Global Corporate Venturing Rising Stars Awards 2017: Egbert Bierman

Linking corporate strategy and entrepreneurs is important in corporate venturing and it is one Egbert Bierman, investment director at Transamerica Ventures, insurance group Aegon’s corporate venturing unit, is highly regarded for.

Georg Schwegler, managing director at Transamerica Ventures and former head of corporate venturing for Deutsche Telekom for nearly 13 years, said: “Egbert has a great overview on trends in analytics and digitalisation of our industry and promotes companies for partnering. He always finds an open door in our management.

“Since bridging the gap between the corporate logic and the startup community is a critical skill in our business he clearly is highly regarded in that sense.

“Egbert is interested to follow up with peers in our CVC world and started early to promote our group in that segment. We are coinvested with other insurance companies and he is definitely a cornerstone in these partnerships.

“He was a driving force in Aegon to promote the initiative for the fund before I joined [in February 2014] and built the investment strategy and structured the governance and legal entities.

“Egbert has a perfect background in finance and insurance working for ABN Amro and Ranstad. Since he was in Aegon’s strategy department [from 2006] before joining the corporate fund he has a good overview on global market trends, business models in the insurance industry but also a view on the competitive landscape.

“He also managed to link Aegon into the iR3 consortium of insurance companies in Europe around blockchain where Aegon now participates with staff from our technology units as well as our reinsurance group. Our US companies like his ability to promote their solution in our European entities.”

Bierman, a keen sailor, has certainly navigated the corporate venturing world with ease since January 2014 with his two colleagues, Schwegler and Andrew Pitz, an associate.

He said: “I scan the market for ventures in data, artificial intelligence, fintech and insurtech and focus on, first, series A and B investment opportunities for our EU operations and, second, EU ventures that want to make the jump to the US, where our fund can offer a cornerstone customer in Transamerica.”

Transamerica Ventures’ deals in the past three years have included Auxmoney, where Transamerica took an equity stake in October 2015 and agreed to €150m ($158m) of funding to be used for loans by the Germany-based consumer-focused debt platform and cryptocurrency holding company Digital Currency Group (DCG), as well as commitment to VC firms Fintech Collective and Lerer Hippeau.

Bierman said: “What attracted me to CVC was making the connection between two realities. First, the reality of disruption/innovation and the dynamic of entrepreneurs that come up with brilliant ideas on how to further change and improve the world

“Second, the corporate reality: a lower paced dynamic where organisations trying to achieve the best with the capabilities they currently have.

“In a corporate organisation there are innovators and legacy oriented colleagues. Knowing the organisation a bit, I know where the innovators are and working with them has been very rewarding. Biggest challenge is and will remain to convince the legacy oriented colleagues that there is value in working with startups that bring innovation and additional energy in their operations.

“Making the connection by providing the organisation access to more efficient and or additional capabilities and in the mean time helping entrepreneurs grow their business is a great job to have.

“Strategically, 80% of our current portfolio companies are working with the Aegon organisation.

“Financially, as we are rather fresh as a fund we have not had exits yet, although a number of ventures I had an opportunity to source and investment in have had significant uprounds, one of which is now in the 20x range.”

Bierman’s advice for the corporate venturing industry was to match the “speed and investment conditions of the institutional VCs” in order to get access to the best deals.

Having participated in races from the Netherlands to England and back, it is perhaps no surprise he values speed but also the freedom that venturing can bring. Bierman, who graduated from University of Groningen, said: “The moment you are out at sea you are in a completely different world with the ship, crew, the sea and the elements.”