Financial industry is experimenting big changes that are going to impact the other industries, and the early adoption of new trends on technologies can make a difference.
Angela Alvarez, is the CEO and Founder of Aglaia Capital, an innovative Corporate Finance for asset backed transactions and Venture Capital business, which incorporates her unique ideologies and exceptional approach combining the knowledge and discipline of Investment banking industry with the strengths of a technological business oriented. Aglaia Capital come up from her aim to adapt the industries where she has developed her professional career, corporate finance, M&A, investment banking, and financial services, with the new technologies, anticipating the needs of clients and including her vision of the industry in short term.
She believes that Technologies will do their best for improving efficiency and more than in other times, innovation or any human quality such as creativity, imagination and passion will make the difference.
In an interview with CIO Look, emphasizes on her journey as well as her contribution on the adoption of the new trends in digitalization and her vision on the industry and what are her and the approach of her company to the ever- evolving business sector.
CIO Look admire such leaders and feels pride in featuring Angela Alvarez—CEO & Founder of Aglaia Capital, in its special edition, “Elite League of Innovative Entrepreneurs, 2019-Vol 2”.
Below are the highlights of the interview:
Kindly take us through your journey on becoming a proficient leader.
The challenges and situations that I’ve had to face in my life, having my own vision and opinions, and fighting for things that I believe in, people that had helped me, and people that I’ve helped, have shaped my vital growth as a person without losing my essence. I’ve enjoyed diversity, challenges, new situations and problem solving, and going out the comfort zone which makes my journey richest.
I think that a good dose of authenticity, passion, ambition, honesty, courage, generosity, resilience, curiosity, appetite for knowledge, and vision have been good companions on my personal and professional journey, together with that inner impulse to start again in the fails, being calm in the celebration of success, and a desire of doing better every day, and making an impact to make a better world.
How do you diversify your organization’s offerings to appeal the target audience?
Aglaia Capital come up from the aim to adapt the industries where I have developed my professional career, corporate finance, M&A, investment banking, and financial services, with the new technologies, anticipating the needs of clients and including my vision of the industry in short term.
It has three main areas. One focus on advisory Corporate Finance, M&A and Private Equity, focus on selected niche funds and investors, off market deals, oriented to be a trusted partner for investing, mainly in Europe, and selectively in Latin America and Asia, specialized in Financing structures, Hotels, Real Estate, Fintech, Blockchain, and Digital Assets. The Venture Capital, in alliance with Scheme Investments, focus on Distributed Ledger technologies at early stage, and Aglaia Capital Club, an Investment Club, with services for Investors and Family offices.
Aglaia Capital is one stop shop for investments on the sectors that we are currently covering, creating an ecosystem where the business is the center, and clients and ourselves are around that in a context where any of us can take advantage of it.
We advise our clients on investments according to their strategies, on our corporate finance business, but they can be also partners investing in our venture capital for DLT, or also being a member of our Investors Club, where they can take advantage of the knowledge and services the affiliated companies of Aglaia Capital as well as do co-investments, or having access to other type of services that they may need for making investments.
What are the basic but crucial traits that every innovative entrepreneur must possess?
In a new world where technology, automation and artificial intelligence will do most of the tasks, creativity is the new productivity. Machines and algorithms will do their best for improving efficiency and more than in other times, any human quality such as creativity, imagination and passion will make the difference. They will be the drivers of new improvements and discoveries on how create new ways of doing things in order to enhance people’s lives or to enrich our society.
Beside those I think that also courage, confidence, resilience, knowledge-seeking, curiosity, flexibility, character, determination, and sense of humor are traits that every innovative entrepreneur must posses. The ability to perceive patterns with some random data, and be willing to imagine or predict what would be next, having a paradoxical thinking, so the ability of seeing the world with an umbrella of possibilities even they may be contradictory, and still be willing to function, and make conclusions, I think that are valuable traits in any creative process.
How do you cope up with volatile technological trends to boost your personal growth?
We are living fascinating times where it is happening a new industrial revolution shaped by artificial intelligence, interconectivity, and digitalization. I am usually keen in following any technological developments, which is also on the Ethos of Aglaia Capital. I believe that these new technologies will improve the quality of life of the society providing us with more time to spend in developing more human tasks if we take the most of them.
On specific technological fields, I am active in Fintech, fund raising in Tech startups, Artificial Intelligence, as well as in the Venture Fund for investing in Distributed Ledger Technologies companies in early stage, and in a blockchain crypto P2P project. I think that Technology and Human Sciences can go together so we can face this new technological world without losing humanity, and those can be used as a tool also to analyze some of the ethical issues that technology can bring nowadays in many fields.
What are your future endeavors/objectives and where do you see yourself in the near future?
My future objectives are continuing developing and consolidating Aglaia Capital, that have founded some months ago.
I see myself in the near future, thriving, contributing in sustainability and impact investments, and in transforming my industry. I believe in doing business based on balance and win-win situations. I am passionate about cooperation business models, and in businesses and transactions where there are companies or groups of interests exchanging or cooperating to achieve the best alternative for their mutual success.
As a leading innovative corporate finance and technology venture capital entrepreneur sector, what is your contribution in its evolution?
Aglaia Capital is a new generation of corporate finance business combining the knowledge, the traditional discipline of an investment banking business and the strengths of a technology oriented business. All the three line of business are around the essence of the corporate finance business in the sectors where we operate, mainly in Hotels and any asset backed transactions and financing, but also if the client is searching for a new way of conceiving investments such as access to tokenisations, or investing in digital assets, it is already included in our offering considering the current adoption and market size.
The Venture Capital focus on DLT and Blockchain aims to participate on the transformation on the financial industry, and also to give access to this type of technologies to other investors through direct investments in the fund, or through being a member of Aglaia Capital Club.
Changes in the industry are happening very quickly, and I would like to provide access to families offices, some also owning big corporations, to a place where they can understand better the digitalization, artificial intelligence, inter-connectivity as well as participate in the transformation on the industries by investing also in these sector where there are some entry who don’t have teams specialized on those.
Financial Services seems the first core industry where changes would impact sooner, impacting later to other industries, so that is why have been focus firstly on the Financial industry in our Venture Capital business, apart from being the one that I know the better.
What would you like to advice to the budding entrepreneurs in various organizations?
Every long journey starts with a single one step. Big organizations started also one day with one entrepreneur, one vision, which attracted others who joined them. It inspires me, and make me proud to see the courage and resilience also of other entrepreneurs following their dreams and pioneering the industries. Innovation is on the essence of entrepreneurship which I think that should goes together along the company in all the stages of the corporates. Passion as well as creativity are human traits that Technology does not replace, and I think that will make the difference in the future.
