The Exchanges

Q So, you know, when it's like, and, you know, now Sarah will take over, and you're like, ah, darn it, relegated. If you could choose one European board member, who would you choose and why in the Series A?

A I choose Johann Butting, who's Global SVP Sales at Slack, and he has built Slack in Europe, Dropbox in Europe, and he's a board member in our portfolio company, Accenture, where I'm on the board with Luciana from Sequoia and Mark from Freygeist, and he's spending so much time with the founders to really build a commercial team, build a go-to-market team. He has done it for the last 12 years, but not on a VC high level, really. He has gone on any details, and this is the kind of sparring partner you want to have Uh, as a founder, if you build a SaaS company, not just high level bullshitting on, on some, some generic advice, but really going, going deep. I'm very impressed by him.

AI assessment note: “I choose Johann Butting, who's Global SVP Sales at Slack”

Q Do you actually get deals? Sorry, I'm being really rude. Do you actually get deals from them? I've had like the good and the great in my funds. They never send me deals. Like they might WhatsApp me, but they don't send deals.

A Yeah. Um, no, I mean, that's, that's how we've, we've built Visionaries. We've, we've built it from scratch just around this founder ecosystem, right? 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, but it's also kind of when we need an advice on whether it's fintech investment, we might, might consult with Adrian for Molly or people in that space. If it's something in the, I don't know, you, you name it kind of enterprise SaaS, then maybe Daniel from the iPad or Brandon are our great sparing partners. And I think that's, that's how we've built everything around exactly that idea. And that's the core of our sourcing and kind of network.

AI assessment note: “some 60, 70% are through our founder networks that we typically were operated in WhatsApp”

Q Did you know at that time you wanted to be a VC? Then you'd had, you'd done some angel investments. You know, I enjoy doing this. I want to be a VC.

A You know, the first time I heard of venture capital was when I was 22 at university, and I thought after the lecture, fuck, this must be the most amazing job on earth, because you're looking into new companies every day, speaking to young, smart people, which are building the biggest thing in their life, and you have the privilege to choose who you want to work with and work with a kind of, um, an array of people and not just focus on one idea. So I thought maybe when I'm 50, 60, and in case I succeed, I could become a VC, but I never thought that I would kind of become an entrepreneur In VC in the middle of my twenties without any experience. So I stumbled into it over angel investing, but I figured out it was, it was my biggest passion. It turned into my biggest passion.

AI assessment note: “I stumbled into it over angel investing, but I figured out it was, it was my biggest passion.”

Q So for me, Is that not a strength? You know, I'm always hiring team members now and I'm trying to figure out the right composition, to be honest. And I, I, is that not a strength that they come from a different perspective and look at deals in a different way?

A It is. I think, you know, the best thing you can do when you're a partner in a founding team is take risks with someone that is a totally different ingredient than you have. And that's what we did. And I think that's, the fund is now at 10 times the money that we invested and it's doing well. But on the other side, you know, if you want to be in a setup for 2030 years, you need to have kind of a certain overlap of, of, of how you work together. And I think my, my, my synthesis is Take risks when you go into those setups, but also be 100% brutally honest to yourself if it's sustaining, and if it's the right setup for everyone, and I think it was a, was a great decision that we, that we took that way, because now the first fund, we're still managing it together. It's a success. Um, we've built Visionaries within three years, a great fund, now six hundred million under management, and I think, um, Judith and Jeannette are doing an amazing job taking Afamia to the next level in their second and third fund based on the track record that we've built.

AI assessment note: “It is. I think, you know, the best thing you can do”

Q So, you know, when it's like, and, you know, now Sarah will take over, and you're like, ah, darn it, relegated. If you could choose one European board member, who would you choose and why in the Series A?

A I choose Johann Butting, who's Global SVP Sales at Slack, and he has built Slack in Europe, Dropbox in Europe, and he's a board member in our portfolio company, Accenture, where I'm on the board with Luciana from Sequoia and Mark from Freygeist, and he's spending so much time with the founders to really build a commercial team, build a go-to-market team. He has done it for the last 12 years, but not on a VC high level, really. He has gone on any details, and this is the kind of sparring partner you want to have Uh, as a founder, if you build a SaaS company, not just high level bullshitting on, on some, some generic advice, but really going, going deep. I'm very impressed by him.

AI assessment note: “I choose Johann Butting, who's Global SVP Sales at Slack”

Q Did you know at that time you wanted to be a VC? Then you'd had, you'd done some angel investments. You know, I enjoy doing this. I want to be a VC.

A You know, the first time I heard of venture capital was when I was 22 at university, and I thought after the lecture, fuck, this must be the most amazing job on earth, because you're looking into new companies every day, speaking to young, smart people, which are building the biggest thing in their life, and you have the privilege to choose who you want to work with and work with a kind of, um, an array of people and not just focus on one idea. So I thought maybe when I'm 50, 60, and in case I succeed, I could become a VC, but I never thought that I would kind of become an entrepreneur In VC in the middle of my twenties without any experience. So I stumbled into it over angel investing, but I figured out it was, it was my biggest passion. It turned into my biggest passion.

AI assessment note: “I stumbled into it over angel investing, but I figured out it was, it was my biggest passion.”

Q I have to ask final thing and then we'll move on to some quite meaty topics. Um, but it's when you get asked advice from managers raising today and who are starting partnerships today, what advice do you give them on the partnership dynamic? Having experienced what you have now with different partners and having founded two funds, what should all partnerships consider before becoming partners?

A I think you should really spend time together about the truth of what's your purpose and what you really want to do and, and, and why you're doing it together and be super honest about your strengths, your weaknesses, what excites you and, um, kind of the reason why you're doing it. And I think the more complimentary kind of ingredients that you can find in a person, the better it is, but you need to be aligned on the, on the core on, on how to do everything. I think the best thing how I did it with, for example, Sebastian was we really went to the deepest level of what we love doing. And, uh, and we were super aligned that being an entrepreneur in VC, having all degrees of freedom to build this and doing this for a period, hopefully of 2030 years was really what, um, what excited both of us.

AI assessment note: “I think you should really spend time together about the truth of what's your purpose”

Q I have to ask final thing and then we'll move on to some quite meaty topics. Um, but it's when you get asked advice from managers raising today and who are starting partnerships today, what advice do you give them on the partnership dynamic? Having experienced what you have now with different partners and having founded two funds, what should all partnerships consider before becoming partners?

A I think you should really spend time together about the truth of what's your purpose and what you really want to do and, and, and why you're doing it together and be super honest about your strengths, your weaknesses, what excites you and, um, kind of the reason why you're doing it. And I think the more complimentary kind of ingredients that you can find in a person, the better it is, but you need to be aligned on the, on the core on, on how to do everything. I think the best thing how I did it with, for example, Sebastian was we really went to the deepest level of what we love doing. And, uh, and we were super aligned that being an entrepreneur in VC, having all degrees of freedom to build this and doing this for a period, hopefully of 2030 years was really what, um, what excited both of us.

AI assessment note: “you should really spend time together about the truth of what's your purpose”

Q think of the biggest, actually, sorry, before we move on to that, uh, I'm, the thing I'm struggling with is actually this entitlement, you know, I want 500 K salary, I want 500 K bonus, and I want, like, it's all I want, I want, I want. And there's this real entitlement I find in kind of 25 to 35 year old venture hiring. How should I deal with that?

A It's, I think it's an adverse selection. Like those are not the people that we want to get with, with visionaries. It's the other way around. 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, to really kind of build something essential because we, Say 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 perform extraordinarily well, and if they, if they're great co-entrepreneurs building visionaries, and I think these are the kind of people that we, that we want to, want to take on board, and if you look at Martin, he became partner just after Three years of joining Visionaries, but he's a co-entrepreneur already kind of leading the seed fund. Sahar is doing the same for the growth fund. Lisa is doing the same for the platform. These are incredibly young, hungry, hyper-intelligent people that haven't been in VC before. I think that's the beauty. You know, if you, 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…

AI assessment note: “It's, I think it's an adverse selection. Like those are not the people that we want”

Q Do you actually get deals? Sorry, I'm being really rude. Do you actually get deals from them? I've had like the good and the great in my funds. They never send me deals. Like they might WhatsApp me, but they don't send deals.

A Yeah. Um, no, I mean, that's, that's how we've, we've built Visionaries. We've, we've built it from scratch just around this founder ecosystem, right? 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, but it's also kind of when we need an advice on whether it's fintech investment, we might, might consult with Adrian for Molly or people in that space. If it's something in the, I don't know, you, you name it kind of enterprise SaaS, then maybe Daniel from the iPad or Brandon are our great sparing partners. And I think that's, that's how we've built everything around exactly that idea. And that's the core of our sourcing and kind of network.

AI assessment note: “I'd say some 60, 70% are through our founder networks”

Q Uh, no. I have, I have some discipline, I hope. Um, do you think the Series A product is good in Europe? You mentioned Sequoia, Excel, and Index. I completely agree. That's what everyone says. That's it. For Europe, for continents, entrepreneurial talent, there's really three firms.

A No, I, I would disagree. That, that was the case four years ago, and I think it was cozy for those firms, because they could just, like, select what they wanted to do, and then, and the pressure has been just competing against two or three other firms. I think the beauty is, you know, now we have maybe five to 10 times what you would call a tier one VC firm from the U.S. that entered the market in the last two years, whether it was Sequoia, General Catalyst, Lightspeed, Iconic, GoToEveryone, opening offices in London, and I think it puts so much pressure into the market on existing funds to bloody innovate themselves and really, really kind of get ahead of the way of doing a great job with founders and referencing that. I think this competition is great for founders because they have more choice. They have VCs that are really need to be on their toes to, to be great VCs with the companies that they back. And I think it's a positive effect for It's consistent from the founder perspective.

AI assessment note: “No, I, I would disagree. That, that was the case four years ago”

Q Do you think VCs add value? We always get like shunned and mocked for our VC value. Do you think we add value?

A Yeah, it depends on how they operate. I, I think small boards are great because it forces everyone really, really to work hard because if you just have two board members and you don't work, then it's kind of obvious. Second thing is, uh, I think the best board or role that you can take as a VC for a founder is not trying to influence any decisions or to think that you have better ideas than the founder, but to be the best devil's advocate that you can with kind of opening up the option space for the founder, and that's Mostly not yourself having an opinion. It's mostly bringing in people from your network. In our case, it's founders who've gone through that journey, who have solved that problems to really provide the best possible devil's advocate's opinion so that the founder can choose what's the right decision to do. And I think those kind of boards are exceptional and giving the founders stability, but I think big boards can be really very difficult if you have 10 board members with 10 opinions, which are all High level. And, um, then the founder doesn't really know like which direction to choose. And then maybe the most dominant board member is forcing more of the direction which the company needs to go. Yeah. I think then a board is a, is a pretty negative and terrible thing.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, it depends on how they operate.”

Q What are the barriers to collectivizing those units in the way that you said, and is that done by a supranational kind of government body organization institution, or is that done by a private institution like visionaries?

A I think it's a combination. First, those companies and those people need to be entrepreneurs and go back to their roots. It's interesting. If you look at those family businesses that are a 102 hundred, some 50 years old, they used to be risk takers. They used to be contrarian. That's what made them successful. But some of them are now in their, like, pretty, pretty high ages, and they're not taking risks anymore. They're just kind of stagnating. I think they need to get ahead of the wave again. Unlock capital. Take risks again. Investing into really new topics. I mean, what is their business model otherwise in 10 years? That's the first thing. So they, they, they need to do it. Who can catalyze it? I mean, that's the core business model of visionaries that we just, we have 25 of those family entrepreneurs because we think their domain knowledge and their capital is essential for B to B companies that we back. Um, I think, yeah, this is something where connecting those dots between those companies and the startup ecosystem is Something where I see huge potential in Europe. It's something we've done with La Familia with Visionaries, but it's something we can take to a much different level.

AI assessment note: “Who can catalyze it? I mean, that's the core business model of visionaries”

Q Now, uh, I want to start. I spoke to so many of your friends and they all told me about your, uh, ability to dominate the tennis court. Uh, but, uh, how did you make your way into the world of venture once you realized that beating Federer wasn't an option?

A Good one. I wish I was more talented in tennis than everything would have been. Much easier, I guess. Um, look, if I have to put it into one sentence, I guess it's always being honest to myself to do what I love doing and really not compromising on it. I think, you know, if you look how it really happened, of course, the dots have connected in a more complex way with many ups and downs. So when I finished university, I was actually about to start a company and then got talked into Boston Consulting Group by a certain Jochen Engert. And maybe, you know, Jochen, he ended up being the founder of Flixbus, which is now the biggest Bus mobility company globally. So he's a very close friend. He was my mentor back then, is also part of Visionaries. I was again, the mentor of Max Fissmann, who's on the total other side of entrepreneurship. So Max inherited a hundred year old family business with, um, 14,000 employees, four billion in revenues, and had to take it to the next level. And the thing that we found out back then was that there's absolutely no connect between old and new economy entrepreneurs, even though 90% of European companies are family businesses, right? So we always thought bringing those networks closer together, because we think it unlocks a lot of power in B to B. It took a little until we did this. So I started my own small company in the mobile space, which I sold t…

AI assessment note: “ended up doing angel investments. And from those angel investments, we said, why don't we pool our money in a small seed fund?”

Q think of the biggest, actually, sorry, before we move on to that, uh, I'm, the thing I'm struggling with is actually this entitlement, you know, I want 500 K salary, I want 500 K bonus, and I want, like, it's all I want, I want, I want. And there's this real entitlement I find in kind of 25 to 35 year old venture hiring. How should I deal with that?

A It's, I think it's an adverse selection. Like those are not the people that we want to get with, with visionaries. It's the other way around. 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, to really kind of build something essential because we, Say 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 perform extraordinarily well, and if they, if they're great co-entrepreneurs building visionaries, and I think these are the kind of people that we, that we want to, want to take on board, and if you look at Martin, he became partner just after Three years of joining Visionaries, but he's a co-entrepreneur already kind of leading the seed fund. Sahar is doing the same for the growth fund. Lisa is doing the same for the platform. These are incredibly young, hungry, hyper-intelligent people that haven't been in VC before. I think that's the beauty. You know, if you, 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…

AI assessment note: “It's, I think it's an adverse selection. Like those are not the people that we want”

Q You mentioned the family offices. Um, There's many great entrepreneurs with incredible family offices and institutions built in Europe. You said before to me, ah, that they can become Europe's Google. How can they become Europe's Google, Rob? I would love to know, right?

A Look, I think, um, and you interrupt me if I'm talking too long ago. So I think, you know, if you look at our tech ecosystem globally, there is a huge shift from consumer internet to B to B. And if you look at the past 2030 years, consumer internet was Silicon Valley, and that was the ecosystem that was thriving. If you look at B to B, what enables B to B, it's all those industrial companies that get disrupted across their supply chains. And if you look at Europe, the DNA of our economy are all those World market leaders in the industrial space, whether it's the car companies like BMW, Peugeot, whether it's the Miele's, the Swarovski's. And I think together they are the biggest enablement of disruption in B to B globally that we have. That's a huge asset that we have in Europe that no other continent on earth has. And that's why we built companies like Salonis, who is global category leader for process mining, UiPath for RPA. And I think there are many more companies in the B to B space that can become global market leaders out of Europe. And the interesting thing is, you know, and back to your Google question, we always complain that we don't have a Google, Facebook, Amazon, or Tencent who are the most profitable companies in their clusters, and they're the biggest tech drivers next to VCs. But what we have in Europe is, 90% of our companies are family businesses. They are hig…

AI assessment note: “If you take those family businesses together, I think this is our Google.”

Q I think hiring is where a lot of people go wrong. When you think about biggest mistakes that other managers make that you see around you, what do you think are some of the biggest?

A So, you know, I'm so young myself and then just at the very beginning, so I'm not sure if I'm the right person to kind of answer what you can do better. Uh, many learnings I'm doing myself, but I think maybe the first thing is that not having a clear kind of differentiation about your proposition, why the market needs you. Like if you want to be a new fund for a cap table of a founder, you need to be a painkiller, not a nicer vitamin. And I think if you don't have this value proposition, that is, New for the market. That's something difficult. Second thing is, I think many new managers start investing into hype deals because it's kind of nice to sneak into things that are kind of validated by other funds. But again, you just build an index of what's already there.

AI assessment note: “first thing is that not having a clear kind of differentiation about your proposition”

Q How do you advise founders when it comes to, when they have a US multi-stage fund, and they're debating that, or a European offer? How do you advise them?

A I think, um, you know, for, there is no right or wrong. I just want to advise them to, to make a very active choice about the, so what of the setup and the, the cons of doing a multi-stage fund setup, I'd see it is, you're a very small check of a huge fund, and the moment you sign the term sheet, you need to ask yourself, did they just buy an option to lead the next round, or does the partner really, really go all in, go on my board and spend the time with me because the, Such multi-stage funds can't do 150 seat rounds a year, and, and kind of keep that quality. Second thing is, they need to be aware that the signaling risk, if that fund doesn't lead the next round, is... Do you buy that?

AI assessment note: “make a very active choice about the, so what of the setup and the, the cons”

Q Sure. No, I totally get you. We mentioned kind of relationships to money. We mentioned price there. When you were like investing, say initial, how central role does price actually pay?

A That's a great question because you can always have this argument, oh, great founders, you need to back no matter what price point, and they go up. I think that's not the right way to approach it. The right way is if you speak with a founder, so we, we've never had a negotiation at the seed stage with the founder about price point because we wanted to have one percent more or two percent less. Our dialogue is always, do we have the same understanding on what we think are the next steps to build a great company, and I think if you have that alignment with the founder, you want to go for a healthy journey that feels right for the company, to, to do a seed round, to have enough runway, to have a great position and optionality for a Series A round, and if it's an incredible serial entrepreneur that has built the product already 10 times, maybe a five million round is Fine, even though it's expensive, because you know they will have a product live in six months, and maybe they can raise the next round with two million AR and, and fine. But on the other side, if you have a team, you know, that is raising, like, building a productivity tool for the first time, raising five million on 25, and they say, look, in one and a half years we want to raise thirty million on a hundred fifty million. That's not for us, because we think, like, it's, it's not a healthy setup for them to build a gr…

AI assessment note: “We are not doing pricey deals. We are, we've passed on many companies”

Q Do you consider yourself an entrepreneur or an ambassador?

A Um, that's the daily balance. So I think, you know, the, what, what gets me up in the morning is, um, basically on the one hand side, we, you know, we, we're entrepreneurs, we need to build the company that we're investing with, right? And that's like just building any other company. There's not, there's no team, there's no strategy, there's no office, there's no website. So, uh, it's basically just like any other company. You can spend 150% of your time doing it. And on the other side, we're doing Investments in our job is to find the best companies, but I think exactly this combination, that's why we never decided to become partner of another fund, but having those degrees of freedom to build it the way you think it's right, it's, it's what excites me, it's what gives me energy, and I think it's what makes me a good investor for founders, because I have an entrepreneurial passion of building something and not just an abstract investor.

AI assessment note: “that's the daily balance. So I think... I think exactly this combination”

Q I do cooler. How do you think about your relationship to money? Do you think about it?

A Yeah, look, so I think, um, As, as odd as it sounds, but, and I, and I'm, I don't want to say that I'm absolutely not interested in money, but I think my, my north star is really, as I mentioned in the beginning, If I do what I love doing every day, and typically that's also the intersection of what you love doing, what you're typically good at, because otherwise you don't love doing it, and that, that the rest will just come. And I think we're in a business with venture capital that if you do this over 20, 30 years, um, you don't need to worry that if, if you do well, that, that there will be a lot of financial flexibility. But, but that's not really what, what motivates me. I mean, I'm, I'm passionate about every day working with founders. I'm passionate about our network and I'm, I'm taking a very long-term perspective of what we were building. 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, uh, kind of journey, um, ahead of them.

AI assessment note: “that's not really what, what motivates me. I mean, I'm, I'm passionate about”

Q If you have a dream and you can cast yourself out till 20, 28, Five years. Where is the European ecosystem then for you in your dream? It's all gone to plan.

A In my dream, venture capital itself got disrupted for the first time in history, because VC are investing in disruption, but have been the least disruptive industry themselves in the last 50 years. If you ask me what it needs to unlock the European ecosystem, it's the domain smartness, taking risks and verticals, and it's the capital. And I think we have a first generation of billionaire B to B founders, like the founders of Adyen, Off Checkout, Guillaume, Tick, Tick, like all those people that reinvest in the ecosystem. Take, take Daniel, who let the hundred million seat round in Helsing, or Zero's A round. And we have the Google, the family entrepreneurs. So together I would say if things go right, do we really need the traditional VC funds anymore? Or can we build a smarter approach, unlocking the domain knowledge of those people and the capital that this people has to kind of back the next generation of, uh, B to entrepreneurs.

AI assessment note: “In my dream, venture capital itself got disrupted for the first time in history”

Q Can I ask, you've founded now two firms with visionaries, um, as have I. Um, what's the fucking hardest element of building a firm?

A Yeah. I think it is this balance of being an entrepreneur and being a VC, you know, Christoph Jan's SaaS napkin, you know, SaaS companies. I did it for fun, uh, in venture capital to my team kind of driver tree with all the things that you have to do at the same time. But I think, you know, it's all about the team then that you build that really unlocks the power of the company and what you can get out of it. And in venture capital is incredibly difficult to, to hire people because they need to be Hyper smart, humble, visionary at the same time, no linear thinkers. So I think it's, it's hard to find them, but the way we decided to, to do it is, is basically not hiring experienced people who have been in VC and who just apply the logic that they've learned at another fund, but go for incredibly young, hungry, hyper intelligent, and people that really want to go exponential in their development, because I think that's what

AI assessment note: “in venture capital is incredibly difficult to, to hire people”

Q I think hiring is where a lot of people go wrong. When you think about biggest mistakes that other managers make that you see around you, what do you think are some of the biggest?

A So, you know, I'm so young myself and then just at the very beginning, so I'm not sure if I'm the right person to kind of answer what you can do better. Uh, many learnings I'm doing myself, but I think maybe the first thing is that not having a clear kind of differentiation about your proposition, why the market needs you. Like if you want to be a new fund for a cap table of a founder, you need to be a painkiller, not a nicer vitamin. And I think if you don't have this value proposition, that is, New for the market. That's something difficult. Second thing is, I think many new managers start investing into hype deals because it's kind of nice to sneak into things that are kind of validated by other funds. But again, you just build an index of what's already there.

AI assessment note: “I think maybe the first thing is that not having a clear kind of differentiation”

Q How do you advise founders when it comes to, when they have a US multi-stage fund, and they're debating that, or a European offer? How do you advise them?

A I think, um, you know, for, there is no right or wrong. I just want to advise them to, to make a very active choice about the, so what of the setup and the, the cons of doing a multi-stage fund setup, I'd see it is, you're a very small check of a huge fund, and the moment you sign the term sheet, you need to ask yourself, did they just buy an option to lead the next round, or does the partner really, really go all in, go on my board and spend the time with me because the, Such multi-stage funds can't do 150 seat rounds a year, and, and kind of keep that quality. Second thing is, they need to be aware that the signaling risk, if that fund doesn't lead the next round, is... Do you buy that?

AI assessment note: “I just want to advise them to, to make a very active choice”

Q Where do you think VCs and founders are misaligned? We sometimes see boards being misaligned with founders. They want to sell. They don't want to sell. The founder does want to sell. Where do you think that boards and board kind of VCs and founders are misaligned?

A It's a great question. So, um, I think it's Opportunism. So as, as a VC, you know, um, you can invest in 25 to 30 companies per fund, and you can, and you know, you really see who's a VC keeping the word when things go negative, and if they still spend time with the, with the founders, it doesn't mean they should spend all of their time, and I mean, they should focus on the winners also in the portfolio, but they should also be there when things go, go, go, go negative. Um, but I think VCs can always, you know, opt out or, or be opportunistic to just focus on what's going well. And where they see value in their portfolio, where founders have this one shot at that moment in time that they need to get right. And I guess that's, that's a bit of a misalignment. How do you see it?

AI assessment note: “founders have this one shot at that moment in time that they need to get right.”

Q Sure. No, I totally get you. We mentioned kind of relationships to money. We mentioned price there. When you were like investing, say initial, how central role does price actually pay?

A That's a great question because you can always have this argument, oh, great founders, you need to back no matter what price point, and they go up. I think that's not the right way to approach it. The right way is if you speak with a founder, so we, we've never had a negotiation at the seed stage with the founder about price point because we wanted to have one percent more or two percent less. Our dialogue is always, do we have the same understanding on what we think are the next steps to build a great company, and I think if you have that alignment with the founder, you want to go for a healthy journey that feels right for the company, to, to do a seed round, to have enough runway, to have a great position and optionality for a Series A round, and if it's an incredible serial entrepreneur that has built the product already 10 times, maybe a five million round is Fine, even though it's expensive, because you know they will have a product live in six months, and maybe they can raise the next round with two million AR and, and fine. But on the other side, if you have a team, you know, that is raising, like, building a productivity tool for the first time, raising five million on 25, and they say, look, in one and a half years we want to raise thirty million on a hundred fifty million. That's not for us, because we think, like, it's, it's not a healthy setup for them to build a gr…

AI assessment note: “We are not doing pricey deals. We are, we've passed on many companies”

Q And so that, unlike just a seed only strategy, I think there is a strategic reasoning as to why. So like, can you just walk me through the two funds and how it's a little bit different than maybe just a traditional fund set up?

A Yeah. Look, I think the main difference, if you, 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, HelloFresh, Flixbus. And on the other side, we have 25 family entrepreneurs who are on the total, kind of, other side of entrepreneurship. They're owning the old economy, and they can be interesting customer groups. And the way we thought about it is like, how can we add the best value to The ecosystem with this network strategy, and we feel it's on the one hand side, you know, if you look at pre-seed, see it where Europe is incredibly decentralized, so you need 10 partners speaking 10 different languages if you really want to cover all clusters, and that's where we think, you know, having those great entrepreneurs who've built companies or operated companies like Spotify or UiPath, or in the Netherlands, Molly, that, like, that's a great source for deals for us, and At the same time.

AI assessment note: “the main difference, if you, if you look at visionaries, is that on, on our investor side”

Q I do cooler. How do you think about your relationship to money? Do you think about it?

A Yeah, look, so I think, um, As, as odd as it sounds, but, and I, and I'm, I don't want to say that I'm absolutely not interested in money, but I think my, my north star is really, as I mentioned in the beginning, If I do what I love doing every day, and typically that's also the intersection of what you love doing, what you're typically good at, because otherwise you don't love doing it, and that, that the rest will just come. And I think we're in a business with venture capital that if you do this over 20, 30 years, um, you don't need to worry that if, if you do well, that, that there will be a lot of financial flexibility. But, but that's not really what, what motivates me. I mean, I'm, I'm passionate about every day working with founders. I'm passionate about our network and I'm, I'm taking a very long-term perspective of what we were building. 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, uh, kind of journey, um, ahead of them.

AI assessment note: “that's not really what, what motivates me”

Q Where do you think VCs and founders are misaligned? We sometimes see boards being misaligned with founders. They want to sell. They don't want to sell. The founder does want to sell. Where do you think that boards and board kind of VCs and founders are misaligned?

A It's a great question. So, um, I think it's Opportunism. So as, as a VC, you know, um, you can invest in 25 to 30 companies per fund, and you can, and you know, you really see who's a VC keeping the word when things go negative, and if they still spend time with the, with the founders, it doesn't mean they should spend all of their time, and I mean, they should focus on the winners also in the portfolio, but they should also be there when things go, go, go, go negative. Um, but I think VCs can always, you know, opt out or, or be opportunistic to just focus on what's going well. And where they see value in their portfolio, where founders have this one shot at that moment in time that they need to get right. And I guess that's, that's a bit of a misalignment. How do you see it?

AI assessment note: “I think it's Opportunism... founders have this one shot at that moment in time”