Investing like Frank Thelen, private investors can also do that in the future with the equity funds of the celebrity investor. However, the offer is unlikely to be the right one for many.
His role in the founders’ show “Die Höhle der Löwen” made Frank Thelen one of the country’s most famous investor faces. Now the serial entrepreneur and investor also wants to encourage others to invest according to his philosophy.
Together with a full-time investment team, Thelen is launching its own fund “10xDNA – Disruptive Innovation” this Wednesday. Private and institutional investors can put their money into tech stocks that Thelen and his team have selected. In addition to Thelen, the team included experts in biotechnology, physics and chemistry, according to the announcement. The former McKinsey partner Jens Giersberg is the managing director.
Risky investment approach
The fund should concentrate on companies with great innovation and disruption potential – and ideally, of course, identify the next Google, Apple or Facebook at an early stage. “Our world will change more in the next ten years due to technologies such as artificial intelligence, 3D printing and robots than in the last 100 years,” says Thelen. “These changes will lead to massive shifts in value on the markets. The 10xDNA fund offers investors the opportunity to participate in this change and to reflect innovation in their own portfolio.”
The fund is issued by the service provider Axxion, Comdirect acts as a premium partner. Private investors can invest with no minimum amount, institutional investors from 200,000 euros. The annual management fee is 1.8 percent, additional costs may arise. The fund should contain a maximum of 30 individual positions, Thelen told the Handelsblatt. The aim is to triple the value over four to eight years.
However, the Thelen fund is probably not the right choice for small investors who are not prepared to take risks. Because great opportunities always mean a high risk of failure. Of course, nobody can say whether the Thelen team will actually bet on the right horses. In any case, consumer advocates advise laypeople not to actively manage funds, as is the case with Thelen, and also not to use a few individual stocks. Instead, they recommend ETFs on broad indices, which are less volatile and have lower fees.
At the age of 45, Thelen has already had an eventful life as an entrepreneur and investor. At a young age he went bankrupt with his own company, re-founded and sold an online photo service to Fujifilm in 2008 for a lot of money. He is known to a wide audience from the TV show “Die Höhle der Löwen”, where he appeared as an investor between 2014 and 2020. Via his venture capital company Freigeist, he also invests in technology-driven start-ups outside of television.
Jane Stock is a technology author, who has written for 24 Hours World. She writes about the latest in technology news and trends, and is always on the lookout for new and innovative ways to improve his audience’s experience.
