Philip E. Reichen

Three biggest learnings from a fundraising journey. Shared by Rainer Märkle, General Partner at HV Capital at EUVC 1/ Have a time box with a deadline attached. Have a defined horizon & create a clear plan. Have some urgency to get things done at some point. Execute very transparently and reliably. 2/ Stick to your narrative. But don't do it blindly. Tweak it when necessary. Adapt it. Don't let yourself be surprised by major changes. Keep focusing on delivering according to your strategy & plan. 3/ Fundraising is a marathon with many sprints. There are moments when you'll ask yourself - Why do I do this? Is it gonna work out? But don't get too negative during the down phases. Adapting and pivoting is part of our job. As it is for the founder of a company. How about you? What fundraising lessons have you learned? Join the conversation. 🔽 #venturecapital #angelinvesting #startupfunding #europe

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Carbon13 is the Venture Builder for the Climate Emergency. Be one of 80 participants from tech, science and business and find the ideal co-founder among them. We put you in the best starting position for a successful climate tech startup. To do that, we ask you to aim big, to build a solution with the potential to reduce carbon dioxide (or equivalent greenhouse gases) by 10 million tonnes per year, at scale – and all our support is designed to help you reach that figure.🎯 To learn more and ask your questions, check Carbon13’s website and register for one of the upcoming webinars. 📢 📢 📢No doubt, the clock is ticking. Apply now https://lnkd.in/eZ6PTFYS Michael Langguth Carbon13

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🚀Navigating Switzerland's investor landscape can be complex for startups. Here’s a guide with insights into the key players, their industry focuses, and the stages at which they invest. #venturecapital #startup #switzerland

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This is how we invest in startups with NEO FOUNDERS: - Check size: €70k to €120k - Stages: Pre-seed Seed - Sectors: Agnostic – all industries - Geo: Europe I’ve signed up for the Early-Stage Virtual Conf on Jan 30. Read these VC stories at the bottom of the PDF, starting on page 2, to explore the core motivations of investors based on experience attracting hundreds of Family Offices, Funds of Funds, VC & PE funds, Angel syndicates to virtual events. And then: 1. Register for the event for free: https://inniches.com/es 2. Like and comment to receive the list with 128 investor contacts & 100 TechCrunch pitch deck teardowns. Max Pog’s team will send it to you via DM or a connection request. 3. Max will gift 100+ books & cakes to participants of the event. Repost to increase your chances.

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If ChatGPT is writing your posts, read this: Your posts look impressive. But they don’t connect. Here’s an example: "In a dynamic digital ecosystem, innovative strategies are essential for scalable growth and competitive differentiation." What does that even mean? 😅 Let me rewrite it: "If you want to grow, focus on your customers." One sounds robotic. The other sounds human. And that’s literally it. People don’t come to LinkedIn for jargon. They want: -Stories they relate to. -Advice they actually can act on. -Posts they can understand instantly. So the next time you write, ask yourself: Would this make sense to a 10-year-old? If not, rewrite it. Because on LinkedIn, clarity isn’t optional. It’s the reason people trust you.

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This is a really good content to learn from! For the past few weeks, I have been trying to interpret #paceB's current stage of Product Market Fit. And this post makes it all easy. A 'MUST KNOW' for all founders. Thanks Wen Zhang for sharing! #ProductMarketFit #Startup #Entrepreneurship

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Excited to share what I learned from Sandro Stark, founding partner at Vanagon Ventures backing FrontierTech from Munich/DACH 🚀 to the World at the YUVC video podcast (links in comments) 💡 Above all, Sandro is a super nice person to get along with and has a great NPS from founders 👋 Here 3 Core Takeaways ✨ 1. Vanagon’s approach to startup evaluation 👀 - Distribution capability is now the key differentiator, not just technical innovation - Customer "stickiness" and deep industry understanding - The solution must demonstrate both climate impact and profit potential 2. Why is Munich's ecosystem strategic? 🇩🇪 - Part of DACH region - third-largest market globally after China and US - Rich concentration of technical talent and corporate headquarters - Untapped potential in Mittelstand venture engagement 3. What's the philosophy behind sustainable success? 😉 - Don't postpone happiness for future achievements - True leadership creates more leaders, not followers - Consistent effort matters more than breakthrough moments Now listen in for more insights! ❤ Kudos to his great co-founders/GPs @Vanagon: Susanne Fromm Axel Roitzsch Shoutout to their amazing portfolios: Senken Particula Renoster youba The Landbanking Group LoopID heartstocks Learn.xyz ExoMatter and more

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Are you interested to #invest in #fungi #startups? Get in touch! We are working on two startup cases now and will coordinate an investment syndicate. So if you are an angel investor or family office, reach out if interest to hear more. #fungi #biotechnology #microbiology #futurefit #startups

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I turned down £10M in funding. Everyone called me crazy (perhaps I was) But I'd seen founders lose their companies to investors who: 👉 Changed the vision 👉 Forced quick exits 👉 Pushed growth over sustainability (Also, they wanted me to ditch my existing seed investors- I felt a responsibility and still do to the people who had faith in me and my vision) At The Brew , we chose bootstrapping. Yes, it meant: 👉 Slower growth 👉 Tighter budgets 👉 More stress But also: ✅ Full control ✅ Better decisions ✅ Sustainable growth Plot twist: We now help other founders avoid the same pressure by offering flexible office space without long-term commitments. 🚀 Sometimes, saying no to money means saying yes to your vision. What would you choose: Fast money or full control? #StartupAdvice #FundingAdvice #EntrepreneurshipJourney

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Zeitgeist is changing and we need to adapt or to encounter. When we started Climate Founders 4.5 years ago, we had a perfect Product Zeitgeist Fit (explained by a16z: https://lnkd.in/ePtBRVD3) in 2018 and 2019 activist groups like Fridays for Future played an important role to make the societies aware that we are in a climate crisis and need to act, with the beginning of the new decade announcement after announcement was made: politics made important changes from regulation to investment programs, more people than usual voted for green politics, the climate crisis got relevant media coverage, thousands of companies world-wide set decarbonization goals, huge asset managers implemented ESG and decarbonization strategies, billionaires pledged for the climate, hundreds of climatetech fund were established, serial entrepreneurs went into climate topics, Covid made many poeple think about contributing to a better world … in general you could feel change to make this decade to what it is in fact, the decisive decade for humanity. Even with beginning of the Russian war, there was a positive thinking that renewables are the solution to solve energy, industry and dependence problems, even climate chrisis deniers called them „freedom energies“. In 2023 we saw some Zeitgeist changes, the climate crisis seemed not to be a main topic anymore, in the media, in the politics, in companies and the society in general. Ambitious politicians understand that the society is not ready to change, some media work heavily against climate politics, companies realize how hard it is to decarbonize and partly drop their goals, asset managers start to drop ESG and decarbonization goals, investors and entrepreneurs look more at AI, politics goes right and populistic. Regarding Climatetech im still very optimistic: The 2018-2022 Zeitgeist helped to build a massive ecosystem, which is still growing. The current Zeitgeist is not in favor for Climatetech, but it will come back for sure, as unfortunately the climate crisis will hit us harder every year and we always had this typical left-right cycles in politics and societies. Due to our expanded activies our dealflow is still growing, but in general we have the impression that less new founders entered the space in the last 12-18 months and also hear from some other VCs that they see less climatetech teams. We take it as a challenge and re-focus on co-founder matching to make it easier to enter the space for founders. Especially scientists and serial entrepreneurs are our target group for our co-founder matching. Take the world’s biggest challenge as your personal opportunity and apply here: https://lnkd.in/egvTQApi

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You might disagree with me but: Having your partner as a co-founder is great. I talked to Vivien Bresson about this a while back on my podcast. Vivien and her husband have co-founded multiple companies. They love building startups together. I got some mixed reactions on this topic after releasing the podcast. Some people said they couldn’t imagine working with their partners. Mixing personal and business seems like a no-go to them. But in my personal experience, working with your partner is great. When I met my wife in Toronto, she was a beauty technician at a Korean Beauty Salon. Her clients loved her and always had ideas on improving the business, but the owner always objected. She was frustrated. I hated seeing her initiatives constantly being shot down and wanted her to be free to implement her vision. So we did our own thing. She quit her job and we set up her own beauty salon. We thought out the entire game plan on a month-long trip to Ko Pha Ngan island in Thailand. It was pretty simple: • She keeps doing what she does best: Making clients happy. • I run some digital marketing and operations in the background. We came back to Canada and got to work - and it was a mega success. She grew it from a small salon with three staff to having two locations and 12 full-time employees. • Top rated on Google. • Clients were raving about it. • Both salons were constantly packed. This isn’t supposed to be a brag about how good we are at building beauty salons. (even though we are.) It’s a reminder that building a business with your partner can be extremely fulfilling, while it might be a relationship test at times. 2 weeks ago, we visited Ko Pha Ngan island again to reminisce about the time we planned out the business together. There’s something about that island that gets us thinking about business and let’s just say - there might be something else in the works. Stay tuned…

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Last week I advised startups to drop the 5-year revenue projection. If a VC asks for it, I said, I'll eat my hat. One common reaction was "but Europe!" So here I am eating a tasty beret. (See link in comments for last week's post and the discussion that followed.) Having eaten that beret, here's my analysis of the Europe point, as well as some others that were made in the comments: ¶ First, it's certainly true that where you stand depends on where you sit. I've lived in Silicon Valley for 30-odd years, and I currently do seed-stage VC. So there's that. ¶ In any geography there is a range of investor styles. As commenters made clear, European VCs are 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦𝘭𝘺 to insist on these projections than their US counterparts, but individuals don't always match the stereotype, on either side of the pond. ¶ If we accept, though, that the detailed 5-year projection is a mostly European requirement, then let me ask a (deliberately) provocative question: how's that working out for you? Correlation is not causality; and there are lots of other factors at play; but it's also the case that US-style venture investing (and specifically California-style venture investing) has been empirically more successful than that practiced in other places. It's certainly possible that this success is despite us "doing it wrong" for all this time; and it's also possible that what's worked for the last 50 years is no longer valid in 2024; but neither of those seems like the most likely conclusion. If anything, time horizons are getting shorter, not longer. Now, all that said, there 𝘪𝘴 information content in a 5-year projection. Last week I mentioned four things that are important to VCs: 1) are you ambitious enough, 2) are you realistic, 3) what's your Price and Cost at Scale (PACAS), 4) what's your Customer Acquisition Cost at Scale (CACAS). (Et oui, je me suis bien rendu compte des autres significations :). To those I would add: 5) what's your level of business and financial sophistication? The thing is, these are all things I have to 𝘪𝘯𝘧𝘦𝘳 from a 5-year model. All of them can be gotten in other, usually better, ways. Such as the direct approach: "what's your ambition here? can you show me your unit economics? how much marketing spend do you think it will take to deliver $100 million in revenue?" Some founders in last week's comments said that when a VC demands a 5-year projection, that's someone you don't want to work with. That's an overreaction. More important is to get to the question behind the question: I understand that you're asking for this, but what is the real concern? It's good to figure out if it's one of the five things above, or something else entirely, as that will tell you a lot about the investor as well as how best to answer the request. OTOH, if they don't know why they're asking, or if they won't tell you - "that's just how we've always done it" - that's a red flag; you want your investors to be thoughtful and transparent.

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Germany-based venture capital fund Robin Capital closed its Robin Fund One at 13 million euros (about $13.6 million). #venturecapital #veteranventures

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💸12%. That’s how many startups make it to Series A. Let’s talk about what it takes: What do investors really look for? Reaching Series A is a pivotal moment for any startup. It’s a sign that you’ve moved beyond the seed phase and are ready to scale, but according to XAnge, only 12% of startups reached Series A within 24 months in 2023, compared to over 30% in 2021. So, what actually gets you that Series A investment? Here’s the reality from where I’m sitting: ➡️Revenue is great, but predictable revenue is what matters. Investors want to see that you’re not just making money, but you’ve figured out how to keep it coming in steadily. ➡️Product-market fit: It’s not just about having a product, it’s about knowing that people actually need it, and proving that the market is there. ➡️Your business model has to work. I’ve seen too many startups with great products but no clear path to profit. Series A is where investors want to know if your business model is not just viable, but scalable. ➡️By the time you’re pitching for Series A, you need a real sales playbook, not just a vision. You’ve got to show that what you’re doing now can scale up in a big way. ➡️By this stage, you need strong leaders in the right positions, especially in finance, HR, and sales. You can’t do it all alone, and investors know that. As an early investor in over 25 startups, including Unicorn Contentsquare and the most recent fundraisings: Lokki Series A, Jus Mundi Series A then B, I’ve seen first-hand how crucial these criteria are. At Seed4Soft, we help founders navigate the path from Seed to Series A by ensuring they hit these critical milestones and position themselves for sustainable growth. #investors #seriesA #fundraising #tech

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Founders, You're WAY too early for a seed round. What make a seed round? I think this chart explains it pretty well. The best seed stage companies will be doing at least $500k in ARR or LTM revenue. With FEW exceptions a seed company can raise at or below $300k ARR/LTM. Here's a further breakdown B2B - $500k ARR B2C software - $500k - $1M B2C non-software - ~$1M While there are other things to consider such as growth, retention, burn/profitability, gross margins, etc the most important thing to remember is that seed stage investors need to see objective evidence of positive momentum. It's a competitive funding ecosystem out there. There are lots of companies who are doing $750k ARR, 2x YoY growth rate, 95% retention, and 1:1 capital efficiency who are still not going to raise. ---------------------- If you're new here, I introduce the best founders I can find to investors that'll participate in your round. Funden is the #1 fundraising platform connecting founders to capital. Founders use our tools and strategic guidance for quicker, more effective fundraises. Investors use us to receive curated, quality deal flow and broadcast co-investment opportunities to our audience of 1000+ global VCs, family funds, angel networks, syndicates, and more.

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founders: this is a good summary of why VCs reject you, though keep in mind that stellaris isn't an early stage fund. that is, it's just fine if you haven't figured out everything in the early days. but by the time you are raising series A, you need to have clarity on many fronts- Just don't wait for everything to fall in place before you startup.

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For the #AI wizards in my network...... any recommendations on an AI tool I can recommend to a client that we can use to run a workbook through and that can extrapolate various free-text notes and convert into singular cell output. As an example: These are all customer conditions that need to be isolated and migrated to a new system. The challenge is that the data is needed in a columnar format for every type of condition/criteria. Right now the data can't be migrated because it was stored in a free text field (PSA for everyone, never store critical contract data in free text fields, ever) Thanks in advance! #ai #data

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One mistake early-stage founders often make is waiting too long to launch, fearing brutal feedback. The same happened to us as well. We all want our product to be perfect, but customers don’t expect perfection. Y Combinator advised us: Launch early. Doing so opens doors for customer feedback and iteration. Customers tracks your progress from Day 1 to Day 90 to Day 365. They want long term partners who are as invested in their organisation’s goal as they are. We presented our product to a CXO 6 months ago. At that time, he wasn’t satisfied and he was hesitant to introduce us to his team. Fast forward to today, and after seeing our refined version, he was impressed by the progress. The result? He’s thrilled, wants us to work closely with his organization, and even said, “Come in, solve our problems with what you’ve built, and I’ll take care of the budget” #ycombinator #entrepreneurship

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🔍 Seeking Input: What Do You Want to Know About Angel Investing? 💡   As an angel investor, I have the privilege to partner with innovative startups and brilliant entrepreneurs. Each investment journey has taught me invaluable lessons.   I want to give back by sharing my experiences and insights. But I need your help.   What topics around angel investing would you find most interesting or beneficial? What questions do you have about the world of angel investing?   Please share your thoughts, questions, and suggestions in the comments below.   #AngelInvesting #StartupFunding #VentureCapital #Entrepreneurship #Innovation

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