00:07:28 · Sebastian Johnson, Gustav Bang
[00:07:28] S0: And you mentioned you've been through some good good startups and bad startups. What have been some of the learnings from your time working and operating, now you're applying as a founder? [00:07:39] S1: Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, like, the biggest learnings to do what we do now also is is, like, from straight out of, like, the Legora playbook and Max, who's, a brilliant founder, really one of the best in the EU, About simplifying things, right, like every time we have a decision, pick the most ambitious, most risky of those two decisions. Makes every single decision very easy. You know, if you're building into a complex area, don't oppress it as complex, right? Just simplify it and make sure that what you're building is simple. But then on the contrary, like, I would say just in general, not being too aware of the market size that you're building into. I think in my experience, building startups, it's easier the harder it is. It seems very contradictional, but if you're building into something very large, like a huge vision, big mission, then it becomes easier to raise funds, it becomes easier to attract great people, Like all these things become actually easier, right? So if you think, I'm just going to do an easy start, I'm going to pick this like easy area, then you're going have more competitors, you're not going to be able to raise. So [00:08:45] S0: yeah. That's really interesting. It's like actually... Yeah. Yeah. What did you say? The easier it is, the harder... The harder it is, the easier it is. [00:08:52] S1: Yeah. It looks like a...
00:08:52 · Gustav Bang, Sebastian Johnson
[00:08:52] S1: Yeah. It looks like a... [00:08:53] S0: Talk to me about the round back. Right? So you just raised 11,000,000. General Catalyst is [00:08:56] S1: Yeah. [00:08:57] S0: A phenomenal investor, very excited to a lot of really interesting things in AI. What did they see? How did that relationship come about? What was that process like raising from them?
00:09:08 · Gustav Bang
[00:09:08] S1: Yeah. So I think for us, General Catalyst was the number one of all the investors we could have dreamed of to lead this round because they... First they have a European side to them now since I think a few years ago. Great network in the retail space that we're operating in. A big understanding of the opportunities also in The EU, like I'm sitting in the European Commission right now, because there's a €2,000,000,000,000 budget every year that we're tap into. So I guess, like, I like that The US investors, they move quickly and don't do as much due diligence, but they also are very US focused. Right? The US is the biggest market. You wanna tap into that. But for us, it's the contrary. Like, we we are actually going to The US. Maybe that's the last market. Right? Like, we got the EU, Canada, China. Like, all these places are way more regulated than The US. So we would like... We... Like, General Catalyst was just so aware of this opportunity outside of The US. And then, obviously, like, I also knew, like, Max, for example, Legora, they also raised from General Catalyst. And, you know, the guy we talked to at first jury, he has maybe the best reputation in in the Valley. Like, no matter who you ask, they know him. They talk good about him, which I think having an investor, like, in a seed round, you know you're gonna be working with them for so many years. Right? So Yeah. It has to be a good relationship.
00:10:25 · Sebastian Johnson
[00:10:25] S0: Think it's really interesting your point about the very... The highly regulated markets. Like, when... Often when you look at the most successful companies that have been built out of Europe, they're often companies that could only have been built in Europe because of some structural reasons. Right? Like, it's Revolut and it was currency exchange and because there's so many countries in Europe, even, like, eleven Labs with their dubbing. And it is... You know, it often feels like the the generational companies and even, like, Deel, which is sort of American but very European roots, you know, remote working is much bigger across Europe where you have so many countries. It's really interesting that there's there's this thing where the structural things occurring in Europe actually often play advantage to the companies that are building from there. True. Yeah. Yes.
00:11:06 · Gustav Bang, Sebastian Johnson
[00:11:06] S1: I mean, I I remember how we framed Complir. Investors is like we call us the Vanta for physical products. Right? Yeah. And we always were like, why why did Vanta show up in The US and not in The EU? Right? Because you have some compliance that you wanna live up to. But I think what's shaping our field right now is that we also wanna become the compliance layer for global commerce basically, right? And global commerce, like we started with European customers, but they sold globally. So we had to think globally from very early on. And that means like, no matter whether you're Vanta or Complir or anyone doing compliance, Fintech compliance, whatever it is, like, it's kind of a global problem by definition when you're doing compliance. [00:11:50] S0: That's so... Yeah. That's like... Yeah. Interesting. You have to... From day one, it has to be... Have to you have to have have something that works everywhere. [00:12:00] S1: Yeah. Exactly. For us, it was not only everywhere in terms of geography. It was also, you know, now we just say consumer goods, but it's like, there's a huge difference between a cosmetic product and a toy and a food product. Like, so when we initially started, people were like, shouldn't you just be doing cosmetics? Like, that's a huge market in itself. We were like, no way. Like, for us, like a retailer selling a product, they should be able to sell any product. And compliance is... So this is a very wide play. You could say a horizontal play that is only also realistic now to do because of the speed of iteration, all that stuff.
00:12:00 · Gustav Bang, Sebastian Johnson
[00:12:00] S1: Yeah. Exactly. For us, it was not only everywhere in terms of geography. It was also, you know, now we just say consumer goods, but it's like, there's a huge difference between a cosmetic product and a toy and a food product. Like, so when we initially started, people were like, shouldn't you just be doing cosmetics? Like, that's a huge market in itself. We were like, no way. Like, for us, like a retailer selling a product, they should be able to sell any product. And compliance is... So this is a very wide play. You could say a horizontal play that is only also realistic now to do because of the speed of iteration, all that stuff. [00:12:34] S0: And tell me now, you've raised this money. You know, I think you said your team was at 18 people. What are you gonna be spending that money on? Kind of what are you gonna be doing over the next six, eight, twelve months to get you to that next stage of your journey?