Global Corporate Venturing Rising Stars Awards 2018: Ilonka Jankovich

Ilonka Jankovich is no newbie in the world of corporate venture, and neither is she new to GCV’s Rising Stars list.

Last year, her colleague and managing partner at Randstad Innovation Fund (RIF) Paul Jacquin had already put her name forward – a nomination that he wished to reiterate this year.

He said: “I think Ilonka’s role as partner and board member in several companies has only increased and built on past experience; she has done incredibly well in terms of her learning path and her mastering of the investment dynamics.

“Being a strategic investor is very different to being an entrepreneur, and while I have a long tenure and experience on the investment side, Ilonka is also bringing perspective from the other side.”

Jankovich is indeed used to having her fingers in many pies. Having started off as a lawyer at Clifford Chance for six years, spread between Amsterdam, London and Budapest, she launched her own M&A specialist law firm in 1993 alongside four partners in Amsterdam.

After 10 years as a lawyer, she started Legal FlexForce, a recruitment company that was set to become one of Europe’s largest legal recruiters, and which marked Jankovich’s first steps in the HR world. The group was incidentally acquired in 2001 by Monster/TMP Worldwide – acquired itself by Randstad for $429m in 2016.

Further companies that Jankovich launched included ProfiPower – the leading recruitment firm in Hungary sold to Randstad in 2010 – as well as management services company BrainPower, launched in 2012.

As country manager of Randstad she was responsible for the integrations of the businesses based in Hungary, a country she had meanwhile decided to move back to with her family in order to “discover her roots,” Jankovich had told GCV last year.

At RIF, Ilonka is currently a supervisory board member within six portfolio companies including Vonq, Crunchr, Gr8people and Brazen.

A new investment completed by Randstad in 2017 was that of online recruitment marketplace CornerJob, which successively gathered $19m and $3m in funding through two series C rounds.

The HR tech-specialist fund also took part in an $8m follow-on A round for Pymetrics alongside Khosla Ventures, Jazz Venture Partners and BBG Ventures.

“It is always good to see a step up in valuation for our portfolio companies and new investors joining in,” said managing partner Jacquin. “If I was to find a headline for RIF’s progression in 2017, it would probably be ‘The coming of age’, as we have definitely witnessed an evolution in terms of maturity, expertise and confidence, and have had clear signs through our portfolio companies that what we are doing is right and is adding value.

“We have continued to make great strides on the investment side and the overall development of the fund, as well with the group’s management and overall thought leadership in the human resources space.”

But as the fund grows in size, so does the challenge of finding new investment opportunities in its field.

Jankovich said: “As RIF develops, we realise that we have already covered quite some areas in the HR space. But it is amazing to see how technology is evolving, and with new areas of research such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, facial recognition and crypto currencies, we are sure to find good opportunities for future investments.”

Randstad, therefore, is likely to start widening its investment scope in future, looking at sectors that are directly or indirectly linked to HR tech, such as fintech, insurtech or adtech.

At the time of writing, a few more investments were to be announced by year-end, according to the partner.

Reflecting on RIF’s evolution since in 2014, she said: “What we are learning very fast is what you need to put in place in order to measure the success of corporate development. That’s something we could not find any literature on, anywhere.

“So we started to develop our own framework on matters such as when can a corporation be called successful, and how can it be scaled? An important task to take up is to make sure that not only your portfolio companies are successful, but also that the cooperation with big corporates is successful.

“As a HR-specialist investor, our know-how in that area is particularly recognised.”

Aside from her activity at Randstad, Jankovich also has a hand in private equity through her non-executive board member role at Delft-based cloud software business Exact, acquired by Apax Partners in 2015. “Switching from one world to the other is fantastic,” she said. “It is a very different level, but with very similar topics, which makes it very instructive; I can bring a lot, and learn a lot too.”

In her free time, Jankovich also makes her own investments alongside industry peers, a venture that she describes as her “fun on the side”.

In spite of all this, the partner still manages to spend time with her three grown-up boys and her husband, and indulge into fun activities such as horseback riding and yoga.