E639 | Alexandre Mars, Blisce: From Serial Entrepreneur to Impact VC — Rethinking Freedom, Purpose & Europe’s Tech Future

0:03Today we're joined by Alex. Alex has founded a bunch of different and important things. One of them bliss and that's what we should talk the most about today. But Alex, before going there, you're... It's Alex. Yeah, I'm saying Alex. Is that not all right? You said Alex when we said hi to each other. It's very American, Alex. What did you say? Usually it's Alexander. What is Alexandre? Alexandre, yes. I love it. Now, I've listened to a lot of semi-French audiobooks by the author, Alexandre Dumas. So for that reason, I've heard that name many times. So, Alex, welcome to the podcast. Let's talk first about your journey into both philanthropy as a founder, as also, of course, now a VC.

0:47Tell me a bit about your journey, how you got into it. I'm first an entrepreneur. That's how I did start everything. So I was 17, and I started my first venture. It's that simple. So it's not that simple. I was hoping it will be simple. It's super hard. But that's what I started. I started because I needed money. So that's the start of everything. I need money. and I love freedom. So those two combined, I said, let's try something out. And it was entrepreneurship. So it doesn't bring freedom, to be honest. And if you are successful, I'm not saying lucky because it's not about luck, it's really about work.

1:30But then maybe you can get money, but no freedom. Well, I guess there are many interpretations of freedom and there are many paths to it. Tell me, Alex, or Alexander. We should talk about freedom then for 20 minutes. Let's stay on freedom. I think freedom is very important. First, define freedom to you then. You said so many ways. For me, at 17, it's different. 17, 25, or 40 years old. At 17, it was, I don't want to have a boss. That was my... The key one. Yeah, the key one. There's no boss to me. Then after, for sure, it's very different. 10 or 15 years ago. And when you understand that you need to find clients, you understand they have no freedom.

2:14It's not because there's no free lunch. Nothing is easy. And you need to work hard because there is no other way to get what you want. But at 17, I was hoping that just because I had a great idea, people will come and will clap and say, no, I want your product. And it's not how it works. would you say you uh have always loved to grind and for that reason it also worked for you to be an entrepreneur or was it that pursuit of freedom that even though you saw it disappear a bit out there in the horizon you still you're still stuck to it yeah it's grinding is working as it's not helping but i didn't see the same way at 17 even 20 i think that my second business or my first real tech startup um i was 21 and i did realize that if if you really want to have clients it was one of the first web agencies in europe and and i was saying to you know people you know around me.

3:23You need to switch to the internet, the internet is the future. And I was, again, hoping that everyone will say, oh yes, he's right. I will just come and I will ask him to build a website for me and everything. And no one came. No one. And then I realized, if I really want to pay the bills, if I really want to be able to pay my team, I will have to do something. And then it's grinding. is calling people, reaching out to other people, getting so many no thank yous, so many. And sometimes once in a while someone says, oh yeah, why not doing something with you? But when you learn this at 20-ish, then it's, you know how to do it.

4:09There is no way, there is no way. And that's what I'm always saying to entrepreneurs. There is no way you can succeed. There is no way you can succeed without hard work. on planet earth i'd never and it's interesting and like you andreas we are meeting so many entrepreneurs and successful ones when you are very direct with them and when you start saying no bullshit with me tell me the truth they will always tell you a ton of work and sacrifices so it's always the same are you okay are you fine making huge sacrifices to achieve your goals and that's it's if it could be a no-go it could be a you know full start but that's an important question so if this freedom to me was a dream at 17 and it realized at 21 that's you know it will be no freedom it will be sacrifices on the other hand you can also argue that or at least that's very much how I think about it, that freedom is the ability and capacity to pursue what you think is important and what energizes you.

5:20And I think that in the end, that is what you have done. And you have, even after having become massively successful as an entrepreneur, made the money you need to get all the freedom that you set out to get in the beginning, you've kept at the grinding wheel. Talk a bit about that decision and why you've not stepped away and rested on your laurels yeah so i love what you just said but i'm not sure if you would have said the same thing when you were in college maybe and i should ask your wife um you know because it is normal because you you have a different view or vision what is still important is what what will drive you and i know you i know that you are driven by something more important than just make money or backing the right entrepreneurs and the podcast is part of it you want to showcase successes you want to talk you want to go deep and that's the point for all of us why we do what we do and i'm not saying you need to know this when you're 15 or 25 it's fine but that's some points you need to do it and for me it was clear i need to have enough to protect the ones I love and I know that at some point I need to do something useful, let's say, at the very least, for other people.

6:44That was my North Star. So after when you are seeing this, what does it mean? How can you use technology to do this? How hard and but at least i knew where i want to where i want to land so after it's you know you can crash landing a plane but at least i knew pretty well where i want to land tell me alexander a bit about because of course you're on the uvc podcast our main audience are founders and entrepreneurs vcs lps people who act in this space of tech and many of them chasing what you have achieved so tell me a bit about because is is the holy grail financial wealth and the ability to do what you want or is it something else for you and what would you say to all the people out there that are pursuing that dream

7:46let's define the dream then and i'm sure your dream and like the dream of everyone in this in this place is different. And I hope so. I hope we have different dreams. And sometimes you call it a dream, maybe it's just an ambition. For me, having money is not a dream per se. I hope that for no one there's a dream. But it was an ambition. It was a goal. It was something I need to get to pursue other dreams. That's where I was. But I did understand quickly and early that I was a good entrepreneur. Why? Because I was able to say to myself that I knew nothing. And that's a good start. You're meeting a lot of entrepreneurs.

8:36Sometimes you say, oh, you already know everything. So I'm not sure I can help you. I think I love the entrepreneurs. When they tell me, I don't know. I'm asking you questions. You answer, I don't know. I love that people can say this. And every time I start a business, and I've started seven different businesses, every time I'm starting from zero, saying, you know what, I don't know, so I will spend time with people. Those people will know better than me. And then I'm standing down, and I'm asking questions. Sometimes dumb questions, maybe, but it's a start. And that's, I think, the other reason, I think that's the other reason why I've been successful, over and over.

9:18of doing those different startups because hard work was just not knowing. And those two together, I think it's a great tango, just playing, dancing together. But you need to accept this. And most of the time when we are 25, let's say 25, it's hard to say you don't know because people will judge you, people will look at you, or even entrepreneurs saying to an investor that you don't know it's not maybe the best way to start a conversation with someone who will certainly put some money in your business at some point still to me it was always the same just i need to start something and i need to better know because at the start i don't have enough knowledge um and then after it's it's implementation then And the minute you do the good market research under your ass, and that's everything, market research to me is so important, so key at the start of the business.

10:19Then after is you go and you go deep, you go fast, you implement, but if you try to implement something, if you are not well balanced at the start, it will fail. Tell me, Alexander, a bit about the decision to become a VC, so to say, found Bliss, which is your VC firm, but also contrast the experience of doing that with the experience of being a founder of an operational business, let's say, operator business. Great questions. Thank you. There's two questions there. The first, it was not a VC fund first. It was my family office. A few, 10 years ago, so I was living in New York, made good money selling, not running those tech startups, but selling those tech startups.

11:03and then I started my family office and then we started investing in a few good startups and then families came over. Other families, other entrepreneurs saying, you have access to those startups. Can we invest alongside of you? And we started doing SPVs. So we started doing special vehicles and we said, I will invest, come with me and we'll invest as a group. That's the start. Why it worked well? Because I built everything for my own family. So I said to myself, I will never do early stages, not because I don't like entrepreneurship, but because I know it's almost impossible to succeed. Almost impossible.

11:40Maybe if you grew up maybe in San Francisco, maybe in New York, if you really want to start from zero. Otherwise, the likelihood to be successful is close to zero. So that, for me, is not for me. Then the pre-IPO hype can work. And we saw this in the last 10 years. Sometimes it works very well, but it's harder sometimes. So I said to myself, if I want to protect my money, it's between series A's and series B's. So businesses making 5, 7, 10, 20 million dollars of revenues, wonderful trajectory, being more in more than one country, sometime a region, want to be global. That was the ambition. And starting, and we talk about this because I know it's important for you as well, how do we think those technologies will impact the world?

12:40How do we think those businesses will really be for good? How can we leverage technology for something positive? And I said, let's put everything together. And we started having more and more families coming over. and a few years after, I said, let's structure a fund. Why we did structure a fund? Because everything we were doing before were through secondary deals. So it was more, oh, as a CEO, I will buy out some shares from you. We'll do a tender for the employees. We'll do stuff where we have less connection with the business where it starts after. And we said, we want to have board seats. We want to be more active.

13:25And that's why six years ago, we said, let's do deals and we'll lead those deals. So what police does, we lead and co-lead everything we do. We have board seats, observer seats. We do series A's and series B's. We do 50 % of what we do in the U.S., 50 % in Western Europe. And we want to understand and we want to back those entrepreneurs. north we would definitely reshape industries we love them but we want to understand how those industries will be reshaped you know in a good way that's how we see stuff um and businesses like to go that you know very well no as being danish yes there's one of your top one of your top success in denmark that's the kind of business we love doing so that's to answer the this question of why and how we did start everything.

14:23And we grew and we grew and we got more families coming over and we're not KKR by any means, but now we have more than$600 million under management. So it's real. Tell me because you come from a family office background, which is very important for people to understand a bit how a family officer thinks. And obviously you come with a lot of credibility because you are a family officer yourself. so there's a lot of resonance there already. But where we're seeing a lot of both founders and VCs struggling today in impact, in the people that are trying to do good, is that they're realizing that the green premium, it's not enough to talk about big carry goals anymore.

15:05You've got to show a much clearer value proposition. So it's interesting you're asking the question. The first thing I told my team years and years ago, I said, we can talk about impact You can talk about B Corp. You can talk about ESG. You can talk about business for good. But there is one thing that we need to achieve if we want this to be at scale. You need to outperform other funds. If you come and you say, oh, we do good, but we do 6 % year over year, and we underperform other funds, people will tell you, thank you, great work. but not for us. Or it will still be a small pocket somewhere.

15:55Since day one, we outperform others. We're top-decied of every fund or every single strategy we are doing. We are able to back the real strong entrepreneurs. You mentioned the Too Good To Go, the Spotify of the world. We've been able to be part of some of those conversations in primary deals, in secondary deals, we have been part of this ecosystem but all the time we want to put together great returns with this ambition to leverage technology for good tell me but you need numbers i agree with you you need facts trying to elucidate this more for for people because i think that this is a narrative question right and oftentimes at least the good businesses do what the businesses have always done or the good investors do what the investors have always done and have been wanting to do.

16:52It's more about how do you talk about this. And we spoke about Pale Blue Dot just before good friends of both of us. And where they have been very strong in their communication about what they do when it comes to impact is saying, we are a generalist fund that happens to believe that the biggest opportunity in the world is fixing the climate. And for that reason, we tend to do a lot of climate deals but they also come from backgrounds of not having necessarily only done climate and impact before so they have a very strong credibility in the normal tech scene as well some might also say that you've invested in of course too good to go and headspace and others that are closer to what you would call pure impact you've also invested in spotify and spotify i guess is something where some would say well what good impact is that and others would say well it completely disrupted the music industry and the whole point was to democratize access and actually allow people to become musicians get freedom if we go back to your first statement as a musician so could you talk a bit about this fluid definition of impact and the importance of being able to navigate that it's it's really hard because if we are asking today the 20 people you'll be meeting the definition of impact I'm sure you get 20 different definitions and it's hard so there's no one 100 agree with you because i got this question from people said and spotify what do you think how you define spotify is not medtech foottech is just another platform so yeah to your point that is before you need to remember 15 years ago before spotify um only rich people were able to get to have access they have to pay 99 cents on iTunes.

18:39That's the way, and for a lot of people, and you said it, the music was not accessible. And so, yes, after we think it's good for the planet and all the servers, but then it's an endless conversation where you will always find something not enough for you. That's why when we do our IC, so when we do our investment committee, We go deep, but we go deep with our dogma. Because the worst thing on Earth is having people with dogma saying, oh, you need to cross every single, you know. Yeah, it's a fact-checking box. Yes, and it's fine. You have to tick those boxes. But the issue at the end is the definition itself of impact.

19:34That's why I've never told you that I'm an impact fund. Yes, we've been the first B Corp venture fund in Europe. Yes, we care about where we put the money. Yes, the entrepreneurs we're backing are so driven by technology and something way more important than themselves, something positive for the planet, for the community. but at the end of the day what is important to us is understanding when we invest why this positiveness or the impact those values are backed in what we have realized is when it's not backed in those entrepreneurs it will be hard for them to change because they need to survive most of the time so it's hard to do something and adding on the top of it impact or something either it's part of your business so Tuga Tuga is easy, it's a food It's a food waste.

20:27So the business itself is about just doing something positive. It could be harder otherwise. Tell me, I want to ask you something because you've recently moved back to Europe. And part of that is, of course, because you are European by heart. You have strong European values. And as you said yourself, I want my kids to grow up here. I want them to experience Europe and be part of Europe. I'd love to ask you a question that I think is, again, on the impact angle, so to say, confounding to many, which is trying to understand what's happening in the U.S., but from the vantage point of a European. So maybe because you've lived 10 years in New York, you're very plugged into that scene, of course.

21:12so could you talk a bit about what you're seeing in the states how you translate to a european audience of founders and investors of what is going on in this space now stuff that you know well entrepreneurship is everywhere in the u.s they have even the college just doing entrepreneurship called bapson college it's just about entrepreneurship so it's it's talking earlier but backed in, it's backed in. You are in the US, you will start something that's important. Not sure when in a year, in two months, but you will start. So it's part of their mindset. Something important that we don't have here is being okay with failures.

22:00You know this. As soon as you fail somewhere in Europe, even 25 years after, we'll say, oh, Andreas, I remember you 25 years ago. It's okay. Even if you have 25 different successes since then, the people will just remind us. So it's this kind of mindset. I think it's changing, but we're still, and I think we shouldn't fight against the US. I love the US, obviously, because my kids grew up there and I've spent so many years there. And the reason why I want my kids or want the family to come back with my wife because we love those two cultures. and I think it's important to us for our family to understand those two different cultures.

22:41Having said this, I do feel that tech entrepreneurs, European tech entrepreneurs will always have the dream to succeed in the U.S. And whatever we can say, we can put any president in the U.S., you can do, you know, whatever you want. The U.S. will still be the U.S. Because we all grew up, if you, like you, you grew up in Denmark, you still have the U.S., the movies and the rock stars and everything. So there's a condition, you know, and that's what we see. And the market in the U.S. is so big, massive, that if you are an entrepreneur, if you tell me you don't want to succeed in the U.S., you don't think the U.S.

23:34is the grail. I do think you are bullshitting me. And it's normal. When my third, my fourth startup, I remember, it was in the mobile space. It was one of the top one in Europe. I said to myself, I can do the best job in Europe. If I really want to be number one in the world, I need to be number one in the US. That's the peer.

24:00Tell me, Alex, then, and I want to go back on the impact point because the European mindset on impacts is very different from the U.S. And we are seeing on the one hand, we're seeing definitely people saying that we have a chance now, an opportunity in Europe because the U.S. is falling behind on this agenda. And then there are others that come out on the other end of the spectrum and saying, no, no, we've got to get off this train because the people that are moving the train are not going this direction. So could you talk a bit about where you come down on that and the movements that you're seeing and where you think that the smart people should position themselves?

24:41The good thing is entrepreneurs, I think they will do what they want to do. If you talk to all those entrepreneurs in every single college around the world, 50 % of them, they want to be entrepreneurs. It's scary and beautiful at the same time because most of them, you know, it will be hard still. I see more and more of those entrepreneurs taking action and trying to define. They want to build something big. They want to be successful. But to them, Instagram or TikTok is maybe not, you know, the perfect ideologist startup. So they want to be successful. They want to make money. They want to have clients.

25:29But at the very start, they say, I can posit myself in building something that will make total sense for the community. And this is not changing. In the U.S., I feel the same. I think there is a direction taken by the administration, yes. but entrepreneurs, they are building stuff for the next 10 years. So they won't stop because they will build something. And yes, they're listening to the news. They're watching stuff coming up. But it's harder on the institution side. So yes. And I was actually about to ask you exactly that and put your bit on the spot there because yes, what entrepreneurs will do, I think you're absolutely right.

26:21Nothing can stop an entrepreneur, and that's the type of founder that you need to build these large companies. However, you're investing in Series A, Series B stages primarily. That is one of the places where finance risk is a big one, and the ability to acquire larger customers is also starting to be a big one. And that is where what is happening in the macroeconomic space is very important. could you talk a bit about when you look at an and now i'm calling it an impact startup but a startup that is motivated by doing good could you talk a bit about how you're looking at the risk landscape in the climate space and the and the more do good oriented businesses so i think when you are series a's and b's those startups really have revenues so it's easier i think And where it's hard is when you have your business plan with you, you are pre-seed and you try to convince the world that your technology will change the world.

27:24This is hard. That's what would have been hard, to be honest. You know this. But now if you do something in the climate world where it's hard to understand, you need to have two PhDs with you to understand the business, plus it's something that will maybe make sense or will succeed in 15 years, that's really hard to raise money for those businesses. I think we are protected where we are because you will already see if you have been able to get the first clients. We have already seen if you were able to get the first money in. But it's very true that when you start early with a business plan, if you five years ago you are putting green climate eag impact of what else what else so we have long list the people were no people were interested but then you have two kind of investors the families and you can put the institutions or so that's where i think some can follow the others some can just be super strict about what they want to achieve and and how they want to achieve it.

28:34On both sides, you will always find people who really believe in something and they are not pushed by other people. They strongly believe that technology could be and should be a force of good. So that's what you need to find. Alexander, now let me ask you a final question before we close. And it's an entire topic of its own. I want to talk about tech sovereignty in And you're obviously out of Paris. And we have Mistral, which I think is our strongest bet on AI sovereignty. So talk a bit about both the political landscape for that, how you're acting in it yourself, and what you're seeing and whispering in people's ears.

29:16And you find now money, five or seven, or even two years ago, you were talking about defense, sovereignty. It would have been super hard for most people to raise money. now you see this every other week there is a fund just doing something more specific around this so i'm i'm you know i'm happy i'm happy for for them i'm happy for europe i'm just always a bit skeptical um on the fact that we we should be careful not you know protecting us too much because we always see this it's it's impossible to live in the bubble it's impossible um our top engineers how can we make them stay in europe this is a big question how can we make those those engineers staying and and living their dreams here in europe not going to the u.s how can we keep entrepreneurs uh here in in this beautiful europe and not going outside so and if they go outside i will keep keep their link between the fact that you're a dan you're a french or a Swede, because that's the world I want to live in.

30:27I don't want to live in a world where we have borders everywhere and even less with our friends from the US. So that's where I think where I am. Having said this, we see a few, you mentioned Mistral, you find a few others saying, you know what? Our way of being successful will be really to spend most of the time and to offer something for Europe. Remember, we backed a great organization led by a super strong entrepreneur in Stockholm called Evrock. And they started saying it's very successful entrepreneurs coming from Sweden, made most of his career in the U.S. And I think three or four years ago, he said, I can keep running tech businesses in the U.S., but there's something coming in Europe and I need to be part of it.

31:20He said, there's one place where we're nowhere is hyperscaler. He said, we have to use Azure. We need to use Amazon Word Services. But if you are really in the defense business, if you are in the healthcare business in Europe, do you really want to think that at some point, maybe someone in the US will be able to have access to your data, to have access to your information, to everything? So it's still been something. As an example, you have the German initiative that's entirely run, the German in collaboration with SAP, that's entirely built on the Microsoft and OpenAI value system. So then how do we want to approach this?

32:05I'm not saying it's the only way, but to be honest, if you work, if you are, you know, healthcare defense, everything is so critical in terms of data, we need to have something, you know, in Europe. And that's what they start doing. So we back them, police back them with EQT that you know very well, with Norgsen that you know very well, with giant ventures. and we hope and I'm sure other ideas like this will pop up, other already do exist but we need to find a few winners, you can mention Mistral, it's already I think a winner but we need to understand why there will be European winners why we if data is important we need to be careful with the data that's why I understand why sovereignty will exist on some other aspects, I think let's not be not too protective, to be honest.

33:04Final question. Tell me a bit about where you come down, and this is a mission that's very close to my heart, on the role of investors and successful founders in policy and politics.

33:21So where do you want to land? Well, I don't... Do you want to become prime minister of Denmark? No, definitely not. Mete, be careful. Yes, Mete, be careful. No, what I'm so... My high horse is that the one force that is truly impacting the world today is technology. And the people that are spending all their time building and investing and trying to understand the future are investors and founders in tech. and for that reason I think that it is an imperative for people the successful people in this space to get involved in that debate both publicly but also of course behind the scenes or in the more closed fora but I do think that in the public discourse we have a very big role to play and I don't feel that we're doing enough especially in Europe and like and that's also why I think we're seeing the narrative being written by our U.S.

34:19counterparts because we're leaving a vacuum of thought leadership when it comes to where will tech take us and what can we do with it. I share the same vision, I think. We need to work better together, public market and private sector. So we need to work together because we'll be stronger. sometimes is hard because we sometimes speak different languages literally just it's hard to understand each other but at the very least is having conversations not public conversations and i'm spending a fair amount of my time with you know with policymakers and leaders is is never ever just you know to take pictures it's just this this talk how do you want to achieve this I said, how can you do this?