After years of acting as a Strategic Advisor for the Group, Peter Gajdoš has recently joined IPM as the Head of Venture Capital. With 12 years of experience in both venture and private equity, Peter is one of the most successful VC investors from the CEE region, overseeing 8 IPOs in 6 years. IPM is pleased to welcome Peter on board.
While being responsible for IPM’s overall VC strategy, Peter Gajdoš will also continue fulfilling his remaining responsibilities as Managing Director and Portfolio Manager at Presidio Partners, a multi-sector, deep technology-focused VC fund investing in IT, life sciences, energy and materials. Presidio returned over US$800m in cash to Limited Partners in six years and had eight IPOs with Peter’s direct involvement in five of them.
Thanks to Peter, IPM has access to projects such as ESS or Wildcat and their technologies, which are now being transferred to Europe as part of InoBat project. This will not only help IPM to transform the European and Slovak economy from production to knowledge, but also to attract talent from abroad.
“After 12 years of focusing on primarily on London and Silicon Valley venture capital, I am delighted to join an organisation which helps bringing Danube Valley start-ups to the U.S. markets and, vice versa, help U.S. technologies and EU entrepreneurs active in the U.S. come back to Europe. I am looking forward to leading the efforts from our San Francisco office,” comments Peter Gajdoš.
Previously, Peter Gajdoš worked with SilverLake Kraftwerk and with Warburg Pincus focusing on energy and technology investments. Peter also worked as an Associate at Virgin Green Fund, a private equity fund backed by Sir Richard Branson that provides growth and scale-up capital to companies operating in the renewables and efficiency sectors optimizing natural resources in North America, Europe and Israel. Prior to working at Virgin Green Fund, Peter worked in New York as an investment banker at J.P. Morgan.
“My perception of risk totally changed when I joined Virgin Green Fund in 2007 as a naïve 24-year old fresh out of Wall Street. I was thinking we were doing all these risky, difficult energy investments at Virgin Green Fund. Well, right next to us were people from Virgin Galactic, walking barefoot around the office, and literally trying to shoot people into space on a ballistic missile launched from a flying mothership. Doing a new battery technology or a new waste facility did not sound that unachievable anymore. Risk is OK and, in fact, desirable – as long as there is a decent chance of an outsized reward for it.”
Peter is an experienced board member, having sat on boards of several companies including Serenova, Corsair Pharma, CNano Technology (sold to Chinese strategic), Arcadia Biosciences (IPO: NASDAQ: RKDA), Reel Solar (acquired by a Chinese strategic), ESS Inc. (Observer), Wildcat Discovery Technologies (Observer), Exela Pharma Sciences (Observer), NeuroRecovery Technologies (Observer), Auspex Pharmaceuticals (Former Observer – IPO: NASDAQ: ASPX and later acquired by Teva for $3.5bn), Ardelyx (Former Observer – IPO: NASDAQ: ARDX), Neos Therapeutics (Former Observer – IPO: NASDAQ: NEOS), SurgiQuest (Former Observer – acquired by ConMed for $265m) and Menlo Therapeutics (Former Observer – IPO: NASDAQ: MNLO).
Peter holds an MBA from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and a BS in Business Administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.