Dušan Stojanović

Dušan Stefan Stojanović (born July 23, 1969, Borås, Sweden) is a Swedish entrepreneur, super angel investor, founder of True Global Ventures,^[1] Keynote Speaker,^[2] based in Singapore.^[3] He has done 18 investments mainly in fintech (including payments).^[4] Out of these 18 investments, he had 7 exits and no investment has closed down.^[5]

Investments

In 2009, he was nominated as one of Europe's top 5 Angels, and in 2013, he was awarded the Business Angel of the year in Europe by EBAN^[6] after having three positive exits in a single week, something which was previously unheard of.^[5]

At the end of 2010, he founded True Global Ventures 1 and in 2013 True Global Ventures 2. True Global Ventures 3 was founded at the end of 2015^[7][8] and he is its single largest shareholder. True Global Ventures is an investment vehicle consisting of exclusively serial entrepreneurs investing exclusively in serial entrepreneurs based in New York, Silicon Valley, Beijing, Singapore, Hong Kong, London, Stockholm, Berlin and Paris within Fintech (including payments).^[9][10]

Some of Dušan’s investments prior to True Global Ventures include Prowebece, Dibs and Payson. At True Global Ventures, some of these include Sharespost, goSwiff, Customermatrix and Opentopic.^[8][10]

Dušan’s investing style can sometimes be viewed as controversial, since it demands each partner to be active instead of being a “passive investor”. He only accepts investors who have done an exit themselves as entrepreneurs and have done at least two angel investments. Most partners have done about 20 investments. As opposed to the traditional VC model, he believes that 32 partners focused on a couple of investments per year is of better help for ambitious entrepreneurs and ultimately drives higher returns.^[1][4][10]

Personal

Dušan has also contributed to a number of different organizations and entrepreneurs through donations.

After his 3 exits in 2012, he donated a portion of his proceeds to save the last Tesla Lab, the Tesla Science Centre on Long Island, New York State.^[11][11][12]

He is also did a smaller donation to the Tesla Statue in Palo Alto.^[13] As a distant relative to Nikola Tesla, Dusan is a strong supporter of all things Tesla.^[4]

In 2015, he had one major exit and some partial exits,^[4] One was Prowebce which was sold to Edenred in May. One of the partial exits was when SharesPost sold its interest in NASDAQ Private Market to Nasdaq, Inc.

Using the proceeds from the Prowebce's exit, he made three more donations which include recognising and rewarding female entrepreneurs ^[14] and Nikola Tesla inspired innovations on 10 July 2015, to mark the 159th anniversary of Tesla’s birthday.^[15]

The 3 recipients of his female entrepreneur donations (a total of USD$35,000) were:

Elsa Dsilva from Mumbai, India with Safecity - a company which aims to stop sexual harassment in India through the use of data and technology. Adrianna Tan from Singapore, with Wobe, which plans to give women social recognition in Indonesia by empowering them to gain $5 a day. Patricia Compas-Markman from San Francisco with DayOne Response, which develops and supplies innovative solutions for disaster relief.^[16]

The 4 recipients of his Nikola Tesla inspired innovations (a total of USD$39,000) were:

Shawn Mastrian from Austin, Texas with Darkside Scientific, which produces "paint" that gives "light" to different objects. Aaron Rowley from San Francisco with Electroloom for his new and fabric process which consumes almost zero energy. Ghazaleh Koohestanian from Berlin with Re2you for her innovative solutions in solving Google and Apple compatibility issues. Joseph Sikorski from New York for his Nikola Tesla Documentary, Tower To The People.^[16]

In 2016, realizing that a typical refugee coming into Sweden takes an average of 7 years to get a job - which is a long time to generate revenues and a potential breakeven point - Dusan made a donation to Niss-Jonas Carlsson's Språkkraft to fix the problem. Språkkraft, a Swedish language mobile application aimed to integrate refugees smoothly into Sweden by equipping them with Swedish language skills and a social network which they can tap into, thus improving their ability to find a job.

Dušan finished High School at Sigrid Rudebeck Gymnasium, in Göteborg, Sweden and finished an International Business Degree at Gothenburg University and Commercial Law in 1994. He also finished the two year GE internal Financial Management Programme in 1997.^[4]

References