#53 Investing in Baltics, Fintech trends, from entrepreneur to VC and insights into building an investment team with Adam Niewinski 🇵🇱 (OTB Ventures)

Adam Niewinski is the Co-founder and General partner at OTB Ventures - a leading venture capital firm operating in CEE out of Warsaw. Adam is a seasoned executive, entrepreneur and with OTB has invested in several Baltic companies already, including Kevin, Ondato and Fractory.

In this episode we talk about the evolution of the Polish VC/startup ecosystem, investing in the Baltics and sharing lessons for investing from business executive experience. We also talk about global VC trends, OTB strategy and making a good first impression to a VC. Finally we discuss building a strong VC team.

The topics covered in this episode with Timestamps

[02:55] - ON POLISH VC/STARTUP ECOSYSTEM

• Historical gaming industry
• Startup ecosystem accelerating last 5 years
• Mid-size country trap 
• EU funds impact
• Unicorn inspirational effect

[07:20] - ON INVESTING IN THE BALTICS

• Substantial part of the portfolio in Baltics and huge potential
• Cooperation with local funds

[09:40] - ON LESSONS FOR INVESTING FROM OWN BUSINESS EXPERIENCE

• Confident vs. arrogant founders
• Have strong opinions, but be ready to change them fast
• The strength of the right people
• Investor can’t run the company for the founder
• Investing as art+science
• F2F vs. zoom investing

[18:50] - ON GLOBAL VC TRENDS

• Correction on the stock markets healthy
• Irrelevance of current market situation for long term investments
• Historical context for venture investments
• Innovation transfer from corporations to startups

[24:50] - ON FINTECH TRENDS

• Bringing own financial sector experience to the table
• Hands-on track record
• CEE countries strengths for building fintech companies
• Global fintech trends

[32:50] - ON BUILDING A VC TEAM

• Founding story of OTB Ventures
• Complementing skills of partners
• Diversity with a common goal
• Hiring drivers not passengers
• Managing reputation

To reach out to Adam use: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-niewinski-07b7931/

Find out more on https://www.pursuitofscrappiness.co/ 

Support for this episode comes from Nexpay > https://paynexpay.com/

Support for this episode comes from Venetor > https://www.venetor.co/ 

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