Super Angel | E322 | Angel investing insights with Szymon Sypniewicz, co-founder & CEO of Ramp Network

0:00Welcome everyone to the Super Angel Podcast. delighted to have you here and even more delighted to have our guest today simon fantastic to have you joining us on the show great to be here thank you for inviting me is this a dream no it's not a dream i'm an angel why would god send me an angel because god knows that everyone needs a little coaching now and then i'm loving angels i saw an angel Angel. Angel. Yeah. You say it's me an angel. The smile on her face. We're here to get that little angel. Princess by an angel, girl. Girl. This show is not investment advice, and the hosts of this episode may be invested in the funds and companies featured.

0:45Thanks for joining, Shimon. And I don't know where to start from, but super excited to get started. So maybe what we do is you tell us a bit more about your background and your journey to date, and then what got you into angel investing in the first place as well. First and foremost, I am a founder myself. I started Rump Network a couple of years ago, and I still serve as its CEO. What brought me here is my passion for Web3. So Rump Network is a company that is building systems to make access to Web3 one click for everyone. and we do that by connecting your everyday fiat life with web3 so you can use rample across all sorts of web3 products to onboard and offboard and to move your money swiftly between your bank accounts and different wallets web3 apps and apps with these everything in my My life is really focused on building Ramp Network and I'm a very focused founder.

1:47What got me to invest in other companies is mostly the opportunity to learn. So obviously I feel the excitement and like the eagerness to join other like exciting adventures, at least to be able to watch it from a first row seat. But the way I rationalized my decision to start investing was that the best form of learning is teaching. And so if I'm looking into early stage startups, this lets me sort of use this lens to also look at myself. When I give advice, this gives me an opportunity to pause and check in whether I'm following my own advice. And overall, I believe that it makes me a little bit better founder.

2:30No, absolutely. And I think, you know, that's even more highlighted in the space of Web3, which is not only an insider's game in some respects, but also it's so fast evolving, right? Perhaps you can tell us a bit more about if you remember the first kind of foray into angel investing, like the first angel investment, or even highlighting a few other companies that you might have invested in. Okay, so I invested in a couple of things. Mostly I am investing in companies that are difficult to understand. I think my very first in investments was in DeepFlare, which is a Polish super exciting company using machine learning to help develop cancer treatments and vaccines, which is incredibly exciting and interesting.

3:16This is very far from what I'm focusing on an everyday basis, but also a very interesting opportunity to learn a little bit more about machine learning and tech bio, but also to share knowledge. and I think what got me to invest in that particular company was that I really liked the founder. And I saw that he's going through a lot of the same pains that I already went through. And so I realized that I cannot solve all of his pain, but I can sort of cushion it a little bit and help him avoid some of the pains that are easily avoidable. And that got me very excited and motivated to invest. and I think in many, many cases, I follow the very same pattern.

4:00So I see that I can have some leverage and be of help, learn something myself and be useful. This is the trend unfolding in all my investments. I think by this point, I'm investing in selling companies, very different industries. There is some concentration in Web3, obviously. I think the common theme was they are hard to understand, hard to explain quite often. So some of them are, or used to be, still like fairly early and what they tried to achieve was not even very well formulated or defined. And I sort of joined at the stage where you can still embark on a journey to like, use beautiful, simple language to try to explain to the world what are you going to deliver.

4:52and this is like something that I really like and enjoy doing and at the same time helps me train this muscle and then reapply for wraps. I love that and I think you know I remember in the like more early days of kind of like blockchain and web 3 you know a lot of it was like attempts to try to explain you know it's a bit like internet when it gets started and protocols and explaining that and putting that to you. So maybe that resembles a bit. One thing that I wanted to ask a bit off script was, you know, do you have any patterns on the type of learnings you try to expose yourself to? You know, I went on and thought very linearly about Web3.

5:30You just gave a parallel, you know, there's technologies, there's industries, there's kind of the domain of founding. How do you think about that? You know, exposing yourself to the different kind of factors of learning. So fundamentally, I try to focus on partnering up with amazing founders. And this is my main selection criterion. And like, I know a lot of great founders where I know that I would not be able to provide any help. So there also has to be like, it's gonna sound cheesy and like, you know, as if I would be ABC or private equity, like adding value, right? So like some synergies or like an area or an angle where I can provide fairly significant help and value with very little efforts.

6:18And then after that, after screening for this factor, I'm trying to... So question number one is, can I deliver something of value with not a lot of work? Because obviously, I cannot spend a lot of time with these founders. But if I would spend any, it has to be high leverage. And then secondly, sort of like, is there something that is particularly interesting? And these could be, these could be very different things. But I enjoy mostly investing at a very early stage and into companies that are fairly complicated. So that have complex business models or complex technology or both. Oh no, it's not about the business.

7:07Okay, so that was the sound of the investment thesis segment of the pod. So that means we're going to kind of go a little bit deeper now on, and I know we've touched upon some of these themes already, but it'd be great just to kind of double click a bit about your kind of strategy and approach. So you mentioned, Simon, that you've done seven investments to date, and it would just be great to understand a little bit about, you know, you've talked about some of the themes that some of those, those like touch upon, and obviously a huge influence is Web3, which makes a ton of sense, given your background in the company that you're leading now.

7:39But I'd love to just dig into if there are any other kind of portfolio companies maybe you wanted to highlight, things that you invested in, or even how you think about maybe countries that you've invested in. I know obviously that's been probably a consideration of where you've been thinking about investing to date. So it'd be great to start that. I'd not really have a thesis in the traditional terms of the world, of the word because I would obviously want to make a profit on these investments. And I think I can reasonably expect to get a good return on that, given that I screen first and foremost for great founders.

8:19And this is very early stage. So at this stage, you typically end up investing in people anyways. It is not the business model. It can shift. It is not the technology. It will evolve. it's just the founder but this is not the primary driver for me right so like for me it is to be able to partner up with someone and like use it as a as a mirror or lens to look at me and be a great founder myself I invest only in Europe and a lot of these investments are in Poland so I think 3 out of 7 are in Poland so this is very concentrated here I'm in Poland today and I spend some time every month in Poland because our offices are based here even though my office and most of my team is based in London right now.

9:09But the reason why I invest here is twofold or threefold. So first of all, this is where I find I have most leverage because a lot of this leverage is my ability to bridge these founders to the US. I have a little bit of a network in the US and also sort of very often I know more than they do about the mindset and sort of like the way to approach US investors. Secondly, it's just facts in the US there's five times more money chasing every startup than in Europe, right? So like, which is the reason why every founder of any Any global business should think at some point about raising in the US and this is something that I can help with.

9:59So this refers back to point number one, but point number two, I think that there's still this big gap in terms of access to financing and even know how or sort of like mentorship for ambitious tech founders in Europe. and this is something that is motivating for me because I can make a difference and again have high leverage but also should be good for my portfolio return wise. I wanted to jump in on something which I'm probably not projecting too much on myself here but like, you know, we talked a bit about some of the exposure to Web3 companies. We also talked about it being a space that's very high, you know, evolving very fast.

10:44Do you think specialization helps? I mean, you know, it can be a double-edged sword as well. So, you know, how do you think about that? And do you utilize that? Do you try to screen against that? How do you think about it? It helps more at later stages. Because very often when I invest, this is like new frontiers. And so being very narrowly specialized or profiled can help because it sort of gives you a foundation that allows you to grasp what's going on with this particular new emerging vertical or just like group of companies. However, it very rarely is directly transferable to these business models.

11:29So what works for me is a much more broad and generic pattern recognition that helps me find great founders and promising opportunities that are yet untapped and i i invested you know like i told you about deep clear uh this is a tech bio company and obviously i know near nothing uh now i know a little bit more about near nothing about this this industry but uh the business model they have uh is in some ways very similar to ours and like the criteria for winning their market are follow fairly similar dynamics to how i believe ramp is going to dominate its relevant markets. So there is that. So I think it's more like on the level of pattern recognition, especially at the very early stage.

12:23Then secondly, I tend to invest in verticals in Web3 that I initially do not understand very well. And so I believe these are very good opportunities for me to just learn. And at the same time, my network can be helpful then, right? So even though I do not know that particular vertical, you know like DeFi and crypto and Web3 are like Lego blocks, everything fits into everything but to make it happen you need to know people so like I can connect across different niches and verticals of Web3 so this is where a little bit of specialization can help but then overall to be a great investor you should be a little opportunistic because all the businesses that I am excited about were pioneers in their respective fields, right?

13:20So, and to catch the wave and invest in a pioneering company, you need to have this flexibility. But what I think really helps is this like generic or generalistic pattern recognition ability. And this fits great into the mechanics of investing early, I think. I think I was always like part of first round of funding, right? So like I never do, I do pre-seed or seed. And like if I invest at a later stage, I'm going to be able to own investment. No, that makes a ton of sense. And, you know, just to, it resonates a lot because just to reflect on me, like I've had a conscious choice and like kind of retain the lens of what I call fintech is everything.

14:00But that's for me, just a lens of like focus. So how am I top of mind for that? How do I build a value add that specific to that? But I try to be much more bottom up because like I think if you try to overly add your specialist hat on and know everything about a category, then you, you know, you need to be slightly naive, right? You need to be chasing the pioneers. You need to be chasing the people. And so it just resonates. But no, I totally, totally agree on that. And just to kind of like pick up on the kind of chasing the pioneers and the individuals, I suppose the founders. And obviously, Simon, you are a founder.

14:31You know, you've taken a very deeply technical product, built out Poland, scaled it, raised some fantastic rounds of following funding. And when you look at the kind of characteristics of the founders that you back as an angel, are there any commonalities that you're drawn to more than others? Not all of the founders I invested in are like that. and it is not that this is a screening criterion for me, but I like founders that are humble and coachable. I typically do not vibe or gel particularly well with people who are fanboyants and larger than life. And I think this really helps because being a founder and being an entrepreneur is a very humbling experience.

15:17and if you are sort of used to it or you are as a person sort of stoic in the best sense of the word, it really, really helps. Secondly, I really like founders who are in love with the problem and not the solution, right? So like this is already something that most investors and founders know, but it is very counterintuitive to apply in real life. You need to love the problem and not the solution you're trying to create. And I think especially at the very early stage, this lets you find best founders because if you can start using this lens, thinking about your product and your market from the point of view of like, what is the pain and not specifically necessarily what is the solution in the first place, that's already sort of like screening for this sort of maturity that yields great results for founders.

16:13and then I really like founders with ideas that are not straightforward and like I know that most successful investors would say that you know best business ideas are very straightforward and like there's no black magic to a good business and I think there is a lot of proof in that but I think this clarity comes later first of all you refine your idea and also you know your idea would be a little bit rough around the edges very early on and then as you sort of expose it to the market forces and other people, it sort of, it can make these edges sort of smoother a little bit. And then second of all, I think that great ideas look obvious on the inside, right?

17:02So like when you pitch great ideas very early, very often they sound very wild. And then this also provides me with a little bit of like alpha, if you will. So I'm not, if you start from the problem and work back, and if your business model or technology you are applying or the market you are on, it seems like wild. It's not eternal for me. I actually am drawn to this. It gets me curious. And then I know that it would be much harder for others to join your company as an investor. And at the same time, I know that I'm probably a better investor for you than many others. Very, very interesting. I mean, I think that if I pick out kind of maybe a theme there, because you've obviously founded a business in a space which is so emerging and so nascent and so young and like kind of got so much scope to go in so many different directions, which are incredibly exciting.

18:05Would you say, therefore, that you don't necessarily see the requisite that someone has spent a deep amount of time in a domain is incredibly important for a founder who's starting something? Would you be comfortable with someone who is academically suited, but maybe hasn't seen it in practice, and backing a founder like that? I think this is going to be true for most, if not all, of the founders I backed. They never really had a chance to cut their teeth in the verticals they are helping to create because they are helping to create them. However, they have some tickable and transferable experiences from their past career or other entrepreneurial experiences.

18:49And this is what is most exciting to me. But like, I think what is much more important is, um, be sharp and learn fast because there's nothing worse than someone who's stuck in their ways, especially if they try to disrupt, uh, a market. So I think in many cases, and obviously I, an ideal founder would be like very sharp, learn very quick and like have loads of applicable, uh, experience both professionally and academically. but you very rarely find such funders. So I would rather bet on someone who learns really, really fast and can catch up, let's say, in a year with someone who spends already five years in a similar space than someone who's got this five years worth of direct experience and exposure but is not as agile, adaptive and sort of, you know, moldable or flexible.

19:47Yeah, you're learning more about them angels, are you?

19:54so if you heard that sound we just passed into the learning section um so thank you for all the discussion till now and maybe you've touched on us a few of those shimon already but you know if you had to take a step back and highlight three core learnings from your time angel investing what would those be first of all at that's uh at an early stage it's all about the people and again it's a cliche but you learn how real this really is then you really need to you cannot underestimate a raising tide so if you find the right people working on something that is relevant to a market that is quickly growing that's like that's very likely a very good opportunity and then again this is very not really intuitive it doesn't feel intuitive to me right because a lot of things that seem really appealing are like new hacks in the market that is already well established and really huge.

20:51And you think, oh, if they could only capture 5 % of this market using this clever hack, whether this is distribution or like some interesting feature that could serve as an interesting USD unless until someone captures up. These tend to be pretty poor investment opportunities from my experience. The third one really is that a lot of the learnings of a startup founders are directly transferable across all industries and all founders, but especially founders sharing a common background. So for example, if you are a first-time founder from tier two or tier three city, your experience is going to probably be fairly similar to any other founder from this demographic.

21:41Most of this experience is very hard to transfer in a way that is not mentorship, on-case mentorship, right? So like, I think Naval Ravikant said that all of my tweets are just like fortune cookie wisdoms and just pointers to your lived experience. You cannot learn anything from it. You can just find it a good, useful pointer to your own lived experience, right? And like, I find most of the advice that I am able to give the same if I give it in a very generic way. So then the only thing that is really helpful is to work on a case. And this is where I think angels who have this entrepreneurial experience are exceptionally useful to other entrepreneurs.

22:27There is a lot of lessons that a career investor can give, especially about fundraising, right? So like, if you get an investment from someone who is like whose job is ABC, then the main thing, the number one thing you should expect is for them, you know, like to always have your back and do no harm. And then secondly, to help you raise. But then you shouldn't expect much more than that. but you should expect at least from some of your angel investors who are entrepreneurs to like comment help with particular issues in this sort of like mentor slash workshop slash on case way and this is very powerful yeah i think that that last point you made is is such a good one i think in terms of what angel investors can bring and i think it's one of the things that we believe and i think the ecosystem is starting to believe as much as is that angel investors can have like i always say like an outsized like impact versus the check that they write particularly if it's if it's done in the right way i think one of the things that's why i was gonna say done in the right way is like how you you know as an angel as running an like fast growing business that is incredibly complex, how you deliver that advice?

23:43And whether that's changed since investment number one versus investment number seven. So first of all, I think I get better with time. And I definitely got much better over the last three to four years of living through real scaling of my company and a series of very demanding and quite successful fundraisers. but also leaps in terms of growth and product growth and team growth and maturation. I always try to make sure that founders know that they can come to me with their problems, but also having done their homework because I do not have a lot of time to offer being a founder myself. And most of them understand it really, really well because it's very easy for them to put themselves in their shoes.

24:38If they come to me, I either help them formulate the question, which I found is like 60 % of solving any problem. And again, it's a cliche, but like very true. Or if they come with the right question, I could either direct them to someone who I know would be like the best person or like one of the best people in the world to address this question or help around. thinking through this question or in like quite rare cases actually I'm helping myself and I'm jumping on this and like sort of talk through this with the founder. And I now started trying to give advice that is as generic as possible based on that particular case because very often founders it's easy for your mind to just focus and look on the problem at hand, but actually typically there is more to this and you should at the end of the thinking process, at the end of the process of thinking through it, zoom out and try to think what new tool do you have now in your hands and what sort of new framework, mental framework emerged in your head and how can you reapply it to other cases.

25:48And when you take this like crude framework or methodology, this really does not require a lot of work because it's, it's mostly offering access to your lived experience. And like, let's call it wisdom. It's a big word, but you know, like your, your, your accumulated founder experience. And so this is very light on my time and highest leverage possible, right? So formulate the question, point to a person that can help. And if, if you are the person that you think is best positioned to help with that particular question make sure that um at the very end of solving or answering this question you also uh take a little bit of time to zoom out and see uh how you can reapply the same framework uh across other categories of problems to solve challenges yeah i think that's i think that's totally true i think that having that kind of framework restructuring questions figuring out where you can connect and then sometimes actually now through probably more angel investing seeing more stories obviously your company at the same time and parallel growing you have almost like a bigger amount of data to draw upon so you can start to answer some of those questions even more directly so it makes a ton of sense makes a ton of sense and i think i love the thing i love about working with angels particularly who are founders is they can they can take on a slightly different role than than we can as investors right i think they can build a different kind of connection to the founders that we're co-invested in and potentially solve problems or address problems from different angles, which I believe, you know, more heads around the table always helps, always helps because you just don't know, you don't know what's going to come around the corner.

27:33So having more, more options to come to draw upon is always a positive. Experience helps, but you mentioned something very powerful that relationship you can have when an angel investor is very different than with someone who's a partner working for a VC. And I think the reason why is that I do not have any video share with you today. When you mature as a CEO, one of the hardest things is to cater to so many different stakeholders. And sometimes these groups of stakeholders are following, have different priorities. And quite often, these priorities could at times be a conflict. And when you realize that, and you will realize that pretty early on, for example, becoming friends and tight-knit with your team, and then thinking about your company, right?

28:33So you've got this human relationship with that person, but then in the context of this relationship, you have a duty to care about the company. So very early on as a CEO, you learn to see how tough it is and you can then directly transfer this sort of tension to how your relationship with your VC is going to look like, because they care for you typically, right? And like most VCs are super well-intentioned and most of them invested in you, at least partially because like they like you as a human being, right? They believe in you. But at the same time, they have the future to their limited partners.

29:12And this is going to fundamentally change the dynamic. And so I think at times it's just healthy to have a relationship where this dynamic is absent and partner up with an angel who is just interested in embarking with you on that journey. And I think at times it can be like, it can help the founder find peace and seek advice in situations where they just cannot turn to the ABC. Couldn't agree more. I think it's a hugely, hugely powerful relationship, particularly when, you know, done in the way that you're describing there. Fantastic. Okay, so we're now approaching probably one of my favorite part of any episode and the final section, which is the quickfire.

30:03so we love to end the episodes in this way it's kind of quick answers 30 60 seconds each how does that sound let's go okay so first question is what is the most counterintuitive thing you've learned since you started angel investing um there are no safe bets in startups If you're investing in a safe bet, it's typically a trap. What would be your top tips to angels wanting to do more international investments? Either partner up with funds that have international presence and then they may ask you to screen some founders for them and then you can tag along to their investments. Or just be present there.

30:49So like go to conferences, go to events. I don't think that there's any other way where it would really make sense, especially for funders you're investing in. Final one on the quickfire is, what advice would you give your 10-year younger self if you only had 30 seconds? A society structure is designed to trap you in local maximum solutions, and you need to be a contrarian to find a global maximum or at least get from this local trap you're facing and gets one level higher. So don't be afraid to be contrarian. Being contrarian is just like starting a business. Typically, the upside is infinite and you can only get to zero.

31:35There's no negative points.

31:42Absolutely love this. I mean, thanks for taking the time to join us, Simon. Your experience building a kind of category-defining company in a fast-evolving space really shows and brings a unique perspective and insight for the founders you back. Thanks for sharing some of those with us today. Thanks for the chat. If you are listening and have a wild idea that nobody else is willing to understand, you can ping me on Twitter. Love the plug. Thanks so much, Simon. Thank you. Is this a dream? No, it's not a dream. I'm an angel. Why would God send me an angel? Because God knows that everyone needs a little coaching now and then.