Apr 7, 2023 · 1h 10m · news
Rob Lacher: How I Scaled to $600M AUM; Hiring Tips for VCs; Venture Capital in Europe vs USA | E999 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of 20VC, host Harry Stebbings interviews Rob Lacher, Founding Partner of Visionaries Club, detailing his journey in venture capital, his unconventional hiring philosophies, and the unique strategic leverage of connecting European industrial family businesses with B2B tech startups.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Harry holds 30.1% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Harry as informed peer 5.3 Guest teaching 3.9 Guest disagreement 2.1 Harry pushing back 4.7
speaking balance: gold is Harry, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 30:26 Disagreement on European Series A Competition
Rob explicitly rejects Harry's premise that European founders only have three top-tier Series A options, arguing that US funds entering Europe have dramatically altered the landscape.
Hardest push from Harry ▶ 54:28 Challenge on European Family Office LPsHarry directly refuses Rob's positive framing of European family offices, bluntly describing them as slow, difficult to educate, and inefficient compared to US institutional investors.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 33:45 Signaling Risk Breakdown of US Seed ChecksRob educates Harry on the structural dangers founders face when accepting seed checks from US multi-stage funds, walking through how non-preempted Series A rounds create negative market signaling.
Harry holds his own ▶ 40:37 DPI Pressure and Secondary MisalignmentHarry demonstrates detailed market expertise on fund mechanics, detailing how LPs' demand for DPI forces VCs into secondary conflicts with founders.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Harry as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Harry pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hook: The Power of European Family Businesses | 2 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Rob opens with a monologue explaining how European family businesses represent Europe's tech engine. Harry sets a relaxed, conversational tone by asking about Rob's background in tennis and entry into venture capital. | |
| Founding Visionaries Club & Partnership Alignment | 5 | 3 | 1 | 4 | Harry offers personal perspective on leaving his former firm Stride to compare with Rob leaving La Familia. He challenges Rob's view on partner differences, asking whether diverse viewpoints should be seen as a strength rather than a friction point. | |
| Venture Capital Hiring Strategy & Nurturing Young Talent | 5 | 4 | 1 | 5 | Harry challenges Rob's strategy of hiring inexperienced young talent, arguing that venture firms lack the time and infrastructure to train unproven investors. Rob defends his strategy by pointing out adverse selection in high salary demands and detailing co-entrepreneurial career paths. | |
| Common Mistakes of Fund Managers & Concentrated Seed Strategy | 6 | 3 | 2 | 6 | Harry presses Rob on his dismissal of hype deals, arguing that securing allocation in high-momentum rounds signals deal access to LPs. Harry also runs through fund return math to question whether a concentrated seed strategy can realistically achieve top-tier ownership. | |
| The Barbell Fund Strategy & Sourcing Deals | 4 | 3 | 2 | 5 | Harry openly questions whether founder LPs actually send actionable deals or merely offer passive pleasantries. Rob defends Visionaries' sourcing network, explaining that over 60 percent of their deals originate from founder WhatsApp groups. | |
| Reserves Management & Outlier Valuation in Venture | 6 | 5 | 2 | 4 | Harry demonstrates technical knowledge of seed check construction, co-investing strategies, and valuation caps. Rob openly admits to making past mistakes by passing on expensive follow-on rounds in breakout portfolio companies like Pigment and Personio. | |
| The Evolving Series A Landscape in Europe | 7 | 5 | 4 | 6 | Rob directly rejects Harry's assertion that European Series A is dominated by only three firms, citing the influx of US multi-stage funds. Rob educates Harry on the hidden signaling risks when multi-stage funds take seed checks but pass on leading the Series A. | |
| Board Dynamics & Founder Alignment | 7 | 4 | 3 | 5 | Harry demonstrates strong market expertise when breaking down how venture funds' urgent need for DPI creates severe misalignment with founders on liquidity and secondary sales. Rob clarifies the distinction between modest founder security secondaries and excessive cash-outs. | |
| European Family Offices & Reinvesting in B2B Tech | 6 | 5 | 4 | 7 | Harry forcefully challenges the efficiency of European family offices, calling them slow, bureaucratic, and demanding relative to US institutional LPs. Rob counters by highlighting BioNTech's 130 million seed round and next-generation family business leaders. |
Statements from this episode (28)
Lacher: 90% of companies in Europe are family businesses
“What we have in Europe is, 90% of our companies are family businesses.”
Lacher: European family businesses collectively represent Europe's Google
“If you take those family businesses together, I think this is our Google.”
Lacher: La Famiglia Started as a $40M Fund for 30 B2B Startups
“So that's how I started La Familia with a group of friends, which was a small, forty million angel fund back then that we invested into 30 B to B companies.”
Lacher: La Famiglia Fund I Backed Deel, Personio, and Other Unicorns
“So we've invested in 30 companies. Many of them have turned unicorns or decacorns like Deal, Presonio, Shoko, Forto, where we've had the privilege to be seed investors.”
Lacher: Never Compromise on Partnership Setup When Founding a VC Firm
“So the one thing you shouldn't do is compromise on the partnership setup, because it's a very, very long-term game.”
Lacher: La Famiglia's First Fund Achieved a 10x Return
“The fund is now at 10 times the money that we invested and it's doing well.”
Lacher: Visionaries Club Scaled to $600M AUM in Three Years
“We've built Visionaries within three years, a great fund, now six hundred million under management”
Lacher: VC candidates demanding high salaries lack entrepreneurial risk tolerance
“So if someone is asking for a high salary, that person is not willing to take risks. It's not willing to, it's not believing enough in the entrepreneurial spirit to really kind of build something essential”
Lacher: Visionaries Club trades low base salaries for higher carry
“We don't pay high salaries at Visionaries. I think if you go to some of the multi-stage funds in London, maybe you get twice the salary, but we're pretty generous with Kerry, and people know that they can build a career faster than at other funds if they perfo…”
Lacher: Poaching experienced VCs creates an average index fund
“If, you can do it super easy and say, look, I just poach from other funds. I hire people who have been three years in VC. They have the networks. They know how to look at deals. You just get An average index of all the other funds.”
Lacher: Visionaries targets 10–15% ownership in 80% of seed investments
“We say 80% of our seed portfolio is 10 to 15% ownership and 20% will leave room if they're exceptional teams”
Lacher: Visionaries aims for 5 to 10 seed deals per year
“We want to rather have maybe five to 10 investments a year in a seed fund, spending time with the founders and then just having maybe 40 deals and just knowing maybe the name of one or two founders.”
Lacher: Visionaries Club's LPs are exclusively unicorn founders and family business owners
“Look, I think the main difference, if you look at visionaries, is that on, on our investor side, we only have successful entrepreneurs. On the one hand side, we have 30 unicorn founders that have built great digital companies, like the founders of Miro, UiPath…”
Lacher: Visionaries Club sources 60%-70% of deal flow via WhatsApp groups
“So the way we source deals, I'd say some 60, 70% are through our founder networks that we typically were operated in WhatsApp groups and that's kind of how they share deals”
Lacher: European Series A venture market is a bloody red ocean
“So yeah, we think, you know, if you look at Europe when we started Visionaries, we thought Series A was pretty crowded. You have an incredible amount of funds with kind of a hundred to seven hundred million in fund size that typically enter Series A, but that …”
Lacher: Visionaries Club allocates 60% of seed fund to follow-on reserves
“We have 60% reserve in a seed fund to follow on.”
Stebbings: 20VC holds $33M in early-stage fund and $107M in Explorer Fund
“So we have thirty three million in the early stage, and 107 in the, you know, the Explorer Fund, which is really series A and B.”
Lacher: Visionaries Club early growth fund enters rounds at ~$100M valuation
“The average entry price point for our early growth fund, it's really early, it's not growth, right? So it's, I would call early series B or late series A, it's around a hundred million.”
Lacher: Two-thirds of European founders reject US multi-stage seed term sheets
“I see, to be honest, two thirds of the founders at seed stage that have those term sheets, rather going for European seed fund setup, because they want to keep the A-Round open to choose from those funds.”
Lacher: Visionaries Club Co-Invests With Multi-Stage Funds in 20% of Deals
“We team up a lot with multi-stage funds at seed. I'd say 20% of our deals.”
Lacher: Multi-stage funds always preempt Series A for top seed investments
“Everyone knows if the deal is amazing, they bloody preempt it.”
Stebbings: Low DPI Will Drive VC-Founder Misalignment Over Exits
“I think around liquidity is probably the biggest whereby, especially I think in the next years it'll be really prominent, which is whereby you have a venture funds with not a lot of DPI. And they know that they need DPI more than ever to raise their next funds…”
Lacher: Visionaries Club Avoided Doing Many Secondaries During Market Peak
“We didn't do many secondaries, for example, in our portfolio, which would have been maybe attractive because we still believe those companies have such a great kind of journey ahead of them.”
Stebbings: Remote Work Is One of the Most Poisonous Things
“I don't buy remote by the way. I think remote is one of the most poisonous things.”
Lacher: BioNTech raised $130 million seed round led by Strüngmanns
“It was a hundred thirty million seed round led by the Strugmann brothers, who were basically farmer entrepreneurs.”
Stebbings: 20VC is a data company, not a media company
“I don't think TwentyVC is a media company. I think it's a data company.”
Lacher: Venture Capital Is All-In, Part-Time VCs Fail Founders
“I think it's an either all in or not business because the moment you start hanging out maybe in southern France at your holiday home and tanning and only working three days a week, I think that moment you're not a good VC anymore because every founder will say…”