 Some nice music. Yes, it's beautiful and nice to have you here Andreas. How are you? Thank you very much? This is a bit impromptu, but it's gonna be fun. Great, I know that I'm not famous enough to make the original lineup. So that's that's that's totally fine I guess we have lots of questions and I really want to understand myself How do I impress the VC right? But before that could you dive a little bit deeper into why you are here and and pretty much? What's your background? Why are you why do you have the expertise to tell us how to impress the VC, you know? Because I am a VC And that's literally the only thing I know so my journey and and Kim already alluded to that a little bit earlier is I'm German. I studied industrial engineering. I spent six months of my life on a factory shop floor in China Which was a lot of fun, but also Not what I wanted to do for the rest of my life And then was very fortunate that I could join project a which is an early-stage fund out of Berlin At a time when they were just effectively getting started on their VC model. I was the first Analyst to join the team. I was incredibly junior And that's now almost nine years ago and I've been doing absolutely nothing else besides VC properly for the rest of my career And now with Atomico for the last three and a half almost years All right, how many pictures do you hear per year? Oh, that's a good question. I should have looked into the date I was asked this question this morning actually as well. I So as a team in total it's several thousands and We ran the numbers so I met with around 500 Organizations this year so far that includes other VCs, right? so it's probably like a third of that and the rest is probably Startups, so that's me personally, but as a team we see a lot. We're a generalist series a investor We love our as as you mentioned in the introduction. We love all all all partners We all have our individual focus areas But as a whole we're a generalist funds and so we have to cover the entirety of the landscape and therefore there's a lot of meetings that come out of that and Also a lot of knows unfortunately, which is which is the The part about this job that I disliked the most all right So now pretend I'm a founder and I really want to impress you a first impression I've never seen you before so how do I make a top impression first impression to a VC? I hope you're gonna start a business and we then we probably have to talk So I think There's one thing that I really value in founders journeys and that's authenticity right like you can be a very much an introvert You can be very much an extrovert. You can be coming from an industry background You can be a whiteboard founder who explored different industries and unsettled on a specific problem to solve all of that is very valid in itself And I think you can really like once you see in many pitches. You can really sense where people Make up stories or like try to fudge things that are not really they are true beliefs and they're true Yeah, they're true intentions of why they started the business, etc So I always really value like an authentic story That's yeah that comes up that is of course well presented I think there is certainly a storytelling element to it But that story element or a storytelling element should also fit to your own personality So I think above all this is authenticity and like really Being who you are as a founder because you don't want to raise capital from people who will think you're someone else So be authentic and I think that's that always leaves a great impression be honest about the challenges that you're facing I think that's if everything's crystal clear everything's perfect That's never the case right like so being authentic also about the challenges that you're facing That shows a good understanding for it You can make a great case out of why you're what they want to overcome these challenges So being honest being authentic being humble. I mean you're setting out to Achieve hopefully a really great great vision. So there's there's a little bit of of strong ambition And maybe sometimes even slight delusion a slight naivety, which is great needs to be in that but But I think sort of dislike humbleness around like hey Building a startup is incredibly tough and nothing is gonna fall Nothing's gonna fall into place. You need to make things fall into place So it's the yeah authenticity being humble and being honest about the challenges that you're facing Do I impress you better with my authenticity humbleness online or in person you? Collectively speaking I think I think you all as the slush team you're just like very Dry finished people who just like to do more than talking and I think that's That's what this entire conference embraces and it's a bit ironic that now we're sitting on stage and talking but but No, it's it's authentic like you're the same person online as you are in real life. So That's great. That's why I want you to start a business. It's gonna be my challenge So if we now move on right so I am pressed to you I Hopefully get to the second meeting and we have more and more chats and potentially we end up working together And I'm raising funding from Atomico. That's great. I'm hopefully here manifesting my future But if you if we now proceed right so you have invested into into my startup in this case And I really want to develop the relationship further. So I now have an existing investor What are the do's that I should do that's make you and the fund love me even more? Yes So multiple things in this question. I think so the first thing is just speaking to us really helps when I was May I may throw him under the bus here But when I was at project a there was one partner who wants an immediate interview said something on the along the lines of hey If founders don't reply to us, that's what makes us really excited and we want want to chase them even further Which for me as a VC junior as an analyst made my life really hard because people just stopped replying to me So I think the first thing I would counter what's at this former boss of mine effectively said is I Think there's an element of nurturing these relationships. That is very important So for us we are not a super early-stage fund. So we don't necessarily do pre-seed We come in around like late seed series a is where our bread and butter really starts So usually you would have an investor before and usually you would have a little bit of time along your journey That has already gotten into this so along this journey And I appreciate very much that as a founder you have so many things to do Right like you have a business to run with people to hire your customers calling you particularly in the beginning You're wearing so many different hats Taking time out of your day to actually speak to investors and like keep them updated about the journey can be a really really tough thing to do What I what I advise my founders to is just like take one call a week Let's have an hour just to catch up with people just to build like a book of people that are Interested in your business keep them engaged keep them along the journey That's just makes it much much easier you can pause that right like if you have an important strategic decision Maybe you're gonna pivot or slightly change your business model Then maybe around that time you don't really want to speak because you first want to make up your mind That's totally fine. So it's not prescriptive But generally building that relationship really really helps and we've seen that also with the fun With our founders who then go on to fundraise it really helps if you have built up a book of excited investors about you So first thing just speaking and building the relationship I think that is that is very very important and then it's basically a continuation of what I said before right? So you're telling about your challenges to tell taking about telling about the things that you're facing I think was always greatest when founders exhibit like a strong understanding of the journey is like, okay Here's where I am. Here's the challenges that I'm having in the next six months I want to prove that I can also sell to a customer outside of my initial ideal customer profile Maybe in the beginning I'm just selling to startups and I want to prove that I can sell to someone else besides startups just as a random example so Really understanding your growth journey is showing your progression along the way. There's a big element of Just expectation management of like if you deliver what you're saying you're going to deliver like if you say well You're going to be at 1 million ARR end of the year and you're actually going to be at 1 million ARR at the end of the year That's what makes me as a easily excitable person Very excited about just someone who has an understanding on this growth journey ends We and that might be different for pre-seed funds who meet you earlier along the journey We have this luxury of being able to build a relationship with founders over time and therefore we have many data points We see how founders grow they get to know us I think it's just a much better start into an actual founder investor relationship Versus you get into a process you have to close in a week or maybe even less That's just not a great start. I think both parties need to get to know each other And I think therefore nurturing building that relationship is really important to both sides Even though I very much understand as a founder you're thinking about the next problem It is going to solve at hand and customers peaking your left right and center and someone's quitting and you have to hire that person and It's busy But taking a capped very capped amount of time out of your busy schedules to do that Actually makes sense and I realized this is a very self-serving answer of course because we also want to build that relationship But yeah, that's that would be my thinking. I'd like to double-click on the on the topic So basically my concern would be that if I'm very open to you and update your weekly on all the challenges I face wouldn't you start to see me in potentially in the image of yeah, or this guy doesn't have anything under control Could that potentially to the VC looking at me negatively? How do I balance those those two things? Maybe not every single challenge, right? So if you've worked in a startup, you know that a challenge can be whatever people are arguing of which sort of tea to order for the office Whatever or which blend of coffee like that's that's maybe not something to talk about with your investors about But we've like this strategic challenges of like as I was saying right like we think a lot and proof points Like getting your first customer getting your first revenues. That's a great proof point So and if you don't have that well, it's a challenge to get there So being honest about these things and then the next proof point is like getting a bunch of customers Maybe different customer segments because you want to prove that you cannot only sell to a specific customer group But also to another customer group then maybe getting like a repeatable go-to-market motion in place of like where you have a sales team You can predictably if you throw leads into the funnel you produce revenue in the end These are like proof points. These are the challenges sort of that that I think it's always great and encouraging to hear and The thing is Investors should know that saying all investors know but investors should know that building an early-stage startup is so challenging and if everything would be great, well, everyone would be doing it and it's a really a really hard job to do and Therefore there will always be challenges and I personally think and maybe that's a personal view and other we sees would think differently But I I think it's great to sort of like own these challenges and like say okay So I need to prove that I can acquire customer out of my initial ideal customer profile I'm going to do that by talking to XYZ. I have these leads maybe already in the pipeline and I want to deliver on that until XYZ That's great. That's like owning a challenge If we now go I'm getting ahead of myself here I'm just very curious. So basically if I'm now the founder and we have those weekly seconds and I'm sharing with you my strategic challenges However, I start to misbehave Outside of your expectations where what does misbehaving mean? That's the question I want to get to so pretty much other any things that founders should never ever do when Collaborating and trying to nurture the relationship with the existing investor Yeah, very good question. I think there is So Not hitting the expectations like if you say you're gonna hit whatever a million a year on the end of the year and You're not hitting that like we know that this is going to happen, right? Like we know that you're like a growth journey is never linear or never fully exponential only if you zoom out at the very end very much But in that moment, it's never like that. So it's very much not hitting your growth plans. I think it's more Really true misbehaving and like the true sense of the word is like really is if it's just misconduct, right? Like if you're if you're misleading me in it like you one day you say, oh, I have 500 K Or are and then you're gonna race around 12 months later and I look at the numbers and actually at this point in time You actually didn't have any revenues at all Like I think this is where borderline starts to become investor fraud and this is where things really start to get worse So I think that's one that's one thing all types of Allogations of like how to how you create the company culture etc So I think that's like really true misbehaving which is a becoming a red flag and then there's Anything in between right like if you don't hit your growth targets Well, of course, it's not necessarily a positive thing, but it can be reasons for that So if you can explain that if you can put that into context, etc It's not necessarily a red flag even though it might not be a positive thing It's not a misbehaving in its true sense. I would say if we now go a step back, right? So I just raised the funding And my key focus was I want funding from a VC that that's why I had the first impression That's for how I impressed you and then we built a relationship But there's many other reasons to raise funding from a VC and many more value ads besides Besides the actual funding could you quickly just summarize of why else are we working together between as the founder and the VC? Yes, I think maybe even before that I'm gonna say something that's slightly controversial I think VC is not for everyone. I think raising VC capital is really like you should be Incredibly clear about what your growth journey is going to be and if you want to build a nice small profitable 10 people business That's perfectly fine and it's great But it's just we see is not the right a form of financing for you So really being intentional about your funding journey is very important So if you go down the VC route because you want to create a really massive generational company Then we see is the right type of funding for you but I think even before even before that what you were saying is like even It's really important to make up your mind that VC is really what you want as a former financing and it really fits to your Funding journey and then sort of like with regards to the value that I would bucket this into two items one is Like the classic core competencies of an investor right like so we are as board members We're and we can get dive into the into the details of that we give like some form of strategic advice We can connect you to people to customers at the right point in time, etc We are well gonna look over your financials. We're gonna provide a certain form of governance, of course So I think there's like this core investor value proposition elements That needs to be right and there's varying varying degrees of how well this can be executed Happy to go into the details on that And then there's the other element lots of VCs. They come with a platform team and it's become sort of this like ongoing Running joke amongst founders like VCs or they always claim to be helpful, but they never really actually are and when it comes to sort of this platform team, this is something that lots of people are saying and I really want to counter this and say like hey if you have a VC that really has a strong platform team And of course I'm tooting my own horn here But we have like a 12 people platform team of people who've built up snowflake in Europe from zero to 250 million ARR Fantastic go-to-market leader people who've seen the talent function grow from zero to one to 20 people on the talent team These are just like fantastic people that you can learn from that's like we call it growth acceleration Other people might call it platform, but this is sort of the second bucket of more operational more functional advice That you can get from an investor or also not get from an investor if you don't want to that's also completely fair by the way You mentioned the board right am I forced to have you on my board if I raised funding for you? Depends on the stage so where we usually invest You're never forced because I don't like these words, but we would generally love to take a board CDS Because we think that well at a certain point and where we invest right like there's at least some indication of product market fits There's big debates around Whether you need to have a board really before you found true product market fit over you It's rather like you need to tinker and find that for yourself. I think everyone needs to find the right Model for them, but once you've reached that once it's more about like creating a certain repeatability Establishing processes and I think just establishing processes There's like a even though it's sometimes a bit of a bad word But it's like there's a certain governance like you've seen that with the open AI board Etc. What all the things that can happen and it's not probably not the Not the very best example of how a board should be working but like there's a certain element of governance a certain element of oversight that should be happening and Usually these board meetings should be and that brings us to another point. They should be most valuable to the founders like I see this as a Service offering if you will to the founders there's an element of classic oversight And we need to see some reporting on like how revenues have grown how like cash in a bank has developed etc We need to see that of course, but then it's much more about strategic guidance on like what do we think about a certain topic? giving maybe a little bit of inspiration to the founders Never being prescriptive I think VCs have this tendency sometimes and I Tend to hold back if I see that in myself because I'm very guilty of that sometimes myself to extrapolate from a too small sample size So if one portfolio company who did one thing really well, and you're thinking okay now This is the next thing that you're gonna preach to every of your portfolio companies It's not true like everything is super context dependent. It still might be a good inspiration and maybe you can connect the two companies, but Giving the strategic advice I think is helpful. You can discuss certain things. What should we be focusing on? What should we would not be focusing on how do we prioritize? How would you do we find the right sequence? Are we first gonna internationalize? Are we first gonna sell into different customers groups that we hadn't sold to before? So all of these like more focusing sequencing type of discussions are usually a great place to do at the board Who should I have on my board in the first place? Is it isn't just the investors I raised from do I get external people? How do I know as a first-time founder? Who should I have on the board? Because we've seen ourselves recently. There's the board has immense power So yeah, how do I make those decisions? first of all and above all it should only be people that you have like a Good relationship to and people that you trust. I think that's above all things That's most important which comes comes back to the forcing rights that you mentioned earlier Like if it feels forced to you then we probably shouldn't do this But if you want this and if you think this can be valuable then well, that's a good starting point So I think first of all like this is like a just base layer of trust of like mutual Appreciation that needs to be established otherwise. It's never going to work and it's never going to be successful It's going to be horrible for everyone involved and then I think sort of like along the classic journey like in the beginning you have the founders on the board and you might have a Pre-seed or seed investor like whoever is the largest of them And then you might have a series a investor and like every round you add like one or two Maybe one observer because sometimes people like to have that And then the board grows and grows over time. I Personally and that's now maybe a slightly controversial opinion as well. I think there's a merit to having a Certain board size and not having it too big because sometimes if you're if you're then in a room with 10 plus people is really hard to find conclusions So keeping it small keeping it to a circle of people that you really trust I think renders merit for founders Because you can still reach out like if there's a specific topic from your other investors that you want input on you can still reach out to them I think at some point somewhere around series a series B usually you start to see independent board directors like founders or operators Who have been through the journey? Can take on a chairman role can be like a non-executive board director can become really helpful can become really meaningful Very context-dependent very dependent on that person Shouldn't get someone just for the sake of getting someone. I think that's generally never to kick never never good But I think this is like how a bird board journey evolves like his guests established With the seed round or with the series a rounds and then sort of like it grows from there and there's also Periods of where you probably need to cut your boards Make it a bit smaller and have to hopefully a collaborative discussion with your investors around that Just to keep the discussion quality high Small board are we talking three people four people five people depends on whatever works, right? I've seen five as a good size usually have you two founders two three investors maybe depending on stage of course right like That that's roughly where where I see is a good equilibrium Maybe one or two observers if you if investors want that and if you think that these observers can add value But yeah, I generally think that smaller boards yield better discussions and I'm happy to be bumped off the board at some point as well Right like it's it's a journey if founders want me. I'm very happy to stay on boards if there's no reason for me being there I'm also happy to step out. So I think it needs to be sort of just like mutual Taking on this journey together and find whatever works for all parties involved We have a couple of minutes left I'd like to kind of finish it off with going even more into the practicalities of work now deepening my Investor relations through the work that that you do on my board So how often do we have board meetings? How do I structure them? Yeah, and how do I prepare for them as a founder to maximize my investor relations that we have through the board's work Yeah Once again, this is very personal and you need to find whatever rhythm works for you But what I've seen work and I hope that by sharing that I'm not prescriptive, but that's what I've seen works really well is Sharing a pre read of materials like exactly the reporting that I mentioned right like you want to report on your revenues You want to report on the number of customers you want to report on your turn whatever metrics you have you want to Report on changes on the team you want to report on strategic changes, etc Key achievements key things that didn't go so well Sending out a pre read can be a dog can be a deck whatever format works for you Sending that out a couple of days before the board meeting make all investors really read that I think if you're on a board you have a responsibility to what a company reading that and I've been in too many boards where Investors started reading that like within the board meeting and that shouldn't really not be the case I've funny side story. I have one portfolio company. They included a link in their deck of like Hey, please inputs. They're raising some working capital facility Please input all the contacts providing working capital that you have and then they Link to a Google sheets and they did not give the investors access to the Google sheet So they would basically see that only the ones who request access to the Google sheet have actually read the documents So it was a funny little little check that they did but really make investors read that deck before because otherwise Like you're gonna not gonna have a great discussion Then start off with like any sort of like Q&A any questions that come out of that 20-30 minutes maybe an hour or whatever works well and then pick one two three Core areas where you as a founder we really would like input on can be a strategic prioritization like are we gonna go international now or are we gonna Solve these are these challenges first can be like a discussion around product can be a discussion around hiring like when should we Introduce like a VP layer as the sea layer sea level additions and how should we approach that? So there's probably like some challenges that are front of mind where you as a founder would love to get some input on That would really pick these areas of like okay. These are the things on my mind dear boards Happy to discuss and then you have a discussion around these specific topics. I think that works really well and Then after the boards there is usually like a well not usually sorry But one of one of the portfolio founders and big shout out to Thomas from they Who has introduced that and it's like I've been now been preaching this maybe a little bit too much Is to do like an all shareholders call after the board as well because we have probably have angel investors smaller funds Etc at some point throughout the journey and you want to keep them engaged and you can send them the reporting But just get them for 30 minutes in a room Like do a little Q&A give like a 10 minute 10 minutes presentation get all of their input You have them on your cap table for a reason, right? Yeah, you're not letting them in just because they wired the money because but because they have contacts of value And put them to the test and I think that's that's really it and sorry you mentioned cadence Roughly quarterly is what we've seen works best but like in the end doesn't really matter But quarterly works best can be every two months fine And then catch ups in the meantime right like Investor to founder relationships board relationships if they only happen within the board meeting then they're probably a bit dysfunctional So they should happen throughout this entire journey Outside of that you can do that with regular catch ups. You can do that async. I do both with my portfolio companies all of that works But it would meet like investor if you only interact in the board. You're probably doing something wrong And the other thing I really wanted to say like as we're nearing towards the end of it Like really put your investors to the test like as founders I think that's one of the things where I always like sometimes getting almost a little bit confused of like you get the investors in For providing the value and then afterwards you're saying ah, they didn't really provide that value But really put them to the test ask questions ask hey Oh, I'm gonna look for benchmarks on whatever what percentage of my Staff at my stage should be engineering versus sales like that's something that we can provide good input on you should Put us to the test like hey, I'm looking to hire this and this function Can you recommend three people who are doing it? Well, so I can calibrate what good good looks like I really put your investors to the test and we're really happy to help like genuinely and I Would love for founders to do that more in the diligence phase actually as well and also after that like we're super happy to Roll up our sleeves literally and work together with founders very closely. So put us to the test, please Thank you so much for jumping in here today Thank you for having I know where to go when I start my company. Please start a company. That's great. Thank you very much