In the 94th episode of Burning Platform, we host Thomas Otter of Acadian Ventures
Thomas talks about their HCM startup investments across 17 countries. As he says 3.3 billion people go to work every day – most of them in emerging economies. Not only do they represent a significant market opportunity, we can also learn from them – as in innovative use and massive scale of mobile/SMS technologies in some of these markets.
He emphasizes democratization in terms of access to platforms. “So, 15 years ago, if you were trying to build a software company in Africa, in, say, Kenya, you needed to find a data center, you needed to support the infrastructure and that was really difficult whereas today you've got a choice in Nairobi, between AWS, Azure and Google. The developer in Kenya, has access today to the same coding environments, the same infrastructures, the same technologies that a developer anywhere in the world has access to, so that boundary is now gone. You can build great software anywhere in the world.”
He discusses a slew of use cases serviced by their portfolio of startups. Some of the ones he mentions in the conversation include
- Worky, Mexico City, Mexico
- Techwolf, Ghent, Belgium
- AG5, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
- Figures, Paris, France
- Fifty, Paris, France
- Brio HR, Malaysia / Singapore
- Palm HR, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
- Workpay, Nairobi Kenya
- Arist remote USA
- Compa remote USA
- Holiva, Marseilles, France
He also describes how by leveraging other VCs like Workday Ventures and accelerators like SAP.iO Foundries, his relatively small fund manages to have such a global reach.
Fascinating conversation about the changing “world” of work in about 35 minutes.
