Business career
Klippgen has been a company founder and investor since the early days of the Internet.[2] He founded Zoomit.com in 1997 with Per Siljubergsåsen. In 2000, Zoomit.com merged with Kelkoo to become a leading shopping comparison search engine and Europe's third-largest e-commerce site. Kelkoo was acquired by Yahoo! Inc in 2004.[3][8] Before starting his own company, he worked as a core tech engineer with U.S. search company Excite.com.[2][8] He became an angel investor in Singapore in 2004 after he sold Kelkoo.com to Yahoo!.[2]
In 2003, Klippgen founded early-stage investment company Tigris Capital. He was one of the first investors in PropertyGuru in 2008.[2] In 2010, Tigris Capital was given the award for Best Performing VC/PE backed company by the Singapore Venture Capital Association for its successful investment in PropertyGuru.com. He also co-founded Singapore seed investment fund BAF Spectrum in 2006, which primarily invested in tech startups across Asia in a co-funding partnership with SPRING Singapore (a statutory board under the Ministry of Trade and Industry in Singapore). Klippgen's equity stakes have typically been between 5 and 20%.[2]
In 2015, along with Deepak Shahdadpuri, Klippgen co-founded InseadAlum Ventures (IAV) that provides seed investments to startups founded by INSEAD alumni.[9][10][11]
In 2016, he teamed up with UK angel investor Michael Robert Blakey to launch Cocoon Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm targeting Southeast Asian enterprise tech startups within the e-commerce, SaaS, fintech and deep tech verticals. The firm has so far raised three main funds managing an AUM of more than USD 90m.[12][13][14][15][16]
In March 2019, Klippgen joined the Advisory Board of VNX Exchange, a Luxembourg-based secondary share platform.[17] He serves or has served on the boards of Tickled Media (theAsianparent.com), Anafore (ReferralCandy.com),[18] Mozat, Progeniq,[19][20] Luxe Nomad (theLuxeNomad.com),[21] Poundit Global,[22] Lendela[23] and Augmentus.
He has been a columnist with Singapore Business Review[24] and has also been a director of Business Angel Network of Southeast Asia (BANSEA).[25] He holds a US patent on user identification and authentication.[26]
