Finquest Exits Technoport Incubator

After reaching the end of its contract at the Technoport incubator, Finquest and its team moved to new offices at the SISA business centre in Foetz. Finquest’s priority is now to continue delivering unique offerings to its private equity and corporate clients, and to continue its international expansion.

Photo: Jérôme Pinneau, Co-founder & Chief Information Officer of Finquest / Image Credits: Jopics Photography / José Dos Santos

With more than 50 employees distributed among its offices in Luxembourg (Tech, Data & AI teams), Singapore (headquarter), Frankfurt, Hong Kong, London and Paris, Finquest is the premier deal origination provider delivering personalized connections to its clients who seek M&A and direct investment opportunities in Europe, North America, and APAC. With a unique database, machine learning and a team of experts, the company provides targeted, curated and actionable connections, whilst maintaining complete confidentiality throughout the process.

“Finquest has profiled 53 million small and mid-market private companies in North America, Europe and APAC. This unique data is constantly enriched by leveraging the power of AI, and enables to serve very demanding clients, for whom finding the right acquisition targets is critical to their success. Clients rate our performance 9.3 out of 10 on average.” says Jérôme Pinneau, Co-founder & Chief Information Officer of the company, heading the Luxembourg office team.

Hi Jérôme, can you please share about your experience as co-founder at the Head of the Luxembourg office?

I had previously founded other start-up projects as a sole founder. Finquest represented my first experience as a co-founder and I definitely saw the benefits of having partners. We are three co-founders active in the company with complementary skills and in charge of different areas of the company: Tanguy Lesselin, the CEO, is based in Singapore; Gerard Belicha, Chief Revenue Officer is based in Hong Kong; and I, as the Chief Information Officer, am based in Luxembourg.

I found it interesting and unusual that the three of us are so distant… This forced us to design an organization that was global in nature since the very beginning of the project. This now serves us well for the next stage of development.

Overall, managing and growing a start-up is very demanding and intense, everything goes ten times faster. I am glad we are able as co-founders to divide responsibilities, smooth out the complexities and still decide together with our combined experience. It definitely helps reduce mental stress and psychological pressure.

My advice to entrepreneurs is to find co-founders who have complementary skills, involve high-level board members early in the life of the company, and think international from the very beginning.

The Luxembourg office is specifically in charge of the research and development activities and of the intellectual property of the company.

Luxembourg is at a crossroad between France, Belgium, and Germany, with a favourable ecosystem for entrepreneurs, political stability, and laws that allow a smooth start of the business and employees management. We decided to create the R&D team here because of the international culture and incredible business infrastructure. This helped a lot with the integration and coordination with the other offices and 22 nationalities we now have on the team globally.

How was the incubator useful?

We started the business very quickly with a full team in Luxembourg, and we needed a workspace. Thanks to Technoport and its flexibility, we have been able to set-up our operations very quickly and access relevant networks and partners within the Luxembourg ecosystem. It was important for us to find a partner that understands the realities that a startup venture faces at the different stages of development. We were thus able to easily grow along with our business development, which was perfect for us.

We found a great work environment. This helped us in our recruitment process as it perfectly reflects the spirit of our company. Great like-minded entrepreneurs and facilities that constitute a unique set-up to attract potential new employees. So, I would definitely recommend to any tech entrepreneurs to use an incubator, if they can, to launch and develop their ventures.

How did investments and M&A change with the Covid-19 crisis?

The Covid-19 crisis put the M&A market on hold for a few months. Private Equity were monitoring the urgencies and cash situation of their portfolio companies, and corporates were on a wait and see attitude. Everyone was wondering how things would evolve and which sectors would benefit or suffer from the crisis. Things started to pick up again during and after the summer, and now the M&A market is very active. The Covid-19 has accelerated some trends, like the search for digital assets, or rejuvenated others like logistics and e-commerce. The increased weight of the tech sector is very noticeable.


This article is brought to you by Technoport and reflects only the opinion of the author.

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