Behind The Scenes / Meet Alex, Head of Ventures

You have been recently appointed to head LIST Ventures. Can you tell us more about your background and new role?

I am a venture professional with a strong passion for deep tech innovation - from flying cars to moon rovers. Over the last couple of years, I mentored numerous European ventures backed by public funding initiatives and orchestrated financial deals – fundraising for start-ups and investing for funds across aerospace, mobility, and telecom industries. My career journey began in investment banking at Societe Generale before transitioning into industry leaders Thales and SES. I hold a Master in Management from Dauphine/PSL University Paris and have cultivated a deep knowledge of the best practices from Silicon Valley (Stanford University, 500 Global…).

In my new role at LIST Ventures, reporting to our upcoming Deputy CEO – Jurgen Joossens, my main role will be to act as an ambassador to the start-up ecosystem and formulate a strategy to stimulate the development and creation of spin-offs originating from LIST, thus bringing visibility on “LuxTech” – innovations made in Luxembourg.

What about the spin-offs originating from LIST? What are the upcoming projects?

To date, and since CRP Tudor and Lippmann, 14 spin-offs have been created (the vast majority of which are based in Luxembourg). With 550+ researchers and innovation experts, LIST is active in the fields of informatics, materials and environment. Our most recent incorporated companies are mainly focused around health – Dynaccurate (electronic patient record and chemotherapy), Invitrolize (harmful respiratory compounds detection) and space with an announcement soon to come.

With regard to new projects, there is a lot of potential within LIST. I talked to nearly 40 inventors over the past couple of weeks and projects can be found across numerous technologies – 6G, AI, biotech and smart materials to name a few.

In general, our aim is to give a future to technologies born in labs and bring start-ups to life. Spin-offs are a growth driver for Luxembourg and its economic activity creating numerous jobs and attracting significant investments. We wish to be at the inception of more success stories such as Open Assessment Technologies (OAT), an education assessment solution made in LIST with an international customer base which was acquired in 2023.

What is required for a spin-off to succeed? How do you support them at LIST Ventures?

Building a deep tech venture is a long journey! Several ingredients are required to make a successful start-up.

First of all, the technology. This is the very essence of a deep tech start-up. This is what I call the “technical capital”, i.e. the intellectual property owned by LIST. Yet, this is not sufficient to make a business out of it. We need a product, a solution to a problem with a unique value proposition. This is one of the very first task that we are involved with at LIST Ventures, supporting market assessment and customer discovery to determine whether there is venturing potential.

Then, we need to set-up a founding team without which the spin-off cannot go far. We mentor scientists aspiring to step in a founder role and matchmake them with entrepreneurs with a business skillset. This is what I call the “human capital” which turns a project into a company.

Eventually comes the “financial capital” which is a growth driver. We have great public-sponsored financing instruments in Luxembourg stimulating start-up creation such as JUMP from Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR) and Fit4Start from Luxinnovation to which our spin-offs apply. Fundraising to attract private investors is more competitive and we also prepare our ventures well in advance to be investor-ready.

What main challenges do you see in venturing? What are your future plans?

Overall, and as stated above, venturing is the art of bringing scientists, entrepreneurs and investors together. My aim is to strengthen relationships with the latter two which are critical and found outside of LIST. I believe that if we adopt a more open and proactive approach towards the ecosystem we can greatly improve the quality of our spin-offs.

We are building a talent pool of entrepreneurs especially with business skills bringing a unique market perspective. Added to our in-house technology, this contributes to a strong commercial/technical founding team duo. This allows founders to early-on “pull” rather than “push” minimum viable products from LIST to a market.

We are building a network of investors interested in financing in early-stage deep tech start-ups coming out from the lab – angel investors, family offices, venture capital firms with a hands-on approach able to bring our ventures to the next level.

We would also like to nurture more “open innovation” relationships with the industry – corporates often acting through proof-of-concepts as anchor customers for start-ups.

This strategy contributes to what we do within our Research and Technology Organisation (RTO) and in the Ventures Office more specifically. Scientists invent technologies and we, at LIST Ventures, invent start-ups.