E349 | Robert Lacher, Visionaries Club: Bridging the gap between old family businesses and the European startup ecosystem

28:35He said, we believe that to be a great investor in Europe, you have to also be a good investor in the US. And they run the strategy of having both a European fund and a US fund and the US being a growth fund. would you agree with that statement? It's again a great question because I would agree and disagree at the same time I think it depends on stage if you want to be a great seed investor you need to understand why you win or lose a deal you need to have the access to the followers and I think you need to be close and you need to understand a bit the market environment so that's why we always have we want to focus on Europe and we don't want to get distracted too early to also be another fund in Silicon a value that is now going to the Y Combinator demo day and saying, hey, I'm fund number 500 and this is my value proposition in Europe.

29:25And then they say, well, but we want to scale in the US first. So why do we need you? So it depends on where you are in the fund cycle. We're at a very early stage with Visionaries. So it's now my third fund for Visionaries. It's our second vintage. And we're respectful about scaling step by step. So that's why we're focusing only on Europe with the seed fund. and we're doing select investments in the US. Here comes the second part of it. Recently, in the last three years, most of our seed companies go straight to US from Europe because the market is just 350 million people, same language, much easier to scale.

30:04So we always ask the question to our founders, what is your core reason not going to the US now? And if you look at Pigment, a great example, company we preceded in paris i think 60 70 percent of the customers are us-based but they're yeah so long story short you need to go to the us at some point to become a global category leader and that's the case also with our great lp companies like the ipad or portfolio companies like deal or um or mural that's one opinion the other thing is the biggest companies still get built mostly in the US. It's just in terms of the market. So I think making that step is something in the long run we would definitely envision with visionaries.

30:48But we're very respectful and conscious when to do that step. And if we look at the history, I mean, let's be very fair, which European fund has really made it to be among the absolute top tier funds in the US? And I'm not talking about side of top tier, but really top tier returns. There's index. And that's it, if I'm honest, I have great respect for Index having a San Francisco office recently, a New York office. They are part of some of the best U.S. deals and they're almost eye level with their peers of Excel, Sequoia and others. No other European multistage fund has managed that. So they've done something really right.

31:25But that has been a Danny going over being hungry and managing the U.S. team. So at some point, I think we'll do that step, but we'll do it when we can do it with full power. So yeah, long story short, I agree with Will. If you want to be a great investor long-term, I think you have to think global and just picking the best founders on this planet to build category leaders. But if you're starting a fund, better try to be a European leader first in your first 10 years and not like be all over the place. To tease to those that are thinking about this and maybe just to explain a bit What Will actually said was that, you know, first of all, important to say they do seed here in Europe and then they do growth in the U.S., kind of like what you described.

32:13Right. But then what he's saying is that, well, the beautiful thing about being in the U.S. with the growth fund is that it allows them to have a give and take relationship with their co-investors in the U.S. Because sometimes they invest in their companies, sometimes they invest in front lines companies. And then at the same time, it also allows them to keep an eye, ear and eye all the time to what's happening in the US, which means that when they're having their IC meetings here, thinking about European companies, they know exactly what companies are being built in the US, what takes have been had on those business models and problem areas.

32:49So that's exactly why he's saying, well, you cannot have this single-minded focus just on what's happening in Europe. And having that presence in the US that's forcing them to be on their toes, not just look over there and listen to the All In podcast, but actually be in the market is forcing them to be better here in Europe. And I - 100%. I couldn't agree more. It's the same. That's why we have a very small investment team of only six people that cover seed and growth. It's one IC, even though we have two people covering more growth and the rest seed but we're making decisions together, we're discussing deals together every day and that is exactly for the reason that you said, like being on your toes and seeing what's going on at early growth, what's going on in the US and the other part I can add to Will's point is there is a massive kind of value you can bring to US SaaS companies from Sirius B and beyond to enter Europe because Europe is as big as the US from the market, but it's highly fragmented.

33:51So normally the companies, why they want us on the cap table is that they say, well, okay, now we've started winning the US. Now we want to win Europe. So where do we go? Do we go to London? And does it mean that we then sell like through Europe or do we need to open an office in Stockholm and Paris and Berlin? And like, how do we deal with this fragmented market? And that's a massive USP a European investor can bring to SaaS companies. I think if I don't remember incorrectly, the frontline research shows that for a US company, the company that goes on the stock exchange when they IPO, they will have on average 30 % revenue coming from Europe, which is considerable.

34:32And that's a pretty good proposition if you say, well, we'd like to take 2 % or 5 % or whatever of the round, but we'll actually help you get 30 % of the revenue that you should be IPO-ing with.

34:52Cool. Now I want to go to something completely else. I made my shout out to Will Prendergast from Frontline here. Now I want to let you give your shout out. Yeah, it's a good question. So too many people I could shout out to. I have great respect for, but I'll pick one who's a good friend, who's a founder, who's part of our portfolio, but who's also an LP. So it's Andrei Kusset, the founder of Miro. And I think he impresses me in many ways because he's one of the smartest, most hardworking, but yet also most humble people I know in the ecosystem. He started Miro, which is a global category leader, as you know, for collaboration software with more than 500 million in ARR.

35:35From the small town of Perm, which is a very small city somewhere in Russia, basically fully bootstrapped. So it's a great example. You know, we always complain about ingredients in our ecosystem and that we don't have enough of policies here and there. I think it's bullshit. I think you can build amazing companies everywhere if you have the right mindset and if you're fighting hard. And what I love about him is that he really built this company and it's an attitude in his life to really never compromise on following his deepest passion and obsession. And that has been somewhere at the intersection of design and Internet and building a company from his childhood onwards.

36:18His father had a little printing business and then, you know, graphic printing. And then he was actually doing a bit of video art and he was building an agency where he was doing video art, Andre. And then in 2011, he had the idea, you know, to start RealTime Board, which was basically a whiteboard in a browser. So a real-time board out of the city of Perth. And then he's really built it into the global category here now, being headquartered in Amsterdam and San Francisco. he's also become a great angel so he's built a 16vc which is his kind of little angel mafia fund where he's backing next generation companies he's one of the most favorite angels in any companies that we back together because he's really one of the best product people on earth but also very great sense of business and and product impact so yeah and he's also a great example what we need in europe because we're an invest a small investor in euro andre is an LP in our fund.

37:14So it's basically a great example of how self-enforcing the cycle in our ecosystem could be.

37:24And if we should do another plug here, you just mentioned S16VC. Many of our audience, I think, would not know about S16VC. We have an upcoming content piece together with them on how they're building S16VC because they're building it in the open. If you subscribe to the newsletter, you'll also be able to follow that. And again, this is what we're about at EUVC. So definitely go in and check that out. I think it's an exciting piece. It's going to come on EUVC as well. So now let me go to, yeah, I'm full of flux today. Let me ask you your three biggest learnings from the last 10 years of your life.

38:04What are those? The single biggest one, and I'm very grateful that I could say that or that the dots connected in the right way is just to really work hard to fight what you love doing and really follow what you love doing, follow your passion and turn that into an obsession and never really compromise on this. Because, you know, I think that the challenge in our Western world is you go to university, you study engineering, you do an internship at a car company, or you just say, oh, I start working for that car company and then after 10 years you're questioning yourself is this really what i want to do in life and and you follow too much the carrot of a usual trajectory i could have never planned when i was at university to start a vc firm or build that but the dots connected in a way that i was trying to follow what i love doing so i can only encourage everyone to really take time take risks to to follow what you love doing and typically the intersection you know a framework that can help is a japanese framework called ikigai because it has become a little bit my life model to always challenge myself what do i love what am i good at because that intersection is typically passion then you know the intersection of what you're good at what you get paid for then then you're suddenly in a profession and if what you love doing is also what the world needs then you suddenly have a mission and if you look at visionaries now it's the only thing which brings all this together because I love the company building element.

39:41I love the investing element. I think I can use my talents, my strengths and weaknesses quite well in that setup with all degrees of freedom. I can make money if I'm doing my job well, but I think really what we discussed 20 minutes earlier, the world needs what we're doing to connect the old and new and to really unlock Europe's transformative power. I think you're absolutely right there. Again, if you don't know, you can go to the show notes. We've plugged in a small description of it there. I think it's a great framework. And I think it's one that, you know, honestly, if we think about the firm building part, this is what I always say about, you know, we meet many emerging managers that were even on the fund zero, so to say.

40:20And there's such a big difference between those that have, so to say, built their firm around Ikegai and those that have not. And I would say almost the difference is that those that have, they have a meaningful place in this world and they're ready to raise. and those that have not tend to be those castles in the sky you know that maybe should not be built um yeah so that's just a small recommendation for people to check that out and hold themselves up against it um 100 percent i would actually add one other uh advice if on learning if you allow me to because it's directly connected to this is really you know to like not let lost points affect your focus.

41:06One core learning I had is anything that felt like something bad that happened came for something 10 times better. So I think setbacks and failures are just a massive test for how badly you want to follow that dream. So if you look at venture capital, from the outside, it looks like a walk in the park. Oh yeah, I found a La Familia, found a visionaries, everything easy. We already started a VC fund when I was at VCG in 2012 with a silly name, silly setup. Luckily, that setup fell apart because it would have not been a really good setup in retrospect. But then starting La Familia on a much better ground and luckily having that success with the first fund.

41:46But then, you know, when I made the personal decision also to take these learnings from La Familia and the whole thing together to the next level with another person, that was an easy decision, that wasn't an easy phase. So you would again think like, maybe at that moment it felt like a hard time but then building something where you feel again it makes you 10 times more happy so I think the combination of try to never compromise on what you love doing but also once you find that really be fine with some 10, 20, 30 setbacks Funnily enough my journey in Manchester started also with a failed fundraise and a failed attempt at building something that would make sense and I use that today thinking back, wow, am I happy that that did not succeed because it should not succeed.

42:35And that's, again, back to the Kigai test. What's your biggest learning on that journey? So actually, I would say I've taken my biggest learning and built EUVC on the back of it. One, venture is incredibly networked. If you're not inside the core networks, you have no idea the most important things that are happening and you're not learning from the best people. And if you're not in those circles, you should not try and be a VC. That's a very ruthless but honest remark. What are we doing with the UEC? Then to remedy that, we're trying to bring out interviews, conversations, content from the best of the best so that you can look at that as a VC or as someone wanting to be a VC and kind of both learn from it, but also get connected to these people.

43:25Because I'm not saying that you can't become one of the best, but if you're not rubbing shoulders and learning from them in a network industry like this, you're not going to make it. That would be my take. And then there's another core learning, which is on the LP side, that it's practically the same, so to say, what I just described on the VC side. Most LP don't get to see the best funds. They get to see the best of the local ecosystem or the guy that for some reason tried to raise from them. And then they're evaluating VC on that. Some of them choose to put money, but they haven't really done diligence against the best of the best.

44:05and BC is just a world-class sport. So you can't invest in the national best. You have to, you know, maybe you can if you're lucky enough that the national best is also the European or world best. But, you know, it's a very, very top echelon, elite industry. And for that reason, as an LP, have to meet a lot of frogs to find out who's the one that will jump the highest. That's what UVC is all about, right? I met this guy. Well, go and listen to the podcast. See if someone else who's investing in that space sounds like they're a bit smarter or more plugged in. And venture in Europe is massively undersubscribed in general.

44:45So there's not many that have been on our podcast that as an LP you can reach out to and say, I'd love to have a meeting. I think even you would take it, right? You would take it at least to explore and see what it would be if it's someone who is really thinking about allocating to venture. Would they get into visionaries? Not necessarily, but you take the call to see if you can at least help further the industry. Okay, so now we're on advice to young people. Do you have any? Yeah, I mean, of course, what we just discussed is one core advice that I would give anyone to first follow what you love doing and not compromising on it.

45:24And given we're talking here to many entrepreneurs, I think another advice I can give is I'm surprised that people not really think a lot about what entrepreneur they actually want to be because I think there are maybe a thousand ways to be a great entrepreneur and we really see it in our LP base of you know family entrepreneurs it's something very different than the person that IPO the company or there are sometimes like the founders of think cell you know great software company but more niche highly profitable but you know just without VC funding and running this so I think it's important to try to find out what entrepreneur you want to be.

46:03You can open a restaurant, you're an entrepreneur. You can build it into a restaurant chain, it's entrepreneurship. You can do a fast scale VC business. And I think it's important because only 1 % of the companies, maybe VC is really the right partner. I think another one is when you build your company to have a maniacal sense of urgency as an operating principle with everything we do. We call it constant application of force. So to really wake up every day and all those things that you want to execute to not be too theoretic. And then the most important part is, I think, on people, because people are making up everything about a company that you build.

46:41So I would never compromise on the team setup. Something that I have learned in the VC company building context is to prioritize attitudes over resume skills in hiring. So we always try to hire the young and hungry, hyper-intelligent people that have no experience in investing, but that are just frightening hungry. Because they will develop exponentially in the future. And that's how you want to develop your firm. If we had poached people from other funds, we would have just hired the skill set that is already out there in the market. It wouldn't have made visionaries unique. So I think, yeah, those are a few things I would share with founders.

47:25I just wanted to, you pivoted or went directly to founders when I asked about young people. Let me ask you a question about founder age. What do you think in general? When you think about founders, do you think automatically, do you see this person that's same age as you or same age as me or someone younger? Or can they really come in any color and size? I think this is such a great question because, you know, I was always wishing when I was at university that someone tells me about windows of opportunities and when to take which risks from an experience. But if we look at our life, let's just take the very abstract discounted cash flow perspective.

48:05When you're young and after university, it's not your bloody harvesting period. You have the lowest salary in your life. So and then typically it goes higher and higher in your 30s. and then it peaks when you're at your 50s, right? So if you take the opportunity costs of risk-taking risks, between 25 and 30, they are just the lowest you can ever have in life because maybe the discounted cash flow of your life earnings is something 2, 3, 4 millions, and you might have a salary of 50, 60K in the beginning. I don't know. So just take that risk. So I think the second thing which is even much more relevant is the opportunity cost of family building.

48:45like it's a different thing and I mean you're a father if you're in your 30s to 40s normally that's exactly the time where you want to maybe build a family maybe you buy a house that you pay a mortgage so I just think in terms of the type of entrepreneur that you maybe can be it's a little easier when you're 25 to 35 to just say hey I just take any risk to do something really big that maybe doesn't pay out but if it works it's something big and if it doesn't work it's still fine others do a phd in that time i think it's a little more difficult if you're 40 um your husband or wife has a certain life standard you're paying your mortgage and then saying hey darling uh the next five years not sure if there's any money coming in and otherwise we're maybe fucked so that's why i i typically see people in that age going sometimes a bit more to different types of entrepreneurship building a consulting company or building uh something that is maybe not VC driven, but has a bit more certainty to work out.

49:47But look, these are just very, very rough indications. Personally, I love young founders because I resonate better with them because I feel like being a founder myself, how they think. So young founders means people up to 40 years, but we've great founders that are older than 40 in our portfolio. And if you look at areas like cybersecurity, I mean, people have to have a certain experience in life to build certain technologies. Thanks. Curious about your opinion. Well, I think I'm very, so I'm very aligned on the, I love your point around, you gotta as a, you absolutely gotta as a founder, think about what type of business do I want to build?

50:29And I think that that goes perfectly into your second point with, well, there's a time in life for everything and, and, and the odds that being what it takes to be a good founder late in life is hard. Most people, it's not a good match for because you have the risk profile that's massively skewed against the payoff or the likelihood that you'll have a high payoff. So it's very hard to justify towards the spouse that now is the time for me to spend five years doing something that might go in the drain. So I think that's a great point. And I completely agree that the importance of putting this in people's minds as early as possible so that we have more that take this risk early, I think is just spot on.

51:16I also think that especially if you're then, we have many that are thinking about hacking capitalism or trying to find a way where they can get out of the hamster wheel and be their own boss, so to say, and make the calls in their life. most people in Europe are in situations where in countries with so good welfare systems that you're not taking a big hit if you just game the system a little bit and try and build a lifestyle business it's what we've done with EUVC right now I make good money I meet the people that I love to meet I'm doing things I could never have dreamt of doing and honestly, I took one year where I didn't make much money but it's made up in year three.

52:10Like how hard can it be? And anyone with a good brain and grit can do the same thing. I love that and I think, you know, this is again coming back to what we discussed in the beginning. I would wish European students to take 10 times more risk because they can afford it. I mean, we're in the top 1 % of wealth globally here, even with our social system. And we talked about if you want to find out what you love doing, it is a long-term project. Personally, when I left BCG to do that, and I always wanted to be an entrepreneur, I had around three years runway that I would have been insolvent. With a little tennis trade I work on the side.

52:49But it allowed me, you know, I was saying, I give me that time to survive, to find what I love and take that risk. And I would have been maybe at zero afterwards, fine, because I mean, wouldn't have earned much money. But I think people are still too reluctant after university to say, especially engineers in Europe, not going to a car company or saying, I'm fucking trying it and there's not much to lose. So I think this risk taking is something that can bring us forward again. Absolutely. And from a policy perspective, if we should put something in there, I think that we're we are making a huge disservice to ourselves or where we are ridiculously stupid most countries is that we we make welfare contingent on you not trying to build something whereas like well if you're just watching netflix all day and whining about not being able to find a job after school then you're allowed to get social services if you try and build a company well you're not it's like that's the biggest opportunity unlike i think that we have if we just said well you know build your company whatever you know you'll employ people you'll pay good taxes later if that's what you do during the the first six months where you're out you know going to be unemployed anyway because we can't find you any job or you can't find a job yourself that's better man at least give it a try right because i mean we can both i guess say and and that's what i'm so grateful for i wake up on a monday morning and i couldn't think of a more amazing job every week.

54:26Except for maybe being a tennis professional where I'm not talented enough. And not many people can say that follow a linear path just going into a job. And you're doing this job for 30, 40 years. So being then 10 years working for the production engineering of a car company. I don't know if it's your biggest obsession or passion. Fine. But if you just do it because it has been an internship during university and you got an offer and you get a promotion and a promotion. but it's just five days a week that you compromise on something that could make you more happy. You have this principle with people being promoted to the highest level of incompetence, right?

55:08What I kind of say with that is also, you're also being promoted to your highest level of discomfort and stress because if you're not good anymore, you're going to be super stressed and super unhappy. You might be making a little more every time, but you're also getting a little more uncomfortable or uncomfortable every single time. So it's like if you're in the corporate hamster wheel, most people will end up not being in a good position. So, yeah, that's a big rant. Now, top tips for emerging VCs. And then I think we'll close this conversation. What are your top tips? Yeah, look, I mean, we're ourselves working every day and have to go through hard learnings, you know, to build it.

55:48But I think a few things I would think about is, you know, you have to be a painkiller, not a nice to have vitamin for a founder's cap table. I think the first thing is, you know, the VC market has turned into such a red ocean in the last years. It is incredibly competitive. There are just so many people that started a VC fund. There are many micro VCs, which I think all is great for the ecosystem because it gives founders choices. But you need to have a painkiller differentiation on the cap table why a founder should choose you and not just a gradual improvement to what all the others have done already.

56:27And having that differentiation, I think, comes to the second point. I think you can only build it if you're absolutely obsessed about the product venture capital and about the company building of venture capital. It's not enough if you just like investing. I mean, everyone is investing. Every one of the, I don't know, 50 ,000 VCs globally is making investments. That's not enough. You need to have obsession for more of that. You need to have an obsession for how you deliver that way with founders, how you really want to disrupt the market and build something new. Can I just ask you one thing? Because you're saying two things here.

57:05We used to have local leaders in the VC space as well, local champions that would be the ones that would win. So 0.9 Berlin, anyone in Berlin would go to 0.9. Now, do you believe that play works? So 0.9 is obviously, you know, pan-European now, so no comment on them specifically. But that would be a comment that you would have in the beginning that you would sweep a local market, you'd be the go-to. Do you think that there's, you know, truth in that anymore? Do you think there's room for being that? Or do you think that your job is small enough now, it's connected enough and any good founder will reach out to visionaries wherever they are.

57:48So forget about it. The local national plate doesn't work anymore. Yeah, it's a great question. It's back to our discussion with the US, right? I mean, for visionaries is absolutely clear. We want to be the leading European fund that every founder wants to partner with. And maybe we want to take that even global. so we have our main office now in London we have a portfolio all across Europe and we think European so for us there is no country there is just kind of Europe as a whole cluster that we pick the best companies and there is also not such a massive amount in each country of great companies that we would feel kind of comfortable enough just focusing on, right?

58:28So if you just do Paris if you just do Barcelona I don't know, as an ecosystem It's just it makes your kind of amount of companies that you can pick from smaller. But that's our ambition. And we are very ambitious to build this very long term. I think in an abstract way, answering that question, it just depends on what you want to be. If you want to stay a niche, small boutique firm with a small fund size, I think you can also say we want to become the local champion of Germany, of Switzerland, or even of a certain university. There are certain funds, like you look at Wingman, they're not called Fondafel, they say Switzerland.

59:09If you look at LocalGlobe, they always say, you know, we only do something that is two hours train ride from our office. So winning in London, the best seat deals. And you have some doing that in Tel Aviv. If you look at, you know, our friends from Gili, you know, Cyberstars, he says like, but then we're talking about the cybersecurity market where 40 % comes from Tel Aviv. So if you're a small focused fund, I think you can be local if you have the ambition to become a leading multi-stage firm or leading a global fund. You have to think European, if not US, Europe, I think. And that's our ambition.

59:45And I think the trend is more of funds being more European. When we started La Familia, when I started Visionaries, most funds in Germany were local. HB Capital was focusing on Germany. Cherry was focusing on Germany and Early Bird and all the others. we were trying to be European from day one, but we wouldn't see them in other deals. It has changed. I think HV has opened an office in London. Early bird has done so. I think it is just the market is by nature becoming international. And just look at the European ecosystem of multi-stage funds. Five years ago, there was Excel Index and a bit of Baltimore and Atomico and Lexta and the likes.

1:00:25Now, there are like 10 times the amount of funds. Sequoia opened an office, Iconic, Lightspeed, and Jury Catalyst and Nia and yeah. Absolutely. Competition has definitely increased in European mentoring. Coming back to that discussion to really start small because I mean the track you have on your face is everything that you can do in the future. It really determines what you can do. And if you start raising a 100 million first time fund, making a 10X is much more difficult than if you're, in our case, we had a 40 million fund, which is of course also much easier to get a great performance on.

1:01:01So I think I would be, if you really see this with a 30-year horizon, be very humble, patient in the beginning, start small, make great returns, and then step-by-step build it into the leading firm. I think many have done the kind of mistake in the last four years where money was available infinitely to just raise massive funds and then you don't find the deals to where you can put in the money and then you just have bad performance and then you will not raise a good next fund. I want to ask you one final thing, and that is, I want to hear from you, what's the most counterintuitive thing that you've learned in Manchur?

1:01:35It is an interesting one because it's at the same time our absolute core philosophy of visionaries as a company ethos. And we call it manufacturing serendipity. And let me try to explain it. Many people say that startup is about luck, about having luck, that you're at the right point in the right time with the right idea and everything. And that is also a little bit luck as a VC, which companies you pick. I think it's bullshit long term. You might be lucky here and there, but I think venture capital is really about manufacturing luck. You have to boost the odds in a way systematically that serendipity will just strike repeatedly, right?

1:02:26So everything we do every day, whether it's meeting a founder and we talked about network and everything, we just have to manufacture serendipity every day with storytelling, with hustling, with being... If we want to meet a certain founder in Barcelona and we just want to speak to them. We just have to find a way to manufacture serendipity that we'll meet him, that he'll take a meeting, that he will like us. And it's not coincidence that we find a founder. We need to influence that. So I think that's the core, what we're doing with Visionaries, with our network. We leverage everything to manufacture serendipity to find the best deals, to have people share deals with us, to have the best connections, to evaluate deals, to pick any resource we can to win a deal.

1:03:15And then once we invest to make those companies successful, and that's what we can always get better on. I think we're just at 5 % of the capability to manufacture serendipity where we are. And I think it's also at the same time, the best support you can give a founder to help a founder also manufacture serendipity. And the last point is, you know, you can see it with, again, in areas like scooter companies, food delivery, you can see how founders that have the exact same starting point outperform others because they just manufacture a serendipity in a much better way that boosts the odds. You described a rather indirect approach there, I would say.

1:03:59And I completely agree. So manufacturing serendipity, I heard it first time from our good friend Anthony Dannon, where I thought, oh, fuck, you're right on point there. That's exactly the right way to describe it. What you did describe, well, if I want to meet a founder in Barcelona, I would then make sure that I kind of stumble into him, so to say.

1:04:22And thus, you did not say, I'll just reach out in cold hope that he'll take the call. Could you maybe talk a bit to that indirectness of it? Is that just like the story that you shared there or the example you shared there? Or do you think that it's important actually to design these, so to say, serendipitous meetings indirectly so that, you know, in a way it feels like karma when something happens? Yeah, I think, sorry, that it was a misunderstanding. It doesn't have to do anything with it indirectly. Like we're not trying to manipulate people and being like MI6 agents meeting the founders. It's more like we just have to be on our toes every day to connect all the dots of insights we get, of the people we meet, of the decisions we take, where to travel this week, of the decisions, you know, who we hire to just connect all those dots in the right way that we have a higher chance to...

1:05:25Yeah, planting enough seeds and making sure that when those seeds actually become something, you have a system to actually notice and pick up on it. But I do give examples. That would be amazing. If you look at Deal, which is the most successful investment from our first fund, and it is interestingly a European founder, but it's a U.S. company. And it's one of the most successful SaaS companies we had in the last six years. in 2016 someone introduced us to to elizabeth gill who is a great angel you know in the u.s and we were meeting him and of course very fascinated by him but back then you know he was he was not what he is today yet but he had been a great angel in stripe airbnb and others and getting that intro was already manufacturing serendipity because before we were visiting a conference where we were was quite high likelihood to meet a few great angels and one of them actually knew him and said hey if you're in san francisco these are the people that that you need to meet so it is already manufacturing serendipity to have the ambition when i travel to san francisco asking 10 people hard preparing well on who you really want to meet and not just go there and see like okay let's see who i meet now and then again because elad is a great guy we tried to keep a great relationship with him so we were trying to support him with a lot of his companies to enter Europe.

1:06:43We were inviting him to a conference here. So we were building that relationship with a lot of investment into it because we said it's one of the 10 ,000 points connecting the dots that might play out in the future. And then we were looking into YC as any other fund would do. And we were looking basically into the companies and we were seeing Deal as a team, which we liked because we were also investors in Prozonio. We liked HR, but we were maybe 50-50 doing it or not. And it was moving very fast. And then it was Ilat, basically, who said, who committed with Avicel Garg and a few others and said, look, guys, either be on or off the bus, but we're doing this.

1:07:20So the combination of then being, again, having deep insights from HR, from Prozonio, having done a good work on that space, but we had to decide within 24 hours. And we had this great relationship with Ilat. Turned out we were the lead investor VC firm then in the seed round. and then the rest of the journey has been that the company is now at a 12 billion valuation and has more than 500 million AR but that is one journey of manufacturing serendipity that we were able to pick this company which we could have never planned before same stories if you look at sequoia and stripe and how they sourced it via a white combinator uh you know building great relationship with them i think as a vc to to just boost all those different odds and make a prioritization on kind of who you work with closely, investing a lot of time in those people with a very long-term perspective.

1:08:10Yeah, I think you're completely. And thank you for that story. That was a great, great, great example of manufactured serendipity. Robert, even more. Thank you for joining us on the podcast. I'm so happy we got to do this finally. Thank you so much. The pleasure was all mine. And thanks for the great and fun conversation. Could have gone for more hours. Here's a few words from our beloved sponsor. This episode comes to you by the support of our partners, Portfolio IQ by Synaptic. Portfolio IQ is the most effective way to track your portfolio. It pulls data from all sources, board decks, financials, MIS sheets, forms, emails, everything, and creates a true single source of truth for your portfolio data.

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