she was able to sell the firm's vintage 1999
to 2001 portfolio to an undisclosed institutional investor, pointing out at the time that
returns on the porftolio were in the 'upper quartile' compared to its peers in the US and
here.
Since so few VC tech funds actually generated cash returns for the years 1999 and 2001 it
was an achievement.
What is particularly interesting from the alarm:clock euro's point of view is that Fricke's
fund managers seem to be good at helping startups generate revenue streams. Of that
portfolio Triangle sold, the "most successful ones will were making €8-10M annually.
Recent investments for this modestly sized venture firm include iPharro, which has developed
video search tech but is currently pushing its tech as an alternative to DRM in video.
Triangle also invested in xaitment, which sells tools for games developers to create more
lifelike opponents - it calls them bots - for virtual worlds and simulation games.
This startup recently opened a Silicon Valley office and recruited Katja Reitemeyer as CEO.
She moved from Germany to Silicon Valley a few years ago to lead sales in the US for NXN
Software (a Euro VC-backed company), which was acquired Avid Technologies
Both startups are hiring.
Source: http://www.thealarmclock.com/euro/archives/2007/11/top_100_women_in_fin_1.html