Miguel Encarnacion is the Managing Partner of Unifier Ventures, an early-stage VC fund bridging Europe and Southeast Asia. 

The firm recently announced the first close of their most recent fund, check out BackScoop’s coverage here. 

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👋🏼 How would you explain your job to someone outside tech?

I meet with 1K companies per year and decide which 10 of them I will support with capital, intros, advice, sweat, and tears for the next 10 years. 

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🧐 What's something about you or your job that would surprise us?

As the Managing Partner of a micro fund, my day-to-day looks more like a startup founder than a fund manager. 

There’s a lot of experimentation, process optimization, playbook building, administrative firefighting, and even fundraising!

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🏆 What has been the biggest highlight of your career so far?

When I decided to become a full-time VC, one of my dreams was to find solutions that could help win the war for talent, uncover untapped pools of talent, and minimize bias in the hiring process. 

I was finally able to find a company doing all of that with my previous fund, where I led the Series A of X0pa, a Singaporean HR tech company that has been building AI for the last 6 years on tens of millions of anonymized profiles from the founder's 20 years in recruitment. 

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🔍 What's a startup trend or space you're watching this year?‍

In the last 6 months, our fund did a deep dive into healthtech because of all the antiquated practices that were exposed during the lockdowns of the last few years. 

Our most recent investment was into Ovom Care, a German startup that is democratizing fertility by using tech to digitize the patient journey, more data to personalize recommendations, and AI to increase success rates.

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💼 What advice would you give someone starting out in your industry? 

Join angel syndicates and put your money where your mouth is. After 20 cheques of even $1K each, you will become much better at your job of being a VC. 

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🗣 What's one thing you can keep talking about for hours? 

I'm super interested in anthropological and psychological topics. I love to hear about the macro and micro of being human, especially cultural nuances, their origins, and modern-day manifestations in individuals. 

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So yes, the talking I'm doing in this regard is mostly asking questions!

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🎥 What's your favorite movie/TV show? 

Pursuit of Happyness.

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🍨 What's your go-to ice cream flavor?‍

Cookie dough!

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FYI. We've edited this interview for clarity.