Jeffrey: Welcome to the supportersfund ask an investor I’m your host Jeffrey potvin let’s please welcome Jordi Ferrer investment director at ship 2B Ventures as our investor for today welcome to Jordi it’s a real pleasure having you join us.

Ferrer: Hi Jeffrey it’s my pleasure being here.

Jeffrey: well you know we’re I’m very excited to have this discussion with you today and I’m sure there’s a million reasons but if I Define it down to two things one you’re an ex-founder that sold their company and two you’re heavy into sales and you’re also on a lot of boards so maybe that’s three things so there’s a lot of cool things that come out of this because there’s a lot of good information that Founders and other investors can learn from so we’re excited to jump into this and the way we like to kind of start our show off with is we want you to share a little bit about your background so you can dive all the way back to your your Deloitte Bank days uh Deutsche Bank days all the way through to everything you’re doing today and then one thing about you that nobody would know.

Ferrer: okay good so I I mean I’m I’m I’ll try to be uh humble a bit about it I’m always I think there’s a lot to learn and I always feel like I’m kind of in the beginning of something much much bigger but uh just to start about about me I I’m an economist by training and then I did an MBA and I ended up doing a a course about value-based Healthcare at HBS I started my professional career as a Financial Consultant I did do an internship at Deutsche Bank but my main experience was four years at Deloitte in that transition advisory services and the m a um departments which was good uh analytically I think I’m I’m strong and I was comfortable with it but I needed some extra action so I uh found by chance an opportunity within the Pharma industry in corporate development in a Spanish Pharma company which got me into the life’s life science sector uh was an outstanding experience I got to meet outstanding people outstanding researchers and I ended up in a spin-off from that from that company and managing the also corporate development but also specially managing the relationships with the us we were able to create a joint venture with a U.S company there we were able to raise the company from zero sales to five million sales and ultimately selling it to uh to a large Japanese group then I moved into my next venture I joined an IBD company and animator Diagnostics company in Italy so I was able to move to to Italy and basically doing the same business environmental corporate development that moved me to headquarters of that same company working in Boston which to me was a life-changing experience in in my life but I got to get very much in touch with what we call digital Therapeutics or digital Health um I it’s I did my course in in value-based healthcare there too and I tried to and start my own thing there too so it was basically it was a CBT accounting behavioral behavioral therapy for um type 2 pre-diabetic patients which was an outstanding experience I started together with a partner unfortunately it didn’t it didn’t fly it didn’t fly through what I have done though in parallel is I’ve always had my kind of my my side businesses when I was actually at Deloitte out of a deal and that that we made I was able to open a couple of franchise franchises of a chocolate brand which was an interesting interesting experience I I owned that business for three years and I was able to sell it afterwards which was also a really good experience you know what the video does a full-time entrepreneur but as an investor uh it felt great uh first first of all generating the business and generating the idea added value and then of course after the sale generating that the value for me was very rewarding with that I was also able to invest in a small uh hotel in Lisbon as a partner together with with three other people so I was only in 25 of it and I just which I just got out actually a couple of months ago so it has been also uh really really good experience and I think based on my uh curiosity and and my passion for the healthcare and and value-based Healthcare I I just knew that I wanted to become a professional investor not do it meet on the side and not doing it in in things that might not add real value to the society but I wanted to be a real professional investor in life sciences and potentially in digital Health um so with my family and I my wife and I we moved back to Barcelona after leaving abroad or for a few years and I was very lucky to meet the partners of ship to the adventures which is the fun I’m currently working at they were looking for someone in their Healthcare vertical and the
way they were looking at it and the impact they wanted to provide was 100 aligned with the vision I had with validate value-based health care so so far I’ve been now a year and a half with with City Ventures but it’s been an outstanding experience we’ve already invested in six early stage companies and we are seeing a very very good Horizon in front of us

Jeffrey: Ah that’s an amazing story and so much uh Insight shared there just along the startup line and being able to jump in and build your own company and and I like the side hustles that turned into exits as well so that that’s uh obviously uh very well done and exciting to be able to share that as well.

Ferrer: Absolutely I mean happy happy to you know if you want me to speak more about any of these experiences I’m happy to to expand.

Jeffrey: Oh for sure we’re gonna dive back into that so you mentioned earlier on that when you started to work and you were working as an analyst uh back in the Deloitte days um can you share a little bit about kind of the experience you had like because I know that a lot of people start off when they leave school they start off as consultants and they usually do jump into the big conglomerates and when you’re working on M A I think it just gives you a totally different perspective of how businesses operate it’s more financial based it’s going through plowing through the numbers and understanding what they’re trying to do what they’ve achieved what’s good what’s bad is there some kind of signs that you’ve carried forward to today that you share with Founders when you’re working with them because they think that that would be very crucial insight to know like hey if you’re going to get your company acquired you know pay attention to these things early on because when I get in there and start ripping apart your business like we do at uh um Deloitte you really have to have these things lined up.

Ferrer: Yeah that this is a great question I’m not sure I’m going to be able to answer it completely um I I so I did start at Deloitte because it was you know the good thing to do or or you know the the best thing for my city as a as a you know as a fresh uh graduate from from University um I did uh want this financial experience but I I what really surprised me is the amount of information you can get about the real business just looking at the numbers I mean you can really understand many many things of a company many many things that that not even a uh you know a founder or or a manager who would be able to to tell you so so the the advice I would give to Founders is keep your numbers very very to date and be very aware of how you when you activate something or when you what whatever [Music] you are doing in your business make sure that that it reflects correctly in your in your numbers because when you are going to be raising money or selling the company or in a lemonade people that are going to be looking at the at the deal are the first thing that they are going to do is looking at your numbers and they have to be self-explanatory um that that would be then of course I mean you can you can uh if you are a company that is very working capital intensive then be careful with your inventories be careful with your payloads with your receivables if you’re a software uh company so be careful with how you activate sales I mean there are other details depending on the sector but basically be what my my main advice is is make sure that your numbers are where they should be.

Jeffrey: And I like the way that you said it should be reflected right away I think it’s pretty crucial in in sometimes and it may be more than sometimes I think it’s quite often businesses tend to be feared of numbers and I’m sure this is baked in from when we’re kids but it seems to be the biggest fear so what do you recommend especially early on Founders tend to avoid this but not also avoided misunderstanded not understand a few of the key things like cash flow what that actually means and then we’ll we’ll dive into that but what do you see as a way to offset this especially with the cost because the cost of having this part-time CFO or a controller how do you see them getting around that and is there a way around that at this early stage.

Ferrer: All right it’s um yeah you really got into it to the point so when it’s early stage usually Founders are either afraid or they don’t say the important or they just don’t know and and they don’t want to deal with it because they don’t see it you know they have other things to do then they end up with you know accountants or part-time CFOs or these external uh people that are not aligned with the objectives of the company they don’t necessarily understand the business they don’t necessarily uh speak to the founders much and and and they end up messing messing around with it I I would I would um so there’s not a simple way of of uh fixing it but again it’s it’s about it’s about the founders um making sure they they have time to look at the numbers and they spend some time with their accountants or with their CFO or whoever is looking at the numbers so they can you know make sure that everything is is in place why not every now and then um having someone external from the company look at the numbers and asking questions why not .

Jeffrey: I love it and I noticed that in your background you’ve done a lot of extracurricular learnings like not only your MBA and your ba and and you’ve done other things as well to learn so do you think this kind of fits into that same spectrum that if you don’t know numbers you’re not understanding certain things then maybe just spend weekends doing a course to ramp yourself up on how all of this can work so that you’re stronger at this suit and yeah you might not be able to work on your business 24 7 7 days a week but maybe take some time for the next four months and just work on learning Excel whatever it might be but do you think just based off your own experiences and what you’ve done to get to where you are today do you think it’s valuable for these Founders to look at the same thing.

Ferrer: Absolutely absolutely and and I’m impressed of uh the information you can get out of out of my CV indeed my I’m a strong believer of continuous education and I’m constantly constantly evaluating my myself and trying to understand what is my next step and what am I missing you know what skills am I missing and I’m always trying to complement my my training action and in fact I’m I’m just doing a evaluation course um right now and you know I’ve been doing evaluation for many years but uh still you know I want to refresh some stuff and I want to get things uh you know in a in a I want to have things on top of my mind and definitely whatever so something that I value a lot in Partners is their humbleness and their and their flexibility that they their ability to know what they don’t know and where they they need help so it’s it’s having this this humble approach and understanding that you can always learn more and know better is is very important and and this will be reflected in the financial you know in the numbers but it will also be reflected in you know understanding their sector understanding how to build a team you know how to build a thing is extremely important and and there are you know many people advisors at who would also help them so yes definitely taking extra time to get you know step back from the day-to-day business and then understand uh alcohol how can they improve their skills is crucial.

Jeffrey: I I totally agree with that and I think in in time uh you have to get the founder to wrap their head around mentoring coaching you know they probably think that their plates full of all of these things and obstacles that are preventing them from building raising funds all these things that are in their way but those little things are actually really important to building that great next founder and to your point you’re always educating yourself and taking new courses even though you’re doing it and you’ve been doing this skill you can still add on to that skill there’s always things that you may not have looked at or you did remember from your your earlier days but they don’t come through in your work because it’s not triggered and then you take this course and then boom you’re like oh I need to add that section and now you’ve got that checklist and and you start doing it again.

Ferrer: Absolutely absolutely yeah