Mar 24, 2017 · 23m · 20vc
20VC: How To Raise $200m In Any Economic Climate, Scale From Garage To Global In Record Time & The Biggest Startup You Have Not Heard About with Christian Lanng, Founder & CEO @ Tradeshift
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
Tradeshift CEO Christian Lanng joins The 20 Minute VC to discuss scaling a global enterprise platform, fundraising over $200 million across economic cycles, and how automation and B2B software innovation are reshaping global commerce.
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 31.1% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Harry as informed peer 2.5 Guest teaching 5.5 Guest disagreement 2.8 Harry pushing back 1.5
speaking balance: gold is Harry, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 9:18 B2B software is pretty fucked
Christian forcefully attacks legacy B2B competitors, calling the industry model pretty fucked and describing suppliers as hostages forced to pay tollgates with a gun to their head.
Hardest push from Harry ▶ 11:12 Harry challenges TradeShift's lack of brand awarenessHarry directly challenges Christian by bringing up the critique that TradeShift is a major startup that everyone should know about but no one does.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 6:11 Reframing the global tech raceWhen Harry asks if East or West will win the tech race, Christian reframes the issue, explaining that social system resilience and energy costs will determine outcomes rather than technological speed.
Harry holds his own ▶ 11:12 Probing B2B brand relevanceHarry demonstrates keen research and interviewing confidence by directly questioning whether TradeShift neglected B2B brand awareness during its rapid scaling.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Harry as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Harry pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Christian Lanng's Founder Journey and the Creation of Tradeshift | 2 | 5 | 3 | 1 | Harry asks open-ended starter questions about Christian's founder journey and a tweet regarding tech globalization. Christian reframes the global job conversation by pointing out that 80% of lost US manufacturing jobs went to automation rather than China, educating the host on technology dynamics. | |
| Managing Technological Disruption and the Strategic Importance of Energy | 2 | 6 | 3 | 1 | Harry prompts Christian on East vs West technological dominance, energy constraints, and Universal Basic Income. Christian rejects the simple East vs West binary, explaining that social system resilience and free renewable energy will determine winners rather than pure tech dominance. | |
| Rethinking B2B Competition: Customers vs. Hostages | 3 | 6 | 6 | 1 | Harry cites Christian's tweet comparing competitors' users to hostages rather than customers. Christian delivers a fiery critique of incumbent B2B software vendors like Ariba, describing their tollgate model as extortion where users have a metaphoric gun put to their head. | |
| The Power of B2B Branding and Authentic Leadership | 4 | 5 | 2 | 4 | Harry offers a polite pushback by pointing out that critics call TradeShift the company everyone should know about but no one does. Christian explains his intentional B2B brand strategy focused strictly on Fortune 500 CEOs rather than public consumer visibility. | |
| Raising Over $200 Million Across Varied Economic Cycles | 2 | 6 | 1 | 1 | Harry asks about raising over $200M across varying economic climates since 2008. Christian details countercyclical fundraising benefits, early VC pitch stories, and the evolution of SaaS metrics across pitch cycles. | |
| Global Capital Strategies and Unconventional Networking | 2 | 5 | 2 | 1 | Harry guides Christian through global capital networking and a rapid quickfire round. Christian explains that Silicon Valley VCs often suffer from localized bubble thinking compared to global capital pools in Asia and Europe. |
Statements from this episode (13)
Network-connected software is the next major evolution in B2B enterprise
“The thing we saw very early on was in the consumer world, we were all moving to networks. This idea that cloud was going to be about the same applications as we had on our desktop, but delivered through the browser was breaking down and we saw a whole new gene…”
80% of US manufacturing job losses came from tech, not China
“80% of the jobs that disappeared in US manufacturing did not Go to China. They went to technology.”
AI will very soon completely commoditize automated manufacturing
“Very soon, that will be completely commoditized. And again, AI will do the same to manufacturing that it's doing to software.”
The primary bottleneck for robotics capital efficiency is tasks per robot
“The biggest bottleneck for automation is actually the number of tasks per robot, because the robotics is expensive, so if you can do more tasks, it'll be much more capital effective”
Free renewable energy is crucial to cushion technological job displacement
“The thing you really need to invest in is actually free renewable energy, because if you have free renewable energy, we have less of a social impact as jobs go, because we can actually produce food, we can produce almost anything we want, and it gets a little …”
Universal basic income enables Nordic startup founders to aim bigger
“If you have universal basic income, the things you tend to strive for tend to be bigger. That's actually a reason that a lot of the startups coming out of the Nordics are aiming big, which is we don't need to aim small.”
Ariba acts as a toll gate, extracting 80% of revenue from suppliers
“One of our competitors, you know, Ariba, they've for a long time gone out to these huge companies and said, hey, we will help you Digitize your supply chain, and you just got to buy our platform, and then they go and they invite all of the suppliers in the sup…”
Legacy enterprise B2B software has hostages, not real customers
“And what you end up with is what I call hostages, not customers, right? You know, if you have a customer, they love your software. They invested in using it.”
B2B startups can easily out-brand legacy incumbents SAP and Oracle
“It's actually not that hard to compete with SAP and Oracle and try to be a little sexy as a brand against those guys.”
Down-cycle fundraising offers less competition and higher investor visibility
“If you're doing it in a down cycle, You actually, you know, you, you're lucky to start with less competition. You need to fight harder, of course, for the money, but you can also stand out more. You know, the investors are not seeing a hundred pitches a day fo…”
Tradeshift pitched investors over 1,000 times to raise its capital
“I mean, I probably talked to a thousand, I probably pitched a thousand plus times, and that's probably even an underestimate to raise the capital we raised.”
Pitching on stage at VC conferences is an ineffective fundraising strategy
“I never really liked this idea of going, like, you know, to some conference and standing on a stage and pitching myself in front of 50 VCs. I don't think that's a very good way to get attention. I think there's a lot of connectors in the ecosystem. Getting to …”