 Hello, hello Helsinki. It's so great to be back at slash and I think this year is a very special slash It's not just because the world has changed a lot in the last 12 months But I think you know if we're looking in the past we've always looked into Silicon Valley as the kind of perfect ecosystem To start a company and a role model and I think fast forward It has really changed a lot because we found our own DNA in Europe to build great startup companies and many of those startups actually that really make a truly Global mark and we have many US investors now that are going to Europe like Sequoia general catalyst lights be the all-opened offices So Europe is really hot and but what does it really take to build a global category leader out of Europe? So I'm super excited to discuss this today with an amazing group of people Eleonore founder of pigment Jochen founder of flicks and Marcus founder of both so big welcome and thanks for being with us today Eleonore let's let's jump right in last year I was sitting here with tavid who actually transitioned from being founder of wise to become a venture capitalist You did the opposite for four years ago. So you were with index and then decided to start pigment What drove you to become a founder? What motivated you? So first of all, I have to say that being a VC if you want to become a founder It's probably the best cool on earth because you see what great looks like, you know when I was at index I got the opportunity to actually meet incredible founders that are on me today And I have to say that this is really how you understand what great look like and what ambition can look like And the reason why I wanted to become a founder. I think it's you know, it came from a very very young age But I really wanted to have an impact on millions of users in the world and I wanted to have an impact I think also beyond the company and I think if you manage to build a global leader in a category You can you can also have a say outside the core topic of your company So you see you create hundreds of jobs, but also, you know with pigment for instance we try to have an impact on global warming by explaining to our customers that they should really care about Decreasing the carbon footprint and you can really you know think also about other topics such as parity for instance in a company Etc. So I really really think that's also what I want to get out of pigment is how to obviously find like something very big I'm very competitive But also have an impact outside the core topic of what we do at pigment Very cool great story and let's maybe talk a little bit about the cluster So you were seeing the London ecosystem as a VC and many clusters, but you decided to start the company in Paris How does Paris compared to other clusters like Helsinki Stockholm Berlin London? And what why did you choose to go back to Paris? So I guess from your accent, but it's a beautiful city. Yes Actually, well, obviously France is my hometown and the reason why we we came to Paris My co-founder is actually the co-founder and sitio of Creteo Creteo was one of the first success success in Paris one of the first unicorn that actually helps the Paris ecosystem to create like dozens of unicorns afterwards and What we knew with pigment pigment is a planning company So we are B2B planning software and we knew that one of the core asset we would have with Roman was actually our engineering team and We had some incredible engineers that we could put together actually in our headquarters So it was very natural for us to create a very very big hub in Paris because we had Incredible talents in hand to create this global leader. Yeah, very cool Marcus, you're the founder of bold which is I think currently the fastest growing mobility company globally So you're in life in 45 countries more than 100 million customers. You started it when you were 19 in 2013 Take us back to 2013. What person would I have met? I was Marcus in his early days and what drove you to start bold Ever as long as I can remember I always had the dream that with technology you can make the world a lot better place I've always been very optimistic about it. So when I was a teenager I learned to codes I was building websites for small companies in Estonia I built a small app for for our school for educational purposes and so on So actually when I was 19 and I was in high school. I just couldn't even wait to finish school I already wanted to get building so while everybody else was starting for exams I started to actually go on the streets of Tallinn sign up taxi drivers one by one and build the app So I was just eager to get going as soon as I could How does it feel like attracting taxi drivers in a time where we've already raised? I think five hundred million or a billion and you're like going on the street saying hi Do you want to be on my app? Hi When I was starting they were still a small limousine company in the US So so back then we didn't even consider them as competition at all So it was about six months in that they started raising massive amounts of funding And that of course made things very difficult for us because you're a 19 year old kid from Estonia No experience no connections nothing really and then you go against this company that became the best funded technology company of all time They raised more than 25 billion dollars So it became very obvious that you cannot outspend them. You cannot compete in the same sector Unless you're doing something really right. So from day one. We understood we're going We'd have to be ten times more efficient at least and even that is not enough. You're still to this day We've raised ten times less funding so it really as cliche cliche as it sounds you come down to the culture So how do you get the right people who are really high performing really high on cost efficiency? That's the only way you can even survive. It's table stakes now. That's great I think efficiency is something especially in these times of the market will touch down on that a little bit later Which is a disciplined approach. I guess Very exciting to go a little deeper But I think one thing I would love to touch down on you were 19 when you started bold right out of high school You still decided to go to university. I think for two three semesters How did it feel then to drop out and make this decision to be bold and then and say, okay? I do this full-time now. I drop my academic career my advice actually for everybody who has this question of sort of academia versus Startups is that you can actually run both in parallel for quite a while So as I mentioned, they started both in high school And then I went to university to study computer science And they only dropped out in the second semester once we already had 10 employees So actually I did risk the situation quite a bit. It wasn't like I decided I'm not gonna go to uni I actually did that as well as well as you can next to a startup But then by the time we had 10 employees and a lot of traction It was very obvious that this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity But I can always go back to uni and study more if I want to and we go back to uni some point in time Or is it like I'm still missing my math and physics lessons, but no probably not anytime soon nice Well, let's see. Jochen actually we met in 2011 When I was doing an internship in BCG and Jochen was my mentor. He was a great mentor He was doing his PhD back then. I think actually he was working already on the plant starting Flix bus But that's one story another story is this little toy here, which is a Greyhound bus So when I was three years old my mother brought it to me from the US and it was my favorite toy And I think Greyhound is something interesting because it's kind of one of the biggest brands in the US And it's kind of a symbol of national identity I would even say and somehow a year ago this guy with Flix bus a quiet Greyhound So what the hell happened in the last year ten years since we met maybe you can give us a two three minute version of Flix bus and what you've built and I'm happy to and I'm not sure if I made too much of an impact on your career by Mentoring you back then but still great to be on stage shortly. I mean we've I also dropped out of academia to be fair I already had finished my university and had started a PhD but figured similar like you This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance and you either jump or you don't and if you for us It was always like if we don't try to do this We may regret this for the rest of our lives and back then everybody thought we're crazy to do this There was this market Deregulation going on in Germany for us for many many years almost 80 years It was not allowed to run bus services between German cities and then the government decided Hey, we're gonna change this and we've seen this opportunity to come and we felt hey This is something where we can build something new build a new business build something that has a real impact on people's lives and Also bring technology in a real-world product and it's very visible obviously what we're doing I'm together and we kind of found this so intriguing that we said look we need to try this out And thankfully we've decided for the entrepreneurial journey and not for the academia in this case And I mean fast forward ten years We've built this out of Germany expanded across Europe. We're in 40 countries, and I'm it's I'm very sad So it's the the biggest bus mobility company globally now. Yeah, we're not in Finland yet So we still we still need to expand here. That's one of the very few European countries But then I think again coming back to efficiency. We also had all these big competitors It was the corporates had much more money They had experience in the space everybody thought you were not gonna make it because they will put buses money people on On this market and you'll lose But ultimately I think again totally agree what you said Marcus comes down to you need this team Who brings that absolute passion to build a product to be more passionate around The customer to build this business and to create efficiencies and also through technology And I'll just to give you an anecdote We've had one competitor two corporates who actually joined forces to be in competition with us They spent more money on consultants before they even built the team than we needed to launch the first routes It's just crazy. It's a bit massive difference And I think this is I think what what we can bring as startups as founders to the table to rethink how businesses are being built And really build global companies out of this That's interesting because actually the liberalization of the market was the trigger to start the company and then the race was on I think there were 10 companies in Germany. You won the market on the other side It has then Turned into kind of a monopoly. I think there are different arguments on what a monopoly is If you follow the bus market, you have maybe 90 percent share if we look at the mobility market overall Not what are the advantages or disadvantages of such a market situation for the consumers and for you as a business because I mean if you look at some of the most Innovative companies globally They're monopolies like google facebook amazon, but that makes them profitable So they can really spend money on things that make the world a little better our technology and not like competition How about flix bus or what situation do you see there? I mean for for us if you just look at the bus segment It certainly feels like we're having very high market shares and we're like If a few years in into market expansion We always target a 50 plus to really be very relevant to build the best and most dense network At the same time we continue to have competition Every customer has a choice of either taking a train taking a flight in some cases taking his or her own car Carpooling whatever there's always substitutes And this is ultimately for us also the big opportunity to really get people out of using cars and using collective mobility That's why we're also we don't really see the state rail folks For example as competition is more like you jointly built an inventory That's better for customers to make you even more independent from owning your car And just relying on also mid and long distance on services like ours Cool Let's talk a little bit about scaling because that's the actual topic of of this panel. Eleonore, you know When starting a SaaS company, there are a lot of choices You need to make in the early days on what you want to focus on Whether you want to win a market first A country a certain vertical whether you want to expand in europe whether you want to expand in us I think you grow six x in five months and you're pretty big in the u.s And you're still very early like three years old as a company What were your major trade-offs in the beginning and and how you're dealing with it right now? Yes, the market situation, you know, we discussed about Efficiency capital constraints, especially going into maybe a two-year or three-year Recession like how do you deal deal with that kind of? Yeah, so we are lucky obviously to to to have raised sufficiently to actually be free of going wherever we wanted but the reality is So we are SaaS company We are the only SaaS company in the panel and when you want to create a global sales leader You have no choice but to go to the u.s right the u.s is going to be your number one market for many reasons And obviously you can go early. You can go later The reality is for us. We knew that timing was now We want to create a very very large probably one of the largest SaaS businesses in the world The modern version of acp 200 billion dollar plus if we can and in order to do that We knew that what could be key for us could have could be to have actually some key logos Some key lighthouse customers that would be able to talk about us and rave about us not only in europe but in the u.s and so it's Completely virtuous cycle actually because when When you start in the u.s. So don't get me wrong. It's very hard because the first customers we had to actually find them from europe When you start there and you start having your first key logo there Then it means that you can hire people that understand that your product is great And as you know, like probably one of the hardest thing for a SaaS company in the u.s Is to put together an amazing team Because a SaaS for instance sales leader in a in a great, you know successful company There is no reason for him to join a european company if you haven't signed any good customer out there He will be like how am i going to crack the market? You know, how am i going to make my quota and help my team be successful So it was critical for us to show actually that as we wanted to create a fantastic sales team there one To be able to prove to them that our product was already superior and that we had raving fans So literally two months after we launched we straight went to the u.s And in a few months we signed figma we signed karta Breaks gong dbt labs and their finance teams their rev ops teams are now raving fine raving ambassadors And it's fantastic because it's the best network effect you can have Now we can have the cf of figma coming to a marketing event to a customer event and saying look, you know This is why i'm using pigment every day right now is the crisis This is how i deal with uncertainty with pigment. This is how i do my scenario planning and is the most powerful thing you can do And i have to say especially for us. We are enterprise sass, which is also very different from when you sell to smb It's a lot of word of mouth So when you get to your first crazy big customers They have an incredible network and it means that not only they will bring to you Your next customers and they will help you unlock certain markets Silicon valley forest new york, etc But they will also help you perhaps find candidates for your company And so it's a completely virtual cycle and i have to say I know i can't regret at all the choice because it's really helpful today And we have already 40 percent already of the business in the u.s With a very small team out there. We have 40 people out there right now How do you deal with it? Is it like the main team is in paris like product development and also kind of strategy but the Distribution is more local so that that will be sales marketing in the in the u.s. Then on the ground exactly So what is important though is that when you sell in no matter what the geography, but it's even more true in the u.s You need your customer is not only buying the product is buying the entire experience Because what they want is at the end a quick time to value and have a product that works It's not only having a product It's really having something that they can deal with on a daily basis So it means that you cannot only have a's for instance or bdr On on on the ground you really need to have a proper experience sell from bdr So top of panel to professional services customer experience support people product specialists That can really help your customer on a daily basis because imagine your product doesn't work And it's like 4 a.m. In the morning in france You need people to be able to help straight away because i don't know a customer is stuck on whatever formula etc So it's it's critical to have a fully functioning service and you cannot bet on a country if you don't put This full set in place cool That's an exciting story because there are many saas companies that focus on one market for us if you take prosonio I don't has also been on stage several times at slush that was focusing on germany For a long time and it's all kind of winning europe, but then there are a lot of competitors in the u.s So i guess different ways to to scale there in saas macos jochen if we look at your Companies that what impresses me most is that you've built global category leaders in a category that i thought was by definition hyper local which is mobility because you mentioned, you know The ecosystem is very local and and there are local competitors and the second thing we already touched down on you were basically competing about Goliaths that were well better finance in your case It was uber being like incredibly strong finance and in your case you mentioned already Deutsche Bahn mega bus if you had to mention one thing what has been the key ingredient To compete successfully or the secret sauce to to outcompete all those companies in such a short time In our case clearly it was just a very high performance As a culture so we realized again from day one that they have a hundred times more funding than us Hundreds times. I mean imagine that you're building a company against There's a hundred times better financing so it was really brutal But that meant that we had to be extremely smart with how we were spending our resources And that meant we had to be very frugal with the people we hired and get them with the right mindset And that's still the core value we carry in the company today But i'd actually have two two comments. They're quite different. What was our thesis? Why we were successful as well What one is that I think many vcs and then companies were making the mistake that they thought you had to go Into us and western europe. I do agree that sauce is a very different business there It makes a lot of sense But specifically in our case we ran the numbers and it was very clear you can build a multi billion dollar company Just in emerging markets or just in central eastern europe And that's something that many Many investors missed and that's why it was very hard for us to fundraise in the first couple of years But then suddenly we were able to show them five years later that hey We're doing this billions of turnover in these markets And then they realized that they actually missed this opportunity And the other thing coming back to culture is that it's very different to build a sauce business or to build an operational business like we have So you need to be strong on both sides on one hand. You have extremely sophisticated software running at extremely high scale We have millions of trips happening every day. You need to build out the maps payments all of that to orchestrate it But then on the other hand, you also have these physical offline operations We have offices in 45 countries So how do you maintain that culture of frugality and this really high intensity operations? Coupled with this technology stack and that's extremely hard to do very few companies are able to do both well So that's what really separates us from from most others in this space That's incredible because um, I think one Key takeaway for me for all the founders here is you know, yesterday I think taglione was saying like starting a company is a 15 20 year long Game and I think in the last two years it has Exaggerated a little bit that just everything needed to go so fast people were thinking about raising the next round and kind of Being successful within two years, but it really shows that it's a very very very Long-term game and strategy that you need to be played to be successful Maybe one quick follow-on question on that before we go to jochen Um, we just discussed, you know, you did an amazing funding round beginning of the year when markets were still like Okay, let's burn it within one year or be be the fastest Did anything change in the last 12 months regarding your strategy because in the beginning you were Hyper efficient and like I guess that's also what made you successful to compete But then you also in the mobility space have to land grab and I guess be aggressive And then again, you have a market like this where you maybe have to switch again to your hyper efficiency So it's both such an agile company that you can switch As fast between those two so in this industry there's first of all two very powerful fundamental forces at play So one is network effects as you mentioned, it's a very hyper local business But those apply to the city So it doesn't matter how big you are in the us what matters is do you have drivers here in Helsinki? Right when I opened up getting there in a few minutes So that's the hyper local bit But then on the other hand, of course you need to invest Tens hundreds of millions into r&d to build out all of this technology to actually orchestrate all of these trips So on one hand, you need to be very strong hyper locally, but you also need sufficient global scale But then coming back to what that means for fundraising was that the first four years for us again were brutal We were only able to raise two million euros locally So effectively we were bootstrapping the company the first four years while our competitors were raising billions And now over the last year in 2021 we raised more than a billion euros in funding So our funding basically went vertical And what we did we were very aggressively investing that but of course now times have changed and we're actually going back into What was the norm for us being very frugal being close to break even and we can be profitable when we want to But this is a very different environment and we actually welcome that a lot Because generally we've seen that we were great at operating this type of business. We're very cost efficient there We haven't necessarily been the best fundraisers So we think actually this environment where companies are getting valued not based on the story they tell But actually based on their underlying economics. We think this is a great error for us for the next five years Reminds a little bit of mickey with vault who has also been competing in such a competitive space and then being so efficient But then also managing to scale Jochen, how about flicks pass? What was the secret sauce to in such a short time out compete so many markets and so many larger Goliaths? I mean I would I would agree with a lot of what you said and I think We've had this extreme situation of the pandemic just recently I'm on our end where the business effectively disappeared within a few weeks and I think that again was the point where The team has been excelling at what we think is the secret sauce, which is Entrepreneurial spirit passion and speed So they all felt like hey, we're in this together. Let's find a solution the very solution oriented Very passionate about how do we solve this and very detail oriented around? Let's be analytical. How do we take these decisions? Where can we put capacity? Where the where's the demand etc to be really agile and Ramping down the business but also ramping it back up when the when the demand came back And I think this was coming back to what you said again The environment that we had through the pandemic funding wise what investors were looking at Obviously in hindsight wasn't super healthy for for many companies if you built for the long term Because I think it truly matters that you built for a healthy unit economics for a healthy business And this is how we've built our business for many many years. So we were always I'm frugal around. Where do we spend our money? What's the speed of expansion? We didn't overdo it But at the same time I think had to find the right balance between where we're going next how fast cream we go What's the organization actually capable of managing in terms of the speed of expansion? And this is something where and and that's why I think we're now much stronger than even before the pandemic So we've done our homework Invested into automation efficiency also through the pandemic But at the same time invested into tools to be even more flexible data driven And how do we take decisions and in our market? And that's true for any mobility company The secret the part that you need to get right the holy grail is supply and demand match If you're really good at that this is what's driving profits ultimately And I think this is where we even improved through the situation And that's something where our team has been deeply impressive to me In which speed with which passion and like analytical sort of ambition They've been managing that situation and that this comes down to entrepreneurial spirit And I think that's that's great to see to have this on the team And I think this is what can differentiate you from the large corporates the big companies the big competitors Because at some point if you have too much funding too early if you're too big anyways If you're corporate you just get slow and lazy And this is what you need to also culturally manage out of your organization from day one and like for the next 10-20-15 years Let's switch a little bit to the investment side because you're all both founders that are successful But also pretty active business angels How has Europe changed in the last 10 years as an ecosystem and what are our Strength and weaknesses compared to other clusters such as Silicon Valley other regions Whoever wants to take that one It's changed massively so from my experience again starting in 2013 as a 19-year-old in Estonia. It was impossible to raise more than a million euros Nobody locally even had any any source of funding more than that And and then also the second problem was that if there was any funding it was mostly in London Those were the only funds that had really any any capable funding to invest Um, but the issue for us was we tried we talked to every VC in London dozens and dozens of them And every single one turned us down So so that's why we were forced to bootstrap the first four years But now looking at 2021 it was completely different So even in tiny Estonia every other week we were seeing companies raise seed rounds, you know, a million two three four million It's it's completely a different world now and capital is so much more available Even in the current climate for early stage companies and I think net net. That's still a great thing Many more people are trying of course many will fail But I think the outcome is going to be a net positive. There's going to be some great outcomes for everyone What I love as well is that a couple of things is that now that we have a lot of global leaders Uh in from Europe the government is changing a lot the laws in every country We are also thinking globally day one because you know, our country is too small So usually a lot of founders. I mean Finland itself We were discussing yesterday Rob with Peter Fenton from benchmark that just in Finland You know, you have so many billion dollar companies because they think they want about being global and building company for billions of of users if possible And not only that but obviously a lot of us capital has come here and thanks to kovid now that we can all work remote It means that for a company for instance like pigment as I was describing It's so easy to be global. It's so easy. So right now, you know, you don't even even team out there That's why it was so cheap for us to go to the us We had zero people on the ground and it's also thanks I think to the full cloud infrastructure both for b2c and b2b business That you don't need as much money as before to actually create a company because you don't have to create everything from scratch So all in all, we are now very lucky. I think in the european ecosystem and there is such also a fraternity Cross country that you know makes it very helpful to to go from one country to the next I I agree. I think it's great that also Sort of founders start reinvesting into companies early on sort of pass on the experience You we continue to see former colleagues of ours starting new businesses and like bringing that connectivity that network already I mean just being here in Helsinki It's incredible to see how much of an ecosystem is here in in Finland And if you can just sort of think about copy pasting this to so many more places in europe I think we have a true chance to to move europe forward And it still feels like it's early days 10 years ago. There was very little now There's a little bit and I think another 10 years fast forward in that development I think we'll we're on the brink of having a very good future here That's great news. So it seems like it has never been a better time to be a founder and I think the dna we have in europe maybe being a little more capital efficient and a little more conservative sometimes But at the same time getting more ambition level also, you know From from the u.s. Also, I mean if we look at slash A few of the speakers that we have seems like the ecosystem is really really really gaining momentum Let's maybe quickly switch to one or two more personal questions We talked a lot about building a business But Eleonore you also run a family business on the side because you got twins two years ago and you're also Fathers and and mums and I know Jochen is Three girls so that could be a whole panel on its own how to deal with that But how does a typical day look like in the life of Eleonore? Crespo with twins and and building pigmen at the top That's a good answer No, actually I did a panel about that yesterday that you can probably watch About how to be a parent and a founder at the same time But really what I try to do is spend time with the kids every day travel as little as possible I try to carve out three hours a day for my kids to make sure that I can see them a bit in the morning A bit in the evening this type of events I do very rarely Obviously because also, you know, I'm running the company So I have to be to be very focused on that but also because I really want to to spend time with my family Right, so I would really give you an advice here to to spend as much time as possible because life is short And it also helps us be more focused because every day you have to think about the Top three things you can do at the company to be impactful But you know, it's it's a 24-7 adventure. So it's it's I would say that apart from these three hours I just work continuously. So that's that's that's my life But it's amazing. It's possible, right? We're always discussing trade-offs But I think we have to work hard on just making Building the environment that it's possible to grow a family inside a company at the same time even though it will be tough Yeah, absolutely. I was saying yesterday that when you build a global leader anyway It's a cross a period of 10 years 15 years 20 years So of course, you're gonna have kids and and you have to deal with your life with that, right? So it's it's it's a clear decision. There is no good time to have kids No good time to fund a company. So just do the do at the same time There's always a good time for both Maybe one last question and I would direct that to Jochen because we're discussing a lot high level Oh, now is the best time to start a company and the markets are difficult So best startups are born out of crisis And it's easy to say that as a VC when you don't have to operate and do this But Jochen, I think you've went through a quite a hard time during covid So maybe you can give us some motivation or an example why A bad crisis can really be a great opportunity for an entrepreneur if you get it the right way I mean, I guess all of us who are here having that entrepreneurial mindset and well We're all optimists and I think this is what carried us through this crisis where Within a few days our business disappeared completely and we were like shocked and scared of are we going to survive this And this was about survival a lot And ultimately we figured hey, this is there's a massive chance in this crisis because everybody in our market is suffering And if we're just better than everybody else and and and just improve and like survive somehow We'll have a massive advantage and then at some point when you have the ground plus there This opportunity was there and we felt like hey This is this unique moment in time again a bit like 10 years ago when we started the business And we can't let this opportunity pass and this optimism and this Determination just gave us that That energy to pull through and I think this is something that we translated into the team with that clear vision Built a strong narrative of hey, we're going to make it through where we're all in one boat slash bus I'm going to make it through and I think as you said, I think this is a good example on how you can use a crisis for your advantage And we're stronger than ever We continue to grow if you sort of see our revenue curve It's been dropping but we're on that same path like we've been in 2019 Um and and we're stronger than ever and I think this is I said never I know this has been stressed a lot, but never waste a good crisis if this is true I think you can learn a lot from these situations and come out much stronger than than you moved in What a great finish never waste a good crisis the capital is there the vcs are there You guys are here to to really build your ideas take a 10 15 year horizon And uh, I think it has never been a better time to build a great company. So thanks so much Thanks so much to you guys for the panel you too. Bye