Alexander Langguth is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Übermorgen Ventures, an early stage Zurich-based venture firm with early investments in climate innovators like Sunvigo, carbo culture and delicious data.
Alex has always shown a high level of transparency and collaboration with other Climate Tech investors. In this episode, I take you behind closed doors and give you maximum insights.
- We discuss Ubermorgen's evergreen fund model and why it actually helps to raise 1st-time funds.
- We hear Alex share how difficult it was to raise a first fund and how they run investment decisions
- And Alex and I rip on contrarian views, on what most people get wrong about being a fund manager and advice for job seekers and entrepreneurs
Listen and Learn
- The reasons why Ubermorgen picked an evergreen fund model
- The difficulty to sell this new model to LPs initially
- Alex’s expected ratio of institutional funds, evergreen funds, solo GPs in Europe in 10 years
- Alex most painful moment raising their 1st fund
- Whether LPs cared more about impact of financial returns
- Why having contrarian views and avoiding confirmation bias is so important in VC
- The area where Alex has completely changed his views over the last 2 years
- What most people have wrong about being a fund manager
- How Übermorgen handles investment decisions internally and votes on deals (with 1 to 10 scoring)
- The best advice to share with entrepreneurs on HOW to engage with VCs to maximize success of their fundraising
- How to land your first job in Climate Tech
Show Links
Carveouts
- Climate Fiction book recommendation: The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. A fantastic Climate Fiction which gives a lot of clues as to what geoengineering solutions might be most helpful and they will play out. It’s like reading into the future of Climate.