"I can judge founders with a migration background better"

The investor quickly makes her guests a cup of coffee herself and leads them to the meeting room. The table is a mess, full of laptops, cell phones and papers. She apologizes, I haven't come to tidy up yet, the meeting with the founders, that took a little longer. "They were impressive," she sighs. "Really, so great!"

For two years, Hana Besbes has been an investment manager at the Berlin healthtech VC Heal Capital, a fund with an investment volume of more than 100 million euros, which comes from over 20 private health insurers. Bebes pays particular attention to women's health.

The investor is a career changer, she studied electrical engineering. And that's not the only reason why the 35-year-old is out of the ordinary and blows up the image of the typical VC employee who - sad but true - is all too often a white man around 40 years old. Besbes therefore confidently describes herself as a pioneer of a new type of investor – she calls it “responsible investors”.

As approachable as Hana Besbes seems, when she quickly tries to clean up the mess on the table, but then lets it go and sits down with a big smile and alert eyes, you can't shake the suspicion that you're dealing with a high performer has to do. And when she talks about her professional life a little later and says sentences like "I was often the smartest in the room", you believe her. Immediately.

But with a quick, emphatic shake of the head, Besbes adds, "It's only appealing for a while. In the long run it is demotivating.”

Besbes, who was born in Tunisia, arrived in Hanover at the age of 19. She received a scholarship and is allowed to study in Germany, but first she has to learn German. "When I sat alone with my suitcase in the dorm, I cried. I realized: Now you are completely on your own! That thought was very frightening.”

But she doesn't allow herself to be scared for long. After all, she arrived here with a mission: “I wanted to change my reality.” Her reality in Tunisia would not have given her many opportunities as a girl from a humble background.

But she wants more, goes to Munich, studies at the Technical University, does internships as an electrical engineer at Siemens, BMW and Allianz. She dreams of becoming a professor, but then realizes that wanting to change something from an elitist point of view has little effect.

The advertisement for a workshop for engineers at the management consultancy Roland Berger appeals to her: It sounds like changing the world and initiating something big. She logs in.

"I had no idea what to expect there," she says. What management consultants do? Didn't she know. She tries it out - and is thrilled. But Roland Berger canceled her after the workshop. Too inexperienced. Not a born consultant.

Frustrated, but not ready to give up, she starts a kind of self-study to become a consultant. In 2014 she applied to the equally renowned Boston Consulting Group – and was accepted. The beginning there was tough. "I was regularly the last one left in the office working on any slide decks."

Two years later, BCG is looking for someone who speaks Arabic for a major mobility project in Saudi Arabia. "At first I refused. As a woman to Saudi Arabia?” You know how few women are considered there.

“I want to have a voice and be heard. I want to change something - and not be told what to do. Like women in Saudi Arabia, I imagine,” she says. She wants to be independent and autonomous, just like young women in Germany live.

She is aware that this is not the reality of young women in Tunisia. She calls it the “cultural heritage” that she carries and with which she always struggles: “In Germany I am the independent woman. As a Tunisian, I am skeptical about women like that.”

In her experience, people with a migration background share this inner conflict. "It doesn't matter what country or culture you come from," she says. She is therefore often better at assessing founders with a migration background than her colleagues.

"As a junior in consulting, I didn't really have a choice. They sent me, I left.” However, when she started the project in Saudi Arabia, she quickly became enthusiastic. She could really move something here. Everything that Besbes develops here is “from scratch”, as she says: “Back then, 90 percent of Saudi Arabia’s gross domestic product consisted of petrochemical revenues.

There was no strong private sector, just one industry: oil. Until the new crown prince came.” Saudi Arabia is considered a G-20 country in terms of GDP. But the infrastructure and other economic and industrial performance was not comparable to other G-20 countries at the time. The crown prince wanted to change that.

After a few projects as a consultant in different areas, Besbes dedicates herself to the local health sector. Whose status quo? Rather rudimentary. Many chronically ill, no security of supply. Again: everything from scratch. She has been working in Saudi Arabia for four years.

But then comes the pandemic. everything stops. Even the committed consultant is suddenly forced to stop. And out of the silence, as with many other people around the world, a crisis of meaning arises: Something was missing, she says, suddenly didn't feel right anymore.

"It was the first time in my life that I asked myself the specific question: 'If I could do anything in the world - how, where and with whom would I want to get involved and share my passion?'"

At the end of the crisis there is one realization: your mission to change realities continues. Healthcare won't let her go. Will continue to get involved here. But not only in Saudi Arabia. Worldwide.

In Saudi Arabia, changes had been initiated from the very top, by the crown prince. In Germany, for example, change has to happen "bottom up," says Besbes. This is how the Tunisian discovered the start-up scene for herself.

During her time in Dubai she made some initial angel investments. She asks herself why not do it professionally. "Everyone told me that without experience I have no chance of getting into the VC business," she recalls. All - except for Eckhardt Weber.

The co-founder of the company builder Heartbeat Labs and founder of the health fund Heal Capital gives her a chance - precisely because of her lack of experience as a venture capitalist.

Weber's claim, says Besbes, is to take a fresh approach to the investment business, to be a completely new breed of investor. That sounds great to her ears, but at first she doesn't really dare. She tried to appear as consistent and number-driven as she imagined a cliche investor to be.

In the end, she didn't feel comfortable with this role-playing game, so Besbes didn't want to tackle the job. Her boss always encourages her to be "her own version of an investor".

Actually, she always looks at the founders first - and then at their pitch deck. Of course, her job is about making a profit. Putting money into companies that make more money out of it. Hana Besbes doesn't want to change that at all.

Still, she believes investors shouldn't focus solely on the numbers on the pitch deck. "Human, honest and prudent" she wants to be, says Hana Besbes. This is how a whole new generation of investors should be.

In the end also because it pays off: "I am convinced that we as investors can move not only ten, but a hundred times more in this way."

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