#523 with GEORGIOS MARKAKIS from VENERO CAPITAL ADVISORS
·31 min·2 clips
Georgios Markakis reveals why HR tech went from boring to a multi-billion dollar investment magnet.
1. SAATKORN host Gero Hesse interviews Georgios Markakis, managing partner at Venero Capital Advisors, in the first investment-focused episode of the podcast series.
2. Georgios Markakis grew up in Greece, spent 15 years in the US working at Merrill Lynch and KPMG, then moved to London and Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank, before co-founding Venero Capital Advisors around 2016.
3. The episode's core thesis is that HR tech investment is in a stable consolidation phase driven by AI, with larger individual deal sizes masking flat deal volume, and that AI will ultimately permeate all products rather than constitute a separate category.
4. Venero has a 12-person team across the UK, France, and North America, runs mandates globally across all HR tech and work tech segments, and targets deals from the low tens of millions to a couple hundred million.
5. Recent Venero deals include WCC (Netherlands, sold to Software Combined for recruitment analytics), NeoCase (France, sold to Sopra), Outly (Mexico, workforce management for frontline workers, sold to iSIMS), and LifeHire (Australia, direct hiring, sold to HumanForce and AKKR).
6. Markakis describes the HR tech investment cycle as peaking pre-COVID and shortly after with the remote-work wave, then entering a correction phase, and now being re-energised by AI from around 2023.
7. Venero's Q4 data, shared ahead of publication, shows 3.4 billion invested across 169 deals — in line historically with 160-170 deals per quarter, but with average ticket size rising from 19 million in Q3 to over 28 million.
8. Markakis forecasts 2026 as another stable year rather than a breakout, citing weak permanent hiring in Hays' quarterly report and the lag of several quarters between interest rate cuts and economic recovery.
9. On the Europe versus US question, Markakis says the US is clearly leading in adoption, budget sizes, and enterprise scale, while Europe lags in part due to data protection regulation and the AI Act reducing implementation speed.
10. On talent acquisition's persistent lead in funding rounds, Markakis attributes it to the problem being perpetually unsolved, the lower barrier to launching a company in the space, and continued M&A consolidation within it.
11. He notes the irony that talent acquisition attracts the most funding while acquirers are wary of exposure to its cyclicality, yet consolidation in the space continues regardless.
12. On the HR suite versus best-of-breed debate, Markakis says the answer depends on company size: enterprises favour suites for cost and manageability; SMBs favour point solutions; and some categories such as learning management systems naturally resist integration.
13. He uses GPS as an analogy for AI: GPS went from standalone device to embedded car system to phone feature, and AI will follow the same path — permeating all HR products rather than remaining a distinct company or product category.
14. Markakis identifies vertical solutions (healthcare, government, frontline), workforce management for historically underserved segments, and passive employee listening and signal analytics as the most active current deal areas.
15. On government as a market, he highlights NeoGo's recent acquisition as an example of the opportunity in helping governments transition from licensed on-premise systems to SaaS.
16. Gero adds that Embrace, a SAATKORN business targeting apprenticeships in Germany, sees government clients as slow to acquire but highly sticky once secured.
17. Markakis summarises his own motivation as helping founders determine the right strategic next step for their business — articulated on his LinkedIn profile as 'helping tech founders achieve exceptional exits.'
18. The interview is conducted in fluent conversational English between two well-networked professionals in the HR tech ecosystem, with references to the Unleash Paris conference and previous meetings at that event.
19. HR tech startup founders, investors, corporate venture teams, and HR technology buyers monitoring the M&A and investment landscape will find Markakis's data and segment-level read-outs directly relevant.
20. Listeners outside the HR tech investment or vendor community, or those seeking deep dives into specific products or technical implementations, are unlikely to find sufficient specificity here.
