Luxembourg may be a small country landlocked in between France, Belgium and Germany, but it’s stable, high-income economy makes it the fifth wealthiest country in the world based on GDP per capita basis. Since 2002, Luxembourg’s government has proactively implemented policies and programs to support economic diversification and to attract foreign direct investment. The government has focused on key innovative industries that showed promise for supporting economic growth such as logistics, information and communications technology (ICT); health technologies, including biotechnology and biomedical research; clean energy technologies, and more recently, space technology and financial services technologies. The economy has evolved and flourished, posting strong GDP growth of 3.4% in 2017, far outpacing the European average of 1.8%.
Those programs have attracted private equity and venture capital firms to start making strategic investments in the country. Rajaa Mekouar-Schneider, is a multilingual private equity investor with twenty years of experience across Europe and emerging markets. As the head of private equity for a single family office based in Luxembourg, she has worked closely with the Luxembourg government to aid in the globalization of North American, Asian and European markets in relation to the country’s economy. That lead her to be elected Chairwoman of the Luxembourg Private Equity and Venture Capital Association in July of 2018 with the task to expand Luxembourg’s potential to play a growing role as a private equity hub.
That task for Mekouar-Schneider included bringing global organizations such as The Global Ventures Summit | Silicon Valley Tours The World to the country. “The summit is bringing together some of the world’s biggest powerhouses in the private equity space to drive new investment and conversation in efforts of globalization. Luxembourg has established itself as a global hub for PE, and increasingly VC. Out of the 20 largest PE firms, 19 run operations from Luxembourg and global houses such as EQT having consolidated their fund centers in Luxembourg. They chose the Grand Duchy for its stable macro environment, deep skill set and professional international workforce. We have also seen a number of VC’s settling here, some of whom are very specialized fields such as cybersecurity, fin-tech and, as mentioned previously, space investing. Luxembourg offers these entrepreneurs and investors many benefits, such as those mentioned, and, critically, EU access In this sense, hosting GVS is further helping to raise the profile of Luxembourg on the international scene and foster the dialogue with US-based investors, Big Tech and start-ups who are keen to be present in Europe, while offering a platform for the European players to build relationships and knowledge in order to expand into the US. At LPEA, the local PEVC association which I happen to lead as CEO, fostering the VC ecosystem by providing access to investors and start-ups, as part of our motto “Matching talent and money”, finds a great platform within GVS to do just that,” explained Mekouar-Schneider.
But what about Silicon Valley? Which is where GVS is managed by Parkpine Capital. According to Mekouar-Schneider, even though venture capital has become global with the advent of disruptive tech trends over the past 10 years, the investment scene remains largely regional. The European venture capital market has been traditionally under-rated versus its US counterparts. That being said many US venture funds do not source investment opportunities in Europe, vice-versa. “GVS coming to Europe gives other funds and startups to get closer to Silicon Valley which remains the core center of venture capital globally. Conferences like GVS break those barriers and promote intercontinental exchanges on more than one level, which is hugely welcome,” says Mekouar-Schneider.
Tara Tan, investor and designer at IDEO CoLab Ventures, an early-stage fund focused on blockchain and the distributed web, will also be attending GVS in Luxembourg. The Harvard graduate has been working on partnering with blockchain and emerging tech startups for the last four years at IDEO, and has worked closely with some of the leading companies to pioneer their first products into the world. “As investors, we often seek out outlier ideas that go against what we would expect, so expanding our perspectives and mindset is very much part of the work we do. A conference such as GVS brings together entrepreneurial and venture-minded folks from around the globe with extremely different perspectives, which — if we’re lucky — might lead to lots of creative and unexpected insights,” says Tan.
The summit that is ran by Parkpine Capital’s Ahmed Shabana and Billy Zane is partnering with Luxembourg House of Financial Technology (LOHFT) Nasir Zubairi and Luxembourg’s prime minister, Xavier Bettel.