Prince Constantijn moderates at ACG

On Wednesday May 17th HPE Growth Capital hosted its first Scale Up event with over 120 attendees in collaboration with Prince Constantijn van Oranje-Nassau in Amsterdam. The key objective of the session was to demonstrate the attractiveness of Scale Ups in Holland as an asset class.

Evidence based facts were presented by three experts from research, private equity and pension funds community. First Professor Justin Jansen from the Rotterdam School of Management demonstrated the existence of 3000 serious Scale Ups in the Netherlands. Following on, John Renkema, senior portfolio manager private equity at the Dutch pension service provider APG elaborated on his data which shows that growth equity provides significant returns. Last but not least, Dr. Eva de Mol from HPE Growth Capital presented her research from Berkeley Haas Business School California to show that team composition is a crucial factor in explaining variance in venture performance outcomes.

The presentations provoked lively discussion and confirmed that there are a number of challenges that need to be addressed. These are centered not only around access to growth capital, but also ambitions of the management team, building truly scalable business models and retaining talent. This is an area close to the heart of HPE who is committed to collaborating with all involved parties to support scale ups in the Netherlands and make data-driven decisions.

Overall sentiment was that this was ACG Holland's best ever networking lunch. Thank you to our sponsor HPE Growth Capital, the speakers and to Prince Constantijn for making this happen.