Speaker 1:
From the library of the New York Stock Exchange at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets in New York City, you're Inside the ICE House. Our podcast from Intercontinental Exchange on markets, leadership, and vision and global business. The dream drivers that have made the NYSE an indispensable institution of global growth for over 225 years. Each week we feature stories of those who had plans, create jobs and harness the ending of capitalism right here, right now at the NYSE and at ICE's exchanges and clearing houses around the world. And now, welcome, Inside the ICE House. Here's your host, Josh King of Intercontinental Exchange.
Josh King:
Any listener to this podcast knows the long journey to becoming a public company really begins years before an IPO, a SPAC combination or direct listing. It used to be easier to identify the companies looking to become the next Twitter or Snap because entrepreneurs had sand hill road permanently etched on their way finding devices, really a divining rod for where funding and startup expertise could be found. Historically, options were limited to the environs around say, Silicon Valley, but today there're dozens of tech hubs flourishing in all corners of the planet with fertile resources to be found in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and elsewhere.
Josh King:
The international story of the market is not new and does the largest exchange in the world, the name of the New York Stock Exchange belies its particular geographic footprint at Lower Manhattan. In fact, this year marks the 150th anniversary of the first international listing on the Exchange as part of the more aptly named Intercontinental Exchange, the NYSE operates offices in a number of countries to serve to nearly 500 non-US companies listed on the exchange today. We also partner with dozens of organizations that are working to nurture local innovation, both domestically such as our recent IPO boot camp focused on Detroit and internationally like our support with the Latin tech forum.
Josh King:
Our guests today, Insider CEO Hande Cilingir and Riverwood Capital Co-Founder, Francisco Alvarez-Demalde, both have spent their careers crisscrossing the globe with companies looking to disrupt the status quo and scale from a simple idea to an industry leader. They join our show today to talk about how looking through a wide lens reveals the entrepreneurship really is universal and the opportunities for technology, artificial, intelligence, and investment growth are frankly everywhere. Our conversation with Francisco Alvarez-Demalde and Hande Cilingir on their careers, the global footprint of technology and like Indiana Jones, the never-ending search for the great next unicorn wherever it may be found. That's coming up right after this.
Speaker 1:
Whether it's markets, exchanges or networks, connection makes everything possible. The connection between data and technology, innovation and expertise. And most of all between people and opportunity. For over 20 years, ICE has transformed markets, products and processes to make things work better, faster, smarter from modernizing energy and commodity trading to revolutionizing the bond markets. Whether it's the world's largest stock exchange or the dream of home ownership, we do more than see the big picture. We create it. You may not know our name, but we bet you know our network. ICE, make the connection.
Josh King:
One of our guests today, Hande Cilingir is the co-founder and CEO of Insider, provider of multi-channelled growth marketing platforms that leverages realtime predictive segmentation powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning. She founded Insider with five fellow co-founders following her exit from a language school that she sold to International Mediterranean Academy. Hande is widely recognized for her global tech leadership, including being ranked by Crunchbase as one of the top three female CEOs of a non-US company. She's joined by Francisco Alvarez-Demalde, the co-founder and co-managing partner of Riverwood Capital. Prior to establishing Riverwood, Francisco was an investment executive at Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company, that's NYSE KKR where he focused on leveraged buyouts in the technology industry and other sectors and was also with Eton Park Capital Management and Goldman Sachs. Francisco, Hande, welcome Inside the ICE House and thanks for joining us.
Hande Cilingir:
Thank you very much, Josh, for the intros.
Josh King:
Let's start with Francisco today. Francisco, Riverwood Capital manages a global footprint of investments totalling around $3.5 billion. Take us back to the start, 2008, how did Riverwood Capital founders come together and what was the initial plan?
Francisco Alvarez-Demalde:
Hi, Josh. Great to be here and I love being with the New York Stock Exchange again. You made these great partners to some of our companies over the years, so thank you for doing this and also for highlighting all the amazing things that are happening globally in technology, in particular in emerging markets. In terms of our experience, look, we started the business back in 2008. And at that time, the whole reason why we wanted to build a new firm was we thought that different technology trends were going to have a very significant impact in the economy from the internet to connectivity, to then the smartphones and then all the other trends that we all know such as cloud and artificial intelligence.
Francisco Alvarez-Demalde:
Our view was all of this is going to have such a impact on almost all the sectors in the economy and that's going to create a lot of new companies that after proving a business, after finding a product market feet, after getting a good base of customers maybe having a good position in one country, then they were going to need at some point that help off what we call a scalability. How do you get from the 20 million in revenue, 30 million to 100 to 200 million. And we thought there's going to be a lot of new companies needing that type of expertise, so why don't we create the new firm? Do we come that growth partner on a scalability partner to love type of pieces.
Francisco Alvarez-Demalde:
And usually that includes growing the go-to market, expanding geographically, expanding the product and a lot of things that we call internally the toolkit for scalability. And that's how we came together. 10 years later here we are having supported almost 60 companies globally. And those companies have grown 40% its revenue per year during those 10 years on a weighted average basis. So it's been an incredible ride. And the first thing I would say Josh is one thing that is pretty incredible today is the market opportunity, the impact that different technology trends are having in our economies in our countries is much bigger than where we all thought back in 2008. Things are just happening bigger and faster than what we all thought back then.
Josh King:
Hande, how has the inflow of capital combined with regional emerging markets that feature a growing middle class really helped transform places like Turkey and Singapore into tech hubs that can compete globally? You're speaking to us today from Istanbul.
Hande Cilingir:
I would say that digital transformation, it has been accelerated or around the road. And the situation is same in middle east or in Asia. And also in the recent markets that we have expanded like Brazil or Australia. And of course a capital inflow to those countries has helped to accelerate this digital transformation. But I think in many ways in those markets, I would say that those are some technologies or the companies like us. I believe leading leaders of the, or let's say, builders in the market and in some categories or for some products or for some technologies, we are the category makers. And when you look at the intention, or let's say, the reason that we started Inside in the first place, I would say that one of the most important and strongest reasons was showing the whole world that breakthrough product companies can also candles are created outside of Silicone Valley. And I believe all of this capital inflows and all of these emerging markets interests of the venture capitalists or private security companies is helping the companies from east part of the world to become like Techstars or other worlds.
Josh King:
Yeah, indeed. I mean, Francisco, you serve on a number of boards of companies that Riverwood has invested in including Globant, which is NYSE ticker symbol, G-L-O-B, whose founder, Martin McGuire, was our guest way back on episode 59. Martin talked about the arbitrage of operating a global tech company in an emerging market compared to Silicon Valley, maybe less expensive to find engineers, real estate, et cetera, is the gap between the emerging and mature markets growing or is it narrowing?
Francisco Alvarez-Demalde:
Yeah, look, it's fascinating what's happening. And I would say that first the geographic barriers are really coming down in technology over the years and that's driven by not only globalization, but also access to knowledge. So if you go back 20 years ago, when I was first getting into the let's call it Silicon Valley type meetings and understanding of what Silicon Valley represented back then, there was a little bit of a monopoly of information. You are there, you connected with people, but then over the years today mainly driven by the digitalization of our lives, we all have access to information no matter where we are. And this combination of globalization as well as digitalization, it's really lowering barriers and access to knowledge and to talent and those centers of talent are becoming so global that it's pretty incredible to see.
Francisco Alvarez-Demalde:
So the consequence of that is you're starting to see amazing companies like Insider, for example, that Hande leads where you have teams of incredible talent in Turkey or in Singapore or in multiple geographies and those teams are actually innovating. They're probably showing and having the quality that is probably even the same or better than engineers in Silicon Valley, and that's happening all over the world. So it's really fascinating to see how talent is coming from everywhere. And that is having an incredible impact in how companies are built. Companies are built now with a more global approach, almost thinking about a network that like countries and all that is having an incredible impact in how both us as investors are thinking about the opportunities, but most importantly in how companies are being run and how talent has access to opportunity from different places.
Josh King:
Globant and Insider where some of the companies that you wrote about in a recent medium article on the software revolution, how has the software revolution really shaped the past decade and really shrunk the globe as you say?
Francisco Alvarez-Demalde:
Yeah, look, I mean, I wrote that piece not that I was so normative about it because I think a lot of people have been talking about these. But I just share some of our own experience, which is incredible. Where, again, going back to my earlier point, if you look at I think the examples I shared in that note were about Insider and Globant and VTechs. And the three companies have been built outside of Silicon Valley, started in Brazil, in Argentina, in Turkey. And the three of them are actually leading their own respective sectors on a global basis, competing with any of the companies you can imagine that probably started in Silicon Valley and today are global champions in technology.
Francisco Alvarez-Demalde:
One point that I would add which wasn't in that article but that we also see is that at the end, when you think about scaling a company, when you think about building a long-term business, businesses like special companies like Insider, for example, is not just about having the capital. It's not just about hiring the right people, but a lot of it is about having a purpose, having a mission and then having a team that is really committed, that feels that they can change what they are doing. That their job is much more than a job. It's almost like a mission to try to achieve certain objectives. And a lot of times what's fascinating about these groups and what's fascinating sometimes about talent in emerging markets is that you see a lot of passion and passion is a very important tool.
Josh King:
So what do you look for in an entrepreneur or a founder when you're considering a potential investment? Is it a decision solely based on your assessment of the enterprises business model and growth potential or are there other intangibles?
Francisco Alvarez-Demalde:
Yeah. At the stage in which we invest, which is already improving companies that are in this growth stage, we're less about finding the new innovation on the new disruption. And we're more about finding, of course, an incredible market opportunity, finding companies that are attacking that opportunity, solving that problem with unique, strong, real technology that can solve the problem and can also scale over time. And then also finding that team, that culture, that can really execute on that vision and that market opportunity. So I think we look at all those components and we try to make our best assessment. And then after investing try to support the journey of those companies.
Josh King:
One of the investments Riverwood Capital has made was as we know, Hande's company Insider where you led it's $32 million series C round. Do you remember when you first heard of the company? And how did you come interested in becoming an investor and participating in the round like you did?
Francisco Alvarez-Demalde:
Yeah. We met Hande and Insider BSM introduction. And then as soon as we met them, met the team, we were impressed because we thought that they were solving a very important problem. When you think about big brands, retailers and other companies that are engaging with hundreds of thousands of millions of consumers, a big issue that you have is how do you try to serve those consumers with a customized digital experience? You want to be meaningful to those customers. You want to try to provide the best service you can, and you need the type of software and platform that Insider serves or offers. And so the market opportunity was there and it's increasing market opportunity. And then second, we found what I said earlier. We find an incredible team with a great product, we did a pretty deep product diligence to understand the feature comparison, the quality of the product.
Francisco Alvarez-Demalde:
And then most importantly after all that, then we found a team that was very committed incredible leadership in Hande, Serhat and the founders of the company. But then broader than that, like a purpose and incredible culture of intensity of execution of trying to do something bigger than each individual person. And that combination was extremely attractive to us. The company was also in a moment of expansion in terms of geography, which is also something that we really like. It's something that we feel we can help on that journey. So the combination of all these factors made us extremely excited and we are very grateful that Hande and her team were open to accepting us into the family.
Josh King:
Hande, Insider came after your first company was acquired by International Mediterranean Academy. But the idea was spawned really, as you were trying to convert website visitors to enroll in your immersive in-person language course, what was the origin story for Insider and how did the founders come together?
Hande Cilingir:
Great question because the origins of the story means a lot for the roots of an organization and also for the purpose of the people joining this organization. For us to main reason we decided to establish Insiders or the origins of the story is all about actually realizing that all the world is going digital. After the language school and the solstice we sold our first venture, we decided to do something in digital. So that was the first reason we decided to establish Insider. The second reason was, yes, e-commerce is growing sharply in the world or all around the world, but we already observed a lot of e-commerce companies or already a huge competition in different countries. So that's why instead of being or instead of starting a e-commerce company or online business, we decided to be a painkiller to the pains of e-commerce companies which is mostly about the commercial rates.
Hande Cilingir:
So they actually try to bring users to the website by paying millions. But the biggest challenge is about conversion optimization. They cannot convert those users into the buyers or they cannot convert these users to retained users. So that's why we have decided to be the painkillers for the biggest pains and establish Insider. Insider is actually a growth management platform, all in one platform for the enterprise marketing teams for the online businesses. And what we are doing is we unlock more funnel across different touch points from acquisition, activation, returns than revenue. And of course, we do it by delivering personalized experiences. It's backed by AI and machine learning and predictive engine at it's heart. So that's the story of Insider. That's the let's say, why we have started in the very first place. And I can say it's about the origins of the story.
Hande Cilingir:
If you come to the romantic reason that we established Insider, because entrepreneurs are romantic people, we have some facts, but at the same time we have our very romantic reasons to start a company. And the romantic reason, as I mentioned in my introduction, we just wanted to show over that the breakthrough product companies, digital companies, leading ones around the world can be also established outside of Silicon Valley. And that was a romantic reason actually we start Insider. As co-founders, I think we are lucky because we are six co-founders. Part time, it sounds a little bit scary I know because it's like a marriage and you feel like you are getting married with six people. It's tough, it's really tough to manage, but I believe that if you are sharing the same values in life and if you have only conflict about ideas rather than money conflicts, poverty conflict, ego conflict, that it works, and it really works well.
Hande Cilingir:
And as six co-founders, we are lucky to find each other but at the same time, we are lucky because in the language school I was a partner with one of our existing co-founders at Insider. So we are doing business together for last 10 years or 11 or even maybe 12 years. And the other co-founder who is our current the partner success team, Mehmet, is our friend from London School of Economics from university. And our CTO is again, a child friend who used to work in Oracle for a very long time, knows the pain of the big marketing clouds well and very closely. And this is why four of the co-founders knows each other from the past, the rest two joined the team later. And I would say three of them are from technical backgrounds, and three of them are from business backgrounds. And this is how we started inside Insiders. I hope it was an answer to your question.
Josh King:
Yes, it certainly does. Before we go to the break, Francisco, Insider was recognized by the Gartner Magic Quadrant for multi-channel marketing hubs in 2020. And it was recently announced that Alibaba owned Lazada chose Insider to be its global marketing partner. From a investor perspective, what do you take away as the growth potential for the company?
Francisco Alvarez-Demalde:
Yeah. Look, it's tough to be objective because we are big believers in Insider and the entire team, but they were able to describe it's happening. I think it's happening in terms of companies like Insider and there's other special companies like Insider in emerging markets. Sometimes you not only need the product, they go to market the team, the culture, but you also need validation. You need the word to really see that you can compete. And I think all these recognition it's very well deserved. And I think that recognition is actually going to help even add that incremental validation. So the company will be able, in our opinion, to continue growing globally to be very successful across all the different geographies expanding. So I think literally the sky's the limit for Insider and we're very, very excited.
Josh King:
Very excited indeed. We're going to take a quick break. And after the break, the co-founder and CEO of Insider Hande Cilingir and the co-founder and co-managing partner of Riverwood Capital, Francisco Alvarez-Demalde, and I are going to discuss how entrepreneurship and diverse talent have both gone global. That's coming up right after this.
Speaker 1:
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Josh King:
Welcome back before the break, the co-founder and CEO of Insider, Hande Cilingir, and the co-founder and co-managing partner of Riverwood Capital Francisco Alvarez-Demalde. And I were discussing how their respective careers progressed to all leading up to the investment in Insider by Riverwood Capital. So just to reset the conversation, Insider began operating in markets where your offerings were the first of its kind to be available. But today you compete with well-known technology giants across dozens of countries, who are you competing against and how do you differentiate yourself from competitors in terms of both technology and the offering?
Hande Cilingir:
So marketing software sector is pretty much product one I can see, or we can observe many different competitors and in the market we observed two types of different competitors. One type, big marketing clots and the other one is **pain point solutions. So I would say in salaries in between. I think we are one of the new generation marketing clouds by we are trying to overcome the difficulties of the big marketing class, because they are not all technologies. They are costly. They're clunky. First time to value is pretty much long. And the integration is taking ages. So many online businesses would like to utilize the tools that they are using in a relatively shorter time. And they would like to see the first value because e-commerce is a multi metric game and time really matters. So that's why long integration processes or non-cooperation processes is pretty much difficult for e-commerce companies to utilize.
Hande Cilingir:
So that's why big marketing clouds has this advantages in terms of integration operation and being a part costly vendors. Point solutions can answer the needs of the clients or needs for e-commerce companies in some significant areas, which is not very helpful because once you integrate Insider, you don't have to integrate in other solution. And sometimes it's a mess to get integrated with many different solutions. If you are going to need a one portfolio solution with an email product, one solution for a recommendation engine, one solution for a personalization, one another reminder for another function.
Hande Cilingir:
So it might create a mess. So point solutions can't be a one-stop platform. So I think Insiders is feeling this huge gap in the sector. It say, "Easy to operate and easy to integrate true." And that's why in the current RFPs that we entered with the other big vendors or other marketing software tools or marketing clouds, we can see that in the POCs Insider managed to show the ROI [inaudible 00:26:44] but to the clients in a much more stronger in a shorter time. And that's why digital marketers, they like to use a tool like us that they can meet. It can meet with all needs in a easy and less time consuming way. I think that's our biggest differentiator.
Josh King:
Coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic. Have you started to explore the lessons of how the globe reacted to the past year and its permanent impact on a company like Insider, either on how you're going to run your company or how the needs of the clients may have changed?
Hande Cilingir:
Let me look at the effects of the COVID-19 in two different ways. First is about the effects on the e-commerce companies or online businesses. And let's say the second is about value cycles. So e-commerce [inaudible 00:27:36] online businesses has suffered from the decreasing sales in the first month of COVID-19. This is what we observed from the companies we work together. And today we are working with 900 enterprise clients from 25 different countries. And some of those companies are fortune 500 companies. Some of them are the regional brands. Some of them are like, [Val Novum 00:28:04] global brands. And we have a chance to observe many different regions, many different verticals. It's many different user behaviors as a reaction to the COVID-19.
Hande Cilingir:
So in the first month, I can say that in most of the verticals, including online retailers or including travel sector and including, for example, automotive companies, the sales or the injections has decreased sharply. But after the first, let's say, three or six months of the COVID those postpone purchases has started to increase the purchases or let's say increase the sales for those companies especially in online retailer, especially in a [inaudible 00:28:53] electronics companies, electronics online businesses. There are some certain verticals like travel, like of course accommodation, why we can't see that, we can't observe that the numbers are now back to the normal.
Hande Cilingir:
Unfortunately, those radicals have been affected permanently. But there are some verticals like food businesses or online retailers. Now we can see that we can observe that the numbers are in the way that it should have been. Maybe it's smaller than expected because of the huge and rapid increase under the COVID-19. So that's the change about our clients or about I think all online businesses. If you ask me the possible effect or the existing effects on the vendors like us, of course, it's affected our business in a positive way because while the whole digital transformation has been accelerated all around the road, the usage of the tools like us has been also accelerated. Because people would like to be more observant about their conversion rates about their spendings after especially this budget deficits or budget restrictions. So the tools like us has started to become much more important for the online businesses, so we have seen a pretty much positive effect on us.
Josh King:
Francisco, studies have shown that the company profits and share performance around 50% higher when women are represented at the top. This suggests that investing in a female founded businesses like [Calmdays 00:30:37] is they're not just about equality, but good investing. Does this factor into your investment decision metrics that you make?
Francisco Alvarez-Demalde:
Yeah. Look, it's pretty clear to all of us that diverse teams and companies that embrace diversity are driving and can do a better job than companies that do not see that way. And I think that's of course, part of how we try to assess the company's way to invest and how we support them.
Josh King:
Are there other areas that the market is ignoring by narrowly defining where tech breakthroughs traditionally come from? I mean, you're living proof of the opportunity that comes when you look beyond Silicon Valley.
Francisco Alvarez-Demalde:
Yeah. Look, I think at the end the market is a broad concept. So the market always gets to the opportunity somehow. So clearly there was a catch-up across in technology investing outside of Silicon Valley, but that catch-up is happening. I mean, that gap is closing. I think more and more investment firms are becoming more global. They are understanding that the opportunities out there that there might be a team that you don't know about in a area very far away from psychic growth that is probably doing something better than the team is doing it close to your place. And I see that gap really, really closing. I'm very optimistic about just when I see the quality of teams outside of the US. I'm very optimistic with international opportunity for technology, of course, in addition to China which is another whole chapter.
Josh King:
I'm thinking globally Hande, we recently had Mark Hawkins on the podcast who talked about Salesforce, which is NYC ticker symbol CRM. They're one plus one plus one policy that Insider also ascribes to. We're recording this podcast in April a month that includes celebrations both of Earth Day and also financial literacy. Why do you embrace one plus one plus one? And how is Insider fulfilling those commitments?
Hande Cilingir:
It can be applied to anything, right? Because it's all about the mentality of donating something or making time for the people around you, because we believe that creating impact is not only about the business itself, it's also about creating an impact for the people around you. It can be about your family. It can be about your friends, or it can be a credit impact for your country. So we believe that is a company which started its business from the emerging markets. We are responsible to make something for the people or the countries that we exist and the societies. So that's why we have decided to create a model where we would like to dedicate 1% of the company's revenue and 1% of the Insiders people time. And 1% of the company's profit to the students who would like to teach, who would like to learn coding especially east part of the world, even including Europe needs to raise a lot of tech companies, because tech companies has the greatest impact on the economies for the emerging markets.
Hande Cilingir:
That's why teaching codes or teaching coding to the students in high school is going to have a huge contribution on that because those students are going to become maybe engineers and engineers are going to start their own tech companies. And those tech companies are going to create a huge impact for those countries economies. So that's a chain. This is why we have started this program, one plus one plus one. And we are started in three countries sides with Indonesia, Turkey, and then continued with Singapore. Now we have this program in nine or even 10 different countries, and it really works well. So far, we have taught coding to more than 7,000 high school students.
Josh King:
Amazing. I mean, Francisco, a couple days ago, the Brazilian cloud technology provider mandate which Riverwood Capital was a main investor in, was acquired by clarinet. What does the deal say about Brazil's cloud potential and the other investments that you have in the space?
Francisco Alvarez-Demalde:
Yeah. Look, but I see Latin America is in a very interesting place in terms of the excitement for technology. So in the last two years, we have seen a significant increase in activity in interest not only by the investment community, but also by a lot of different technology companies that are really being able to roll their resources in the region in a way that was probably unthinkable 10 years ago. So even when you look at large tech companies such as Uber or Netflix and Facebook, They are very important businesses in Latin America. And that you can also see that opportunity having an impact in a lot of different startups and midsize companies in technology in the region that are just doing really well, just growing, creating a lot of new jobs and opportunity. And then being a very interesting targets for maybe global companies that really want ours to have an opportunity in Latin America.
Francisco Alvarez-Demalde:
So in the case of Mandic, the partner that acquired a company was spent on it which is able to be on company with the interest of really growing in Brazil. We also recently announced the sale of [RV Station 00:36:31], which is another great software company in Brazil to talk to us which is a publicly listed company in Brazil. So what's happening really in Latin America is you are seeing this combination of a lot of fundraising, a new capital to establish companies that are continued to grow. We are seeing an increasing interest from global strategic companies at one half Latin America in the revenue in the platform. And then you're also seeing some local Brazilian companies or even mergers between players within Brazil that really want to get bigger, want get to scale.
Francisco Alvarez-Demalde:
So the whole market is finding on all cylinders, despite of course, the tough times that the region is experiencing due to COVID. So it's pretty interesting to see, by the way, side note, Insider is also doing really well in Latin America, expanding, being a great leader in the region and bringing these next generation marketing technology platform into Latin America. Which as Hande was saying, as all these companies are getting more and more users selling more online, they need a next generation platform like Insider for them to be able to do their marketing.
Josh King:
Insider, making its way really around the world. One last question for both of you before we wrap up. Hande, you had one exit in your career before Insider, do you see yourself as a serial entrepreneur or a longer-term founder this time around?
Hande Cilingir:
Great question. It's the first time that I received that question. Well, it's all about, I think being a serial entrepreneur or being a lifelong founder let's say. I think it's all about that you feel like your story has came to the end that you have dreamed for yourself and for the people around you. So until this point I cannot decide whether I'm going to be a serial entrepreneur or I am going to start the next story, or I'm going to be a long-term let's say founders, it's an Insider. If you ask me, "Okay, what are you looking for? What do you aim at Insider?" I think it should be important and big success story which is going to show again the role that a company from east part of the world and also be one of the or maybe the top vendor in marketing software.
Hande Cilingir:
And whilst we reach these targets, whilst we prove that we can also do it from this part of the world. Whilst we are going to inspire many other youngsters to start their own business from that part of the world that I think if they are going to meet that purpose, plan continue about maybe doing something else. But until that point I can't decide on this. So you already enjoy from a journey itself a lot. I believe that it's not something that I should try to decide now, we will see after doing everything for Insider, after putting 100% of our effort on that, the time will solve the answer of your question.
Josh King:
And I'll put a similar question to you, Francisco, does Riverwood have a systematic exit strategy for its investments or is every investment like Insider treated differently? And has the rise of SPACs altered any of your plans?
Francisco Alvarez-Demalde:
Yeah. Well, thanks. I mean, I think there's two very different questions there. One is look on us, we don't really have a defined exit strategy the moment we invest. Really our word driver for an investment is, as I mentioned earlier, we're trying to partner with companies that feel can create a very interesting opportunity for us and for our investors. But also companies in which we want to be part of where the journeys, the journey of growth of a scale of trying to really solve the problem. And that's the main driver on how we invest. And then we're not really thinking about when we make the investment. Okay? This is how we're going to exit our investment. We feel that if we invest in good companies companies that can be a positive impact all across and can create long lasting businesses, we're going to have several options to at some point monetize. I would investment either in one transaction on overtime, or sometimes we an IPO, which then gives you a lot of flexibility on that front.
Francisco Alvarez-Demalde:
So that's your first question. The second about the SPACs. Yeah. Look, the SPACs are impacting the entire market. It became almost like having a watch in the investment circles. But I think that, look, it's having an impact. It's a reflection of the interest from the poly markets into technology, into high growth, into companies that maybe can become public into participating in those opportunities earlier or at the right time when trying to accelerate that process to go public. And I think as everything that happens in, or most... I shouldn't say everything. Most things have happened in markets and in financially driven decisions, it goes in waves.
Francisco Alvarez-Demalde:
I think that at the end of the day, it's just a framework for the company to be public. And I think some companies can be great. Public companies can be a great story for the markets, can be great for investors. Some other companies may be they're probably not so suited to be good public companies. And maybe some of them that went through a SPAC would probably have a tough time. So I hope that when people are looking at these opportunities, they really do their diligence and then they understand the fundamentals of the visas. And hopefully they have instead of a three-months view or a my-one-month view on what's going to happen with the stock price, more likely, we okay, can these visas grow, sustain itself, be an independent solid company over the next five years? And I think the ones that have those characteristics, even if they went badly with a SPAC or with an IPO, they're probably going to be successful.
Josh King:
Well, hopefully some of those characteristics or all of them will be embodied in Insider as it continues its trajectory of incredible growth and international spread. So with that we should probably wrap up our conversation, but it has been a great tour around the world of entrepreneurship technology and startups and investments. Thanks so much Francisco, Hande for joining us Inside the ICE House.
Francisco Alvarez-Demalde:
Thank you for having us.
Hande Cilingir:
Thank you very much Josh for the great questions.
Josh King:
And that is our conversation for this week. Our guests were Francisco Alvarez-Demalde, co-founder and co managing partner of Riverwood Capital and Hande Cilingir, co-founder and CEO of Insider. If you like what you heard, please rate us on iTunes so other folks know where to find us. And if you've got a comment or a question you'd like one of our experts to tackle on a future show, email us at [email protected] or tweet at us @ICEHousePodcast. Our show is produced by Pete Ash with production assistance from Brian Hopkins and Ian Wolf. I'm Josh King, your host signing off from the library of the New York Stock Exchange. Thanks for listening. Talk to you next.
Speaker 1:
The information contained in this podcast was obtained in part from publicly available sources and not independently verified, neither ICE nor his affiliates make any representations or warranties, express or implied as to the accuracy or completeness of the information and do not sponsor approve or endorse any of the content hearing. All of which is presented solely for informational and educational purposes. Nothing here in constitutes an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any security or a recommendation of any security or trading practice. Some portions of the proceeding conversation may have been edited for the purpose of LinkedIn clarity.
