00:18:35 · Uwe Horstmann, Andre Degler
Ultimately, we didn't do it, and, you know, I wish those guys obviously the best of luck, and they have proven us wrong already. Not to say that we would have been able to invest again, but they are doing a fantastic job, we would love, of course, to put some money in now in hindsight. Or another example is Sorare. We really tried get that deal done. Unfortunately, couldn't get there, but yeah, in hindsight, of course, that would have been fantastic. Also, you know, a great team, awesome set of investors, such a great success story so far for everyone involved. So we are very happy that this works out. Obviously, we would be a bit happier if we would be part of it, but that's the way that that game goes sometimes. [00:19:18] S0: Generally speaking, does the whole crypto industry and NFTs, does it fit into your thesis? [00:19:25] S1: We are... So we haven't traditionally done a lot there, to be honest. We are looking at it always a bit from the outside, and we are regularly checking, basically, if we should get more involved. And it seems like there's a new wave happening, and we are at the moment evaluating how should we get involved. So, you know, if people listen to this and they really think we should, we'd be very interested in having that discussion even though we haven't done a lot in the past just yet. It is something that is obviously high on our agenda that we wanna reevaluate on an ongoing basis, and right now is one of those reevaluation points. [00:20:01] S0: I'm still very skeptical, but then I'm not a VC. So... I mean, that's why.
00:20:01 · Andre Degler, Uwe Horstmann
[00:20:01] S0: I'm still very skeptical, but then I'm not a VC. So... I mean, that's why. [00:20:07] S1: Lots to like, lots to dislike. Right? So definitely, it's about it's about the right model. I mean, the new fancy coin, you know, two years ago, that probably wouldn't have been our right business. When it comes to enabling infrastructure, probably a bit more so. So let's see. [00:20:21] S0: Yeah. Yeah. And, so you mentioned already that, you have quite a few people, working, for Project A, and, like, much more people than you would normally expect, from a VC firm of your size, and most of them operators available for your startups if they want them. So... How does it actually feel and how it works when you scale a VC firm pretty much the same way as you would scale a startup? So how was it for you?
00:20:51 · Uwe Horstmann
[00:20:51] S1: I mean, it's it's very interesting. Right? Because I I think what you're saying... What you're stressing is a really, really good point. I think you need to you need to start thinking about a VC firm like about any other company in that space, which means we are in a fierce competition for talent with everybody else. That's something that becomes clear, whether it's on the investing side or whether it's on the operational side. The same holds true. So we are thankful that we have great leaders in those teams that are taking over, like, a lot of the management and development and leadership roles, as the name says. We are focusing a lot on internal feedback, on constant development of the organization. So we work with software that measures basically the satisfaction of that organization on a biweekly basis. And through that, we've been able to improve our net promoter score, our employee net promoter score from an okay value to a fantastic value. It's not me who does that, so I can't claim that this was Uwe who did that, but we have great people in the organization who work on that, and they've been doing a fantastic job. And, a, we do this because it makes it a better environment for ourselves to be in. It's just more fun to work in such an environment. But on the other hand, we also need to do that. We need to provide a great atmosphere, lots of degrees of freedom, but also like a clear path to leadership in that industry, because that's something where I think the VC industry is not really good at, and that's also a problem, and that leads to a situation that more and more of the same people become VCs because I think we need to become better as an industry to show the inroads into the industry, and then also to make sure and make transparent, make it objective who makes progress in that industry. Because if I'm just hiring in my own network, and then I'm just promoting the people who are like me, that just basically leads to a situation that more people like me will be in decision making positions in the venture capital industry, and that needs to be more diverse. Because that's the key factor to making to making sure that capital flows also to more diverse entrepreneurs.
00:22:54 · Andre Degler, Uwe Horstmann
[00:22:54] S0: So Yeah. [00:22:54] S1: We can't solve the one issue without solving the other, and through that, we can only achieve that, I think, by making it transparent how to get into the industry and make it transparent and predictable and plannable how to make progress in that industry and make it objective. And that's what we're trying to do. And that kinda governs our thinking when it comes to building a VC firm as well. [00:23:14] S0: And you already mentioned all these tools, all these software tools that you're using. So on the side of the actual investment business, what what is it that you're using? All the data analysis, tracking, AI decision making sort of things. What what have you seen over these years, and what have you ended up using?
00:23:36 · Uwe Horstmann
[00:23:36] S1: Yeah, so we've seen a lot of things. I mean, I guess we've all seen, you know, people are trying to build up massive machines and trying for detection and decision making and so on. We are always experimenting with that, but it leads to... Definitely, it helped to increase the funnel, so it helped to screen more things, but then the process still remains very quote unquote manual, and I think it will continue to do that. It will continue to be pretty like that for a longer period of time. We worked a lot, of course, on how we approach all those things mentally, how we think about investment decisions, how we communicate our thinking about startups, how we make this process interactive with potential investment targets, how we share our research with them, how we get feedback from them on what we think about them, and so on. So I think for us it's been much more about process than about making that process automated. I think it's going to take a while until we get there. For us, it's still such a human factor. It's about individuals, it's about chemistry and so on, so I wouldn't know how that can be fully automated. That doesn't mean that we don't invest obviously in making the process faster and smoother, especially also for the benefit of the portfolio of the founders, because, you know, they almost always have better things to do than to talk to us. Right? I mean, they should be building a business and not wasting the time with with VCs too much. So we obviously thrive for process optimization. And we do that, and there are great tools out there. You know? Probably everybody uses some kind of CRM system, whether it's a ticketing system or a Salesforce version or Affinity or whatever you wanna use. I think that's best practice by now that you're kinda up to speed with, with that and and and get the process... Get the trains run on time. But, yeah, the the real innovation for us, I think, happens on how do we think about companies, how can we structure our thinking, how can we come up with a reasonable way to quote unquote try to predict the future in a future that's unpredictable. You know, how how do we approach that? I think that's, that's more about it, because we don't wanna focus on business only where I have to analyze current numbers.
00:25:49 · Uwe Horstmann, Andre Degler
We want to focus on businesses where we define, like, a joint view of the future together with the team. And it's probably gonna come in a very different way. It's probably... You know, the likelihood of this future becoming reality is zero, but I think you learn a lot in the process together, and that can't be done by a computer. [00:26:09] S0: Alright. That makes sense. And, do you think... How many how many companies, do you analyze, every, I don't know, week, month? [00:26:19] S1: So it's roughly 10,000 per year. Mhmm. So... Yeah. So roughly, you know, very simply speaking, a thousand per month. [00:26:29] S0: That's just how we How many of them do you see? What do you think? [00:26:33] S1: Me, personally? [00:26:34] S0: Uh-huh. [00:26:35] S1: I would say probably 20 or so a month. So I would say it's in in the hundreds still per year. [00:26:42] S0: Yeah. Mhmm. That's still quite a bit.