Latest / Deep Tech Germany – AI, Robotics & Frontier Innovation by Startuprad.io™ / STS's Schubert: Capital-Efficient "Camel" Startup Scaling
Transcript
- WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.240 --> 00:00:00.560 Foreign. 2 00:00:09.280 --> 00:00:12.800 Your podcast and YouTube blog covering the German 3 00:00:12.800 --> 00:00:16.480 startup scene with news, interviews and 4 00:00:16.560 --> 00:00:17.760 live events. 5 00:00:20.400 --> 00:00:23.800 If you're a founder chasing your first round or early 6 00:00:23.800 --> 00:00:27.200 stage looking to scale, resilience and 7 00:00:27.200 --> 00:00:30.960 traction, this conversation is for you. Meet Stephan Schubert, 8 00:00:30.960 --> 00:00:33.980 serial entrepreneur turned super angel whose fund 9 00:00:34.060 --> 00:00:37.700 STS Ventures backs hidden champion 10 00:00:37.700 --> 00:00:40.860 tech startups in the dark region. From Building On 11 00:00:40.860 --> 00:00:44.580 Vista, that's an online trading website. I also do 12 00:00:44.580 --> 00:00:48.099 have an account and Ligatos to investing in Emma we 13 00:00:48.099 --> 00:00:51.780 interviewed in the past Audio Bine and just watch. He brings 14 00:00:51.780 --> 00:00:55.580 real operator DNA to early stage capital. Stay tuned. 15 00:00:55.580 --> 00:00:59.220 Right after this break, we'll jump into the decision that turned a founder 16 00:00:59.220 --> 00:01:02.270 into into one of Germany's most connected seed investors. 17 00:01:03.790 --> 00:01:07.150 Hello and welcome everybody. This is Joe coming to you straight from 18 00:01:07.150 --> 00:01:10.790 startup land in Cologne together with Deutsche Startups on today's 19 00:01:10.790 --> 00:01:14.390 startup land from Cologne we welcome Stephan Schubert. As the 20 00:01:14.390 --> 00:01:18.110 founder of leading Internet companies like On Vista 21 00:01:18.270 --> 00:01:21.790 and Ligatos, Stephan has more than 15 years of 22 00:01:21.790 --> 00:01:25.490 hands on experience in founding, scaling and existing tech 23 00:01:25.490 --> 00:01:29.090 firms. Today he leads STS Ventures, a colonial 24 00:01:29.250 --> 00:01:33.010 early stage fund known for investing 200,000 25 00:01:33.010 --> 00:01:36.210 to 1 million in resilient camel 26 00:01:36.290 --> 00:01:40.010 startups. In the pre seed and seed phase, he's backed some 27 00:01:40.010 --> 00:01:42.370 of the strongest names in German startup history. 28 00:01:43.090 --> 00:01:46.570 Audiobene. Just watch. And he's here to unpack the 29 00:01:46.570 --> 00:01:50.370 metrics, mindset and matchmaking behind the investments 30 00:01:50.370 --> 00:01:54.060 that really matter. Let's welcome him. Welcome. Thanks. 31 00:01:54.220 --> 00:01:58.060 Thanks for having me here. Stephan, you've been both founder 32 00:01:58.060 --> 00:02:01.820 and investor. What's your once upon 33 00:02:01.820 --> 00:02:05.580 a time moment that made you leave 34 00:02:05.660 --> 00:02:08.860 building companies and focus on investing? 35 00:02:09.740 --> 00:02:13.340 Yeah, the answer might be disappointing. It wasn't a real strategic 36 00:02:13.660 --> 00:02:17.260 decision. We sold our company after building it for 10 years. 37 00:02:17.260 --> 00:02:21.040 And then a lot of people called and said, you know, you 38 00:02:21.040 --> 00:02:24.680 have experience and you want to look at my company, invest in my 39 00:02:24.680 --> 00:02:28.520 company. And the reason is we founded on Vista in 1998, so the very early 40 00:02:28.520 --> 00:02:32.280 stages of the Internet era. So at 41 00:02:32.280 --> 00:02:35.760 that time we sold it in 2007. A lot of people just 42 00:02:35.760 --> 00:02:38.760 valued the experience we had. And so I step by step 43 00:02:39.960 --> 00:02:42.840 came into investing in startups. What was 44 00:02:43.640 --> 00:02:47.400 the thing you've seen the ecosystem and what were you going to 45 00:02:47.400 --> 00:02:50.060 disrupt there? Yeah, 46 00:02:51.340 --> 00:02:54.900 I think for almost 10 years I invested only with my own 47 00:02:54.900 --> 00:02:58.380 money and did that more occasionally whenever, as I said, 48 00:02:58.380 --> 00:03:02.060 deals came. And then after a while I 49 00:03:02.060 --> 00:03:05.660 started realizing that there is a gap in the German ecosystem 50 00:03:05.660 --> 00:03:09.500 which we think is what we call camels and I think we 51 00:03:09.500 --> 00:03:12.540 will talk about that later. So startups that are 52 00:03:13.100 --> 00:03:16.820 more have a Mittelstand, nice German word, 53 00:03:16.820 --> 00:03:20.670 a Mittelstand mindset and try 54 00:03:20.670 --> 00:03:24.310 to build companies that are capital efficient and that try to 55 00:03:24.870 --> 00:03:28.550 reach profitability after a couple of years and then grow out of their cash 56 00:03:28.550 --> 00:03:31.990 flow. And that's something that is pretty unique in the, 57 00:03:32.470 --> 00:03:36.110 I would say the European ecosystem. So what we our 58 00:03:36.110 --> 00:03:39.830 mission was to bring private equity mindset into the 59 00:03:39.830 --> 00:03:43.590 early stage startup world in the 60 00:03:43.590 --> 00:03:47.400 DAF region. You've invested in well 61 00:03:47.400 --> 00:03:51.240 known companies like our guest Emma. We'll link it somewhere here. Just 62 00:03:51.240 --> 00:03:55.000 watch an audiobena what was the aha moment that confirmed 63 00:03:55.000 --> 00:03:58.480 your investment thesis there? Well, 64 00:03:58.960 --> 00:04:02.760 with Emma and Audibene and some of the others in Kafta, I found 65 00:04:02.760 --> 00:04:06.160 founders who from the beginning on tried 66 00:04:06.240 --> 00:04:10.080 to generate cash. And with generating cash, I mean they had 67 00:04:10.080 --> 00:04:13.280 a product which they sold at a price that they had a nice margin. So 68 00:04:13.280 --> 00:04:16.890 every additional revenue meant additional margin. And they did that with a 69 00:04:16.890 --> 00:04:20.050 very efficient marketing and sales process. And 70 00:04:20.850 --> 00:04:23.650 you could see that the company, when it grew, 71 00:04:24.770 --> 00:04:28.610 would sooner or later become profitable because it scaled. 72 00:04:28.930 --> 00:04:32.530 And having founders that had this mindset trying 73 00:04:32.530 --> 00:04:36.210 to become profitable within the next three, four 74 00:04:36.210 --> 00:04:39.850 years really taught me that this is 75 00:04:39.850 --> 00:04:43.170 possible because that's what we did with On Vista without thinking, thinking about it at 76 00:04:43.170 --> 00:04:46.930 the time, 1998, we didn't have VCs in the German ecosystem that much. 77 00:04:47.410 --> 00:04:51.010 The German VC ecosystem just started at that time 78 00:04:51.090 --> 00:04:54.530 and we simply didn't have VC funding and we didn't have 79 00:04:54.770 --> 00:04:58.529 other cash sources than our revenue. And I found later on that there's other 80 00:04:58.529 --> 00:05:02.010 people out there who have the same mindset and who actually 81 00:05:02.010 --> 00:05:05.090 managed to do that and still grow very impressively. 82 00:05:05.890 --> 00:05:09.490 So that was the moment when we said, okay, this might be something we can, 83 00:05:10.270 --> 00:05:12.990 we can grow and we can start to 84 00:05:13.870 --> 00:05:17.590 scale in a larger system where we don't do just one or two investments per 85 00:05:17.590 --> 00:05:21.350 year, but maybe five to 10. You 86 00:05:21.350 --> 00:05:24.910 are investing in very, very early stage pre seed seed. 87 00:05:25.470 --> 00:05:28.110 How do you deal with this uncertainty, 88 00:05:29.230 --> 00:05:32.630 evaluating the growth potential and so on and so forth. Like the 89 00:05:32.630 --> 00:05:36.430 camel you've been talking about. And wasn't there a better name than 90 00:05:36.430 --> 00:05:40.030 Camel for this concept? Well, 91 00:05:40.470 --> 00:05:44.150 yeah, it's always hard if you have a strategy, it's always hard describing 92 00:05:44.150 --> 00:05:47.750 it. And we found that the camel actually is something people understand 93 00:05:47.750 --> 00:05:51.510 very well. Let's define what's a camel. Camels don't eat a lot of water. 94 00:05:51.910 --> 00:05:55.430 Camels always have reserve on their back. Camels are very 95 00:05:55.750 --> 00:05:59.350 resistant and can survive in a dangerous environment 96 00:05:59.430 --> 00:06:02.110 for a long time and they can still run very fast if you look at 97 00:06:02.110 --> 00:06:05.910 camel races. So transforming or translating that into the startup 98 00:06:05.910 --> 00:06:09.040 world, we found that 99 00:06:09.760 --> 00:06:13.600 people understand very quickly what we're looking for. Capital, efficiency, 100 00:06:14.640 --> 00:06:17.680 cost control, so that you can survive 101 00:06:18.160 --> 00:06:21.560 harder times. And once you have found the 102 00:06:21.560 --> 00:06:25.040 metrics of growing and the scalability formula, 103 00:06:25.360 --> 00:06:29.200 they can still grow very fast. So actually, I think the camel might be a 104 00:06:29.200 --> 00:06:31.920 funny picture, but it works very well. People understand it very well. 105 00:06:33.240 --> 00:06:37.040 And coming back to your question, this means 106 00:06:37.040 --> 00:06:40.840 we look at business models typically that are in a niche 107 00:06:40.840 --> 00:06:44.280 market. So we don't try to disrupt the 108 00:06:44.280 --> 00:06:47.879 auto market or the food market because these markets are really large, but 109 00:06:47.879 --> 00:06:51.600 they need a lot of capital to win in there. We like companies that operate 110 00:06:51.600 --> 00:06:55.240 in niche market, bring a new idea to the niche market where 111 00:06:55.240 --> 00:06:58.680 there's not a lot of competition. Therefore you have high margins. High 112 00:06:58.680 --> 00:07:02.280 margins mean you can afford marketing, you can afford sales 113 00:07:02.280 --> 00:07:05.840 processes, and with each sales, you generate 114 00:07:06.480 --> 00:07:10.000 a contribution margin that actually helps covering your costs. And 115 00:07:10.160 --> 00:07:13.880 what we look at in the first place is business models where we 116 00:07:13.880 --> 00:07:17.599 think that eventually, with a total investment of something between 1 and 117 00:07:17.599 --> 00:07:21.040 10 million euro, they can become profitable and grow out of their 118 00:07:21.040 --> 00:07:24.880 operating cash flow. And of course, we look for founders who share this 119 00:07:24.880 --> 00:07:27.740 vision and who are willing to build a company like this. 120 00:07:29.410 --> 00:07:33.130 You typically, before we head into that, 121 00:07:33.130 --> 00:07:36.810 I do understand the founder who founds the 122 00:07:36.810 --> 00:07:40.210 next big LLM model and wants to compete with ChatGPT. 123 00:07:40.530 --> 00:07:43.410 They're not the right person you would talk to? 124 00:07:44.130 --> 00:07:47.930 Yes, I think that's something you could say. And the reason is 125 00:07:47.930 --> 00:07:51.770 very simple if you look at just taking that example, and this has 126 00:07:51.770 --> 00:07:55.610 been true for over 25 years now. But if 127 00:07:55.610 --> 00:07:58.910 we look at the current AI world, 128 00:08:00.430 --> 00:08:03.870 I mean, companies like Meta and 129 00:08:04.590 --> 00:08:08.062 OpenAI, they invest 40, 130 00:08:08.158 --> 00:08:11.310 60 billion dollars per year 131 00:08:11.790 --> 00:08:15.510 into building LLMs. And I just don't think that 132 00:08:15.510 --> 00:08:18.910 is something we as STS Ventures and probably the 133 00:08:18.910 --> 00:08:22.710 entire European VC ecosystem can do. So we 134 00:08:22.710 --> 00:08:26.280 have to find smarter ways to build companies and make money. 135 00:08:26.920 --> 00:08:30.720 And yes, that's true. We wouldn't be able to look at 136 00:08:30.720 --> 00:08:33.920 these kind of companies. Doesn't work for us. Just to tease you a little bit. 137 00:08:33.920 --> 00:08:37.760 Because there was a lot of talk around town and in the 138 00:08:37.760 --> 00:08:41.520 blogosphere recently. How high do you think is the 139 00:08:41.520 --> 00:08:44.600 probability that the current AI market is a bubble? 140 00:08:45.880 --> 00:08:48.760 You know, I've been in this market for 25 years now and 141 00:08:49.800 --> 00:08:53.450 we could actually draw a chart and show you 142 00:08:53.930 --> 00:08:57.530 the topic of the year for the last 25 years. Now it's AI 143 00:08:57.930 --> 00:09:01.090 LLMs. Two years ago it was NFT, before it was 144 00:09:01.090 --> 00:09:04.810 blockchain, before that it was E commerce, before that it was circularity. 145 00:09:04.810 --> 00:09:08.650 And then, oh, don't forget quick delivery. Quick delivery, yeah, 146 00:09:08.650 --> 00:09:11.850 you know, so there's a new story in town 147 00:09:13.370 --> 00:09:17.130 every year and that's okay. That's momentum investment. And some of these 148 00:09:17.130 --> 00:09:20.750 companies really grow very, very fast and become very 149 00:09:20.750 --> 00:09:24.590 big. But at the end, it's a very small percentage to succeed in these 150 00:09:24.590 --> 00:09:28.030 markets. And therefore, whenever one of these trends comes up, 151 00:09:28.990 --> 00:09:32.670 we tend to specifically not look at that, 152 00:09:32.670 --> 00:09:36.470 but look at the value that is creating behind these trends. 153 00:09:36.470 --> 00:09:40.190 So LLM and all these new tools we see in AI 154 00:09:40.510 --> 00:09:44.070 are big change in the entire tech 155 00:09:44.070 --> 00:09:47.670 ecosystem, but it's just a tool. 25 years ago it 156 00:09:47.670 --> 00:09:51.230 was the Internet, TCP, IP and CGI 157 00:09:51.230 --> 00:09:54.790 bin and nobody knew how to use it. And then we invented all kinds of 158 00:09:54.790 --> 00:09:58.190 languages and I don't want to downgrade that. But at the end, it's a tool 159 00:09:58.190 --> 00:10:01.950 that we can use in different environments and that's what we look at. How can 160 00:10:01.950 --> 00:10:05.750 we use AI and LLMs in new environments? 161 00:10:05.750 --> 00:10:09.110 Like, for example, we invested in one company that 162 00:10:09.110 --> 00:10:12.350 uses AI technology for the waste 163 00:10:13.260 --> 00:10:16.860 processing industry. And that's a very nice case where we 164 00:10:16.860 --> 00:10:20.700 think AI has a lot of value, but I don't have to create the 165 00:10:20.700 --> 00:10:24.460 base technology underneath, which is very, very competitive and needs 166 00:10:24.460 --> 00:10:28.220 a lot of cash to be successful. Talking 167 00:10:28.220 --> 00:10:31.340 about being successful, you invest with STS around 168 00:10:31.420 --> 00:10:35.020 200,000 to 1 million and then follow up up to 169 00:10:35.020 --> 00:10:38.380 5 million. What is your decision framework 170 00:10:39.050 --> 00:10:42.770 to decide, double down or exit a startup? Yeah, I 171 00:10:42.770 --> 00:10:46.490 think it's finding out the metrics that drive growth and 172 00:10:46.490 --> 00:10:50.330 finding out if a company or a team is 173 00:10:50.330 --> 00:10:53.450 able to generate growth with positive 174 00:10:53.530 --> 00:10:57.370 contribution margin cash flow. Once we have understood and once 175 00:10:57.370 --> 00:11:00.330 the team has found a way to scale, 176 00:11:01.130 --> 00:11:04.650 so build the engine and then scale from there with 177 00:11:04.650 --> 00:11:08.310 positive contribution margins, meaning, you know, you 178 00:11:08.310 --> 00:11:11.750 subtract your costs of goods sold, 179 00:11:12.790 --> 00:11:16.150 the marketing costs, the sales costs and everything. 180 00:11:16.550 --> 00:11:20.270 Once you find out that you have a scaling way of growing and 181 00:11:20.270 --> 00:11:23.709 still have a positive contribution margin, I think that's when we become 182 00:11:23.709 --> 00:11:26.150 exciting, become excited, and 183 00:11:28.630 --> 00:11:32.190 what you say, double down and talk to the team if there's a way to 184 00:11:32.190 --> 00:11:34.470 invest more money and scale growth. 185 00:11:36.510 --> 00:11:39.790 Right after the break, we'll talk about how you manage 186 00:11:40.110 --> 00:11:43.950 founders, investors relations and red flags you're watching out for. 187 00:11:44.350 --> 00:11:47.790 How do you view the ideal relationship 188 00:11:48.190 --> 00:11:51.870 between founders and investors, especially in the very early 189 00:11:51.870 --> 00:11:55.150 seed phase? What behavior from 190 00:11:55.150 --> 00:11:58.830 founders excites you and what behavior actually consists, 191 00:11:59.550 --> 00:12:02.040 let's say red or an orange flag. 192 00:12:06.360 --> 00:12:10.040 So immediately after investing, what we like to do is sit down with the founders 193 00:12:10.040 --> 00:12:13.800 and define the KPIs that we think 194 00:12:15.000 --> 00:12:18.680 lead to growth. And we means the founders in us. So we sit together 195 00:12:18.680 --> 00:12:22.120 and we discuss what will be the drivers for the next one or two years 196 00:12:23.000 --> 00:12:26.360 that might lead growth. And we build up a KPI system, typically 197 00:12:26.810 --> 00:12:30.610 a very easy bi tool looker studio or something where 198 00:12:30.610 --> 00:12:34.370 the team tracks these KPIs typically on a real time or daily basis. 199 00:12:34.370 --> 00:12:37.970 And every other week we just look at these KPIs together 200 00:12:37.970 --> 00:12:41.730 and say, is it developing in the right direction? Every once in a while we 201 00:12:41.730 --> 00:12:44.610 find out also the wrong KPIs. We have to find a different way to do 202 00:12:44.610 --> 00:12:48.170 sales and stuff. So people that build a number driven company 203 00:12:48.170 --> 00:12:51.290 is one thing that excites us and 204 00:12:52.260 --> 00:12:55.540 the other thing is, and we are often 205 00:12:55.540 --> 00:12:59.260 misunderstood, Camel is not a type of company. Building a 206 00:12:59.260 --> 00:13:03.100 Camel is a mindset. So founders that have the mindset 207 00:13:03.100 --> 00:13:06.860 of using these KPIs and looking at the 208 00:13:06.860 --> 00:13:10.540 same time at their cost structure, you know, not growth 209 00:13:10.540 --> 00:13:14.100 at any price, but growth at a, at a 210 00:13:14.820 --> 00:13:18.500 decent cost structure. And having the mindset 211 00:13:18.500 --> 00:13:22.220 of fundraising is not a KPI that exciting. That's exciting for 212 00:13:22.220 --> 00:13:25.760 them, but profitable growth is in the KPI that's exciting for them. 213 00:13:26.240 --> 00:13:29.720 Those are two parameters that we really like and what we 214 00:13:29.720 --> 00:13:33.320 typically when we work with founders together, found very quickly, both the 215 00:13:33.320 --> 00:13:35.680 founders and us, that it works very well together. 216 00:13:37.200 --> 00:13:39.360 Yeah. And if these things are not there, 217 00:13:41.680 --> 00:13:44.800 everyone's wild. Find founders who are not really honest to us, who try to create 218 00:13:44.800 --> 00:13:48.640 KPIs that are very creative. So 219 00:13:49.040 --> 00:13:52.840 look at your company in a very honest way. Talk about the things that don't 220 00:13:52.840 --> 00:13:56.640 work. Look at the right KPIs drive these KPIs and be capital 221 00:13:56.640 --> 00:14:00.400 efficient. That excites us and the opposite does not 222 00:14:00.400 --> 00:14:03.880 really excite us. I wouldn't say it's a red flag, but we would definitely have 223 00:14:03.880 --> 00:14:07.640 a conversation then. Looking at exits like 224 00:14:07.640 --> 00:14:11.360 audiobene, Kaufta, what patterns 225 00:14:11.600 --> 00:14:14.880 do you observe in scaling from seat to 226 00:14:15.120 --> 00:14:18.840 exit? What 227 00:14:18.840 --> 00:14:21.980 lessons should founders absorb early? 228 00:14:23.660 --> 00:14:27.020 Yeah, you know, there's one interesting thing. It's a huge difference 229 00:14:28.140 --> 00:14:31.340 if you raise money when you can raise money versus 230 00:14:31.740 --> 00:14:34.860 if you raise money because you have to raise money. 231 00:14:35.420 --> 00:14:39.260 So we see a lot of startups that are constantly in 232 00:14:39.260 --> 00:14:42.140 fundraising mode and are constantly close to 233 00:14:42.780 --> 00:14:46.420 running out of cash. And that generates a lot of stress for the 234 00:14:46.420 --> 00:14:50.110 entire company and all investors. And there's a lot of 235 00:14:50.750 --> 00:14:54.070 time invested in finding the next round, finding the next 236 00:14:54.070 --> 00:14:57.710 investors. The examples you just said is 237 00:14:58.110 --> 00:15:01.710 most of these companies did not run into that situation. 238 00:15:02.830 --> 00:15:06.430 They were able to grow, they were able to run their business. 239 00:15:06.510 --> 00:15:09.670 And then if someone came around and said, you know, I would like to invest 240 00:15:09.670 --> 00:15:13.450 2 or 5 or 10 million in your company, then 241 00:15:13.450 --> 00:15:17.170 we could talk about the terms. And that's a total different situation. Because you take 242 00:15:17.170 --> 00:15:20.530 money because you have ideas how you can grow faster, you have ideas how you 243 00:15:20.530 --> 00:15:24.330 can go in another country. And you take the money because you have found the 244 00:15:24.330 --> 00:15:28.170 right investor in the right situation, but you don't urgently need the 245 00:15:28.170 --> 00:15:31.770 money to pay the next payroll. And that 246 00:15:31.770 --> 00:15:35.490 has brought these founders into situations where they could 247 00:15:35.490 --> 00:15:38.930 invest a lot more time in building their company and outperform a lot of their 248 00:15:39.660 --> 00:15:43.420 competitors. I think that's something we really appreciated in these cases. 249 00:15:43.500 --> 00:15:47.220 And at the end, these exits were not unicorn 250 00:15:47.220 --> 00:15:49.980 exits. But the interesting thing is the founders had 251 00:15:50.860 --> 00:15:54.540 much more shares in their own companies because they didn't have that much dilution. 252 00:15:55.179 --> 00:15:58.460 And some of these guys became really rich without 253 00:15:59.420 --> 00:16:03.220 having a unicorn exit, but Simply still had 50, 60% 254 00:16:03.220 --> 00:16:06.899 of their company. And if you sell a company at 100, 200, 255 00:16:06.974 --> 00:16:10.630 300 billion euro and you own 50, 60%, that's still a lot of money. 256 00:16:10.950 --> 00:16:14.550 And it's more money than if you own 1% at a unicorn exit. 257 00:16:15.110 --> 00:16:18.550 And that's a lot of money even in Germany, after taxes. I see. 258 00:16:18.630 --> 00:16:22.350 Plus you don't, you don't have been in the spotlight all over because if you 259 00:16:22.350 --> 00:16:26.030 want to do unicorn exit, I'm sure for the rest of your life, you get 260 00:16:26.030 --> 00:16:29.630 calls, you get emails, you get all this stuff. Do you have money? Do you 261 00:16:29.630 --> 00:16:32.810 want to invest? Yeah. Ultimate advantage. And that's one other thing. 262 00:16:33.530 --> 00:16:37.370 If you build a profitable company, you have many, many more 263 00:16:38.250 --> 00:16:41.370 exit options. You know, some of these huge 264 00:16:41.370 --> 00:16:45.090 unicorns, there's only a few companies in the world who can buy 265 00:16:45.090 --> 00:16:48.610 them. Or you have to do an ipo. And the IPO window is not open 266 00:16:48.610 --> 00:16:52.090 very often in Europe. Actually for the last 25 years 267 00:16:52.170 --> 00:16:55.450 we've seen it maybe twice that it was possible to 268 00:16:56.180 --> 00:16:59.780 exit fast growing non profitable companies with an ipo. 269 00:16:59.860 --> 00:17:03.460 But if you have the other model of a company generating cash, 270 00:17:03.460 --> 00:17:06.940 generating ebit, all of a sudden you have the 271 00:17:06.940 --> 00:17:09.940 typical strategic company, corporate 272 00:17:10.260 --> 00:17:14.020 mittelstands, buyers, PEs who are interested in these kind of 273 00:17:14.020 --> 00:17:16.980 business models. And that opens a whole new door of exits. 274 00:17:18.020 --> 00:17:21.780 You can proceed there. Let's 275 00:17:21.780 --> 00:17:25.620 look a little bit into the future. There's some macroeconomic headwinds 276 00:17:25.620 --> 00:17:29.300 in there. How do you adjust your 277 00:17:29.460 --> 00:17:33.100 thesis and what contrarian view do you have about the 278 00:17:33.100 --> 00:17:36.340 next big tech investment in the German and the Dach market. 279 00:17:37.380 --> 00:17:41.020 Yeah. I think the funny thing is we don't think we have to adjust anything 280 00:17:41.020 --> 00:17:44.100 because we think this is exactly the time we were prepared for. 281 00:17:44.900 --> 00:17:48.660 We had a lot of questions from our investors in 2020 and 21 282 00:17:49.300 --> 00:17:52.980 why they had other VCs that have three unicorn 283 00:17:52.980 --> 00:17:56.260 investments and we don't have any unicorn valuations in our portfolio. 284 00:17:57.830 --> 00:18:01.550 And we had to explain that why this was the case 285 00:18:01.550 --> 00:18:05.030 because some of our larger companies didn't even raise money during that time. 286 00:18:05.430 --> 00:18:08.390 Now I think it's the right time for our strategy. And 287 00:18:09.350 --> 00:18:13.030 with our portfolio, we have a lot of companies that 288 00:18:13.030 --> 00:18:16.790 simply don't need cash. And that's a very good situation we're in right now. And 289 00:18:16.790 --> 00:18:20.430 also the founders are in a very good situation to be in. So 290 00:18:20.430 --> 00:18:24.190 we don't adjust anything right now and we're very happy with our positioning 291 00:18:24.190 --> 00:18:27.370 in the current market. Usually we close our 292 00:18:27.370 --> 00:18:29.530 interviews with two questions. 293 00:18:31.130 --> 00:18:34.490 Are you open to talk to new investors? In your case, 294 00:18:34.890 --> 00:18:38.530 potentially LPs? I mean, yeah. If someone likes this 295 00:18:38.530 --> 00:18:42.090 idea of looking at tech startups and investing and building 296 00:18:42.090 --> 00:18:45.770 companies. We're always interested in people who 297 00:18:45.770 --> 00:18:49.530 support this ecosystem and like our approach. 298 00:18:49.690 --> 00:18:53.200 Absolutely. And also usually we ask, are you open 299 00:18:53.360 --> 00:18:57.160 to talk to new talented employees? Yes, yes, of 300 00:18:57.160 --> 00:19:00.720 course. We link down here in the show notes, your career website. 301 00:19:01.280 --> 00:19:05.080 Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you. It was a pleasure talking to you. Thanks, Jiren. 302 00:19:05.080 --> 00:19:06.400 It was a pleasure talking to you too. 303 00:19:11.040 --> 00:19:14.480 That's all, folks. Find more news, streams, 304 00:19:14.800 --> 00:19:15.840 events and 305 00:19:15.840 --> 00:19:20.240 interviews@www.startuprad.IO. 306 00:19:20.640 --> 00:19:22.700 remember, sharing is here.