Christophe Maurissen - 20 years investing in Private Equity

Christophe Maurissen’s Wolfpack was one of the first syndicates to launch on Roundtable. Now it is opening up to new members as a Public Community.

Christophe spoke to Roundtable about his passion for investing, the importance of co-members understanding risk, and how they came up with the syndicate name in the car.

The Genesis of Wolfpack

Roundtable: Can you explain a little about your background and how the Wolfpack came about?

Maurissen: I’ve been investing in private equity for the last 15 to 20 years, and I’ve always been passionate about it. As an entrepreneur, I’ve often had to focus on one sector, but I wanted to spend time and energy understanding other sectors, so I decided to invest my savings in people I believed in, who had big dreams and were ready to dedicate their lives to their projects.

We have shared these deals with friends and family for a while. Then we decided to create an SPV. That was a total nightmare, and I realized that there were projects I wasn’t doing, simply because the administrative burden was too high. Over the years, we had around 125 people who invested at least in one of our projects.

And that's when I learned about Roundtable. They made things very easy, setting up the SPV, opening the bank accounts, and communicating with the investors, so I didn't have to call friends and family all the time to ask, “have you done your wires, did you finish your paperwork?” Everything was outsourced, and it was totally scalable.

I really like the idea that there are plenty of people who I don't know yet, but I would love to know. They can see on Roundtable which deals we have invested in. And if they like our approach, they can just apply. And we're very open to expanding our syndicate.

And as for the name, my wife suggested the Wolfpack as we were driving through the mountains. I think this name represents us pretty well: it is a group of people who operate together to achieve a common goal. The journey is not always easy but certainly worthwhile. Sometimes we may be a bit aggressive. And when I say aggressive, I mean if we have an idea in mind, we're going to do everything in our power to go for it!

Roundtable: When you talk about looking for people with big dreams – well, a lot of people do have big dreams. So how do you differentiate?

Maurissen: It's a very good question. Look, a lot of people we’ve invested in so far are people we know: I know their track record, perhaps I was on the board for one of their companies, and so on.

The more people you see, the better you are able to assess. And we got a lot of recommendations. You start building that assessment skill with experience and through your network. But I trust my gut feeling.

Roundtable: What percentage would you allocate to gut feeling and how much to recommendation?

Maurissen: I think I would put more on my side, so it would be a 60/40. I guess that if people were not recommended, I wouldn't hear of them. I think I'm lucky enough to get recommendations from people that I trust, and then I do the second round myself. And I see if there is a fit because it's a journey. We usually invest in early-stage companies, so you're going to be with the founder for a long time. You will go through good times and more complicated times. The human aspect is very important.

Who Wolfpack Wants

Roundtable: Who are your ideal community members?

Maurissen: Honestly, investing is a passion. Following entrepreneurs is a passion. If there are people who are willing to be part of this passion and share our values, they're more than welcome to join us, but they don't have to write me a pitch [to apply]. That's not the way it works, for us at least.

So far, we have mainly friends and family. A lot of them are entrepreneurs, people who have created their own companies and so they know the notion of risk. That's very important for us because nothing is guaranteed. They also know that investing in a company is a long journey. So for us, it's important that the people who decide to invest with us understand the startup world and don't panic whenever something goes wrong.

Perspectives on Success and Failure

Roundtable: How do you deal with success and failure, personally?

Maurissen: When you invest in early-stage companies, you take risks, and I’d rather try and fail than fail to try.

We see a lot of investment opportunities, so we can be picky. But as an investor, you are going to fail sometimes. That is what business is about. You have to fail to build experience. But if you continue, I think you're not going to regret it.

Investment Strategy and Sectors

Roundtable: Is the Wolfpack sector-agnostic?

Maurissen: Yes, I'm an opportunist. We invest in people. I'm sure everyone says that, but I need to have a good connection with the founders, and the CEO. And then obviously, the sector needs to appeal to us. And so, we have been invested in the car industry, in rockets in the US, in furniture, in SaaS – in many different industries. We can do seed, or pre-seed, depending on the opportunities. We try to be as flexible as possible.

Roundtable: How do you share deals?

Maurissen: We find a company we like, we decide to invest our own funds, and then we propose it to the community. We usually give them one week to ten days. We like to organize a call with the CEO for whoever is interested. It's nice for people because it gives them the opportunity to ask questions, see if they feel comfortable with it, and after that they usually give their commitment.

We put a carry on the community. We never charge any management fees because we want to be aligned with the community. If the company does very well, then we're going to benefit from that. If the company doesn't do so well, then everyone suffers. So that's why I like the idea of the carried interest.

Roundtable: Do you have a philosophy about the volume of deals you do?

Maurissen: The reality is that I invest my own funds. When I have more savings to allocate, I could potentially do more deals. It's also about the opportunities. And the macro environment is very changeable. So there are good times to enter the market and there are times where you have to be a bit more cautious. I want to remain diversified in terms of geography and sector, so I'm not going to invest in three companies in the same sector in the same country. I try to bring these three elements together to have a diversified portfolio of companies.

If one year we do zero deals, that's totally fine. At the end of the day, I don't believe that you have to do 25 deals a year. You need to be diversified, but you need to have a strong conviction.

Governance and Due Diligence

Roundtable: What are your views on governance?

Maurissen: Given that we invest in early-stage companies, we're going to do our own due diligence, and we're going to use our own common sense to keep the cost totally under control. We don’t hire lawyers at this stage to avoid charging setup fees. If there’s something we're not 100% sure about, we're going to ask [my business partner] Constantin’s wife, who is a lawyer. A lot of people help each other in the community. We negotiate the terms and when we feel comfortable, we put the deal on Roundtable.

But for our first exit, at a rocket engine developer company called Launcher, we had to have lawyers involved to get the exit and the liquidity preference right. Since it was a big amount, we needed to involve more people to defend the interests of our investors.

The Future of Wolfpack

Roundtable: Finally, what do you expect to gain from opening up the syndicate to public applications?

Maurissen: I'm excited to meet new people. A wider community means more leads, more experience and expertise we can rely on. I think that having a wider community could give us access to even bigger deals. A lot of the people who have invested contact us to create an SPV with them because they have an investment idea. So, it's a snowball that’s rolling, rolling, rolling.

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