At Face Value

From Equations to Exposure 

It isn’t surprising that Alessandra Agnello, Director at ACE Ventures, describes Venture Capital as picking out gems out of a pile of rocks- after all, her background in commodity trading makes her trained in spotting valuable raw materials that are then made to be profitable. It’s also not surprising that she follows up with calling her investments bets- her career has been a series of making hard decisions without knowing a predictable outcome. 

What is more surprising is the jump from a career in crude oil trading to a director of one of the most successful VC firms in Switzerland. Agnello used to be far more interested in the technical side of things: She graduated from the Politecnico di Torino with a Masters in Energy and Nuclear engineering. Physics drew her in because it was hard. “I wanted to do something difficult,” she says, and the habit stuck: think in first principles in places where challenging the status quo is rare, break into hard-to-enter industries, move countries with a little more than a suitcase, do the unglamorous math. 

After that, the expectation of stepping into the footsteps of her family and becoming an academic led her to the pursuit of a PhD in Beijing. But that was the first time that Agnello learned about cutting your losses as fast as you realize you have incurred one: After not even a year of her PhD studies, she moved back to Europe, realizing the academic world wasn’t for her. One of her friends nudged her towards commodity trading: a field that was looking for young, hungry and fiercely motivated just like Agnello. “Even though I did not have a financial background, I networked my way into the commodity trading industry and ended up in Switzerland, working across oil trading businesses in Zug and Geneva. By the end of 2020, in the midst of COVID, I began to rethink my career. I wanted to do something more purposeful with it. That shift – from the short-termism of trading to investing in technologies promising to reshape the world over the long term – it’s all about purpose. That is when I came across venture capital for the first time – I was hooked.” 

Big Bets on Big Business

Agnello’s path into the venture industry symbolizes the values and attributes she stands for even today: Risk, reward, and conviction. “In my previous career in trading, business was always about making calculated bets where the risk of losing significant sums of money was real. You have to be comfortable with losses, because as long as your gains outweigh what you lose, the bet ultimately pays off.” 

The trader turned investor says her time in commodities taught her to be creative: “Trading isn’t a static, excel-filling job- you constantly need to come up with new ways to make money.” And that is where belief in your decision comes into play: “When you’re taking big risks with large amounts of capital, you need to have conviction. Conviction is not stubbornness; it’s willingness to hold and defend a view until the evidence changes.”  

Doubling down and losing fast

Her two real life examples of these two sides of the coin- cutting losses and doubling down- paid off: Quitting her PhD when the path no longer fit and ending a prestigious Banking and Finance degree when offered her dream position in the trading industry. “I was so utterly convinced that I needed a finance degree to become a trader. So, I did everything to get into a finance master program, even got a scholarship, and then, 6 months in, I got my dream job offer.” Even though Agnello already invested significant time and energy into her degree, she got a signal from a different direction and followed her instinct. “Cut your losses fast,” she says. “Then commit hard where the upside is real.” 

This translated well into her role at ACE ventures. Joining the VC firm as an analyst meant taking a pay cut, but Agnello doubled down. Within four years, she became a director at ACE and earlier this year she spearheaded the effort to open the new Zurich office. 

“You’ll never be right all the time – mistakes are part of the journey. What matters is having the guts to go all in on the right calls and turn them into big wins. And when you realize you’re headed down the wrong path – cut your losses quickly.” This approach not only defines her investment philosophy, but also defines the way she evaluates founders. 

According to Agnello, the most intriguing founders to her, are those who possess unwavering conviction in their mission. Yet, they also demonstrate flexibility – the willingness to take decisions very quickly when evidence indicate that a change is necessary. 

The Evangelist 

Agnello has many proven skills that she has built over her career. From technical number crunching to making bets that pay off, she has proven herself across the board. But the one skill that makes her stand out is her ability to convince people. “I can build trust quickly,” she says. “You need to be an evangelist in this job: Convince founders to take your capital, convince LPs to back you, convince talent to join.” It’s also the thing she urges many Swiss founders to practice more intentionally: selling the mission- product, company, and self- with conviction and direction.  

Two other traits that has brought Agnello to where she is today are her endurance and her resilience- again, traits she also looks for in the founders she invests in. 

Seeking the Scarred 

Today, investing from the “ACE Swiss Tech Outliers” fund, Agnello hunts for a specific profile. She isn’t looking for shiny, perfect resumes. She is looking for friction. 

When asked what an outlier is and how she spots them she notes: “An outlier is someone outside the normal band of people. The truth is that most people will never do anything extraordinary in their life- and that is by definition, right?” she notes. “Outliers strive to create something extraordinary. They often come from a formative, perhaps even traumatic experience that scarred them. It’s almost like they get so angry at the world that they need to prove themselves, that their trauma, their inner world doesn’t define them. They become obsessed.” 

She seeks founders with an unhealthy level of obsession and the endurance to survive the inevitable pain of building a company. “Things can go badly throughout this journey,” she says. “You need that intrinsic motivation, or you’re just going to drop the mic.” 

If you want to find out which extraordinary founders Agnello and her fund has backed, check out part 2 of our series: Backed to the Future.