October 11, 2023

Why now is Europe's time according to Joe Schorge, Co-Founder & Managing Partner of Isomer Capital, one of Europe's most active VC fund-of-funds

1 hour 6 minutes

Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.

Today, we travel to London to talk with someone who has seen the evolution of the European tech ecosystem up close.

We discuss the rise of Europe with Isomer Capital’s Co-Founder and Managing Partner Joe Schorge. Isomer is a pan-European fund-of-funds, co-investment, and secondaries platform that is on its way to €1B AUM. They’ve invested in 70 VC funds, including the likes of Seedcamp, Hoxton Ventures, Atlantic Labs, and leading European companies like Sorare, Refurbed, Zenjob, and more.

Joe has a fascinating perspective on European’s tech ecosystem on a number of dimensions. He’s an American who moved to Europe in the late 1990s to work in tech before moving to the allocator and investor side. He worked as an investment consultant at Cambridge Associates, where he advised institutional investors in Europe and MENA on strategy, planning, and implementation that amounted to over $2B of capital across 75 transactions in private markets. He was then a Managing Director at Pomona Capital in Europe, where he focused on secondaries, fund investing, and co-investments, which paved the way for him to found Isomer as one of the early institutional pan-European fund-of-funds based in Europe.

Joe and I had a rich conversation about the past, present, and future of the European tech ecosystem. We discussed:

Why Europe is a great place to invest right now.
Perspectives on how to build a tech ecosystem, given Joe’s deep experience and history in Europe.
How they uncovered two local funds which invested in one of Europe's biggest tech successes, UiPath.
The biggest opportunities in the ecosystem.
Why availability of capital is not the issue for the European ecosystem.
Why local funds will still win in their respective regions at pre-seed and seed.
Why there are different skillsets that both investors and founders need to have to succeed in Europe.
What the current market environment means for European venture.
Why more institutional investors should be allocating to European venture.

Thanks Joe for coming on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast to share your wisdom and experiences about European venture and thanks to the EUVC team, Andreas Munk Holm and David Cruz e Silva, for the intro to Joe, where they together have a fantastic partnership between Isomer and EUVC.

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By Michael Sidgmore