insead mba

Top recommendations for Dean Veloso from the ‘03Ds:

“Just make sure that your education is raising the bar on future management, not only in terms of technical knowledge, but in terms of values.”

“The university has a great asset, it's the Alumni Network - invest more and with the expectation to get more out of it.”

“Keep up the education of your alumni and give them the opportunity to get back together, because at the level of the class is where you have the strongest bonds.”

Our 20Y reunion in a nutshell: Excitement, fun, connections.

“It's the life in your years that counts, even more than that it is the people in your life. To me INSEAD has brought a lot of important people and reunion was all about meeting the ones that we see often, the ones that we see less often and finding that old energy is still there, which is amazing.” Sofia Marimba

“When I think about the 4 reunions we've had - all of them a lot of fun. The 5 year was very much around what job have you got, what have you achieved in that period work-wise, where are you in your career. 10 years was a bit more like what's your family situation, have you had 5 kids yet, that kind of thing. 15 in Singapore was just a bit insane, people just wanted to be students again and largely behaved like that. This time, lots and lots of fun, but I found people in more reflective mood. I had more conversations about looking around what the next phase of life might look like.” Sophie Kent

“It was exciting to get back together with people and realize how much I enjoyed their company and being around them.” Jeff Clay

“The mood was different - there was no competitiveness anymore for sure, there was a lot more looking for cooperation.” Milena Ivanova

Favorite moments: the things that bind us together

“Life can be as fun as you make it up as long as you're blessed with health.”

“The feeling of the first hug that you give to people that you have not seen in a long time, this physical connection, the smiles and the happiness of just seeing again face-to- face people that you have not seen in a while.” Sofia Marimba

The fact that we can all get back into the Chateau and dance together in the way that we always did, that's definitely the first image that comes to mind.

I loved seeing the much older vintages also dancing with us and I was like “Okay, that's a message of hope for the future.”

“Fun and joy absolutely have no age. I actually took videos of our older colleagues on the dance floor jumping and dancing like they were teenagers and I basically shared those videos with friends back home and I said this is how I want to grow old.“ Sofia Marimba

“Just being on the lawn and having a beer right outside there was reminiscent of those conversations that you had that were kind of impromptu and ended up going for hours.” Jeff Clay

“Team work makes dream work and I think our class is best practice in that sense”

For me there were two options. I can be very rich and lonely 10 years down the line, or I had to change something so that I'm happy and I'm not lonely and I'm with someone that I enjoy being with.

20 YEARS IN PERSPECTIVE:

I changed absolutely everything. So I was in the recruitment industry in Poland before INSEAD, and then I ended up in investment banking in Austria. The only thing I didn't change was the market, because my entire life, the theme has been emerging markets.

I spent two and a half years in Vienna doing corporate finance, and then love called, and so in 2006 I moved to London. In 2008 I got a call from a head-hunter who was chasing me for a job in Kazakhstan and in April 2008 I moved to Almaty, Kazakhstan and then I moved to Russia in 2011. The end of 2012 I got downsized, it was the best thing that happened to me, because I needed to exit Moscow, I needed to exit finance.

At the time I was also going through a divorce, which was “amazing”, it was a major shock to the system, took me a number of years to get over it, not in terms of the relationship, but in terms of the failure, I treated it for the longest time as something I failed at.

So what I did is I bought a ticket around the world and took off for six months, the end of this was our reunion in Fonty in 2013.

Where I am today is I serve on boards, I have my own small business in aroma therapy, which is a direct to consumer model, I help with my family's business, which means these days I've [also] opened a hotel. And then I do a lot of pro bono work.

I got a guy who landed on my balcony in London, and so we have a seven year old son now, and I'm mostly spending time in Bulgaria.

On topic: a woman in finance, overcoming adversity and life in general

For a woman to decide that she doesn't like where she is and to move on is a fact of life. I did not like entering a boardroom with 22 men and two women on a regular basis. I did not like eating lunch in the MD lunchroom where I was the only woman and the guys had to talk with me out of politeness. But what they can talk to me about was Sponge Bob, they didn't know what to talk about.

The biggest challenge was solving my personal life because I was 36 and getting divorced. I thought I'm 36 and starting a family, and then one day I'm 36 and getting divorced. So I went through the fear of would I be alone, I went through the fear of would I have children…

There are three things in life that ruin you - one is divorce, one is losing your job, and I forget was the third one, and then you die. So I had two of those at the same time. So you are pushed. You are pushed, and this is when either you grow either or you go back to your old self, but going back to your old self, it's going to come back to bite.

After the rain comes the rainbow, in the darkest hour, I need someone to just remind me, that.

On all things INSEAD and giving back

Why I do it, I will revert to what a lot of people in these episodes have mentioned, the word impact. And it's having an impact and working for something that's bigger than oneself.

Without education, society goes down the drain. And sometimes people tell me, “Yes, but MBA is a luxury good.” And I'm like, “But you need leaders, as well.” And it's not leaders in the arrogant sense, but it's people who have the courage, people who are willing to be honest. So, if you want to change things, we need education at all levels.

I keep on saying thank goodness for my healthy sense of self-confidence because otherwise some of the things people have done are like, Jesus…

You've also seen them dance without their shirts on, so that's a great equalizer.

Running your own business is like a marathon at the speed of a sprint

Your mental health is under constant stress, what I realized early on is it's a very lonely space to do it, because there are very few people who do this.

Quite frankly, you're dealing with more failures than successes than from the outside people see.

I still remember sitting on my balcony with helicopters flying by, with soldiers and machine guns roads were blocked. You know buildings boarded up or you know it was, it was absolutely intense.

20 YEARS IN PERSPECTIVE:

We built the number one vitamin water brand in the UK and Ireland, it was bought by Pepsi several years later.

I worked for Pepsi for 3 -4 years in the UK and then we had this second big adventure together with the same wonderful business partner where we moved to Los Angeles.

I had immediately another and entrepreneurial bug, so I started the first low-cost gym chain in the UK, but I quickly realized how difficult it is to start a company when you don't have a business partner as incredibly fun and smart and nice to work with. So I decided to let that go.

And eleven years later we're still here thriving and building the business. We just increased our distribution footprint with a massive deal in Target which is super exciting.

On topic: vitamins, supplements, the supplements market opportunity in the US

We realized very quickly that the vitamin market was huge in America, yet it was extremely outdated, so this was ripe for disruption, which is why we settled here in LA, which is considered the centre of health and wellness. This is where the trends start they show up first on TV programs, or in movies and then they spread across the world.

It's not a multivitamin that will fix your unhealthy diet, right? The basis has to be right, you should eat your vegetables, your fruit, ideally you got your fiber, etc., that is really an ideal foundation. And then I would recommend to supplement or, as we say, complement with those micronutrients that are hard to come by with a regular diet.

Here in the United States there's a real shrinking of the gut microbiome, because the diets are not very well-balanced.

As you age your digestive enzymes deplete actually and this helps you break down the foods and foods have become more and more complicated, especially processed foods.

On topic: start-ups, entrepreneurial endeavors, INSEAD business partners

If you think about that, we have spent at this point 5,000 days together, which is a long time.

It's a very special relationship to have a business partner for many, many years. They know your real working life from a very unique perspective. It's not the same as having a report or having a boss is not the same as having a life partner, it is different.

When you start something you can develop a bit of luck and you develop opportunities and things that you wouldn't have known were going to start when you began the business

All things INSEAD and giving back

I honestly think that we have profited from the INSEAD connections almost more than anybody else.

We raised our seed money largely through INSEAD alums to get the V-water business off the off the ground.

So a lot of our seed investors were INSEAD, 2 of our board members of V-water were also INSEAD. Several of our INSEAD original investors have continued to support us with the HUM nutrition business in Los Angeles.

“And remember, it’s not a judgement of your performance, it’s just we don’t need this position anymore.”

After selling the chain of clinics business twice, I got fired from day 1 to day 2 with the typical capitalist view, you put your things in a box and leave the premises in 2 hours type of thing. This put me in a very difficult position of trying to redefine myself as a business person, so I took a step back.

20 YEARS IN PERSPECTIVE:

5 years ago I joined one of my most recent investments, because I felt it has the potential to become something big. I raised about 120 mn in financing for our firm and it’s going well, fingers crossed.

You need a very tall building or a very slow elevator for this [elevator pitch]

I went into pharma, initially in Austria and then Switzerland. And Switzerland was so boring, I needed to go back home.

Joined a chain of clinics in Romania, sold the business to PE twice, made a little bit of money from ESOP. So this turned out very well and I had a little bit of money. So I decided why invest it prudently in real estate and stuff, when I can invest it similarly in small companies that will grow big.

I have the same 2 kids and the same wife I had at INSEAD, so that’s quite a success.

Nowadays I am teaching strategy, entrepreneurial growth to MBA students, I am teaching a fintech course as well.

On topic: Fintech, start-ups, fund raising, entrepreneurial endeavours

B2C, crypto, blockchain which are not in very good shape, and then the more traditional SaaS, B2B – the only thing that has changed is the multiple you get in the valuation. It just takes a little bit of time to adjust to the current reality.

Everything is pending on the bigger markets resuming tech IPOs for fast growing, loss making companies.

The base scenario is that we will be able to converge to breakeven with the money that we have and we would do it by the end of 2024. We’ve moved from 80% growth with significant loss, to 50% growth with very clear convergence to B/E.

We need to grow 5 to 10x more to even be considered for an IPO.

I don’t think it’s difficult frankly [being an entrepreneur] – it is so much fun.

The younger students and graduates are much smarter than we were and I think they’ve realised that our prudent way of joining a company is just a path to some sort of plateau, that is kind of convenient, but is just that.

My advise to everyone is not to get trapped in some sort of cosy job that pays the money and gives you no more thrills. We could build things that are meaningful. And every time I failed, it proved to be a kick in the butt that makes you leap forward. So don’t worry that much about the potential failures in the process, it is more about enjoying the opportunity to build something that is going to impact people in some way.

Our security net is pretty high and is given by what we know and how the CV looks like, and how employable you are if eventually the sh*t hits the fan. And you can aways jump in a secure job, maybe slightly less attractive that the one you would optimise for if that was your target.

All THINGS INSEAD AND GIVING BACK

INSEAD – kind of detached me from the imposter syndrome.

INSEAD brainwashed me in a very efficient manner, a person [me] came out that was willing to do things that are new and different and trusting himself a lot more.

I'm sure when we started our first business together we were like “God, this is the learning one and we're just gonna smash it all the way through the rest of them”. Unfortunately hasn't quite turned out that way, it continues to be a learning experience. Turns out, there's new sh*t to learn every time.

20 YEARS IN PERSPECTIVE:

The journey is the destination.

If you ask me where I thought I'd be 20 years after INSEAD I think I've definitely, largely because of my wife, who I met at INSEAD and my business partner, who I also met at INSEAD, I am in a 10x better space than I could see, so I'm pretty happy.

So we built a great business plan, we ended up actually acquiring a series of money transfer businesses, about 11 businesses over about 7 years and built what was a pretty substantial – 4th/5th biggest remittance company in the world.

Built another business and actually just sold that business last year to a large Israeli tech company called Papaya global, which is a phenomenal outcome, actually a great deal.

We had some crazy ideas on the list, but possibly 1 of the stupidest was starting a bank.

These days one of us got a couple of businesses on the go and I'm obviously a shareholder in those and we are on the board together. I'm doing a bit of VC investing for a couple of funds actually and then we do lots of angel investing.

ON TOPIC: Start-ups, exits, entrepreneurship, partnership

I remember being worried that we might be on the front page of the FT for the first time for all the wrong reasons, having taken a regulated financial services business bust, because of the sort of leverage that we put in.

The best thing that's happened in the last 30 years is it's become okay to be an entrepreneur.

I knew when he threw the entire telephone at me, it smashed through a 32nd story New York window and went out in the pavement that maybe this was not going to be the perfectly peaceful business relationship that I'd once hoped for.

One thing the three of us all had in common, we all promoted club nights at university which is very much an entrepreneurial venture.

I just never really fitted in traditional jobs. I didn't get on with them, they sort of felt a bit either I felt I wasn't very good at them or I felt very shackled in working for someone else.

It was a good way of learning what not to do, wasn't it? We took on probably too much debt, one week we were having dinner in the CEO’s office at Barclays and they'd written us a big senior debt line and then the financial crisis came and they sort of took us into the basement and beat the living crap out of us because we'd breached the covenants.

Actually, when you hit the liquidity moment and either the company's no longer yours or the money lands in the bank account or you sign the docs, whatever it happens to be, that moment is very fleeting and actually what sticks with you is the good times and the bad times that you've had over the years. 

Winning wasn't measured just by the money, or the fame, or the other stuff, but actually by having a great set of friends, enjoying good times with them and having really quality relationships in your life.

All THINGS INSEAD AND GIVING BACK

INSEAD gave me my business partner, gave my wife and gave me all the talent that has made me successful. I'm British, particularly Scottish and this still feels a bit distasteful to be this enthusiastic about something, but yeah, it's definitely been a great thing for me INSEAD.

When you're moving as a family, the only common denominator you have is the family, so you stick together and you make sure that everybody goes through the experience in the smoothest way possible.

20 YEARS IN PERSPECTIVE:

Quite a ride, it brought me through 5 different locations (Switzerland, France, Spain, Andora, Bulgaria and now Israel), 9 or 10 different positions and all with this desire, this intent to actually revolutionize to some extent a quite old and legacy industry and move it into something closer to the twenty first century.

We've always wanted to be kept on our feet, to put ourselves in challenging situations, facing new unknowns over time probably in order to avoid complacency and comfort of just having a very, well-organed life.

The more the company was offering new locations, the more we felt it was just not the right thing to do. And the right thing to do was to stay here, to live in Israel, to become Israelis, to develop our kids here in this country.

The biggest challenge has been to advocate for this smoke-free world as part of Philip Morris, to come in as a representative of the largest, you could say, death enabler from some perspective of avoidable death, by selling cigarettes and being listened to and considered by anti-tobacco activists, by political stakeholders, by community leaders has been very challenging and quite painful and quite tough at times.

One of the biggest personal changes was also to manage our parents from a remote perspective, parents who are getting older and don't have their grandkids around them.

I had a stint at startup and eventually things weren't exactly the way I was expecting them to be. I found it to be way more complex than I guess I naively thought and actually quite cynical. Overall I understood what it takes to be an entrepreneur and to be part of a startup and to manage it and it turned out that it was not really my thing, so it was a great experience but it didn't really hit my DNA in the way I thought it would.

What I'm doing at Catalyst Investments is actually offering selling or setting up a platform in the form of a venture capital fund for corporates that want to create a portfolio of startups in Israeli innovation.

ON TOPIC: All things Israel, start-up scene, ecosystem, Israeli culture

You have now more than 90 unicorns out of Israel, which is the highest number for a single country in the world, number of startups per capita and investments.

I think it's the country that invests the highest percentage of GDP into education, over nine percent of Israel’s GDP is going to education.

Israel had always been a bit of a dream destination, something that I was, we were very keen in experiencing.

[Israel] is still a pilot project as a country, it's a 75 year old country made of a melting pot of people that have immigrated from over 80 countries so it's still all in development.

The Israeli Innovation Authority is really fuelling and funding not only with money, but also with support and with networking capabilities the entrepreneurs and their ventures.

There's more 380 VCs present in Israel providing funding.

All THINGS INSEAD AND GIVING BACK

INSEAD is so intimately linked to most of the things that have happened to me. It's not only about giving back to be connected and to participate and to be active about it.

I don't see INSEAD as just a place where we learn things, or we developed a great network and friendships. It's really a foundation step in what has happened to me and my family over the past twenty years.

When I was very young I just was interested by politics because you can influence. It's very fulfilling when you see that you can make things change. So that's really the main driver now.

20 YEARS IN PERSPECTIVE:

From 2009 to 2020 I was having two hats - one was the local managing partner of EY in Luxembourg, a firm of about 1700 employees, the second one was to be the private equity leader for EMEA.

I always had also a kind of public vibe in myself which is that I was always very much engaged into politics - not in the first row, in the second or in the third row, but co-managing electric campaigns. I was appointed to the State Council in Luxembourg, which is kind of the Senate, or the Upper House and I am today the vice president of that chamber.

In 2019 I was approaching to be 50. Working for big 4 is great, but I have been there for 25 years, it's super intense and I came to a point where quite frankly I was quite exhausted. After a lot of sleepless nights I decided to leave EY.

I took a couple of boards, I have 5 today, where I actually can make hopefully a difference. I'm spending more private time, so I have more time to practice my dancing skills

It's true that when you have a portfolio of activities which are very diverse, it requires a lot of organization and planning.

My political engagement is strong, but not that strong that I would want to become a full-time politician. The interesting thing is this the combination between business and politics.

You do it a bit for yourself, because it's very interesting, but at the same time definitely you're not doing it for financial reasons. So in that sense you're giving something back.

Biggest regret… in life there are sometimes windows of opportunities and you say no or yes and then you regret it. And I had 1 or 2 windows like this on the private side, where I took a decision which today I would have taken differently.

ON TOPIC: Big 4, being a part time politician

They are 4 Big 4, so each one has a natural share of the audit market of 25% so there are 75% left where you can do consulting, it's the wrong debate. It's just the way its needs to be organized.

Most of these people went back into the industry after a couple of years, so it's making a kind of training for the entire ecosystem. It's a fantastic career opportunity and it's a very socialist / communist, egalitarian system, based on meritocracy - no matter who you are, who your parents are, whether you're black, white, whatever your religion, nobody cares. Only thing what matters is your performance.

You work 80 hours a week if you want to progress and it is a tough school. But that's also part of the natural segregation. Once I became a partner and specifically when I became Managing Partner, it's where it really went to the 80 hours.

There are people who are saying that you should not ask the “hours” question, it's a matter of organization. I think that's rubbish, it's just not true. The reality is if you take that type of job, you just need to know it's going to be a phase in your life, maybe 4 years, maybe 8, where you're going to work crazy hours. If you don't like it, don't take it.

All THINGS INSEAD AND GIVING BACK

INSEAD has been probably the best decision in my life, educationally and professionally, and overall probably. It has been probably one of the best, if not the best year in my life. And I think I would not be who I am today without INSEAD. I am very thankful, grateful to INSEAD as an institution, but I would say, to you and to everybody who I had the chance to cross on my path at INSEAD, to our community, our class.

The story of someone about to disrupt a part of medicine.

“What if we were able to invent a technology, basically a new material, that would allow to repair and reconnect tissues without trauma, in an atraumatic manner, in a non-penetrating manner.”

What you're trying to do is big, it is going to take time and we're going to give you time.

20 YEARS IN PERSPECTIVE:

I love the last twenty years, I'm very excited for the next twenty to be honest.

I would have never described myself at the time as an entrepreneur, to be honest. So maybe people see things through you that you didn't even see about yourself when you look in the mirror.

One part of the [INSEAD] journey was to ask myself whether I was really certain I wanted to stay in healthcare and towards the end of INSEAD I was convinced that this was the industry I wanted to stay.

The best way to have an impact is to be with people you know yare gonna be able to contribute.

To be honest, I really love what I do, so I don't necessarily see it as work and because I don't see it as work, I can spend too much time on it, by definition.

MIT [scientists] had invented quite a profound technology in the domain of tissue repair and we decided altogether to start Tissium, which is a medical device company. So this is how I moved from biotech to medical devices.

We have raised a total of 170 million in the last ten years. We did the last fundraising in March 2023, it was between SVB and Credit Suisse, so it was an unusual period.

We build the company from day 0 with a very optimistic mindset saying if it works, it should work in many areas so let's build it, so that when we get there we can replicate and develop multiple solutions for patients. We operate in the space of peripheral nerve repair, where we can reconnect the nerve after a trauma, an accident, together.

We are developing implantable devices. It came from an insight from the MIT at the time, they invented a new material to try to reconnect tissues during surgical procedures.

We are a bit unique in the MedTech space. We are not proven yet in terms of business model. Today we have more than 20 families of patents, which have already generated a 60 or 70+ patents and we keep inventing every year.

ON TOPIC: Start-ups, entrepreneurship, founders, investors

We built Tissium to remain independent, we never build the company hoping to get acquired. You need to identify investors that believe in that vision, because if an investor is hoping to have an exit in the next two years, or 3 years, the discussion will be very different at the board, as someone who tells you “What you're trying to do is big, it is going to take time and we're going to give you time.”

When you build important things, or novel things, it takes time, it doesn't happen overnight. And because it's long, because it's hard, it's always easier to be with someone else, or a few other people.

ON TOPIC: MedTech, disrupt, healthcare, biology, science

You're about to disrupt a part of medicine.

Working with scientists – science is a domain which is, in theory, data driven in the sense that data is at the core of the discussion. Yet, what is a bit surprising, and it took me a certain time, scientists can be somewhat emotional, not on the data, but on the way they perceive their work and the way they try to achieve.

Sometimes scientists try to seek for perfection, which is in reality not achievable and one of the big challenges is, you need to make sure that they move their mindset from perfection to excellence. Because excellence you can reach it, perfection you will never [reach].