Just weeks after joining the Sophia Business Angels, Wouter van Beek announced to us that he had joined Destinus as Group CFO from his position as Vice President Transformation & innovation at Air France/KLM. Already Wouter's last position should have given us a clue to his move, while mainly at Air France/KLM Wouter relentlessly pursued a program of continuous change, innovation, growth, and barrierless thinking, including smartly leveraging Artificial Intelligence to meet the group’s priorities, a topic he spoke on at the World AI Cannes Festival, sponsored by our SBA Partners, Institute EuropIA. The slogan of Wouter’s new company, Destinus is: “Challenge the limits of time, space, and human potential.” As their website says, “Destinus, is an expanding European company specializing in autonomous flight systems for diverse applications, both civilian and defense. Its designs cover all speed ranges, from subsonic to future hypersonic and its expertise spans system design, airframes, turbojet engines, flight software, and AI, emphasizing a holistic approach to aerospace innovation.” Following Wouter’s 16 years of bringing all types of technological, business mode, and energy innovation to Aviation companies from such diverse geographies as Singapore, Dubai, and Paris, not to mention chalking up 4 Billion USD in structural savings for the Air France/KLM Group, combined with his prowess as a finance crack honed at such companies as KPMG, it is clear that Destinus has found their man. We at Sophia Business Angels have also found “our” man, while mainly Wouter has been an Angel Investor and Entrepreneur, for years and has with his family businesses made many investments. Right after joining the SBA we were fortunate to have Wouter invest in one of our newest portfolio companies, TWISE. With all of these feathers in his cap, we were very touched to learn in our interview that Wouter greatly values and is very proud of the social entrepreneurship that his parents have practiced throughout their lives. His mother, Astrid Verhaag, started her own business and now after retirement is very active in the Netherlands with social initiatives amongst others a newly founded concept of a restaurant/conference center preparing status holder refugees for society and landing a future job, which is thriving and which has been visited by King Wilhelm-Alexander. His father, Piet van Beek is a theologist and has worked all of his life doing social work in the army, youth prisons and counseling those in need. Wouter van Beek is a rare bird indeed. We thank our Board Member, Jean-Claude Goldenstein for introducing us to him and know he will continue to fly high and bring transformational change to our world. | | In addition, we are thrilled to communicate to our SBA Connect Community that SBA Member Francesco Bongiovanni has just published his third book, “The Return of Geopolitics and Imperial Conflict: Understanding the New World Disorder” published by Palgrave Macmillan and available on Amazon. This is a must read for all investors as geopolitics is inherent in all of our businesses! We are also delighted to announce that SBA Member Alex Wiedmer has successfully launched Qatar’s first ever VC Fund, Rascal Ventures. Our SBA President Emeritus, Marcel Dridje is also working in Qatar and has recently been named as an ED Advisor Incubation , Acceleration & Investment for the Qatar Development Bank. Marcel followed his wife, Soumaya BenBaya Dridje to Qatar, when Soumaya joined Rascal Ventures as Junior Partner - Talk about keeping it in the Family! Our SBA Member Martin Johnson in the UK is building an Accelerator in Birmingham, UK, between now and the end March 2025. The program is for companies who are already growing 20% y/y and have passed £1m ARR. We are wishing Martin all the best with this new initiative! And last. but certainly not least, we are so proud of our longtime SBA Member Marilyn Davison, MIT Sandbox/MIT Explorer Moroccan Program Mentor andTufts Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy - D Prize Mentor. The praise that she has received as a mentor, be it from the mentees themselves, such as this young gentleman, "Saying, "thank you" doesn't seem sufficient to express my gratitude, your support and insights were fantastic, and I will always be thankful for what you offered as mentors” or from the Director of the MIT Morocco Program, “ Thank you very much for sharing and of course for really caring. You are a true mentor and your attention and patience are always evidence. While we do a lot, you are the core and the largest asset this program has. This high praise is so well deserved and reminds us all that “mentoring” is a very important part of being a Business Angel | SBA Portfolio and Member Blog | Amongst all the activities above, it is important to remember that the SBA’s main focus is to invest in early stage StartUps and to make them grow. Our SBA Portfolio, continues to grow and we invite all of you to seek out our latest investments, mainly in Deep Tech, be they HABS.AI, HIVE.NET, The Exploration Company, Interstellar Lab etc.. We are most pleased to include below a blog from our SBA Member, Jerome Nollet about why he and several SBA Members re-invested in the latest round of HABS.AI: ‘Dear Fellow Winged Humans, Like a few other SBA members, I recently made a second investment in HABS.ai. What motivated me to double my initial investment is seeing the entire HABS team working tirelessly to deliver their first product, which has already been pre-sold to a significant number of corporate clients. In contrast, during my pro-bono mentoring, I often encounter startups and businesses with no sales who are seeking to raise millions at a high valuation to "recruit marketing employees" or to "accelerate business development." After a few choice words for those who have "chosen the red pill," they often seem to grasp my point. But in reality, they just plan to reduce their ask and still try to recruit salespeople. They prepare nice presentations for the current shareholders, listing all their achievements, and then ask for more money. In my view, they should simply say, "Shareholders, we will go bankrupt unless we sell. You believed in us, so now we ask you to bring us clients; otherwise, it will have been all for nothing. You will lose your investment, and I will write a sad story on LinkedIn." This month, it was announced that for the first time in years, more startups are closing in the US than there are new businesses opening. The era of easy money is over. Now, "It's about sales, stupid." So when I receive a new pitch filled with buzzwords and impressive team profiles, I tell them to replace it with just one page—a sales graph. The best pitch advice I now give entrepreneurs is simple and requires nothing else: "SELL YOUR SALES." |
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