Before he became one of the few Black fund managers in the EU, Fabrice do Rego had quite a long career in finance. He started off with Lehman Brothers, before moving to stints at Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse, and eventually founding M&A advisory firm Valmeon Corporate Finance.
But during all his years analyzing M&A deals and corporations, do Rego rarely saw people who looked like him in that industry. That realization, he tells me, inspired him to start The Blueprint VC with Ibrahim Ouassari to back founders from under-represented backgrounds in France and Belgium.
For do Rego, the logic behind launching The Blueprint is simple: Mixed teams with diverse backgrounds are known to perform well, yet capital allocation to such teams is still low. “There’s a lot of money being left on the table,” he said. So, he decided, literally, to go get that money.
Launched in December 2021, The Blueprint started raising a €25 million fun …
