Paolo Dellachà is the CEO of Industrie De Nora, an Italian industrial company with global presence. It is the world’s leading supplier of electrodes for all major electrochemical processes – and have recently seen tremendous growth in applications for green hydrogen production.
📜 After almost 100 years as a private family-owned company, De Nora listed on Euronext Milan in June 2022, in a €500mn transaction. Before that, the company had welcomed Blackstone and Snam S.p.A. as minority investors starting in 2017.
📈 With the market volatility last year, it was one of only a handful of companies to list globally that year. Paolo has also been through another IPO this year, as Deputy Chairman of thyssenkrupp nucera, the electrolyzer JV between thyssenkrupp and De Nora. With Paolo, we discuss the changes De Nora has been going through as its energy transition business has expanded, the IPO rationale in 2022, his experience from interactions with public markets investors, and the challenges to scale up the energy transition.
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🗨️ Our favorite quotes:
On the IPO rationale: “we came to a point of being aware of the phenomenal growth we had in front of us related to energy transition that we had to share with our board, with our shareholders, that together with that growth, there was inevitably an important demand of cash to invest, to sustain this growth.”
On working with a PE firm as a minority owner: “I have really to thank Blackstone because they’ve been really wonderful allies. We’ve been working together side by side. They’ve been observing and supporting our growth journey that happened in those years.”
On timing: “We decided together with our shareholders to be aware that we could have the chance to suffer a little bit on the final pricing, but the end of the day, we were so convinced that that was the right timing independently from the negativity that there was around in the market that we’ve been very determined to go ahead”
Disclaimer: this discussion is not financial advice, nor an investment recommendation, nor a solicitation to buy or sell any financial instruments, or an offer for financial services or any other transaction. The information contained in the recording have no contractual value and are destined for an informational purpose only. Amundsen Investment Management and the participants on this podcast may have holdings in the companies being discussed.
Transcript
Per: Today we look back at the IPO of Industrie De Nora with Paolo Dellachà, the CEO. Industrie De Nora is an Italian industrial company with global presence. It is the world’s leading supplier of electrodes for all major electrochemical processes and have’ve recently seen tremendous growth in applications for green hydrogen production. After almost 100 years as a private family-owned company, De Nora listed in June 2022 and a €500 million transaction. With the market volatility in 2022, it was one of only a handful of companies to list globally that year.
Paolo has also been through another IPO in 2023, as deputy chairman of Nucera, the electrolyser JV between ThyssenKrupp and De Nora. With Paolo we discuss the changes De Nora has been going through as its energy transition business has expanded, the IPO rationale in 2022, his experience from interactions with public markets investors and the challenges to scale up the energy transition.
Before we start, we would like to remind our listeners that our discussion is not financial advice, nor an investment recommendation, nor a solicitation to buy or sell any financial instruments or an offer for financial services running out of the transaction. The information contained in the recording has no contractual value, and this is for an informational purpose only. Amundsen Investment Management and the participants in this podcast may have holdings in the companies being discussed.
Paolo, thank you very much for joining us today. It’s a pleasure to have you here and maybe we can just start with you explaining a bit what Industrie De Nora does.
Paolo Dellachà: Hi, thank you for inviting me. De Nora is an Italian multinational company, listed at the Euronext Milan Stock Exchange since it had been more than one year now. We are the world’s largest supplier of high-performing electrodes and coatings for many industrial applications. Wherever there is electrochemistry, we are the suppliers of a key component that the electrode at the heart of the processor that is enhancing is the enabling factor of the performances of the solution they go into.
We are the leader in emerging sustainable technologies with a very key role today in energy transition, and in particular in green hydrogen production technologies. Last but not least, we are recognized as a leading provider of disinfection and filtration solutions for water and wastewater treatment technologies. We are made by 25 operating companies out of which 14 are manufacturing.
We are very well spread all over the world, we have a very good geographical distribution, both in revenues and in people from the geographical standpoint. This year, we are celebrating 100 years of anniversary so that’s a phenomenal milestone that we have achieved. We are going through many different events all along the year with our employees and with our stakeholders, which is very exciting. We have achieved the recently 2000 people in our group.
Per: Yourself, Paolo a bit about your own history, what led you to join the company and become the CEO?
Paolo: Sometimes things happen totally by chance. I’m an engineer, I graduated in the Polytechnic of Milano. I’ve been always working in technology business, first, pharmaceutical technologies, second, food technologies. Then all of a sudden I crossed De Nora, they were looking for a new managing director to drive the growth that they had in mind, they wanted to develop a plans to develop this growth and that’s what happened. I’m in De Nora since 14 years and we’re going through an amazing journey over here.
Per: Was that before or after your launched on the energy transition effort?
Paolo: It was before. De Nora has been exposed to the so called electrochemical hydrogen since probably the ’50s but then, of course the methane, the fossil fuels took over and some of these things were totally forgotten. Then, I joined De Nora and few years later, but I would say really, a couple of years later, we started working again very hard on energy transition at the research and development level, of course.
Per: Excellent. As you said, you’re celebrating 100 years history this year, and you have a long history of family ownership with the De Nora family having founded and still chairing the company and being large owners. I’m just wondering, what was actually the rationale to then IPO the company after so many years under family ownership?
Paolo: That’s very simple, is the growth. We’ve been growing quite consistently and successfully over this years but we came to a point by being aware of the phenomenal growth we had in front of us related to energy transition that we had to share with our board, with our shareholders, that together with that growth, there was inevitably an important demand of cash to invest, and of course to sustain this growth.
That happened in 2021 when we presented this new business plan. I have to say really unanimously, all our stakeholders, board member, and shareholders agreed that was really the conditions to start planning an IPO to collect financial resources, to sustain this growth journey that we planned in our industrial program. That’s really the main reason. Of course this growth was mainly related to the energy transition.
Because all the other segments have been always growing, but with a much more moderate rate while the energy transition had such an impressive growth, and because we are producers, that growth means to arrange our production facilities to be able also to produce that kind of technologies that meant expansions mainly, and also greenfield expansion to a certain extent. That would’ve required a lot of financial resources.
Per: Before the IPO, back in 2017, you had included flagstone as a shareholder that then exited in 2020. I’m just wondering why choose to involve a private equity player then in 2017 and not do the IPO at that time?
Paolo: Actually, I have to tell you that we launched an IPO project back in 2015, in the second part of 2015. There was a decision of the shareholders of the De Nora family because they thought we have achieved, at the time, a size and a visibility that would require probably to become a public company. The reasons were different from this time, but they thought, this is probably the time that we open up our capital to the market. That’s what we did. We did very intensive and very demanding process because all IPO processes are very demanding for the management.
Unfortunately, Our timing for the IPO in 2016, unfortunately, was really very close to the Brexit. Everybody was convinced that the Brexit would’ve given a different result, so we have been continuing that part. We were supposed to go public on the 26th of June, something like that, and Brexit was 23rd of June. There was an horrible coincidence. When the Brexit vote was announced, then we said, this is not the time. Let’s wait until July but actually, you might remember, nobody was so much focused on IPOs at that time. We decided to park it, not to abort it, but to park it, to keep it on hold, to wait for better times.
The same time, right after this decision the family, the shareholders said, why don’t we open up the capital to a private equity fund so that they will accompany us in this process and they will maybe help us even becoming stronger in how to be ready to the level of readiness for the IPO, one day we will do. That’s what happened. We started selecting a potential partner. You can imagine that Blackstone was one of the strongest or is today, one of the strongest in the world. We had a really very good alignment with them, and that’s what happened. At the beginning of 2027, they entered and they actually left the beginning of 2021.
Per: In terms of that period then, between 2017 and 2022, what were the major changes you made to the company in order to be even more IP0 ready in the sense when you came in ’22?
Paolo: It’s a matter of culture at the end of the day. I have really to thank Blackstone because they’ve been really wonderful allies. We’ve been working together side by side. They’ve been observing and supporting our growth journey that happened in those years. They were very pleased to see us growing in all our core and legacy businesses. At the same time, they really transferred us a very good, let me say financial cultures in terms of capacity to forecast the best, build the best kind of reporting packages. Really also to sustain the company in this culture evolution to be more and more or better and better ready for that opportunity down the road. That’s really what happened and we’re very pleased to add them together with us for a little bit more than three years.
Per: It was actually quite a long IPO journey. We talked to some CEOs who had a six month IPO preparation but you had a bit more time to think about it.
Paolo: To be honest with you, it was not an IPO preparation. It was simply saying, now they’re not the conditions for an IPO, and we really parked it. We were not doing anything in the direction of the IPO. The IPO was not there holding for something. The work we did with Blackstone is being focusing on the business and growing the company, not just so much related to the IPO.
Then when we thought that the IPO was coming, by the way, Blackstone was already gone because they were so much solicited by many other investors, thanks to how De Nora was performing in those years. At a certain point, they decided to leave and then after we came to the point that energy transition was so much booming unexpectedly, to be honest with you because otherwise probably Blackstone would’ve remained with us. With that additional growth potential, and then this was the time where we decided now is the time to make an IPO. The decision was taken in the second part of 2021, and we went public in 2022.
Per: Excellent. The IPO and now being a public company, how do you feel it’s changed or affected the company?
Paolo: On the operative standpoint on the day-to-day basis, including myself of course, there are not so many changes. Focus is on business, on managing our people, our projects of expansion, of growth, of partnerships, so that really didn’t get any change. In parallel to this, we are building and continuously the trust and the relationship with our new community or investors, and stakeholders, so that’s the new part of our daily life. That is for sure a new chapter. No doubt the company had to also work on some processes, on some policies, on the governance.
When you go public, you also have to revise your board with the right number of independents, with all the committees that we do, we have created the right engagement to really help them to be as operative as possible to support the decisions, the right processes within the organization and the management at the end of the day. This culture of enhancing the financial reporting and controlling is a never-ending story as you can imagine. We were already very much structured also thanks to the support of Blackstone but what we have been adding has been this culture of disclosure, so we have a financial communication process that has to be continuously disclosed and shared with our stakeholders.
Per: You said one of the reasons for the IPO was because of the growth of the energy transition business?
Paolo: Yes.
Per: You’ve always been very active in the electrode and water technology, so obviously you came to it with a very strong background in electrodes. Can you just describe a bit what the energy transition actually is, what it includes for you?
Paolo: In general, is an unprecedented market opportunity for a technology company like De Nora because it is a perfect matching between our know-how, our really core competence, and there’s been a natural evolution for– Of those core competencies into this new market opportunity because at the end of the day, green hydrogen is an electrochemical product. That’s really the first point to twilight. Then in the typical business model of De Nora meaning to have a unique portfolio of technologies, to serve our customers and partner base also in this business, we have done exactly this.
To design and produce electrodes for our joint venture, we do more than electrodes, we do the complete cells that is on their design. We do electrodes for also the fuel cell business which is the other part of the energy transition meaning turning hydrogen back into electricity in a clean manner and more wider portfolio of technologies that will help us in having a very good, let me say, diversification of revenue streams.
Thanks to this concept of partnering with the right players like our JV ThyssenKrupp Nucera that are well positioned in the market, providing a final solution, very successful in terms of performances, reliability, durability. We are the key suppliers of the core, of the heart of those solutions, enhancing, enabling them to perform as expected. That is a win-win combination that has been driving us in our history and is also continuing in the energy transition.
Per: Your customers in this business, it’s basically the manufacturers of electrolyzers, right?
Paolo: Manufacturers of electrolyzers, in particular our JV manufacturers of use sales. Engineering companies– We are also working on small size electrolyzers because we have a competence. We don’t want to leave this small application market that our JV, for example, is not following totally unattended. We are also developing our own solutions that we will use in partnership probably with the engineering companies also in some cases with the end users.
With the industries that are demanding green hydrogen production, like the hard to abate industries, for example, that especially in Italy, there are going to be many small medium companies that do not require huge, decentralized solutions, but quite decentralized small, medium sized solutions to serve a specific geographical area like the so-called hydrogen valleys that they’re using today as a name or their specific need to substitute fossil fuels in their industrial processes.
Per: Obviously, there’s a very high growth component here. You’re a tech business at heart, right? You’re also a manufacturing business. How is this high growth segment in the energy transition transform the company in terms of growth dynamics, hiring, CapEx? How have you seen those changes over time?
Paolo: Let me say that probably the main component is OR2 is CapEx and people. We have our main driver being manufacturers of technologies is expanding our capacity. We have, I think, a unique advantage, as I said, that our production technologies in every factory we have around the world, they are already somehow set up or very similar in terms of concept to what is needed to produce green hydrogen technology.
For us, it’s not a matter of reinventing new factories in terms of technologies, but rather than expanding our factories to serve that curve of demand. On one end, there is a phenomenal versatility, as you can imagine. Because we can switch in our production facilities from one application to the other, and we don’t have to have fully dedicated lines only to the hydrogen that is giving us a greater versatility and flexibility in managing the factories.
At the same time, the volumes are such that we’re expanding. The first phase of expansion is brownfield, meaning expanding wherever we are already. That means to have already management, competencies, properties, utilities, and simply to expand. Expand in terms of real estate side, but also in terms of production technologies inside to increase the capacity. When I talk about people again in a brownfield expansion, the requirement, the complexity of hiring more people is definitely easier than a greenfield where you have to hire everybody from scratch.
For the time being, people are absolutely part of this transformation. Definitely easier than when we get to greenfield expansions that might be required in geographical areas where there will be a very high concentration of demand and where we will not be able anymore to serve with existing factories or where we don’t even have an existing factory. In that case, we will have to go greenfield, and the people related part of this complexity will increase definitely because we will have to work on a total expansion starting from blue collars to the management of the company itself.
Per: If you think of it simplistically about the IPOs, so you raised capital in the IPO, can you maybe just talk a bit about in practice, where does that money actually go once you raise it?
Paolo: Yes. Most of the money of the IPO will go to CapEx for expanding our capacity.
Per: Great. In terms of investment engagement, it was probably the first time you actually engaged actively with public markets investors, right? Can you tell us a bit about the types of investors you engaged in during the IPO process? Was it more generalist, was it specialists, Italian versus European or US investors? Can you talk a bit about that?
Paolo: We met both the generalist and specialist investors. As you can imagine, the most active and interesting investors turn out to be investors with a particular focus on energy transition, but also on water technologies in general, sustainable technologies that we do for many different industrial applications. Let me say our equity story was very much appreciated by these guys. They could really appreciate, even in a very difficult market situation, the strong equity story of De Nora, the leadership, or this magic combination between a very strong leadership with impressive market shares in our legacy business.
In parallel, a phenomenal growth story with very high chances already demonstrated today to gain very similar leadership positions in a new segment like the one of energy transition. In terms of geography, going back to your question, we engage international investors in Europe, in Americas, in the Far East. At the IPO stage, we mainly gather interest from European investors, particularly in Italy, in Netherlands, UK, Norway, but we also attract the investors in the United States, in the far East.
As far as the United States in particular, we’ve been continuing engaging them with our investor relations activities, and they followed our equity story and they increased progressively their presence. Also, thanks to the private placement that we had back in April this year, where we increased our floating position.
Per: It was quite a difficult period July 2022. There was not easy time to IPO, many investors were a bit taken aback by volatility, but how was the investor engagement? What did you feel you got out of the discussions with investors?
Paolo: I think we got a very good engagement. As I said on one end, we were brave enough and not to put as many other companies the project on hold, we had our growth story, we had our equity story. We felt pretty strong on that, and we decided together with our shareholders to continue being aware that we could have the chance to suffer a little bit on the final pricing, but the end of the day, we were so convinced that that was the right timing independently from the negativity that there was around in the market that we’ve been very determined. I have to say that by reunion the engagement by the investors has been very strong. That’s why we did something like 3.5 times during the book building in a few days.
Per: I think it was brave, but also smart to start down, because then you also had the segue to showing the market you delivered over time, right?
Paolo: Yes.
Per: As you said, you engaged quite a lot with energy transition experts. Did you feel there was a lot of engagement from ESG focused investors? Was the industrial energy transition angle the most important, or was it the sustainability story?
Paolo: Energy transition for sure was probably the most interesting and attractive part of our equity story, but I have to say that there was, and there is a progressively higher and higher interest also in ESG, ESG funds, especially thematic and impact funds that still today account for over 30% of our free flow, so quite significant. Nowadays, I have to say ESG investors are increasing the level of engagement versus De Nora asking for more details about our ESG performances also in terms of operating activities, so action plans.
We’re working a lot on that, and we have achieved the AA rating from the leading agency, the MSCI, this April so that’s has been really very rewarding for us, but again, the journey’s longer and the action plan is what is going to drive us over the next months and years on this ESG roadmap.
Per: Taking a step back, I just wanted to reflect with you a bit on the process of the IPOs. First of all, you’ve been through two IPOs now in two years, which is great. You went through the IPO of De Nora as CEO and the IPO of Nucera now as vice chairman, can you tell us a bit more about Nucera and De Nora’s role in Nucera, how that works?
Paolo: Nucera is a fantastic platform that we built with our own ends, I have to say, because the relationship between De Nora and ThyssenKrupp goes back to more than 20 years ago where they were fighting, they were enemies in the market. That’s a really very interesting story because they were the two European engineering companies because at the time, De Nora was also making chlor-alkali plants as well as Udhe who was the engineering company of ThyssenKrupp, and they were fighting, they were competitors. The other enemies were two large Japanese companies.
They were so smart to the certain point that they sat around the table, and they said, why we keep fighting instead of putting together this effort and being even better prepared to fight against the Japanese. This is what happens, in 2001, they made a 50/50 JV called Uhdenora, was also a nice name combination Uhde and De Nora, became Uhdenora. That became the vehicle, the organization where De Nora and Uhde contributed not only technology but also the people, and they started this joint plant business in chlor-alkali. That was the first milestone of this fantastic story.
Then after a number of years, I joined the company in 2009 and also in view of this growth journey that they started, I had the opportunity to acquire a piece of the joint venture that De Nora had with Mitsui in Japan, making electrodes called Permelec electrodes. It was a 50/50 joint venture too. In that case, when I started developing this plan and understanding that Mitsui was willing to sell this joint venture, they told me, “Paolo, the joint venture is part of a much bigger platform called the electro-chemical platform where there is one of those two famous Japanese enemies or the plant business of chlor-alkali.”
We decided to go that way, so we acquired one of those two guys, Chlorine Engineers Corporation was the name at the time. A global player, one of the leaders worldwide in the chlor-alkaline business. At that point, we created a problem to our JV. We had two ways, either to dissolve the old partnership and to become once again competitors or to enter into a very complex project of putting once again all these pieces together and create the strongest platform in the world. That’s what we did, it was a longer complicated project that lasted two and a half years of negotiations and discussions or designing because we had to put together competitors.
People that were fighting in the market on a daily basis, and all of a sudden, they were supposed to become colleagues. We formed this JV that was launched at the end after antitrust and many other procedures in 2015 called the ThyssenKrupp Udhe, Chlorine Engineers and then further transformed as a name into ThyssenKrupp Nucera one year ago more or less. The long and very interesting history I would say because we have really given to this platform all the right components to become the world-wide leader in that business.
Another piece of the funny story is that while I was negotiating the joint venture agreement back already in 2012, we already wrote in the first draft that that platform would have focused on green hydrogen plant because of this fantastic legacy and knowledge and know-how coming from the chlor-alkali. You can imagine that we have been quite pioneers because already 11 years ago, we had in mind to compete and to play a very strong role in the green energy plant business.
Per: If you look at the two IPOs now, 22 for De Nora and 23 for Nucera, how would you compare the two? Your experience with the two of those?
Paolo: Very similar to be honest with you. The target, the objective of these two IPOs is exactly the same, growth. We are a capital-intensive company because we manufacture and we are also the manufacturing hub for their cells. Our money was more supposed to be dedicated to as I said expanding the production capacity. On their side, they are more an engineering company, they have to grow in research and development in people because at the end of the day when you deal with these complicated projects from engineering procurement, construction, at the end of the day it’s people–
It’s a people business so they have to sustain their growth with OpEx and CapEx to really achieve this progressively increasing size to be able to cope organizationally wise with this impressive growth of demand, and that’s what they did. They originally plan to go public exactly in the same year of De Nora one year ago, then unfortunately we were really even too much overlapping in terms of timing totally by chance because the two projects were run totally independently. Then they decided to put it on hold and wait for the following year. That’s what happened, and I have to say that both have been successful despite market conditions not easy also this year, but the main reason for both has been growth.
Per: With hindsight, what do you think was the key factors contributing to both De Nora’s IPO success and Nucera’s IPO success?
Paolo: I think as I said that the equity story is really very strong for both sides. I have to say that, both companies are coming from very strong leadership positions in the market they serve. De Nora much more diversified because we’re in water, we’re many different industrial applications. They were the number one in the world, in chlor-alkali and they still are, but the strength for their side was the backlog, as you can imagine. This is the company that awarded the majority of the green hydrogen projects that enter into final investment decisions so far, as a consequence, part of their backlog became also backlog of De Nora, because we are their suppliers of this core technology. That was really strengthening their equity story.
Let me say that compared to one year ago where the war was already a strong backlog, one year later the backlog was even stronger so they could be even more convincing to their investors that their equity story was very credible and very strong. As you know, we are in full execution of this job on a daily basis. We are not promising something, but we are doing, we’re absolutely working our talk on a daily basis.
Per: Are there any topics during the IPO you felt you could have been better prepared for? Or you felt that maybe you should have gotten a bit better advice?
Paolo: To be honest with you, not really. Maybe talking about advice, there’s always this feeling that the beginning you are somehow convinced, or you are told that the value of your company is X. Then when you enter into the real game, you need to acknowledge and become aware that probably that value is a little bit lower. That could create some disappointment. It’s not a mistake, by the way. It’s a fact that you really need to prepare. Maybe we were not so prepared because we are so proud of what we do.
We’re so proud of this fantastic one century of successful history that we were probably a little bit more ambitious, but then, after the IPO, the market has recognized De Nora progressively high value. We cannot complain about that. For, let me say, our preparation for how we’ve been handling the project on a daily basis apart from the comment that is heavily demanding for the management team is heavily demanding because it’s an incredible absorption of resources that comes on top of your daily operational business. That’s for sure, but I have to say that we were very prepared. The success of the IPO demonstrated that.
Per: In terms of the entire energy transition industry, what do you think is actually the biggest challenge going forward? Is it access to funding or is it regulation? Is it going fast enough? I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts about that.
Paolo: The energy transition industry– You mean the producer of technologies like us?
Per: Yes. You, other OEMs, et cetera.
Paolo: For sure, money meaning CapEx funds is a key element because this is going to be a huge market is not a niche market. The gigawatt expected, we might argue they’re going to be X, they’re going to be X minus X%. For sure is a new segment, is a new industry. It will take its time to properly develop in volumes in preparation by the end users and in the related industry, but in general, I have to say that everyone wishing to deal with this market has to be prepared to invest a lot of money because the volumes related to this business are going to be high.
As usual, let me say, because we sell durable equipment and because we serve this durable equipment, that’s not enough to say we are prepared to deliver the first solutions you need to prepare to serve this install base in every corner of the world it would be positioned. Once again, funds, CapEx, multi-locations, proximity to customers are all going to be very, very important parts that can be somehow all related to investments, but on the other side, we can also forget about the technology. The technology level of many of these players in this industry is still at the early stage.
One reason of the other, they started from something. They might have started from the right point with the right steps. They might have also started with the wrong steps, with the wrong technologies. Most of them are still struggling in achieving industrialized, reliable, durable solutions to convince the customers to give them trust and orders. That’s one of for sure the challenges of the industry. It’s in a sort of infant stage in most of the cases. They have their journey from the technology standpoint to achieve certain results. Why we proudly say that we consider ourselves a little bit different, because of the legacy coming from the chlor-alkali.
When you’ve been dealing with our JV, of course ThyssenKrupp Nucera with hundreds of projects in every corner of the world, very complicated, large-scale industrial electrolysis projects. There’s not so much big difference if it’s an electrolysis for chlor-alkali or is an electrolysis for green hydrogen. At the end of the day, this sort of background, this legacy, this competence in handling complicated projects and delivering highly performing technologies is really making the difference.
Per: Very interesting. Just to finish off, is there any fun facts you would want to share from your IPO process or roadshow? [laughs]
Paolo: The roadshow, I have to say that they’re very demanding. You have to respect timing super diligently because maybe one day you need to meet 20 people, sometimes even more, but there’s always a sort of fun among the team. You jump from one bus to the other, from one car to the other, from one plane to the other, to meet people. Let me say, with the big difference this time compared to when we did the same process back in 2016.
At that time, it was mainly a physical kind of interfacing with all the investors in this process. Again, jumping taxes, planes, one day in Geneva, one day in Paris, one day in London, and so on and so forth. This time has been funny and demanding at the same time, but almost virtual, all virtual. Totally different setup. Definitely more efficient because we could really start in the early morning and end up late evening sitting at the same desk and meeting maybe between individual one-to-ones and group of maybe even 40.
I think we did more than 40 investors in one day, which is quite crazy, but being virtual, maybe a little bit less funny because when you travel and you jump from one place to another, there’s also some fun, some team spirit and maybe you are so tired and so exhausted that you tend to also laugh and to have fun of simple stupid things. This time was a little bit more serious. Let [laughs] me put it this way because it was more virtual.
Per: Difficult to crack jokes over VC, right?
Paolo: Exactly.
Per: Thank you very much, Paolo. Great story. Best of luck with implementing the strategy going forward. It’s a lot of projects on their plate. Thank you very much, Paolo.
Paolo: Thank you so much for listening.
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