#TŐKEPORTÁL BLOG
Mini interview with Gergely Szűcs
09/17/2021 – Tokeportal’s own content
After Gyula Szabó’s mini interview, our next mentor, Gergely Szűcs PhD, financial investment analyst and risk manager introduces himself. Gergely is the manager or the management member of several Hungarian small and medium size enterprises. He graduated in Financial Investment Analysis and Risk Management at the Közgazdaságtudományi és Államigazgatási Egyetem of Budapest, and later took his PhD at the Corvinus Egyetem. His main research areas are environmental innovation and patents.
You promote startups in the growth phase at Valor Capital, typically until the exit. In this period, what are the biggest obstacles a startup has to face?
In my opinion, the biggest obstacle is getting into the international stage. Competing internationally, finding the right market and pricing for existing or improved products, i.e. the product market fit is not an easy task. It is not always possible to draw conclusions from the domestic situation, so it is very important to do an in-depth market research beforehand and to analyse how your direct international competitors are performing. International sales activity (or its enhancement) can only be built up afterwards. Expanding your team, and building an international team is also extremely difficult because of the different constraints (language, distance, culture…), but it is also really important. Finding the right people, and outsourceing the tasks with a calm heart, and good communication are all necessary to perform well.
You mentioned earlier that one of your activities is to contribute to the development of renewable energy projects, so that besided the financial return, you can realise a positive environmental impact too. What do you think, how has the demand for investing in such projects changed?
My view is that there are more and more investment opportunities that have a positive environmental impact. As in their personal lives, people are increasingly take sustainability into account in their business decisions. Also, nowadays it is required for more and more institutional investors to give preference to positive environmental impact investments or funds, so I definitely think that the demand for such solutions has increased and this tendency will continue.
In what ways do you think the pandemic has changed the way startups operate, in which areas do they need to improve? Has people's inclination for entrepreneurship declined, or contrarily, as people want to stand on more legs, their entrepreneurial spirit has increased?
In my opinion, start-ups have been less affected by the epidemic compared to the national average. Undoubtedly, in the first, most uncertain phase of the epidemic, it was much harder for them to raise capital and acquire customers, as it was for other companies. However, I have not noticed any significant change in entrepreneurship. In Hungary, people have always had less entrepreneurial spirit and been more risk-averse, and this is something that we need to change.
If you want to know more about Gyula, visit his mentorprofile.
