Making It Real

Interesting episode guest in the Making It Real Podcast for all the product enthusiastists out there: Malte Scholz, product manager specialized in the SaaS and mobile tech space. He is Co-founder and CEO at airfocus, a prioritization and roadmapping software for product teams and decision makers. Malte shares with us his top techniques to prioritize features, to decide on the first product version and to build the best-possible roadmap for your product. We also cover the tricks of balancing customer needs and the challenges of scaling development teams. https://www.linkedin.com/in/maltescholz https://airfocus.com linkedin.com/in/janbrinckmann 00:00 Intro 00:50 How Malte joined the entrepreneurship space 3:50 Building a first version of a product 5:10 Time until launching a first version 6:25 What does airfocus do? 8:10 Feature prioritization as a product manager 11:35 What framework should I use for prioritization 13:10 Staying on track with the product roadmap 14:55 Challenges that founders face in product development 16:40 What should go into a first version? 19:15 Balancing customer needs 21:15 Assessing the impact of the next release 24:20 Hiring and sustaining a great team 27:55 Quick fire round: Person Malte admires the most | What is so broken that entrepreneurs should fix immediately | Technology that will transform the future | Favourite management concept 32:50 Closing

In today's episode we welcome Stephan Schambach, serial entrepreneur building market changing companies in the e-commerce space. Prior to his current software NewStore, providing Ominchannel-as-a-Service, Stephan launched Intershop and Demandware that was acquired for $2.8 billion by Salesforce. They say timining is everything, when launching a business. But what is the secret to get it right? How to narrow down focus and go big, when there are so many exciting opportunities? And once launched, how to find your first customers? He answers all these questions and shares his take on the NFT space as well as on the European investment ecosystem. https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanschambach https://www.newstore.com linkedin.com/in/janbrinckmann 0:00 Intro 1:00 The energy that powers Stephan 03:03 Stephan's passion for building companies internationally 06:20 The challenges of starting international companies in Europe 09:30 Finding ideas for new ventures and executing them 14:00 How to determine the right time for launching a startup 18:10 The influence of the first customer 21:10 How to find the first customer 22:30 Trends to watch out for in the ecommerce space 25:30 Stephan's take on opportunities with NFTs 27:45 Raising venture capital in Europe and building a European tech stock exchange 32:45 Quick fire round: Middlename | Something broken that entrepreneurs should fix immediately | Technology that will transform the future | Core concept 33:52 Closing

This episode presents David Heinemeir Hansson, Founder and CTO of Ruby on Rails, HEY, and Basecamp. David is not just a prominent entrepreneur but also the author of four best-seller books as well as class-winning race-car driver. We take a deep dive into building up one of the leading web development tools as well as the core activities to stay relevant in the tech community. He shares with us his take on work-life balance while handling several projects at the same time. Listen to the full episode to hear more about his journey and insightful tips. linkedin.com/in/janbrinckmann https://dhh.dk https://rubyonrails.org https://basecamp.com 00:00 Introduction 01:05 David's journey as a business student to open-source web development 04:30 Core ingredients for a successful web development framework 06:55 Most effective way to showcase a tech product 10:30 Staying relevant in a community 14:00 David's passion for Ruby on Rails 16:45 Focusing on one vs. balancing several projects 25:30 David's take on the 80 hours work week and his experience as a book author and competitive race car driver 30:45 Quick fire round: middle name - what entrepreneurs should fix immediately - technology that will transform the future - software recommendation - core concept 33:25 Closing

In this episode we welcome a female founder in the tech space, Vivien Dollinger who co-founded ObjectBox, a database management provider for developers. Vivien's entrepreneurial journey started as a side project that became a high-growh potential company and was along the very few of #Techstars cohorts. Some of the questions we cover: When is the right moment to turn side project to launch? How to get traction in the tech community at start? Why is a tech co-founder important despite the fast growing world of no/low code tools for early product development? If you are about to turn your idea and make it real, this episode is definitely worth to listen! linkedin.com/in/janbrinckmann linkedin.com/in/vivien-dollinger https://objectbox.io 00:00 Intro 00:55 Does research qualify one for entrepreneurship? 02:53 Vivien's journey to the startup space 07:50 Financing and building a successful team 08:55 Vivien's pitch for ObjectBox 10:05 The need for having great technical people in-house 13:05 Obtaining traction and the long way to getting first sustainable revenues while keeping the motivation high 17:45 Finding and selecting a first investor through Techstars 19:55 What it takes to grow adoption and foster growth with an open source product 25:55 How to develop a great developer community 28:45 Vivien's advice to her younger self - the right balace between focusing on the venture and other parts of life 31:19 Quick fire round: Favourite management concept - underdog software tool - dream job if not heading a tech company 35:01 Outro

Jeff Clavier began investing into early stage ventures more than twenty years ago and have supported several teams that have reached successful outcomes, among others Eventbrite, Fitbit or Postmates. He has founded Uncork Capital in 2004, one of the most prominent seed funds based in Palo Alto with over $500m under management. In today's episode, he shares with us the current and hottest investment areas he focuses on and why he is passionate about B2B SaaS enterprises. Also, he gives us his take on the current state of the European start-up ecosystem and his advice on avoiding the three most common mistakes made by early stage founders both in the ideation as well as in the product building phase. https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffclavier https://uncorkcapital.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/janbrinckmann 00:00 Introduction 0:50 Why and how Jeff joined the entrepreneurship world 02:35 Jeff's reasons for moving to the US & becoming a VC 05:45 The first investment in the time of the Web 2.0 & impressive returns 11:25 Investment hypothesis: Coming from seed investments to also having a growth fund 13:55 On which sectors Jeff focuses his investments 15:35 The opportunity for B2B SaaS companies 17:05 Jeff's view on the European start-up ecosystem 22:50 Advices for founders in the early stage 25:30 How to find the right idea for starting a start-up 27:10 Common mistakes made by founders 29:35 After having the idea - how to build the product 32:45 Jeff's personal advice for getting into the entrepreneurship space 34:28 Quick fire round: Thing Jeff is most proud of; most useful software tool; what would Jeff be if not a VC 38:15 Closing

Saul Klein, serial entrepreneur and prominent seed investor in the global tech scene, has co-founded numerous game-changing businesses such as LocalGlobe, Seedcamp, Kano, Zinc or Lovefilm (acquired by Amazon). Prior, he had a VP role at Skype and was General Partner at Index Ventures. He shares with us his journey to the entreprenurial space and talks about the transition from working at an established company to starting your own business. He highlights the first steps to take as founders to really see the exciting opportunities and elaborates on the way LocalGlobe evaluates investments and helps improve their performance. https://www.linkedin.com/in/janbrinckmann https://www.linkedin.com/in/saulklein https://localglobe.vc 00:00 Introduction 1:31 Saul's journey into the entrepreneurship world 3:40 Disrupting the newspaper industry as a 22 year old 6:25 Seeing entrepreneurship in a new light at netscape 08:55 Making the transition from working at an established company to starting an own business 11:20 First startup experiences at a MIT spinn-off and getting to know the VC and M&A space 13:55 Founding LoveFilm 16:00 Being an Marketing Executive at Skype 19:10 Advice on finding THE entrepreneurial opportunity 23:55 First steps to take as a founder to really see the exciting opportunities 29:53 How to enhance the performance of the start-up as a VC 37:55 How LocalGlobe finds the startups to invest in 43:56 Quick Fire Round: who Saul admires the most | biggest risk currently | #1 recommendation for aspiring entrepreneurs 44:38 Closing

This time our special guest is Fabian Wesemann, Co-Founder and CFO of insurance unicorn WeFox. Wefox recently secured $650 million in capital, giving the firm a $3 billion valuation. Fabian shares with us how they closed their funding round and his take on building relationship with investors. He also gives us advice on finding tech engineers in the start and and making decisions in a team. And if you wondering how to enter and build trust in a regulated industry, this episode is also for you! https://www.linkedin.com/in/janbrinckmann https://www.linkedin.com/in/fabian-wesemann-6036a629 https://www.wefox.com 0:00 Introduction 1:18 They way investment banking helped Fabian to grow into the startup ecosystem 2:30 How Fabian & the team found the idea for WeFox 4:42 The first version of WeFox 6:20 Evolution of the business model and why the first idea never stays 11:25 How to build trust as an InsureTech 13:15 Convincing a strategic partners as a young startup 15:00 The first rounds of raising venture capital 17:03 Finding tech engineers as business people when founding a startup 19:20 How to build deep domain knowledge, in this case insurance 22:10 Advice on building an amazing team and how to make decisions in a team 25:48 Closing a VC round at a 3 billion valuation 29:50 Communicating effectively with investors: unit economics, data room, pitch deck, etc... 33:58 Building trustful relationships with investors over time 37:05 Quick fire round: trading live with someone for a day, most useful & so far not well known software tool, what should entrepreneurs fix immediately, personal highlight of the day 40:15 Closing

This episode features Jasper Masemann, partner at HV Capital, one of the most iconic VC firms in Germany. HV Capital invested in more than 200 companies, including market leading companies such as Zalando, Delivery Hero and Flixbus. He shares insider tips for first-time founders, such as the dilemma of bootstrapping or initial hiring without an HR person, and reveals the main criteria that they take into consideration before making investment decisions. Our discussion also covers the recent developments in the European Venture Capital space. https://www.hvcapital.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/janbrinckmann https://www.linkedin.com/in/jmasemann 0:00 Introduction 0:50 Jasper's road to join HV Capital 3:50 Why Jasper started a venture first before joining VC 7:15 Should a first-time founder start with a scalable project which can be VC backed? 10:45 Is bootstrapping a better way to get experience at first? 12:25 Why you have to make mistakes with your startup 13:35 What is the core ingredient of a successful venture? 17:25 Why Jasper enjoys to do early investments - but why other companies need some traction so that Jasper invests 19:10 Customers have to be willing to pay for your product 22:13 The importance of customer acquisition and pricing strategies 24:25 Discussion about churn 25:40 Biggest mistakes from which Jasper learned 28:15 How to hire a great team as a founder when you do not have someone for HR 30:05 Why you should use headhunters and how to find the right one 31:20 Current developments in the EU VC space - is there a bubble? 36:40 What is sustainable for a startup - should you always listen to the VC trend projections? 38:40 Quick fire round: who you admire the most | most useful software for entrepreneurs that is underappreciated | something broken that entrepreneurs should see differently | life-long dream 42:07 Closing

David Nothacker is co-founder of Europe’s leading digital freight-forwarder platform, Sennder. The Berlin-based unicorn has recently raised an additional $80 million in funding at over $1 billion in valuation and will use this funding to expand into new regions. David started Sennder 1.0 as an MBA graduate but failed, as his co-founder left him five minutes after signing the investors term sheet. After overcoming this difficulty and setting a clear vision with new co-founders, he managed to turn the company into a unicorn with a team of 800 employees. If you want to find out more about how to excel in #winnertakesitall markets, whether it is a good idea to exit a built-up venture and how to build effective teams, then listen to the full episode! https://www.linkedin.com/in/janbrinckmann https://www.linkedin.com/in/janbrinckmann https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-nothacker https://www.sennder.com 0:00 Introduction 1:12 What is sennder? 2:44 All about the numbers: employees, revenue expectations, valuation of sennder 4:06 How David started sennder 7:40 What is harder to get as a platform business - demand or supply? 11:02 How to find co-founders and how working together works best 16:04 What David thinks about having luck as an entrepreneur and his exit strategy 20:19 Lessons learned on how to grow faster than the competition 23:20 How to onboard talent in a fast growing company (from 200 to 800 employees in one year!) 26:14 Organizing digital teams and sharing the culture 28:31 Quick-fire round: favorite activity | method to stay productive | personal hero 32:14 Outro

Quim Sabria is the Co-Founder and CEO of Edpuzzle, a crowdsourced video-lesson-platform in the K12 space, one of the top of cohort YCombinator startups in the EdTech industry. Edpluzzle combines simple video-editing tools with analytics so that a teacher can take a video and make it personal for their classrooms. Quim started as a math teacher without any tech or business know-how to run a company. He used to make his educational videos that he shared with other teachers who loved the idea and wanted to personalize them on their own. Started as a side project with childhood friends, the business made it to Silicon Valley and received a seed round which resulted in $800.000. In this episode Quim shares with us his insights on the main steps to create and accelerate high-growth companies. https://www.linkedin.com/in/janbrinckmann/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/joaquimsabria/ https://edpuzzle.com/ 0:00 Welcome back & introducing Quim Sabrià 1:14 How Quim started EDpuzzle 3:06 How to find co-finders 3:57 Pros and cons of founding a venture with friends 8:23 How to working effectively in bigger founding teams 10:05 Quim's top 3 learnings from his participation in the Y Combinator 15:48 Quim's number 1 metric 17:55 Many people say "don't sell to the government" - How Quim managed this challenge 20:27 Steps after finding the product-market fit 23:17 Growing a startup in a lean way 25:19 The process of going fully remote as a company at the US west coast 27:56 How to organize a remote sales team 30:48 Quick fire round: New middlename | What should entrepreneurs fix immediately | Technology that will transform the future 31:50 Outro - until next time :)