Episodes
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Ahead of Slush 2022, we sit down for a conversation that provides everyone who’s joining us in Helsinki with a bit of the backstory and context behind the event you’re about to attend. We'll cover:
Why and how Slush was foundedHow it became a student-run event (and continues to be that to this day)The impact Slush has had on the Finnish ecosystemWhat lies ahead now that Finland has a prospering ecosystemWhy Slush 2022 is the best Slush to dateWhat you should do on Nov 16–18 to make the most of your time hereIn the episode, you'll hear from:
Slush's CEO Eerika SavolainenSlush President Mikko MäntyläSlush's first CEO and Wolt founder Miki Kuusione • fıve founder Claire Gusko – one of 4,600 founders & operators joiningAmin Hassan – one of the 1,500 volunteers building the eventHope you enjoy the conversation! See you November 17–18.
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We bring you two sides of the German collaborative presentation company Pitch as its Co-founder and CEO Christian Reber is joined by board member and Lakestar partner Stephen Nundy to discuss product-driven companies.
Christian and Stephen (as a CTO himself) discuss the various balancing acts companies can struggle with from both founder and board member perspectives: marketing and product team inputs, product-led CEOs and their CTOs, and even the emotional toll of such leadership positions.
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Missing episodes?
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Jeppe Rindom is the Co-founder and guiding hand of Pleo- The corporate card and expense claim company and the fastest to reach the €1bn valuation in Denmark.
Jeppe dives deep with Mikko Mäntylä into the granular details of how to define your problem space, some key ways to create investor FOMO, and what he believes is a counterintuitive company-building truth.
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Sonali de Rycker is a true icon of European venture. In her fourteen years with Accel, she has made early investments in success stories ranging from Spotify to Avito, Hopin to Kry and Monzo to Sennder.
Together with Sonali, we explore everything that more than a decade of backing the greats of European tech has taught her about the formative choices that build legendary tech companies.
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Today, we speak to Des Traynor of Intercom about problem selection, pricing, using principles to scale yourself as a leader, and maintaining alignment as an organisation grows. Des is one of the most succinct communicators in European tech. He didn't disappoint on the episode. Throughout it, you'll come across surprising, unique principles and heuristics that have helped Des propel Intercom into €1B+ business it is today.
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Today, we’re speaking to Brian O’Malley, Managing Partner at Forerunner Ventures – the famously consumer-savvy Silicon Valley firm – on everything it takes to build generational outcomes in the consumer space.
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Guy Podjarny is Co-founder and President of Snyk – the €8B developer-first security platform. Together, we unpack tactical considerations that go into scaling a business – especially one with a product-led, freemium-based go-to-market.
Guy started Snyk with his co-founders Assaf and Danny in 2015, spent four years as CEO, and migrated into his current role of President in 2019.
Built dually in Tel-Aviv and London, and later in a distributed fashion around the world, Snyk is a platform that enables developers to automatically detect and fix vulnerabilities in their code and stack.
Today, Snyk employs 1200 people is valued at closer to 8 billion euros. They’ve got there by raising a whopping 1.3 billion euros from iconic investors like Accel, GV, Coatue, Tiger Global, Addition, Blackrock and so many more.
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1:11 What are the most important traits to have within a founding team?
2:17 What should non-technical founders spend time on in the early days?
3:23 What are the humane characteristics of great founding teams?
4:51 How do you know to stop pursuing a given idea?
6:16 Snyk's most critical milestone in the first month, quarter and year?
9:28 Why should you launch a crappy product early?
11:36 With a product-led go-to-market, which systems ensure deep learning?
15:09 Why did you choose a product-led go-to-market?
18:11 What are the signs that you should hire a professional CEO to replace you?
20:12 What can an exceptional external CEO bring to the table?
21:42 Having been acquired in the past, what do you optimize for acquiring companies?
24:22 How do you judge when to say yes and when to say no?
25:02 What do founders underinvest in early on? How about the inverse of that?
26.18 What is one important truth about company-building that very few people would agree with?
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Today on the Soaked by Slush podcast, we're joined by Deena Shakir, Partner at Lux Capital – the notoriously frontier tech focused fund. We cover topics ranging from recognizing iconic entrepreneurs early to Deena’s efforts to write a children’s book about a young girl who starts a company.
Deena herself has the most fascinating of backgrounds. She is a first-generation daughter of Iraqi immigrants and she self-funded her way through Harvard and Georgetown. After kicking off her career in media, she moved to public service, working for Hillary Clinton’s office during the Obama administration, and eventually ended up leading product partnerships at Google before jumping into venture– first at GV and later Lux.
At Lux, Deena invests in transformative technologies improving lives – especially in women’s health, digital health and the intersection of those. She has led investments in some exceptional companies from Maven Clinic to Ramp.
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When it comes to building legendary engineering and product organizations, there really aren’t many people more experienced than Quentin Clark. Having spent 20 years moving up the ranks at Microsoft, Quentin went on to become CTO at two legendary software companies in SAP and Dropbox.
These days, Quentin looks for next-generation products at General Catalyst, and sits on the boards of some exceptional startups like Coda, Commure, Hopin, Minio, and Aviatrix.
In this episode, we unpack what Quentin has learn about leading and scaling technical organisations for world-class outcomes.
Note: Any mention of or reference to any specific company is for discussion and illustrative purposes only and is not a recommendation or an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any securities. The views and opinions expressed by the speaker are their own as of the date of the recording and not of General Catalyst. These views should not be relied on as investment or financial advice of any kind.
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0:50 What has made Microsoft such an exceptionally enduring company?
2:49 How does Microsoft circumvent the Innovator’s dilemma?
4:29 What characteristics are non-negotiable in good CEOs?
6:16 When have you been most surprised by a trait of an individual CEO?
7:05 What separates truly exceptional CTOs from good CTOs?
9:08 How do you balance input from your sales team with long-term vision in your product roadmap?
11:13 What are the signs that you should replace your technical co-founder with an experienced hire?
12:43 What have you learned about finding and evaluating great technical talent?
14:19 What do great technical co-founders look like?
16:15 How should you think about the structure of your technical organization?
18:33 For a CTO, what really changes when the company scales from 5 to 50, and 50 to 500 people?
21:12 What are the 3 most common root causes of company failure?
22:46 What do founders think matters in the early stages that doesn’t?
23:45 What are the most insightful questions you ask when being pitched by founders?
24:43 What is one important truth about company-building that very few people would agree with?
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In just over three years, Alex Bouaziz has scaled Deel to more than €5B in valuation and 700 employees across 60+ different countries. In the episode, we discuss the principles, systems and choices that have put him and Deel on that trajectory of true hypergrowth.
This episode marks the first in a new era for the Soaked by Slush podcast, in which we will laser focus on company-building advice, interviewing some of the most iconic founders and investors of our generation to uncover the first principles behind the companies they have built.
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0:42 Without which habit would you not be where you are today?
1:27 If you got to relive your early 20s, what would you spend more time on?
2:03 What are you inherently better at than most founders? What have you had to painfully cultivate?
3:15 What systems do you have in place at Deel to mitigate your lack of a knack for documentation?
4:31 Can you choose to become a founder first, and come up with ideas second?
6:11 When and why did you give up on your first company, Lifeslice?
7:51 Because of your experience at Lifeslice, what did you do differently in the early days of Deel?
9:32 How can I as a prospective founder understand whether I’m better at B2B or B2C?
10:46 How did you concretely listen to customers and iterate on the product early on?
12:50 How can you ensure that your speed of execution ripples down the organisation?
15:10 As their companies scale, how should founders manage their own responsibilities?
16:49 A common aphorism is that companies need a different CEO for each stage of growth. What are those phases? How should you adapt?
18:20 When should you promote people into leadership positions? When should you hire externally?
19:40 If you showed me your calendar, what would I find most surprising?
20:37 Who do you go to for advice?
21:53 What is the most impactful question you’ve asked the CEO of another company?
22:59 What is an important truth about company-building that few people would agree with?
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Hi folks. Slush 2021 happened, and we had the opportunity to record some fun and interesting episodes on location. This week’s guest is Robert Lacher, an entrepreneur and Founding Partner at the Berlin-based VC Visionaries Club. Robert is a central figure in the European VC-scene, and is an excellent brain to pick about what entrepreneurs should think about when shopping for investors nowadays. Being a recent former entrepreneur, he himself has sought out to build a VC from his perspective of what would be most useful to founders. In this episode, we will delve into these perspectives, from personal chemistry to access and network. And we talked about Europe too, of course.
Expect to learn:
Why access and network means more than everWhat is Robert’s unique take on Europe’s strengths in entrepreneurship?Why is the personal relationship between investor and founder important?“VCs are all about upside, not about downside”Timestamps:
1:06 Start
1:40 Intro for Robert Lacher and Visionaries Club
4:25 On the value VCs can provide to entrepreneurs these days
6:42 How has access and network changed in Europe?
11:58 Why Europe, why now?
15:19 How should entrepreneurs think about VC fit?
18:50 The role of network and access
22:20 The personal relationship between VC and Founder
27:15 Can that relationship be too close and friendly?
31:15 On failing
33:55 Curating the VC setup
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Find out more about Capchase on capchase.com/slush
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In this episode, recorded live at the Slush 2021 event in Helsinki, William and Isak talked to Gini and Eccie Newton from Karma Kitchen. Gini and Eccie are a pair of British siblings who decided to enter the catering business, and ended up finding a niche that they developed into Karma Kitchen. What was that niche? Buying warehouses and turning them into kitchens for restauranteurs. Oh, and their idea has raised over 300 million dollars to date. It sounds astounding, but the more you hear Gini and Eccie explain it, the more it makes perfect sense.
Expect to learn:
About sibling chemistry in entrepreneurshipHow Karma Kitchen grew without almost any marketingHow Gini and Eccie manage a very capital intensive ideaWhat the idea behind Karma Kitchen isCheck Soaked by Slush out at:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/soakedbyslush/
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Soaked by Slush website: https://www.slush.org/soaked/
Slush website: https://www.slush.org
Shoot us a message or feedback: [email protected]
1:29 Intro to Eccie and Gini
3:25 History behind Karma Cans
5:11 What it’s like working together as sisters
8:43 Kitchen vs sales in planning menus
9:44 Origins of Karma Kitchen
15:08 How and why Karma Kitchen is so capital intensive?
18:30 How does Karma Kitchen acquire customers?
20:30 Marketing and finance
23:50 The relationship between investor and invested
26:15 How are Gini and Eccie different from each other as people?
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In this episode, we had the pleasure of talking to one of the absolute veterans of venture capital, the Managing General Partner of NEA, Scott Sandell. NEA has been around since the 1970’s, making it one of the oldest VC firms in history. That coupled with Scott’s personal track record and experience makes for a heap of knowledge and insights about investing, venture capital, entrepreneurship, technology and more. We hope you’ll enjoy listening to this as much as we enjoyed making it.
Expect to learn:
How NEA set out to build a company lasting 100 yearsHow Scott transitioned from being a product manager at Microsoft to venture capital How Scott thinks about investment decisionsHow could the VC model be innovated?00:50 Introduction to Scott
01:30 Introduction to NEA
02:45 How do you build for longevity in VC?
05:20 Transition from Microsoft to NEA
09:05 Scott’s favourite investments
14:45 How Scott makes investment decisions
16:50 Have the basic ingredients for success changed?
21:52 Recent investments that have made Scott excited
26:20 How much has the tech world changed since Scott’s time at Microsoft?
27:50 Innovating the VC model
30:40 Is the VC model wasteful?
33:20 Allocation of capital to purpose-driven companies
Find out more about Capchase on capchase.com/slush
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How does one rebrand? Should you even rebrand? We were joined by Nicola McClafferty and James Clark, from the establishment formerly known as Draper Esprit. That’s right, Draper Esprit did what many people often advise against and rebranded themselves, to Molten Ventures. In fact, it’s probably not great that I’ve written Draper Esprit more times than Molten Ventures. In this episode we will talk to James and Nicola about the reasons behind the rebranding, the operational checklist for rebranding, and how to choose a name for the new brand.
Expect to learn:
Why James generally thinks rebranding is a bad ideaHow the need for rebranding should be identifiedWhat the creative and operational side of rebranding look likeDoes the name matter?00:44 Introductions to Nicola, James, and Molten Ventures
04:00 Rebranding: what has changed, why did you choose to rebrand?
06:30 Rebranding in an increasingly competitive environment
11:10 Checklist for rebranding
18:05 When is the right time for a startup to start thinking about a brand?
23:30 Death of the artist in a brand
26:00 Using external help in rebranding?
28:00 Operational side of rebranding
34:45 Determining the name
36:30 Deliberate creative tension involved
37:45 What is ‘Make More Possible’ all about?
40:00 Do you think competition among VCs will push more to consider rebranding?
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I don’t know about you, but there’s something special and even beautiful about trucking. About the seemingly simpler life on the highway, accompanied by demanding distances and fleeting views. It doesn’t immediately conjure up images of digital platforms and software, but that doesn’t mean that it wouldn’t be a good idea.
Sennder is a Berlin-based digital freight logistics company that seeks to provide a platform that connects shippers with a unified fleet of trucks in Europe, and David Nothacker is their CEO and Co-Founder. In this episode, we discussed sennder’s growth through acquisitions and David’s acquisition checklist, customer acquisition, and the future of the freight industry.
Expect to learn:
If David thinks consulting is a good path to entrepreneurshipHow sennder approached customer acquisition of smaller and bigger customersSennder’s growth through acquisitionsSome of David’s thoughts on the future of the trucking industry00:30 Intro to David
01:30 Consultants and startup founders – similarities and differences
03:30 How David got started with sennder
05:05 David’s pivot experience
07:45 Why is the digitalization of freight forwarding happening now?
09:37 How did you identify the problem?
11:40 B2B platform companies’ march forward – what is the main difference to B2C companies?
14:45 How did you acquire your first customers?
16:40 Acquiring bigger players as customers
18:20 Sustainability in the industry as a whole and what sennder is doing about this
21:30 Next 7-10 years going to see the first autonomous trucks (on highways) last legs will be done by people. Long-distance trucking.
26:25 Growth through acquisitions
31:15 How do you determine which companies to acquire?
33:50 Expansion
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When Softbank unveiled its first 100 billion dollar Vision Fund in 2017, the world had never seen investment funds of such magnitude. Two years later in 2019, Vision Fund 2 was announced, and in 2021, their combined fair value was estimated to be 154 billion dollars. In this episode, we talked to two representatives from SoftBank, Anthony Doeh and Nahoko Hoshino, about what this journey has been like from their perspective. What are some of the lessons taken from the first to the second fund? Do they have different strategies from one to the other? And how does the future look?
Expect to learn:
Is the Vision Fund II fundamentally different?Why is Europe more interesting now?How SoftBank assesses teams and foundersWhat SoftBank sees as future trends00:50 Introduction to Anthony and Nahoko
01:30 Softbank Vision Fund II: What has changed?
03:20 How has the 2nd fund been different
06:30 Does it include early stage investing?
09:15 Critical milestones for eligible companies
11:35 Why Europe now?
15:40 European founders – big companies mushroom into new companies
16:50 Intangibles in founders
20:15 Importance of founder and investor relationship
24:00 Are VC markets more competitive now?
26:30 How do you determine what’s the right path for a company to exit?
31:00 Will data and AI change everything?
Find out more about Capchase on capchase.com/slush
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Our guest this week, Edgeir Vårdal Aksnes, is reinventing how people buy electricity. I don’t know about you, but I don’t always even remember that I’ve bought electricity, I just know that I pay a bill. To Edgeir and his co-founder Daniel, this sounded like a transaction that was ready to be improved, to fit both the problems and opportunities that our ever-weird modern age has to offer. And not only does Tibber, the company Edgeir co-founded, already provide a much appreciated product to many around Europe, it has grown with some fascinating unconventional means; no salespeople, simple value propositions, and a crystal clear narrative.
Expect to learn:
How Tibber’s business model is intrinsically aligned with purposeWhy Tibber has no official salespeopleEdgeir’s perspective on simplicity in solutionsEdgeir’s thoughts on how to think about value propositions01:00 Introduction to Edgeir and Tibber
02:30 Why did you start?
06:30 How energy can be optimised
09:15 How Tibber plans customers’ access to information
12:10 The power of simple value propositions
15:10 How important is it for a company to have clear, tangible, and ambitious goals
20:10 Is there a tension between profit and sustainability?
25:05 The importance of having a crystal clear story
28:10 Should you start with a less impact-driven company to ‘learn the trade’ before?
30:30 Reinventing an industry with massive legacy
34:20 What’s up next for Tibber?
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In some previous episodes, we have discussed the state of the European ecosystem and its future trajectory, everywhere from the projections of investors to what’s happening on the aisles of accelerators. In this episode, Philippe Botteri from Accel joins Isak and William to discuss the Accel 2021 Euroscape report, which outlines pretty much all you need to know about the state of the European cloud ecosystem. With Philippe we discussed data on the amount of public and private funding in Europe and Israel, the number of IPOs, as well as comparisons with similar US metrics, among others. The report also provides some takes on what Accel sees as accelerating future trends such as the rise of crypto and DeFi infrastructure, as well as AI’s impact on the complexity of use cases. Are Europe and Israel “on their way to global domination”, as the report puts it?
Link to the Accel 2021 Euroscape: https://www.accel.com/noteworthy/2021-accel-euroscape-on-the-path-to-global-dominance
00:50 Introduction to Philippe Botteri and Accel
08:00 What is happening with cloud and SaaS
12:30 Why include Israel: part of same ecosystem
13:10 A look back to 2016
20:10 Is Israel making Europe look better?
23:20 Why is Israel a unicorn factory?
25:50 What’s different about this batch of founders?
27:50 “The world of cloud is flat”
29:50 Future trends for SaaS
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No trace of darkness in this episode, where we talked to Emily Orton, Co-founder & CMO at the cybersecurity success-story Darktrace. Emily has been on board from the beginning, and shared some of her main learnings from the founding days to their recent IPO. In this fast-paced discussion, Emily and William discuss Darktrace’s early days in terms of customer acquisition and brand building, hiring and training people to become future leaders, scaling yourself as a founder in a rapidly growing and international company and the floatation of Darktrace on the London Stock Exchange. Expect to learn:
How Darktrace approaches hiring and why you don’t necessarily need a business degree to do businessHow Darktrace approached acquiring the first customers and building the brand and story behind the companyHow we can foster more research-driven innovation in EuropeHow Darktrace approached expansionEmily’s thoughts on Darktrace’s recent IPO00:40 Introduction to Emily and Darktrace
07:06 Transition from tech to building a brand
11:54 How to create that initial momentum
17:20 What to focus on when hiring
22:55 Scaling yourself as a founder
25:57 Fostering more research-driven companies in Europe
29:42 Global expansion
33:52 Darktrace’s IPO process
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