The Ledger
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Hinrikus: Critical Tech Sectors Will Divide into a Tripolar World
“A lot of sectors where I think we're going to be living in a, It's a tripolar world. Is that a word? Did I make it up? So there's gonna be an American version. Let's call it Android. There is a European version, Helsing, a Chinese version. Defense, space, ener…”
Torsten Reil: Eliminating 1-on-1 meetings had zero negative impact on performance
“I used to do them religiously, by the way, I just stopped doing them. It hasn't had a negative impact.”
Torsten Reil: Four exceptional engineers outperform eight good ones for less money
“You can achieve a lot in particular around software with three to four exceptional people. And so we'd rather have a team of four exceptional people than eight good people. It makes everything easier. It's also cheaper, by the way, even though you pay above ma…”
Torsten Reil: Needing weekly 1-on-1s with senior leaders signals operational problems
“The people I work with are usually senior and don't need that much guidance. If I need a one-to-one with them every week, I think something's probably gonna, is probably going wrong.”
Helsing's 2021 pitch deck predicted invasions of Ukraine and Taiwan
“When we started Helsing in March, 2021, we actually put one of our slides that we thought there were going to be two galvanizing events. One of them was going to be an invasion of Ukraine by Russia, the other one an invasion of Taiwan by China.”
Hommels: Defense primes resemble pharma giants focused on regulation over innovation
“The pharma industry, if you think about innovators, they are basically a gigantic organization if it comes to distribution and regulation, but not invention. So, a big prime as Moloch in distributing because they have I have years and years of lobbying into th…”
Taneja: Helsing will capture disproportionate share of European defense market
“Helsing with this mission, its execution its access to capital, talent should be the company that gets disproportionate share of defense in Europe.”
Freise: Founders must pick long-term backers over quick-profit VCs
“As a founder, the Investors you choose are so important. So of course it makes a huge difference. You know, if you're the founder of Helsing and you choose Daniel Eck, because Daniel Eck understands what long-term business building means, you know, and you don…”
Stebbings: Investors should back existing category winners rather than searching for alternatives
“If you want to invest in the next Helsing, don't. Just invest in Helsing. I spend my life with investors who are like, oh, I'm trying to find the next OpenAI, the next Android. Don't. Just put your money in the winner.”
Freise: Other defense leaders will emerge alongside Helsing's founder within five years
“Torsten is, is the best, but in five years time, we look back and say, of course, Torsten couldn't have done it all by himself. There will be more, there will be others.”
Torsten Reil: Governments spend under 1% of equipment budgets on startups
“I think it's less than one percent.”
Torsten Reil: Performance improvement plans actually work and turn employees around
“Well, I, I've seen actually quite a lot of people turn around, including at my previous company as well, in, on a performance management plan. So it's not a foregone conclusion.”
Torsten Reil: Heavy capital lets defense startups bypass grants for major contracts
“And the second thing that allowed us to do is, is to not go for innovation you know, projects in defense for incubators and, you know, little grants here and there, but because we were quite well funded, we could go for programs of record. So the official larg…”
Torsten Reil: Constant hiring pressure is necessary to manage low performers out
“You need to basically always have pressure on the pipeline of good people coming in, in order to be able to manage other people out, and so that you end up with a pool of people that are amazing.”
Hassabis: Spotify and Helsing are contenders for Europe's first trillion-dollar company
“Daniel might well get there with one of his companies, you know, Spotify, Helsing. I think those are two good options.”
General Catalyst claims unique portfolio of US, European, and Indian defense primes
“I think we're the only firm that's invested in a defense prime in US, Europe, and India. We did Andrel, we did, you know, invested in Helsing, and we invested in a company called Rafi in India.”
Taneja: General Catalyst joined every funding round for Helsing and Anduril
“We invested in Helsing. You know, Jeanette has seeded that, if you remember before, and we've invested that in all the rounds that they've raised since then. If you look at Andrel, same thing. We seeded that, and we invested in every round that they've raised …”
Helsing raised a €100M Series A four months after its seed round
“So the seed was eight and a half million euros, but then we were lucky to have Daniel Ek and Prima Materia invest a hundred million euros about four months later or so.”
Torsten Reil: Helsing would have prioritized EW and GPS independence earlier
“We would have focused all of our efforts on specific systems to deal with the problems in hand, which were, which are now the ones that I talked about earlier. It's electronic warfare resistance, GPS independence you know, being resilient to comms jamming.”
Torsten Reil: Complex defense tech startups cannot be built by solo founders
“I would say Helsing is a company that you can only co-found. You need to have multiple founders.”