Christian Lanng, European founder of unicorn Tradeshift who spent 10 years in Silicon Valley, discusses why European startup ecosystems struggle to match American execution speed.
Insight
Lanng: VCs leverage founder fear in down markets to extract better terms
“Like, risk is just all the investors and, you know, especially when they want to, Extract a bit better terms or, you know, bully you in a down market or whatever, right? They will tell you, like, oh, we would lose you. We'd hate to see you lose everything, rig…”
Opinion
Founders should never accept a 40% valuation discount for 'smart VCs'
“I kind of always disliked the whole You should pick us as a VC. We know it's a 40% discount to the other guys, but we are smart. Ah, like the smart VC, like, story, because the reality is, like, if I need to give us 40% discount because the VC is so smart that…”
Opinion
Lanng: Tech companies should ban internal political discussions to focus on building
“And I like what David Heinemann says, like, he banned politics in, in, in in signals and I think that's absolutely right. I think we shouldn't sit around the table discussing all this stuff. We should just build something and make it work, and if we're allowin…”
Opinion
Lanng: Salesforce turns software users into robotic button-clickers
“Salesforce don't have a human in the center. Salesforce makes you into a robot that has to click buttons in a certain order.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Lanng: Pursuing AGI Will Disappoint Due to Asymptotic Limits in AI
“Everybody who's pushing for AGI level AI right now, they're going to be sorely disappointed. I think it's an asymptomatic curve, and I think we're going to end up with Waymo-style cars, meaning you almost have a lawyer, but not quite, and the five percent you …”
Opinion
Lanng: Salesforce is just a database and LLMs bypass software UI layers
“I'm so sorry, but Salesforce is just a database. And LLMs are really good at talking with databases and querying data. You don't need 15 layers between you and that database to do it.”