The last week’s panel discussion about the Latvian venture capital and private equity market, which yours truly had the privilege to moderate, was seeking answers to a range of questions. What is the current supply and demand situation with venture capital and private equity in Latvia? How well-functioning and sustainable is the whole ecosystem and what can and needs to be done to make it more efficient? What else can be done by the government to make investments in this asset class more attractive for private sector investors?
A lot of salient facts, statistics and arguments were exchanged in the discussion seeking to provide a balanced opinion about the state of affairs. The most stimulating, though, at least for me, were the thoughts calling for more profound changes in our attitudes and perceptions. The first one suggested that for the investor base to change from almost completely public sector-funded to a better diversified structure we have to start seeing ourselves as not a Latvian, but rather as part of a common Baltic market. With the investors and donors already thinking along these lines and with the new fund managers increasingly having a pan-Baltic or even wider regional mandate, the ball now might be in the court of governments to see that the playing field gets levelled and the rules harmonised.
The other shift which might be needed suggested a complete revamp in attitude towards entrepreneurship, replacing the old concept of “this is my company for life” with that of being a serial entrepreneur, a person who develops the vision, builds it into a business and sells it, before starting the whole cycle once again.
To conclude, the Latvian private equity and venture capital industry has gone a long way to develop a functioning ecosystem but bringing it to a new level might require some totally game-changing shifts in paradigm.
A video summary with the event’s highlights (in Latvian) is available below.
Sincerely,
Aivars Jurcans
editor@mergers.lv
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