Rob Lacher: How I Scaled to $600M AUM; Hiring Tips for VCs; Venture Capital in Europe vs USA | E999

Rob Lacher 0:00 We always complain that we don't have a Google, Facebook, Amazon, or Tencent, who are-

Harry Stebbings 0:03 Mm-hmm.

Rob Lacher 0:04 ... the most profitable companies in their clusters, and they are the biggest tech drivers next to VCs. But what we have in Europe is 90% of our companies are family businesses, they are highly profitable, they are run by entrepreneurs that can make fast decisions, take more risks, think long term, that have an incredible alpha knowledge in their domain, and that own global supply chains. If you take those family businesses together, I think this is our Google.

Harry Stebbings 0:28 (upbeat music) Rob, my friend, we have been friends for quite a few years now, so thank you so much for joining me.

Rob Lacher 0:35 Thanks for having me. It's my honor and pleasure.

Harry Stebbings 0:36 Now, uh, I wanna start, I spoke to so many of your friends, and they all told me about your, uh, ability to dominate the tennis court.

Rob Lacher 0:43 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 0:43 Uh, but,

Harry Stebbings 0:44 uh, (laughs) how did you make your way into the world of venture once you realized that beating Federer wasn't an option?

Rob Lacher 0:49 (laughs) Good one. I wish I was more talented in tennis, then everything would've been much easier, I guess. Um, look, if I have to put it into one sentence, I guess it's always being honest to myself to do what I love doing and really not compromising on it. I think, you know, if you look how it really happened, of course, the dots have connected in a more complex way with, with many ups and downs. So when I finished university, I was actually about to start a company and then got talked into Boston Consulting Group-

Harry Stebbings 1:15 (laughs)

Rob Lacher 1:15 ... by a certain Jochen Engert. Uh, and maybe you know Jochen, he ended up being the founder of FlixBus, which is now the biggest bus mobility company globally. So he's a very close friend. He was my mentor back then, is also part of Visionaries. I was, again, the mentor of Max Viessmann, who's on the total other side of entrepreneurship. So Max inherited a 100-year-old family business with, um, 14,000 employees, 4 billion in revenues, and had to take it to the next level. And the thing that we found out back then was that there's absolutely no connect between old and new economy entrepreneurs, even though 90% of European companies are family businesses, right? So we always thought bringing those networks closer together, because we think it unlocks a lot of power in B2B, took a little until we did this. So I started my own small company in the mobile space, which I sold to Zalando, and then ended up doing angel investments. And from those angel investments, we said, "Why don't we pool our money in a small seed fund?" So that's how I started La Familia with a group of friends, which was a small 40 million angel fund back then, that we invested into 30 B2B companies. And I guess we were like-

Harry Stebbings 2:14 Did you know at that time you wanted to be a VC? Then you'd had the, you'd done some angel investments, you know what, "I enjoy doing this." But you're like, "I wanna be a VC."

Rob Lacher 2:19 Yeah. You know, the first time I heard of venture capital was when I was 22 at university, and I thought after the lecture-

Harry Stebbings 2:25 (laughs)

Rob Lacher 2:25 ... "Fuck, this must be the most amazing job on Earth because you're looking into new companies every day, speaking to young, smart people, which are building the biggest thing in their life, and you have the privilege to choose who you wanna work with and work with a kind of, um, an array of people and not just focus on one idea." So I thought maybe when I'm 50, 60, and in case I succeed, I could become a VC. But I never thought that I would kind of become an entrepreneur in VC in the middle of my 20s without any experience. So I stumbled into it over angel investing, but I figured it out it was, it was my biggest passion, it turned into my biggest passion.

Harry Stebbings 2:57 You mentioned La Familia there. Um, and you know, you obviously left La Familia to start Visionaries.

Rob Lacher 3:02 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 3:03 What did you learn about yourself from leaving La Familia? Like, I think I learned about myself from leaving Strive with Fred, which is like, actually, he was fantastic at so many things.

Rob Lacher 3:13 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 3:14 But it meant that I didn't have to do them, and actually-

Rob Lacher 3:17 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 3:17 ... I should've been doing them. And actually-

Rob Lacher 3:19 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 3:19 ... I was just comfortable, and so I didn't force myself to be uncomfortable. Do you know what I mean?

Rob Lacher 3:24 Yeah. Yeah, sure.

Harry Stebbings 3:24 But I should've, and that's why I run every day, 'cause-

Rob Lacher 3:26 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 3:26 ... I like to feel uncomfortable. (laughs)

Rob Lacher 3:28 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 3:29 What did you learn about yourself?

Rob Lacher 3:31 Look, that's a great question. And you know, I'm, I'm still managing the first La Familia fund, and I'm incredibly proud of what we've built with the team. So we've invested in 30 companies, uh, many of them have turned unicorns or decacorns, like Deel, Presonio, Schoko, uh, Forte, where we've had the privilege to be seed investors. And believe me, it hasn't been an easy decision, then saying, you know, if you've put all your energy in something, building it, if you invented it, if you kind of, you know, put risk in it, contrarian thoughts to, to say you want to continue in a different setup. But I was at the beginning of my 30s, um, and I realized that it's my biggest passion to be an entrepreneur and VC, and I wanted to do this for the next 20, 30 years. So the one thing you shouldn't do is compromise on the partnership setup, because it's a very, very long term, um, game. And with Sebastian, who I founded Visionaries with, um, he has been a long friend, so we've worked on many deals together. He was my first LP in the first La Familia fund.

Harry Stebbings 4:25 (laughs)

Rob Lacher 4:25 So we, we did, uh, companies like Veii and other investments together, and he's a fabulous entrepreneur. And when he became available after selling Amoveli after six years, it was basically a great setup to team up. And on the other side, you know, with Jeanette, um, I, I really love working on, with her, and I was the one also pulling her into our group when we started, uh, the, the, the whole La Familia idea. But we're also incredibly different on how we look into deals, how we would run a company, how we would take things to the next level. So for me-

Harry Stebbings 4:52 Is that

Harry Stebbings 4:53 not a strength? You know, I'm always hiring team members now, and I'm trying to figure out the right composition, to be honest. (laughs) And I, I, is that not a strength that they come from a different perspective and look at deals in a different way?

Rob Lacher 5:04 It is. I think that, you know, the best thing you can do when you partner in a founding team is take risks with someone that is a totally different ingredient than you have. And that's what we did, and I think that's... The fund is now at 10 times the money that we invested, and it's doing well.

Harry Stebbings 5:17 (laughs)

Rob Lacher 5:17 But on the other side, you know, if you wanna be in a setup for 20, 30 years, you need to have kind of a certain overlap of, of, of how you work together. And I think my, my, my sense of this is take risks when you go into those setups, but also be 100% brutally honest to yourself if it's sustaining and if it's the right setup for everyone. And I think it was a, was a great decision that we, that we took that way, because now the first fund, we're still managing it together. It's a success. Um, we've built Visionaries within three years, a great fund, now 600 million under management. And I think, um, Yulit and Jeanette are doing an amazing job taking La Familia to the next level in their second and third funds, based on the track record-

Harry Stebbings 5:57 I-

Rob Lacher 5:58 ... that, that we've built.

Harry Stebbings 5:59 I have to ask final thing, and then we'll move on to some, (laughs) some quite meaty topics.

Rob Lacher 6:02 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 6:03 Um, but it's, when you get asked advice from managers raising today and who are starting partnerships today-

Rob Lacher 6:09 Mm-hmm.

Harry Stebbings 6:09 ... what advice do you give them on the partnership dynamic, having experienced what you have now with different partners and having-

Rob Lacher 6:16 Mm-hmm.

Harry Stebbings 6:16 ... you know, founded two funds?What should all f- partnerships consider before becoming partners?

Rob Lacher 6:22 I think you should really spend time together about the truth of what's your purpose and what you really wanna do and, and, a- and why you're doing it together, and be super honest about your strengths, your weaknesses, what excites you, and, um, kind of the reason why you're doing it. And I think the more complementary kind of ingredients that you can find in a person, the better it is, but you need to be aligned on the, on the core, on, on how to do everything. And I think the best thing how I did it with, for example, Sebastian, was we really went to the deepest level of what we love doing, and, uh, and we were super aligned that being an entrepreneur in VC, having all degrees of freedom to build this and doing this for a period, hopefully, of 20, 30 years was really what, um-

Harry Stebbings 7:08 (laughs)

Rob Lacher 7:08 ... what excited both of us.

Harry Stebbings 7:09 Do you consider yourself an entrepreneur or an investor?

Rob Lacher 7:12 Um, that's the daily balance.

Harry Stebbings 7:14 Yeah.

Rob Lacher 7:14 So, I think, you know, the, what, what gets me up in the morning is, um, basically, on the one hand side, we, you know, we, we're entrepreneurs. We need to build the company that we're investing with, right? And that's like just building any other company. There's not, there's no team, there's no strategy, there's no office, there's no website. So, uh, it's basically just like any other company. You can spend 150% of your time doing it. And on the other side, we're doing investments, and our job is to find the best companies. But I think exactly this combination, that's why we never decided to become partner of another fund. But having those degrees of freedom to build it the way you think is right, it's, it's what excites me, it's what gives me energy, and I think it's what makes me a good investor for founders because I have an entrepreneurial passion of building something and not just an abstract investor.

Harry Stebbings 8:00 I think it's what investors don't anticipate, though, when they spin out. Like the firm build aspect-

Rob Lacher 8:04 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 8:04 ... is like... I mean, it's 50% of my day or more, and I'm sure-

Rob Lacher 8:07 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 8:07 ... it's probably 50% of yours, everything-

Rob Lacher 8:09 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 8:09 ... around team management and everything we discussed.

Rob Lacher 8:11 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 8:11 I think people forget that.

Rob Lacher 8:12 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 8:13 Can I ask, w- w- you've founded now two firms with visionaries, um, as have I, um... (laughs) Uh, what's the fucking hardest element of building a firm?

Rob Lacher 8:24 Uh, I think it is this balance of being an entrepreneur and being V- uh, a VC. You know, Christoph Jan's SaaS Napkin, you know-

Harry Stebbings 8:32 Yeah, yeah.

Rob Lacher 8:32 ... which is about SaaS companies. I did it for fun, uh, in venture capital to my team, kind of the driver tree with all the things that you have to do at the same time. But I think, you know, it's all about the team then that you build that really unlocks the power of the company and, and what you can get out of it. And in venture capital, it's incredibly difficult to, to hire people because they need to be hyper-smart, humble, visionary at the same time, nonlinear thinkers. So, I think it's, it's hard to find them, but the way we decided to, to do it is, is basically not hiring experienced people who have been in VC and who just apply the logic that they've learned in an- another fund, but go for incredibly young, hungry, hyper-intelligent, and people that really wanna go exponential in their development, because I think that's what takes your firm-

Harry Stebbings 9:19 Thi- man, I need, I, uh, again, the reason this show is successful is because I, I literally just use it to learn myself. Uh, my question and concern there is that, obviously, I need to hire (laughs) , uh-

Rob Lacher 9:30 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 9:30 ... as all my LPs tell me. Um, but I don't want to hire someone with no experience, 'cause you can't just give them a check, but you need to put mechanisms around them to learn-

Rob Lacher 9:39 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 9:39 ... to grow. I, we don't have the time or space to do that.

Rob Lacher 9:42 Mm-hmm.

Harry Stebbings 9:42 You need to just run from day one.

Rob Lacher 9:44 Mm-hmm.

Harry Stebbings 9:45 So, did you put the mechanisms in place? And if so, what are those mechanisms?

Rob Lacher 9:51 Look, in the beginning, you're doing everything, right? So, it was just Sebastian and I starting the fund, and you're CFO, you're chief media officer, you're chief investment officer, and you, you just cover everything. I think it's also important to give the DNA of what you think you wanna do differently to that company. But then it's also important to not micromanage the whole time, but really, in the best case, find people who are so much better than you are in each of those dimensions to really take things to an exponential development. And I think that's, that's the balance after, like, a year when, in the beginning, it's easy. You don't have a portfolio to cover. You have enough time to look how you design your office or website, but then (laughs) you start doing investments, and then you have 30 companies in the portfolio, and then you don't have time to do this anymore. You, you can't be, kind of everywhere. So, that's why I think the best mechanism that we put in place is that we hire people that we give 50% a job description of why we need someone, and 50%, we give them the degrees of freedom to use their time to really unlock what they love doing, what they're good at, and what really, really, in turn, brings our company to the next level.

Harry Stebbings 10:55 What would some examples be?

Rob Lacher 10:57 Take Lisa. So, Lisa is a great example. She joined us as an intern, and she initially applied to become part of the investment team, uh, as an associate. And then, uh, she was spending two or three months with us, and we, we thought she was exceptional on, on how she connected with our founder LP base, family entrepreneur base, how she hustled with our f- uh, portfolio founders. And we sat, you know, we were sitting together after three months and said, "Why don't we start an experiment and you just own our platform, but not like platform in a traditional way, having a recruiting team. Just build whatever you think, any alpha that we can unlock on our kind of Visionaries platform." And she, in the last three years, has built such an incredible kind of-

Harry Stebbings 11:36 (laughs)

Rob Lacher 11:37 ... events that she's organizing on Visionaries, how she's connecting the dots behind the scenes that, um, yeah.

Harry Stebbings 11:43 Do you know what I find so funny about you? I don't think I've ever told you this. I have so many people tell me, like, "Lisa, Marton, or whoever it is in your team, Harry, you should try and hire these people."

Rob Lacher 11:53 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 11:53 And I'm like, "I know-

Rob Lacher 11:55 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 11:56 ... but Rob's such a good friend." (laughs)

Rob Lacher 11:59 You mean out of my team a- approaching.

Harry Stebbings 12:01 Li- yeah, yeah, literally. I'm like, "I would love to, but I could never do that."

Rob Lacher 12:05 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 12:05 Um, no, if-

Rob Lacher 12:06 If, if we get you in, in return and we-

Harry Stebbings 12:08 (laughs)

Rob Lacher 12:08 ... do some, some PR and media for us-

Harry Stebbings 12:09 I don't think it's a trade.

Rob Lacher 12:10 ... that'll, um, that-

Harry Stebbings 12:11 (laughs)

Rob Lacher 12:11 ... that will be fun.

Harry Stebbings 12:12 Uh, no, I, I love that. What do you think are the biggest-

Rob Lacher 12:14 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 12:14 Actually, sorry, before we move on to that-

Rob Lacher 12:16 Yes.

Harry Stebbings 12:16 ... uh, I'm, the thing I'm struggling with is actually this entitlement. You know, "I want 500K salary. I want 500K bonus, and I want..." Uh, like, it's all, "I want, I want, I want." And there's this real entitlement I find in kind of 25 to 35-year-old venture hiring.

Rob Lacher 12:31 Mm-hmm.

Harry Stebbings 12:32 How should I deal with that?

Rob Lacher 12:33 It's a, I think it's an adverse selection. Like, those are not the people that we wanna get with, with Visionaries, it's the other way around. So if someone is asking for a high salary, that person is not willing to take risks, it's not willing to... it's not believing enough in the entrepreneurial spirit to, to really kind of build something essential. Because we say we, we don't pay high salaries at Visionaries. I think if you go to some of the multi-stage funds in London, maybe you'll get twice the salary, but we're pretty generous with carry and people know that they can build a career faster than at other funds if they perform extraordinary well and if they, if they are great co-entrepreneurs building visionaries. And I think these are the kind of people that we, that we wanna, wanna take on board. And if you look at Martin, he became partner just after three years of joining Visionaries, but he's a co-intrapreneur, um, already kind of leading the seed funds. Sahar is doing the same for the growth fund, Liza is doing the same for the platform. These are incredibly young, hungry, hyper-intelligent people that haven't been in VC before. I think that's the beauty, you know. If you... you can do it super easy and say, "Look, I just poach from other funds, I hire people who have been three years in VC, they have the networks, they know how to look at deals," you just get an average index of all the other funds if, if you do this. I think if you wanna build a contrarian own DNA, you need to go for people that are unbiased, that wanna grow ex- exponentially themselves and that have the trust that over time this will pay out, and not the people that say, "Look, I know I finished Harvard and now I wanna have a 750K annual salary-"

Harry Stebbings 14:06 (laughs)

Rob Lacher 14:06 "... otherwise I go to Goldman." Fine, maybe they should go to Goldman because then it's the better, safer environment-

Harry Stebbings 14:12 No-

Rob Lacher 14:13 ... I guess, if that makes sense.

Harry Stebbings 14:14 I think hiring is where a lot of people go wrong. When you think about biggest mistakes that other managers make that you see around you, what do you think are some of the biggest?

Rob Lacher 14:23 So, you know, I'm still young myself and then just at the very beginning, so I'm not sure if I'm the right person to-

Harry Stebbings 14:29 No, far... totally are. I- I- I-

Rob Lacher 14:31 ... kind of answer on, uh, what what you can do better, um, any learnings I'm doing myself. But I think maybe the first thing is that not having a clear kind of differentiation about your proposition, why the market needs you. Like, if you wanna be a new fund for a cap table of a founder, you need to be a painkiller, not a nice-to-have vitamin. And I think if you don't have this value propo- proposition that is new for the market, that's something difficult. Second thing is I think many new managers start investing into hype deals because it's kind of nice to sneak into things that are kind of validated by other funds, but again, you just build an index of what's already there. I think you need to-

Harry Stebbings 15:08 I think it also... but I,

Harry Stebbings 15:09 I think, you know... and I didn't mean it pushing back, but it does help with LPs-

Rob Lacher 15:12 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 15:12 ... like being able to get into hype deals bluntly shows access and it shows ability to win allocation in the best of the-

Rob Lacher 15:20 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 15:20 ... the best of the best real time with no data deals.

Rob Lacher 15:23 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 15:23 Do you know what I mean?

Rob Lacher 15:24 Yeah, yeah.

Harry Stebbings 15:24 Like if we operate in a world of no data, the hypest deals, uh, would seem to be the most attractive-

Rob Lacher 15:31 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 15:31 ... at this real-time moment. Do you know what I mean?

Rob Lacher 15:33 I think it's fair, maybe build a blend, right? If you show that you can get allocations in some of those great hype deals, it's fine if it's 20% of your portfolio, but I think it's so much more impressive if you have chosen companies that others haven't seen and after five years, it turns out to be one of the most successful companies in the market. I think that's

Harry Stebbings 15:51 Well, this is- ... quite interesting.

Rob Lacher 15:52 ... interesting. I actually spoke to a multi-stage GP earlier this morning, and this probably didn't reflect in the schedule, so it's a surprise. Um, and they said the interesting thing with visionaries is, like when you look at their early stage, like practice- Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 16:03 ... they believe that actually you generate returns at early stage by picking when really everyone else is much more focused on breadth and volume-

Rob Lacher 16:13 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 16:13 ... which I think is probably true. A... how do you think about the picking at seed and whether it's really possible to honestly do a concentrated strategy at seed-

Rob Lacher 16:23 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 16:23 ... and pick well?

Rob Lacher 16:25 I mean, I think on the extreme, um, either you run the Y Combinator seed kind, kind of model where you're just, um, basically bui- building a broad portfolio and the likelihood to have like one or two of those amazing, so where UiPath kind of outliers is almost given, so you're basically building a seed index on the really best of the best founders. But then you, you can't get your, your ownership that if something is really a crazy home run, you get to 20X your fund or 25X, so you'll have a incredibly good performance and, and those funds are doing super well. That's the one game, and the other one is like building a more concentrated portfolio where-

Harry Stebbings 16:59 The truth is you won't even get that though. Like if you look at doing-

Rob Lacher 17:01 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 17:01 ... 100 to 250K or even 400K-

Rob Lacher 17:04 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 17:04 ... in a UI path at seed, uh, listen, that will do unbelievably well. But if you have 100 million fund and you did a 250K check-

Rob Lacher 17:14 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 17:15 ... poof, 100X is 25 million.

Rob Lacher 17:17 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 17:18 400X is your fund.

Rob Lacher 17:20 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 17:20 Yeah, you could three... Do you see what I mean? Like-

Rob Lacher 17:23 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 17:23 ... 1,200X would be three times your fund.

Rob Lacher 17:26 Yeah. Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 17:26 It's hard.

Rob Lacher 17:27 It's hard but look, I think... and, and then the other model is that you try to build a more concentrated portfolio of 25 companies where picking is more important, of course. So you can get it wrong and the fund is zero or one, but if you get it right, and I think you have 25 chances to really get it right, then you get it very right if you have two or three companies that where you have your 10, 15% ownership, let's say you have 100 million fund, company's 10 billion, you have your 10%, right, it returns your fund a few times, and if you have two or three of those companies... But I think in the end-

Harry Stebbings 17:57 Can I ask you, is 10% your like, your threshold? I remember being with Fred at Stryd and it was like under 10 we were like, "Ugh."

Rob Lacher 18:03 Yeah. Yeah, so look, we, we say 80% of our seed portfolio is 10 to 15% ownership-

Harry Stebbings 18:08 Yeah.

Rob Lacher 18:08 ... and 20% we leave room if they're exceptional teams where there's maybe another setup is more interesting for them teaming up with a multi-stage fund or, um, it's just a different round setup, or maybe we're not 100% confident about the space, but we wanna learn them, then we keep kind of 20% for total ownership deals.

Harry Stebbings 18:24 Do you wor- do you worry that then like, uh, Lightspeed or Excel or Index will say to entrepreneurs, "Oh, we're in another deal with Robin Visionaries and they only have 3%, so actually in this next one we can cut them down." My worry is-

Rob Lacher 18:37 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 18:37 ... that if you do do those, you allow yourself to be pushed down in others.

Rob Lacher 18:41 Yeah.No, so we are pretty clear about that strategy. You know, we're, um... And, and you asked, like, two minutes ago, um, about can you have a concentrated and focused portfolio, and I think it's also a little bit on how you like working as a VC. We l- love spending a lot of time with the founders. That's our, our, our passion. So we wanna rather have maybe 5 to 10 investments a year in a seed fund, spending time with the founders and, uh, than, than just having maybe 40 deals and just knowing maybe the name of one or two founders. And, um, I think as long as, as you get that message across to the founders and also get the, that referencing on, on how you work with them and then I think it's a fair value proposition, where founders then need to decide, look, either it's a good partner to take Visionaries on board with 10 or 15% or, or not. And I think with these 2 or 3% deals, for, for us, you know, we, we're, we're doing it with maybe two or three deals a fund, and we were pretty clear about, um, about the strategy, and, and we, we don't-

Harry Stebbings 19:40 (laughs) .

Rob Lacher 19:40 ... make a difference than kind of how we work with the founders.

Harry Stebbings 19:43 Well, I, I think the interesting thing here that I, I wanna discuss next, 'cause it's important for both of us actually in our fund strategies, 'cause we both do the barbell approach.

Rob Lacher 19:50 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 19:50 And so that unlike just a seed-only strategy, I think there is a strategic-

Rob Lacher 19:54 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 19:54 ... reasoning as to why... So, like, can you just walk me through the two funds and how it's a little bit different than maybe just a traditional fund setup?

Rob Lacher 20:02 Yeah. Look, I think the main difference if you, i- if you look at Visionaries is that on, on our investor side, we only have successful entrepreneurs. On the one hand side, we have 30 unicorn founders that have built great digital companies like the founders of Miro, UiPath, uh, HelloFresh, FlixBus. Um, and on the other side, we have 25 family entrepreneurs who are on the total kind of other side of entrepreneurship. They are owning the old economy, and they can be interesting customer groups. And the way we thought about it is like, how can we add the best value to the ecosystem with this network strategy? And we feel it's on the one hand side, you know, if you look at pre-seed/seed where Europe is incredibly decentralized, so you need 10 partners speaking 10 different languages-

Harry Stebbings 20:42 (laughs)

Rob Lacher 20:42 ... if you really wanna cover all clusters. And that's where we think, you know, having those great entrepreneurs who've built companies or operated companies like Spotify or UiPath, uh, or in the Netherlands, Mollie, that, like, that's a great source for deals for us. And at the same time, we look for our-

Harry Stebbings 20:57 (sighs) Do you actually get deals? Sorry, I'm being really rude.

Rob Lacher 21:00 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 21:00 Do you actually get deals from them? I've, I've had, like, the good and the great in my funds.

Rob Lacher 21:04 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 21:04 (laughs) They never send me deals.

Rob Lacher 21:07 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 21:07 Like, they might WhatsApp me, but they don't send deals.

Rob Lacher 21:10 Yeah. Um, no, I mean, that's, that's how we've, we've built Visionaries. We've, we've built it from scratch just around this founder ecosystem, right? So the way we source deals, I'd say some 60, 70% are through our-

Harry Stebbings 21:23 Wow.

Rob Lacher 21:23 ... founder networks that we... Typically were operated in WhatsApp groups, and that's kind of how they share deals. But it's also kind of when we need an advice on whether it's FinTech investment, we might, might consult with Adrian from Mollie or, or people in that space. If it's something in the, I don't know, you, you name it-

Harry Stebbings 21:39 Sure.

Rob Lacher 21:39 ... kind of enterprise SaaS, then maybe Daniel from UiPath or Brandon are our great sparring partners. And I think that's, th- that's how we've built everything around exactly that idea, and that's the core of our sourcing and, and kind of network approach.

Harry Stebbings 21:52 Uh, and so you have pre-seed and seed, and then we have not a series A. We have a series B and C?

Rob Lacher 21:58 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 21:59 So how does that work out in terms of fund sizes, just so everyone can understand?

Rob Lacher 22:03 Exactly. So I, I s- I start answering that question again. (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 22:05 (laughs)

Rob Lacher 22:05 Sorry, you were asking what's the strategy. So, um, yeah, we, we think, you know, if you look at Europe, um, when we started Visionaries, we thought series A was pretty crowded. You have incredible amount of funds with kind of $100 to $700 million in fund size-

Harry Stebbings 22:18 Yeah.

Rob Lacher 22:18 ... that typically enter series A, but that has been bloody red ocean, uh, and I think valuations have been quite aggressive, uh, compared to the traction that the companies had. And at the same time, it's not yet a space where we can add so much value with our network. So we said, "We're good at pre-seed/seed," so that's basically we've all been entrepreneurs before and we love working with founders really at those dirty early stages. And then we leave out series A so there's no signaling risk for the founders, and they can choose from those amazing funds out there, whether it's an Accel, a Sequoia, an Index, or you name them, who are amazing lead investors. And then, again, for us, it's really interesting at series B when B2B companies start hyper-scaling. They need to build a customer base across Europe. That's where our family business entrepreneurs can be interesting, whether it's all the car companies, the Mieles, the Swarovskis of this world. And, uh, that's also where founders, you know, if they wanna get go-to-market advice, they better wanna speak to, like, a Hanna Reina from Personio who has just scaled a company across Europe or if they wanna have more product advice with an André who founded Miro and not just kind of with, um, (smacks lips) with average advice. So that's where we think we can bring in a lot of value again at series B stage. But on the other side, you know, we thought the best product we can offer to founders is not another 1 billion fund that competes with those funds out there, but complementing great ............................ kind of, uh, multi-stage US funds in, uh, in those rounds with a 5 to 10 million investment.

Harry Stebbings 23:46 You, you mentioned kind of the red ocean there. We're gonna get to that. I just wanna ask quickly, eh, w- you know, you lead rounds, uh, at, you know, pre-seed and seed. Uh, w- we're seeing a totally different fundraising environment now where-

Rob Lacher 23:56 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 23:56 ... uh, you remember before when it's like, "Ah, d- do you need your pro rata?" And then they're like, "Oh, everyone else wants it." You're like, "Great, okay, take it."

Rob Lacher 24:03 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 24:03 In, like, every company, even terrible companies.

Rob Lacher 24:06 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 24:07 Um, (laughs) respectfully. Um,

Harry Stebbings 24:09 and so my question to you is, like, how does your reserves management change today-

Rob Lacher 24:14 Mm-hmm.

Harry Stebbings 24:14 ... versus years of old? Because it's shifting, for sure.

Rob Lacher 24:16 Yeah. It's actually not in the current fund. I mean, we, we have 60% reserve in a seed fund to, to follow on and 60-

Harry Stebbings 24:23 You have 60% reserve?

Rob Lacher 24:24 Sixty percent-

Harry Stebbings 24:25 Wow.

Rob Lacher 24:25 ... reserve.

Harry Stebbings 24:25 So 40% is initial?

Rob Lacher 24:27 40% is initial. 60%-

Harry Stebbings 24:28 How big's the seed fund?

Rob Lacher 24:29 ... is reserved. It's, uh, the latest one is 150 million.

Harry Stebbings 24:32 Wow, so that's-

Rob Lacher 24:33 Before, uh...

Harry Stebbings 24:34 So you've got, like, 70 million for initial chairs or 65 million for initial chairs?

Rob Lacher 24:38 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 24:38 Wow, that's not many.

Rob Lacher 24:40 Yeah. And, I mean, we're, we're trying to build a focused portfolio there. And then, you know, typically you can follow on, uh-... in series A and in series B, you can do either full or half pro rata. It depends a little on the price points of the companies, round sizes. And I think, you know, why we haven't made a change to the current fund, I mean, what drivers do you have that would change your strategy? Either you have a m- momentum market, which we had the last two years-

Harry Stebbings 25:03 (laughs)

Rob Lacher 25:03 ... but, um, we try to avoid investing into momentum companies. I think we have done none of them, and we try to be incredibly disciplined with our founder to raise what they really need to raise and what is necessary and not, like, go into momentum fundraisers where you basically just put in more money without knowing what it is. Second reason could be that you have, um, kind of not-good companies in your portfolio, and you still send them to family offices to raise money or kind of stretch.

Harry Stebbings 25:31 (laughs)

Rob Lacher 25:32 We're writing off those companies and, and with the founders deciding not to continue if the model doesn't work, like why, why should we kind of encourage them to raise more money to just postpone the decision? And the third reason could be that you're such an amazing picker that you have so many companies in the fund that are outperforming that you not have enough money to put into that. And that's something where typically opportunity funds or the late-stage fund could then come into place to take care of it. So long story short, with our existing fund, we haven't made any change to the reserve m- amount, but we've done the new fund. We've increased the fund size to 150 million because the initial check siz- sizes are just getting, getting bigger.

Harry Stebbings 26:10 No, totally, I see that. I mean, you, you think about-

Rob Lacher 26:12 How about yourself? I mean, with, uh, with your seed fund, um, and y- you have been in some great deals that, that have raised quite, quite significant up rounds.

Harry Stebbings 26:21 Yeah, I, I think about it really in two types of deals that we do. One is, uh, where we like to have a really meaningful check size. So we have 33 million in the early stage and 107 in the, you know, explorer fund, which is really series A and B.

Rob Lacher 26:33 Uh-

Harry Stebbings 26:34 Um, for me, it's two deals. One is where we kind of try and take the lead as much as possible. So 750 to one and a half, very much similar to kind of how any traditional seed fund would wanna concentrate in the best companies. And then the other one is this, like, recognition that I'm doing two now, where bluntly, we're behind. Some amazing multi-stage fund, which we're gonna get to, is leading it, um, who I'm very close to in, in two different contexts. And actually, do I want a 250K check in one of the potential best breakout companies?

Rob Lacher 27:04 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 27:05 100% because I can absolutely earn the right to put more in over time, I hope. The question that I have is, um, time will tell. (laughs) In the best companies, do you have the ability to concentrate capital over time? I think that's my question to you.

Rob Lacher 27:21 Mm-hmm.

Harry Stebbings 27:21 Do you think in your true breakouts, you'll be able to concentrate money from the larger growth fund?

Rob Lacher 27:27 Yeah. Yeah, so that's... I mean, if you look at it, um, with a seed fund, typically, you can play until series B, and then, I mean, the round size, it, it, it's not working anymore-

Harry Stebbings 27:38 Yeah.

Rob Lacher 27:38 ... with your allocation. And that's where the growth fund comes into place, where we invest five to 10 million, which is interesting, mostly in allocation we get on top at that stage.

Harry Stebbings 27:47 Yeah.

Rob Lacher 27:47 So we invest as long as we can from the seed fund.

Harry Stebbings 27:49 What sort of price is it, then?

Rob Lacher 27:51 Mm-hmm.

Harry Stebbings 27:51 Is it like 500 to a billion, in that range?

Rob Lacher 27:54 Um, no. So I think the, the average entry price point for our early growth fund, it's really early, it's not growth, right? So it's, I would call early series B or late series A. It's, it's around 100, 100 million. So there are many companies like Xentral, Takestoo, and others that, that we entered at far below 100 million. There are a few ones that have been a little more pricey when we enter, but we haven't done any round at a, at a 500 million or 400 million in the last two years.

Harry Stebbings 28:21 I've done a couple of seeds at 100 million. So (laughs) like...

Rob Lacher 28:25 (laughs) Well, there... (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 28:26 I mean, listen, um, it's not... I, I was in, uh, um, IC with Ciaran today, and he was explaining something to someone, and he said, "We like cheap deals." And I said, "Fuck no, we don't. That's a bad, bad answer. We like the best deals," which can be expensive. Um, but those, those were slightly toppy. Yeah, 100 million seeds? Uh, you gotta have someone pretty special.

Rob Lacher 28:47 Well, look, I think we, we did things wrong there because if you look at those later-stage rounds where we thought they have been too expensive and, and maybe didn't follow on a second time with the early growth fund, those have been the outlier companies, b- and they have always been expensive. If you look at-

Harry Stebbings 29:02 Which, which ones were they? (laughs)

Rob Lacher 29:03 If you look at Prisonio, if you look at Deel, if you look at even, you know, Showko, all those companies have done incredibly well. They've, they, they have been the ones that, that have outperformed, and they have... Pigment, great example. So we were in the pre-seed, and, uh, I mean, what an amazing team, and Eleonore building it with, with her co-founder, but that has always... Ophelia at the A, we thought, "Wow, that's an expensive price point just for the product."

Harry Stebbings 29:26 Everyone thought that was an expensive price point. I think credit-

Rob Lacher 29:29 And, uh, Greenoaks did the D. We thought, "It's expensive," but they have shown, like, uh, it, it would have been cheap in retrospect. So I think the learning is if, if you have those outlier companies, um, I think you have to pay those price points if you have the internal knowledge of kind of how the founders are doing and if you have the trust in what they're building.

Harry Stebbings 29:46 I think that's where I give credit to Ophelia, though, 'cause there wasn't the data respectively to support the price that she paid at the A.

Rob Lacher 29:52 Incredibly well done.

Harry Stebbings 29:53 And, like, foreseeing that, fucking pissed. I really wanted to be in Pigment. (laughs)

Rob Lacher 29:58 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 29:59 I, I, I think they're just such a good team.

Rob Lacher 30:00 Have you ever... But, but you have the chance with the growth fund, right?

Harry Stebbings 30:03 I, uh-

Rob Lacher 30:03 Is it now too expensive? (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 30:04 It's pretty fucking expensive.

Rob Lacher 30:06 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 30:06 Uh, no. I have, I have some discipline, I hope.

Rob Lacher 30:10 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 30:10 Um, do you think the series A product is good in Europe? You mentioned Sequoia, Accel and Index. I completely agree. (claps hands) That's what everyone says.

Rob Lacher 30:18 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 30:19 That's it. For Europe, for a continent's entrepreneurial talent, there's really three firms.

Rob Lacher 30:27 No, I, I, I would disagree. That, that was the case four years ago, and I think it was cozy for those firms because they could just, like, select what they wanted to do and then, and the pressure has been just competing against two or three other firms. I think the beauty is, you know, now we have maybe five to 10 times what you would call a tier one VC firm from the US that entered the market in the last two years, whether it was-

Harry Stebbings 30:48 Wow.

Rob Lacher 30:48 ... Sequoia or General Catalyst, Lightspeed, Iconiq, Code Two, everyone opening offices in London, and...I think it puts so much pressure into the market on existing funds to bloody innovate themselves and really, really kind of get ahead of the wave, doing a great job with, with founders and referencing, that I think this competition is great for founders because they have more choice, they have VCs that are... really need to be on their toes to, to be great VCs with the companies that they back. And I think it's a positive effect for the ecosystem from the founder perspective.

Harry Stebbings 31:23 So I've done three seed deals in the last y- well, in the last two months. What is it, end of February? So-

Rob Lacher 31:28 That's seed, not A round.

Harry Stebbings 31:28 L- the last seed deal.

Rob Lacher 31:29 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 31:30 So, but this is impressive. Like, three seed deals-

Rob Lacher 31:33 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 31:33 ... all Tier 1 US-

Rob Lacher 31:35 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 31:35 ... all beaten Tier 1 U- UK and Europe.

Rob Lacher 31:37 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 31:38 And then I spoke to an LP and they said, "Well, I would put money in European funds at the A because I'm just-"

Rob Lacher 31:45 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 31:45 "... betting that they will get something that a US fund missed."

Rob Lacher 31:49 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 31:49 Do you think that's short-sighted and unfair? And do you think you'd be worried if you were a Series A fund today when the US guys are coming in harder than ever and winning?

Rob Lacher 31:59 Yeah. I mean, I can't speak for Series A because we're, we're, we're not engaged in that space that much. But from our portfolio, you mentioned seed, I, I don't see it the, the same way. But, but maybe let me put it in a different way. I think those founders that we wanna back are those guys that really do deep referencing on the funds that they want to work with and have a-

Harry Stebbings 32:21 Mm-hmm.

Rob Lacher 32:21 ... super clear kind of impression why they want to work with which fund. It, it's like a wedding. You can't get divorced and... (laughs) So I think those founders that are just hyped by a US brand putting in $3 million in a seed round or $5 million without thinking about the "so what" are not the founders we wanna back, because that's not the long-term thinking. Those founders that really go deep into referencing, we see actually many conversations where they might go rather for Point Nine or Visionaries or 20 V.C. or whoever for the seed stage because they're closer to, uh, to those partners working with them, their meaningful check in our funds because we're smaller funds. We work hard, we want to make everything, and they're independent in the Series A round to really choose from a great fund with a significant check, a board position from a partner, not an associate. So I think, long story short, it's self-selection. Those founders that go with US funds and really know why, because either they want to go into the US market or they have a certain alpha in whether it's gaming industry or something, fine. But I see, to be honest, two thirds of the founders at seed stage that have those term sheets rather going for European seed fund setup because they want to keep the A round open to, to choose from those funds.

Harry Stebbings 33:35 How do you advise founders when it comes to... when they have a US multi-stage fund-

Rob Lacher 33:40 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 33:41 ... and they're debating that or a European offer? How do you advise them?

Rob Lacher 33:44 Yeah. I think, um, you know, for... there is no right or wrong. It's... I just want to advise them to, to make a very active choice about the so what of the setup and, uh, the cons of doing a multi-stage fund setup at seed is you're a very small check of a huge fund, and the moment you sign the term sheet, you need to ask yourself, "Did they just buy an option to lead the next round? Or does the partner really, really go all in, go on my board and spend the time with me?" Because the... such multi-stage funds can't do 150 seed rounds a year and, and kind of keep that quality. Second thing is, they need to be aware that the signaling risk if that fund doesn't lead the next round is, is huge.

Harry Stebbings 34:25 Do you buy that?

Rob Lacher 34:25 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 34:25 I just had David Tisch on the show from BoxGroup and he was like-

Rob Lacher 34:27 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 34:27 ... "Nah, signaling risk is the biggest load of BS."

Rob Lacher 34:30 Yeah. I've seen it many times in our portfolio and we, we team up a lot with multi-stage funds at seed. I- I'd say 20% of our deals are like this.

Harry Stebbings 34:38 And so when they don't come back-

Rob Lacher 34:39 And-

Harry Stebbings 34:39 ... it does look bad.

Rob Lacher 34:40 It, it is terrible for you as a founder if things don't work out. Look, there are, there are three scenarios. Either you kill it and everything is amazing, then it doesn't matter. I mean, then everyone wants to do your A round, it doesn't matter.

Harry Stebbings 34:50 Sure.

Rob Lacher 34:50 Yeah. And then li- likely the seeded fund, like the multi-stage fund at seed will also preempt the A round. If things go pretty good, pretty great, but not like incredibly great, likely the multi-stage fund wouldn't preempt the next round and just see how things go because they got their f- for kind of ownership, they make a new decision with a new investment committee at the Series A stage whether it is a great investment or not, and they likely stand on the sidelines. And if things go bad, then they wouldn't pick it up. And believe me, behind the scenes, I mean, every fund knows exactly if partner X of multi-stage fund Y is not leading the next round, that there, there's a reason for it.

Harry Stebbings 35:28 Mm-hmm.

Rob Lacher 35:28 And we've seen it many times with really good companies that have good metrics, but maybe were not killing it yet, uh, that, that they had trouble really getting great funds ICs from other multi-stage funds because they do referencing with a partner and it's just not true. If a partner then says, "Look, it's a great company and we have our core ownership and that's fine and someone else can do it," because everyone knows if the deal is amazing, they bloody preempt it for the next round.

Harry Stebbings 35:55 But, but also actually the hard one is the messy middle there, which is actually the company going actually pretty well-

Rob Lacher 36:00 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 36:00 ... but it's not enough where you're like, "We're gonna f- preempt it aggressively."

Rob Lacher 36:03 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 36:03 Because then everyone else goes, "Well, why aren't X actually being so aggressive? If it was"-

Rob Lacher 36:08 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 36:08 ... "really good, they would be." And so even good-

Rob Lacher 36:10 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 36:10 ... isn't good enough.

Rob Lacher 36:12 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 36:12 Do you see what I mean?

Rob Lacher 36:12 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 36:13 Eight... Seven and a half, eight out of 10.

Rob Lacher 36:15 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 36:15 The other thing I always so think is like price optimization, and founders don't think enough about this-

Rob Lacher 36:19 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 36:19 ... which is just like if you knock it out of the park, yes, sell aggressive, preempt-

Rob Lacher 36:24 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 36:24 ... but you are misaligned because they're already in, they do not want to optimize for pricing on the next round in terms-

Rob Lacher 36:31 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 36:31 ... of getting the highest price possible.

Rob Lacher 36:32 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 36:32 They wanna crush your price.

Rob Lacher 36:34 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 36:34 Whereas me and you are totally aligned with founders-

Rob Lacher 36:36 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 36:37 ... because we just want the best price on the next round.

Rob Lacher 36:38 Yeah. Exactly, yeah. And look, I think there is a lot of beauty if you're independent as a founder if you go for a seed fund setup or great angels. You can choose maybe from 100 Tier 1 funds globally or Tier 2 to lead that round. And the likelihood, I mean, just speak to Miki from Volt who's had 70 funds past and-... love ٩ (๑•̀ᗝ•́) و fund number 71. I mean, it was in your podcast, picked it up.

Harry Stebbings 37:00 Yeah.

Rob Lacher 37:00 Imagine, it had to be more, a more difficult journey if you hadn't been independent to kind of choose from any fund. But look, there are many pros also going with a multi-stage fund, like some have 40, 50 years experience of supporting companies, some partners are incredible to have on your board, but just make sure as a founder to challenge that and to ask the partners, "Will you be on my board or will you just send your associate on my board?" Or... (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 37:23 (laughs) Or the savage thing-

Rob Lacher 37:25 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 37:25 ... "When I'm not performing, will you transition to your associate?" (laughs)

Rob Lacher 37:28 (laughs) I mean, fair enough after two years, but...

Harry Stebbings 37:30 So, you know, and it's like-

Rob Lacher 37:31 Uh...

Harry Stebbings 37:31 ... and, you know, "Now, Sarah will take over," and you're like-

Rob Lacher 37:33 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 37:33 ... "Oh, damn it, relegated."

Rob Lacher 37:35 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 37:35 If you could choose one European board member, who would you choose and why? In the Series A?

Rob Lacher 37:39 I'd choose Johann Butting, who's global SVP sales at Slack, and he has built Slack in Europe, Dropbox in Europe, and he's a board member in our portfolio company, Xentral, where I'm on the board with Luciana from Sequoia and, uh, Mark from Freigeist, and he's spending so much time with the founders to really build a commercial team, build a go-to-market team. He has done it for the last 12 years, but not on a VC high-level really. He, he has gone on any details and this is the kind of sparring partner you wanna have, uh, as a founder if you build a SaaS company, not just high-level bullshitting on-

Harry Stebbings 38:12 I, I, I...

Rob Lacher 38:12 ... uh, on some, some

Rob Lacher 38:14 generic advice, but really going, going deep. I'm, I'm very impressed by him.

Harry Stebbings 38:17 Do you think VCs add value? We always get like, you, you know, shunned and mocked for our VC value. Do you think we add value?

Rob Lacher 38:24 Yeah, it depends on how they operate. I, I think small boards are great because it forces everyone really, really to work hard because-

Harry Stebbings 38:30 Yeah.

Rob Lacher 38:30 ... if you just have two board members and you don't work, then it's kind of obvious you're gonna fail.

Harry Stebbings 38:34 (laughs)

Rob Lacher 38:34 Second thing is, uh, I think the best board or role that you can take as a VC for a founder is not trying to influence any decisions or to think that you have better ideas than the founder, but to be the best devil's advocate that you can with kind of opening up the option space for the founder, and that's mostly not yourself having an opinion. It's mostly bringing in people from your network. In our case, it's founders who have gone through that journey, who have solved their problems to really provide the best possible devil's advocate opinion so that the founder can choose what's the right decision to do. And I think those kind of boards are exceptional in, in giving the founders stability. But I think big boards can be really very difficult if you have 10 board members with 10 opinions which are all high-level (laughs) and, um, then the founder doesn't really know, like, which direction to choose, and then maybe the most dominant board member is forcing more the direction which the company needs to go. Yeah, I think then a board is a, is a pretty negative and terrible thing.

Harry Stebbings 39:37 Wh- wh- where do you think VCs and founders are misaligned? We sometimes see boards being misaligned with founders, they wanna sell, they don't wanna sell, the founder does want to sell. Where do you think that boards and, boards, kind of VCs and founders are misaligned? Uh...

Rob Lacher 39:51 It's a great question. So, um, I think it's opportunism. So as, as a VC, you know, um, you can invest in 25 to 30 companies per fund-

Harry Stebbings 40:04 Mm-hmm.

Rob Lacher 40:04 ... and you can, and, you know, you really see who's a VC keeping their word when things go negative and if they still spend time with the, with the founders, it doesn't mean they should spend all of their time, and I mean, they should focus on the winners also in the portfolio, but they should also be there when things go, go, go, go negative. Um, but I think VCs can always, you know, opt out or, or be opportunistic to just focus on what's going well and where they see value in their portfolio, where founders have this one shot at that moment in time that they need to get it right. And I guess that's, that's a bit of a misalignment.

Harry Stebbings 40:35 I, I-

Rob Lacher 40:36 How do you see it?

Harry Stebbings 40:37 Uh, I think around liquidity-

Rob Lacher 40:39 Mm-hmm.

Harry Stebbings 40:39 ... um, is probably the biggest, whereby especially I think in the next few years it'll be really prominent which is whereby you have venture funds with not a lot of DPI situate-

Rob Lacher 40:47 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 40:47 ... and they know that they need DPI more than ever to raise the next funds.

Rob Lacher 40:50 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 40:50 Uh, liquidity opportunities come about in secondaries, in sales, in PE sales-

Rob Lacher 40:55 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 40:55 ... and actually it is suboptimal for the founder to have them sell a large portion of secondary or it's suboptimal for the founder to sell now, um, but the board absolutely want it-

Rob Lacher 41:05 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 41:05 ... or the VCs absolutely want it.

Rob Lacher 41:07 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 41:07 I think that's to me the biggest by far.

Rob Lacher 41:11 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 41:11 Um, and so I think, I think that's the one I worry about, especially over the coming years.

Rob Lacher 41:17 Yeah. Yeah, but then it's again I think, you know, when you team up with the founder as a, as a VC and vice versa, it's more like, do you align in general on how you wanna build that company and, and, uh, and the journey that you wanna take? Sometimes it's more aggressive, sometimes it's less aggressive, but if founders wanna do 150 million secondary in the Series C round as has sometimes happened in the last two years, then I think it's a, it's a general misalignment of,

Rob Lacher 41:41 of a setup there that I wouldn't back as a, as a VC.

Harry Stebbings 41:43 (laughs) I, I, I feel quite sorry for people in those situations. I'm gonna get a lot of hate for that because everyone like demonizes them now. They were actively pursued to sell, like they didn't go into market and say, "I wanna sell 150 million."

Rob Lacher 41:57 That's a very different s- thing then. I was not referring to that kind of group of people.

Harry Stebbings 42:00 Do you see what I mean though?

Rob Lacher 42:01 Sure.

Harry Stebbings 42:01 I think often they're demonized and it's like-

Rob Lacher 42:03 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 42:03 ... these big growth funds like Rob will take your stock at any price-

Rob Lacher 42:06 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 42:06 ... and it's like well-

Rob Lacher 42:07 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 42:07 ... if I own 50%, sure I'll sell you 10%.

Rob Lacher 42:09 Yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, that's very fair. I was more referring to, so I think with... It's an interesting discussion, secondaries, and you know, we are supporting it a lot because many of our founders and also the founders that, that back us at Visionary say, you know, when they did a five million secondary or something in the space that you, that you have a little certainty that you don't need to have sleepless nights, maybe you can buy a house.

Harry Stebbings 42:28 You can buy a house, you can buy security, yeah.

Rob Lacher 42:30 You know, you can send your kids to school. That makes you more relaxed to build a great company and take risks and be a good entrepreneur. But is it different if you're doing a secondary on that level or maybe also can be, it can be a little higher or lower, or if you basically take, uh, a fortune (laughs) off the table. (laughs) Uh-

Harry Stebbings 42:48 I don't know about you but I think a lot bigger now that I'm not worried about losing my home. I'm not rich, but I-

Rob Lacher 42:54 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 42:54 ... I don't worry about losing everything (laughs) -

Rob Lacher 42:56 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 42:56 ... which is nice.

Rob Lacher 42:58 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 42:58 Uh, and I, and now I go for bigger swings-

Rob Lacher 43:01 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 43:01 ... and do cooler shit. (laughs)

Rob Lacher 43:02 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 43:04 How, how do you think about your relationship to money? Do you think about it?

Rob Lacher 43:07 Yeah. Look, so I think, um...... as, as odd as it sounds, but, uh, and, and I, and I'm, I don't wanna say that I'm absolutely not interested in money, but I think my, my north star is really, as I mentioned in the beginning, if I do what I love

Rob Lacher 43:21 doing every day, and typically that's also the intersection of what you love doing, what you're typically good at, because otherwise-

Harry Stebbings 43:27 (laughs)

Rob Lacher 43:27 ... (laughs) you don't love doing it, and that, that the rest will just come. And I think we're in a business with venture capital that if you do this over 20, 30 years, um, you don't need to worry that if, if you do well that, uh, that there will be a lot of financial flexibility. But, but that's not really what, what motivates me. I mean, I'm, I'm passionate every day working with founders, I'm passionate about our network, and, um, I'm taking a very long-term perspective of w- what we're building. We didn't do many secondaries, for example, in our portfolio, which would have been maybe attractive, because we still believe those companies have such a great, uh, kind of journey, um, ahead of them. So-

Harry Stebbings 44:04 What was your biggest mistake of 2020 to '22? Like mine was not doing secondaries in companies that I probably should have done secondaries in.

Rob Lacher 44:12 Uh-

Harry Stebbings 44:13 What was yours?

Rob Lacher 44:15 Between '20 and '22? Oh, God, so many. Uh-

Harry Stebbings 44:18 (laughs)

Rob Lacher 44:19 ... pick one on the, on the fun side? (laughs)

Rob Lacher 44:22 Um, I think the biggest mistakes, if you're referring to market, maybe what I mentioned earlier, that some of the really great winners in our portfolio, maybe we should have backed at later stages even more aggressively, but we thought they were pricey, but maybe they weren't.

Harry Stebbings 44:38 Mm-hmm.

Rob Lacher 44:38 I think a mistake on company building, maybe starting to hire a great team a little too late. I mean, (laughs) you've, you have a story of your life.

Harry Stebbings 44:48 I could say it's a tough-

Rob Lacher 44:48 Uh, but... (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 44:49 It is sort of. Uh, it's a, no but it's, it's a tough one, because you want to retain the quality bar, and you also wanna be cognizant that, you know, I don't, I don't like hire fast. That's not my style.

Rob Lacher 45:00 Same here.

Harry Stebbings 45:00 Um, and I think you've got to go slow to go far.

Rob Lacher 45:04 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 45:04 Um, but then you also have to go.

Rob Lacher 45:06 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 45:06 (laughs) That's it, too. So, eh, it's really fucking hard.

Rob Lacher 45:10 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 45:11 Um, I don't buy remote, by the way.

Rob Lacher 45:13 Mm-hmm.

Harry Stebbings 45:13 I think remote is one of the most poisonous things.

Rob Lacher 45:15 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 45:16 Um, (laughs) yeah, says deal investor.

Rob Lacher 45:19 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 45:19 (laughs) Sorry.

Rob Lacher 45:21 Right, it's, it's not just remote work. It's, it's like, uh, international hiring, you know, if you wanna build, uh, any subsidiaries, you know, they're, they're, I think that's also where they're taking a lot of advantage from.

Harry Stebbings 45:29 Sure. No, I totally get you. We, we mentioned kind of relationships to money, we mentioned price there. When you're, like, investing, say, initial, how central a role does price actually play?

Rob Lacher 45:38 Mm-hmm. That's a great question, because they can always have this argument, "Oh, great founders you need to back no matter what price point, and they go up." I think that's not the right way to approach it. The right way is, if you speak with a founder, so we, we've never had a negotiation at the seed stage with a founder about price point because we wanted to have 1% more or 2% less. Our dialogue is always, "Do we have the same understanding on what we think are the next steps to build a great company?" And I think if you have that alignment with a founder, you wanna go for a healthy journey that feels right for the company, to, to do a seed round, to have enough runway, to have a great position and optionality for a series A round. And if it's an incredible serial entrepreneur that has built the product already 10 times, maybe a five million round is fine, even though it's expensive, because you know they will have a product line-

Harry Stebbings 46:27 Sure.

Rob Lacher 46:27 ... in six months, and maybe they can raise the next round with two million ARR and, uh, and, and fine. But on the other side, if you have a s- team, you know, that is raising, like, building a productivity tool for the first time, raising five million on 25 and they say, "Look, in one and a half years we wanna raise 30 million on 150 million," that's not for us, because we think, like, it's, it's not a healthy set-up for them to build a great company, because they don't have any optionality for the A round. So we're trying to figure out with the founders what's the right strategy to move forward, and we are very passive. We are not doing pricey deals. We are, we've passed on many companies that were doing those US rounds, because US funds, for them, it's easy.

Harry Stebbings 47:05 Don't worry, you've got me for that. (laughs)

Rob Lacher 47:08 (laughs) That, that's kind of your, uh-

Harry Stebbings 47:10 A sweet spot.

Rob Lacher 47:11 Your sweet spot, but l- look, those can be great companies, but if, if you're Ribit or if you're one of those US kids, like, you can pay six, eight million on a seed round fine, right? On, on good teams. We, we like to go a little deeper and understand, um-

Harry Stebbings 47:23 I, I think for me the question I always ask is if we think about funding rounds as like science experiments -

Rob Lacher 47:28 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 47:28 ... and we have a hypothesis to prove out, what is the hypothesis we're looking to prove out which, when proved, we will be able to raise the next round?

Rob Lacher 47:35 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 47:35 And I think saying, "Hey, we will be in 10 large enterprise accounts with more than 25 seats-"

Rob Lacher 47:41 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 47:41 "... we'll have 25% upsell from there," that, that makes me really comfortable.

Rob Lacher 47:46 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 47:46 I'm like, okay, I'd, it's when it's like I, I'm not so sure-

Rob Lacher 47:49 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 47:49 ... and I think clarity around what is required, and it will change.

Rob Lacher 47:52 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 47:53 Markets change. But just some sense of direction around how I-

Rob Lacher 47:56 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 47:56 ... need to scale traction-wise-

Rob Lacher 47:58 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 47:58 ... I, I always find, like, crucial.

Rob Lacher 48:00 I think it's, uh, as a founder, exactly, I would 100% agree, and we've now 50 SaaS companies in our portfolio and we've seen different pathways, but we never see, like, any company that is doing great has had great times and terrible times.

Harry Stebbings 48:13 Yeah.

Rob Lacher 48:13 And I think at the seed, you know, it's the first decision on if you do the pricing or the optionality that you have for the A. So, if you do a three million seed round with a g- healthy set-up and things don't go that well, it's fine, you can still raise a great A round because you're sitting on, on a valuation where you can grow in it.

Harry Stebbings 48:29 Yeah.

Rob Lacher 48:30 If you're doing a ballsy seed round of, of five to 10 million, and if you, after one and a half years and two years... And that's happening with 80% of the companies. If you're not there yet, you, you, you either have to bloody raise a down round, which you don't wanna do, or you're in a momentum market like the last two years, but then it just takes maybe one or two years later until you figure out that you're

Rob Lacher 48:50 then at the 500 million-

Harry Stebbings 48:51 (laughs)

Rob Lacher 48:51 ... valuation and still can't raise any more.

Harry Stebbings 48:52 But then I, and I oscillate between it, because I think, like, the biggest crime that Europe does often is we underfund our companies. We're in the future-

Rob Lacher 48:58 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 48:58 In the past, sorry, we have done, not last two years. (laughs)

Rob Lacher 49:01 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 49:01 But in the m- more distant past we have done where it's like you get a million, and a million gives you-

Rob Lacher 49:06 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 49:06 ... a chance to V1.

Rob Lacher 49:07 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 49:08 You don't get V2 with a million, in most cases-

Rob Lacher 49:10 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 49:10 ... uh, unless you're extremely capital efficient.

Rob Lacher 49:13 Mm-hmm.

Harry Stebbings 49:13 And I think that's, you know, and most things, like we said, need the V2. They have some fail-

Rob Lacher 49:17 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 49:17 ... they need iteration, and so on the second or third thing. And I think the US is brilliant at giving you large enough runway to have V2, V3, V4.

Rob Lacher 49:24 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 49:24 Uh, but then also I go back to, fuck, I'm just oscillating between the two. Like Tobi at Shopify says to me the other day that the best businesses are built around constraints, whether artificial or real. Uh, and so I don't know the answer, I'm just chatting shit. (laughs)

Rob Lacher 49:39 Yeah. Yeah, but look, it's, it's not about the exact answer, but it's about the, the truth. Like looking at a company, we, we take a 10, 15-year perspective, and, and, and like exclamate any cycle thinking or, or whatever. Just think about what is healthy and, uh, and, and, and what makes sense to build a great company. And I think that's something I hate about VC that, that we're, um... I mean, there are 1,000 ways to be a great entrepreneur, and we have LPs who have built family businesses over 100 years, we have people who have bootstrapped companies, and we have the aggressive VC-driven founders. But I think in the VC space there's too much hype about what's right, what's not right. As a founder, just think totally independently, "How much money do I need? Which people do I wanna hire?" Um, and, and kind of what is my, "What are my milestones in the next one or two years?" And, and then raise the money that you need, and not, not overraise. Maybe overraise a little bit to have a little more runway. It will always put you in an incredible good position to raise the next round if you do well. And believe me, I think you can optimize so much for ownership in the later rounds if you really kill it and the company goes through the roof and you have great metrics. That's when business models start to be predictable, and that's when all the growth-stage funds, I mean, that's where you can really optimize valuation and kind of protect ownership. But I think it's not that we seize or, or A-stage, uh, raising, raising too ballsy.

Harry Stebbings 50:57 Y- you mentioned the family offices. Um, there's many great entrepreneurs with incredible family offices and institutions built in Europe.

Rob Lacher 51:06 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 51:06 You've said before to me, uh, that they can become Europe's Google.

Rob Lacher 51:11 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 51:11 How can they become Europe's Google, Rob?

Rob Lacher 51:13 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 51:14 (laughs)

Rob Lacher 51:15 Makes a lot of sense, right? (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 51:17 I would love to know, right? (laughs)

Rob Lacher 51:17 Yeah. Look, I think, um... By the way, I love Bruno Puglianelli-

Harry Stebbings 51:20 And you interrupt me if I'm talking too long again, right?

Rob Lacher 51:22 ...I say it, all good.

Harry Stebbings 51:23 No, no, Rob.

Rob Lacher 51:24 So I think, you know, if you look at our tech ecosystem globally, there's a huge shift from consumer internet to B2B. And if you look at the past 20, 30 years, consumer internet was Silicon Valley, and th- that was the ecosystem that was thriving. If you look at B2B, what enables B2B, it's all those industrial companies that get disrupted across their supply chains. And if you look at Europe, the DNA of our economy are all those world market leaders in the industrial space, whether it's the car companies like BMW, Peugeot, whether it's the Mieles, the Swarovskis. And I think together they're the biggest enablement of disruption in B2B globally that we have. That's a huge asset that we have in Europe that no other continent on Earth has. And that's why we built companies like Celonis, who are a global category leader for process mining, UiPath for RPA. And I think there are many more companies in the B2B space that can become global market leaders out of Europe. And the interesting thing is, you know, and back to your Google question, we always complain that we don't have a Google, Facebook, Amazon, or Tencent, who are the most profitable companies in their clusters and they're the biggest tech drivers next to VCs. But what we have in Europe is 90% of our companies are family businesses, they're highly profitable, they are run by entrepreneurs that can make fast decisions, take more risks, think long-term, that have an incredible alpha knowledge in their domain, and that own global supply chains. If you take those family businesses together, I think this is our Google. If we unlock the alpha domain knowledge in those verticals, if we unlock the profitability, if we get that into the VC ecosystem, I think this is how we can really kind of build our Google together, um, combining the domain knowledge and, and the capital available. And I think we have to serve our ecosystem the way our ecosystem is built, and not copy Silicon Valley.

Harry Stebbings 53:11 What are the barriers to collectivizing those units in the way that you said? And is that done by a supernational kind of government body, organization, uh, institution? Or is that done by a private institution like Visionaries?

Rob Lacher 53:25 I think it's a combination. First, those companies and those people need to be entrepreneurs and go back to their roots. It's interesting, if you look at those family businesses that are 100, 200, some 50 years old, they used to be risk-takers, they used to be contrarian. That's what made them successful. But some of them are now in their, like, pretty, pretty high ages, and they're not taking risks anymore, they're just kind of stagnating. I think they need to get ahead of the wave again, unlock capital, take risks again, investing into really new topics. I mean, what is their business model otherwise in 10 years? That's the first thing. So they, they, they need to do it. Who can catalyze it? I mean, that's the core business model of Visionaries that we just... We have 25 of those family entrepreneurs because we think their domain knowledge and, and their capital is essential for B2B companies that we back. Um, I think, yeah, this is something we're connecting those dots between those companies and the startup ecosystem, is something where I see huge potential in Europe. It's something we've done with La Familia, with Visionaries, but it's something we can take to a much different level.

Harry Stebbings 54:28 Can I be honest? I find there's a real consumer education challenge to be had with a lot of European family offices. Uh, my LP base is 90% US. We're very grateful to have great US institutions.

Rob Lacher 54:41 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 54:42 But they get it.

Rob Lacher 54:42 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 54:43 They're fast, they're smart, they're great partners.

Rob Lacher 54:47 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 54:47 And the Europeans, I mean, they're slow, you have to expl- explain everything, and then they turn up with like a $2 million check-

Rob Lacher 54:54 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 54:54 ... after, you know, knowing them for 10 years and, you know-

Rob Lacher 54:57 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 54:57 ... taking their kids to Sardinia.

Rob Lacher 54:59 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 54:59 I mean, like, "Fuck." Like, uh, am I wrong or am I actually right?

Rob Lacher 55:06 Yeah. Both. If you had, um, asked me this question three years ago, I would have said, "Yeah, like, uh, how can we get all those companies really getting active?" Because family offices is something that hasn't happened in Europe like for the last-

Harry Stebbings 55:17 Yeah.

Rob Lacher 55:18 ... 30 years, diversification hasn't happened.

Harry Stebbings 55:19 But we have so many.

Rob Lacher 55:20 We have so many.

Harry Stebbings 55:20 There's 1,100 family offices in London, did you know that?

Rob Lacher 55:23 If you look at the dry powder, it's, it's in the trillions, but it's really the domain knowledge. So, let me give you two or three examples why I'm positive and why I'm encouraged.... take BioNTech, which is maybe the most successful startup we ever had out of Germany. It was 130 million seed round led by the Strüngmann brothers, who were basically pharma entrepreneurs, so that was-

Harry Stebbings 55:41 130 million seed round?

Rob Lacher 55:42 130 million seed round in 2008, middle of the financial crisis. They had balls. They took risk to invest. I mean, they not only did BioNTech, they maybe did 20 investments where 15 others didn't work, but they understand biotech. They have domain knowledge because they've built a billion-dollar business in that industry, and they've taken the risk to finance that company that is now, I don't know, 30, 40, 50 billion market cap. And we have in our network-

Harry Stebbings 56:05 Do you know what price they did the 130 at?

Rob Lacher 56:07 (laughs) Uh, you, uh, I'm sure you can find it online. Uh, but that's an example of, you know, alpha domain knowledge, deep capital pools, taking risks. If we multiply that the 1,500 times you mentioned, we can do this with cardiac device manufacturer, with, like, other specialty companies. I think it's incredible what we can unlock. And the one thing why I'm optimistic, don't underestimate how fast those companies can move. Take Max Viessmann. He inherited Viessmann from his father, took him three years and a lot (laughs) of work to get 14,000 employees into the digital age. You have the whole energy thing that happened in Europe, kind of attack it with fast decision-making, act fast during COVID, and he's in his early 30s. And we have many of those next-gen entrepreneurs who are very intelligent, who are ambitious to maybe even reach something higher than their parents did, and who can take fast decisions, take risks, think long term. Let's bring them into the B2B ecosystem, because that's something unique that typically US VC funds can't do, that multi-stage funds can't do, but which is essential to lock- unlock the alpha in B2B.

Harry Stebbings 57:15 Uh, uh, let's say, uh, final one, but I like

Harry Stebbings 57:17 ending before we do a quick fire on our positivity. If you, like, have a dream and you can cast yourself out till 2028, five years-

Rob Lacher 57:25 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 57:25 ... where is the Europe ecosystem then for you in your dream? Uh, it's all gone to plan.

Rob Lacher 57:29 In my dream, venture capital itself got disrupted for the first time in history, because VC are investing in a disruption, but they have been the least disruptive industry themselves in the last 50 years. If you ask me what it needs to unlock the European ecosystem, it's the domain smartness, taking risk in verticals, and it's the capital. And I think we have a first generation of billionaire B2B founders, like the founders of Adyen, of Checkout, Guillaume, take, take, like, all those people that reinvest in the ecosystem.

Harry Stebbings 58:03 Mm-hmm.

Rob Lacher 58:03 Take, take Daniel, who led the 100 million seed round in Helsing on Series A round. And we have the Google, the family entrepreneurs. So together, I would say, if things go right, do we really need the traditional VC funds anymore, or can we build a smarter approach, unlocking the domain knowledge of those people and the capital that these people has to kind of back the next generation of, uh, B2B entrepreneurs? (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 58:27 You're not dissing me. I totally agree.

Rob Lacher 58:29 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 58:29 I, I, I... My, my job is to build the next great venture firm at the intersection of-

Rob Lacher 58:35 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 58:35 ... venture and media, and to leverage media products-

Rob Lacher 58:38 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 58:38 ... to allow me to be better ambassadors. I s- I tweeted this the other day, but I don't think 20VC is a media company.

Rob Lacher 58:43 Mm-hmm.

Harry Stebbings 58:44 I think it's a data company. Like, every-

Rob Lacher 58:45 It's a what?

Harry Stebbings 58:46 It's a data company.

Rob Lacher 58:47 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 58:47 Like, you know, we... (laughs) Before this show, we spoke to eight founders that you work with-

Rob Lacher 58:52 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 58:53 ... and now have, like, 32 pages of notes on you. (laughs)

Rob Lacher 58:56 Nice. Can I buy them? (laughs) What do I need to do to get access to that?

Harry Stebbings 58:59 Uh, no. (laughs) Ironically, no, you can't.

Rob Lacher 59:01 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 59:01 But, uh, but, but we have so... And we've got this over 3,000 shows.

Rob Lacher 59:05 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 59:05 And so you just have incredible data. Um, I-

Rob Lacher 59:08 We're the Visionaries, so that's our vision, you know. We wanna... We act like any venture capital fund, the fund is structured like any fund, but we only have those entrepreneurs as our LPs. And our vision is really to take venture capital a little bit to the next level, unlocking this domain knowledge and those capital pools. I

Rob Lacher 59:25 think it's something for Europe that would fit our ecosystem.

Harry Stebbings 59:28 No, I, I totally agree. Um, I wanna do a quick-fire round. So I say a short statement and you give me immediate thoughts. Sound okay?

Rob Lacher 59:34 Trying to do my best, my friend.

Harry Stebbings 59:35 So, uh, I l-... We messaged about this one before and you said, "Oh, I can't think of them." I'm like, "Oh, well, you have 24 hours, so good luck."

Rob Lacher 59:41 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 59:41 Um, if you were to invest in one European seed firm other than your own, which would it be?

Rob Lacher 59:45 Yeah. I'll pick two. Beyond Capital and Cocoa, because they're both micro funds led by-

Harry Stebbings 59:50 Sorry, Beyond Capital?

Rob Lacher 59:51 Beyond Capital, it's Gloria Boilard.

Harry Stebbings 59:53 Ah, yeah.

Rob Lacher 59:53 She was with Index before. She's one of the smartest and most hungry young VCs that I know.

Harry Stebbings 59:58 I know Johns did 20V.C., but didn't, okay.

Rob Lacher 1:00:00 And, uh, I'll bring her on the show.

Harry Stebbings 1:00:02 (laughs)

Rob Lacher 1:00:02 And Carmen, who's also running a 50 million, 15 million micro fund. I believe in those young managers that are hungry, hyper-smart, talented, and still wanna have this kind of ambition to win. In fact-

Harry Stebbings 1:00:16 I, I, I'm in Cocoa too. I, I think Carmen has done unbelievably well in terms of visibility.

Rob Lacher 1:00:21 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:00:21 Every deal that we meet at seed, they've always met at Cocoa.

Rob Lacher 1:00:24 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:00:24 Um, totally agree with you. Yeah. (laughs) Series A firm in Europe. Which would you invest in?

Rob Lacher 1:00:28 You mentioned... I could mention the usual ones like Accel, Index, Sequoia, and the likes, but let's, let's, let's pick a different one. I think Felix Capital is a great company because, you know, that's an entrepreneurial-run venture capital fund with a great focused value proposition. They are doing incredibly well on getting new partners on board, like Julien recently, who has been an angel investor in, in Pigment, Xentral. I like him a lot. I think he's an amazing partner, so. And Felix is an entrepreneur in VC, like the, the company, so I like this.

Harry Stebbings 1:00:56 JC is like my big brother. I love Julien, so I totally agree.

Rob Lacher 1:00:59 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 1:01:00 (laughs) I love the fact that I, I just get to ask these questions-

Rob Lacher 1:01:03 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 1:01:03 ... I didn't have to answer them.

Rob Lacher 1:01:04 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 1:01:04 Uh, it's such a good job. Um, tell me, uh, growth firm.

Rob Lacher 1:01:09 Um, difficult, because I think they are by nature more global, but if I had to pick one, I still... Your favorite one, 83North-

Harry Stebbings 1:01:16 Mm-hmm.

Rob Lacher 1:01:16 ... because they're super humble, very domain specific. They don't-

Harry Stebbings 1:01:19 Concentrated fund size as well for the... 'Cause there's like-

Rob Lacher 1:01:21 Concentrated fund size.

Harry Stebbings 1:01:22 Mm-hmm.

Rob Lacher 1:01:22 They go deep. They don't make a big show out of it. Uh, they work hard with the founders. Love them.

Harry Stebbings 1:01:28 I totally agree with you. (laughs) Again, I just, like, pummel you with the questions and I don't have to answer any of them. Brilliant. Uh, what have you changed your mind on in the last 12 months?

Rob Lacher 1:01:37 I think really, an- and don't laugh at me, I think...Growth is not the right North Star, like, economic growth for our Western economy anymore, because I think, you know... I, I mean, in venture capital, we are investing in growth, and that's my biggest passion, like-

Harry Stebbings 1:01:53 (laughs)

Rob Lacher 1:01:54 ... technology change.

Harry Stebbings 1:01:54 Hence, why confusion.

Rob Lacher 1:01:55 But if you look at what it does with kind of, um... if you look at the Western world, and we're always striving for growth, it has to be economic growth, it has to be like, that's the North Star for each country-

Harry Stebbings 1:02:06 Sure.

Rob Lacher 1:02:06 ... uh, each, each company then, and for each employee. And I think if you look, I think our, our Western economy, I'm not talking about all the world, but it's so overdeveloped in so many areas of the society-

Harry Stebbings 1:02:17 Mm-hmm.

Rob Lacher 1:02:17 ... that we're so far above the peak of, of what is really healthy in terms of growth, that I think we need a different view. See it with, with whether it's energy, whether it's the whole kind of, um, climate change dis- dis- dis- discussion, all those topics you can't solve anymore with, with just our stupid North Star of we have to economically grow. And you see this as a society parting, you see it... I think, um, it, it's not the right North Star anymore. We need a different value system, a new reinvented adjusted value system for our society.

Harry Stebbings 1:02:53 What was the craziest thing that happened in 2020 to '22? Like, the way you're remembering it. "What? I can't believe that."

Rob Lacher 1:03:00 I think Justin Bieber moving into crypto, buying 1.3 billion-

Harry Stebbings 1:03:05 (laughs)

Rob Lacher 1:03:05 ... JPEG that is now maybe worth 90% less-

Harry Stebbings 1:03:09 (laughs)

Rob Lacher 1:03:09 ... I think it's a good example of what happened in the last two years.

Harry Stebbings 1:03:12 Oh man, I can... I remember buying chain runners. I remember getting, uh, yeah-

Rob Lacher 1:03:17 It was great. (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 1:03:17 ... a couple of meters in, and like that was not a, that was not a good investment, you know.

Rob Lacher 1:03:21 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:03:22 Um, what one word would be on your tombstone and why that word?

Rob Lacher 1:03:26 Uh, it will be something in the direction 4K love of my life, because, you know, family for me, as much as I love venture capital and tennis, even though I'm not talented enough, is the most important thing in life. And if I had to put one thing on my tombstone would be related to that.

Harry Stebbings 1:03:42 Oh, that's so sweet. (laughs)

Rob Lacher 1:03:44 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 1:03:44 I wasn't expecting it.

Rob Lacher 1:03:45 How about yourself?

Harry Stebbings 1:03:46 Uh-

Rob Lacher 1:03:46 I just got to know your mother, so... (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 1:03:48 I think, I think persistent.

Rob Lacher 1:03:50 Persistent? Okay.

Harry Stebbings 1:03:51 Yeah. I, I think just, uh, you know, I will sprain ankles, tear ligaments, and I will still run, right? Uh, to the point where it's detrimental. It's not a good thing.

Rob Lacher 1:04:00 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 1:04:01 Uh, it can be a good thing, but I would just never, ever give up.

Rob Lacher 1:04:04 Uh, uh-

Harry Stebbings 1:04:05 (laughs) Again, it, it-

Rob Lacher 1:04:08 It's a good one, I mean, for... it's one I would copy for myself just with work-related, and actually, it also applies to many private life things, but where, where, where does it bring you, like persistence? Like if you just apply it on your, on your job, like what does it-

Harry Stebbings 1:04:24 Oh, uh, uh-

Rob Lacher 1:04:24 ... mean for your private life?

Harry Stebbings 1:04:25 ... on... It means actually loneliness on your private life. Um, but on your work life, it means success.

Rob Lacher 1:04:31 Mm-hmm.

Harry Stebbings 1:04:32 If you are persistent and every single day you show up and you get better and better and better, which you will do if you show up every day, uh, you will win.

Rob Lacher 1:04:39 So, you prioritize already work over, over private life. You have 70 years to go. So, if you want to-

Harry Stebbings 1:04:46 I, I, I-

Rob Lacher 1:04:46 ... put it on your tombstone-

Harry Stebbings 1:04:47 I think, I think, I th-

Rob Lacher 1:04:47 ... uh, that can also be a different word.

Harry Stebbings 1:04:48 ... I just think there's a time in life for optimizing for different things.

Rob Lacher 1:04:52 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:04:53 And like in your 20s, when you have the energy, when you, you know, maybe don't feel ready for children, don't feel ready for that family, and you love what you do. The other thing people always say to me is like, "Oh, you know, when you actually, uh, regret giving hour every weekend-"

Rob Lacher 1:05:08 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:05:08 "... regardless. When you regret, you know, spending every weekend in a recording studio." No.

Rob Lacher 1:05:13 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:05:13 I love it. It gives me energy. And you know what? It may not do when I'm 35-

Rob Lacher 1:05:18 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:05:18 ... but actually, you know, going back to the relationship to money, and by that point, I hope to have financial security where I, I don't need to.

Rob Lacher 1:05:25 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:05:25 And actually, then I can be a great dad. I love kids.

Rob Lacher 1:05:28 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 1:05:28 It's super important to me to be at the tennis match or the-

Rob Lacher 1:05:31 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:05:31 ... clarinet concert.

Rob Lacher 1:05:32 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:05:32 So, fuck no.

Rob Lacher 1:05:34 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:05:34 I, I always r- you know, uh, the work you do in private is the work that you're rewarded for in public.

Rob Lacher 1:05:40 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:05:40 And it's like the dark hours in the studio are the-

Rob Lacher 1:05:43 Mm-hmm.

Harry Stebbings 1:05:43 ... what you get credit for on Twitter.

Rob Lacher 1:05:45 Yeah. Yeah, I think it's the beauty. If you love doing what you do for work, there's no work life balance. Life is work.

Harry Stebbings 1:05:52 Yeah.

Rob Lacher 1:05:52 But it's also the danger. And I've had it also in the last five, six, seven years really, that you just, on the weekends, you just don't do anything else because you love it so much, and suddenly a lot of your friends around you are also in the startup ecosystem. And uh, I think-

Harry Stebbings 1:06:07 I think the hard thing is you can get to a stage where the only thing that stimulates you discussion wise and intellectually is work-

Rob Lacher 1:06:13 Mm-hmm.

Harry Stebbings 1:06:13 ... and actually, that's very dangerous, I think-

Rob Lacher 1:06:15 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:06:15 ... because like you should be stimulated by, you know, your other half talking about medicine, or they could be a-

Rob Lacher 1:06:21 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:06:21 ... child psychologist, or they could be a biologist, and other intellectually stimulating-

Rob Lacher 1:06:26 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:06:26 ... but not your areas. I think the challenge that I have is, unless it's about venture or business and economics in general-

Rob Lacher 1:06:33 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:06:33 ... couldn't really give a shit.

Rob Lacher 1:06:35 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:06:35 That's not so good.

Rob Lacher 1:06:37 Well, I'm happy that I have this other thing in my life.

Harry Stebbings 1:06:39 (laughs)

Rob Lacher 1:06:40 I could tell you, it's-

Harry Stebbings 1:06:42 I love that. Well, I'm happy that I got a-

Rob Lacher 1:06:43 I'll work hard to get it into your life as well. (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 1:06:45 Man, who's your, who's your investing mentor?

Rob Lacher 1:06:50 I have great respect for Doug Leone for the fact that, you know, met him so many times last year or the year before that he's a... He was back then a 65-year-old or 64-year-old person that was still-

Harry Stebbings 1:07:05 So fit.

Rob Lacher 1:07:05 ... 150% hungry. He was working incredibly hard, like any of us would work in our age. And I think keeping that hungriness, keeping that discipline of working 150% hard still at that age is something that I think is very inspiring. I think it's inspiring how he has been... We discussed about being an entrepreneur and an investor at the same time-

Harry Stebbings 1:07:31 Mm-hmm.

Rob Lacher 1:07:31 ... and how he's balanced it. Building Sequoia as a company with, with Michael Moritz, but also being, being an investor. And I think, you know, in VC, and it's again discussing about our future of when do you want to retire or not-I think it's an either all-in or not business, because the moment you start hanging out, maybe in Southern France at your holiday home and tanning and only working three days a week, I think that moment, you are not a good VC anymore, because every funder will say their prison is not hungry anymore, and is not a ........................ partner I wanna have on the board-

Harry Stebbings 1:08:02 Mm-hmm.

Rob Lacher 1:08:02 ... going all in with me. That's what I admire about Doug.

Harry Stebbings 1:08:05 Yeah.

Rob Lacher 1:08:05 Not many VCs I've seen that, that have done it until that age.

Harry Stebbings 1:08:08 That is unwavering commitment. I, uh, uh, totally agree.

Rob Lacher 1:08:11 What is yours? Who's yours?

Harry Stebbings 1:08:12 Who's mine? Mine's Mark Evans.

Rob Lacher 1:08:14 Mm-hmm.

Harry Stebbings 1:08:14 Mark Evans is, uh, I think probably one of the greatest jewels of European venture that, you know, I think few people know about.

Rob Lacher 1:08:20 Mm-hmm.

Harry Stebbings 1:08:21 Um, he's taught me so many things.

Rob Lacher 1:08:24 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:08:24 He's taught me... I... He taught me this, which is, you know, "You're never wrong to do the right thing."

Rob Lacher 1:08:28 Mm-hmm.

Harry Stebbings 1:08:29 And whenever I come up with a difficult decision, I'm always like, "Huh, what's the right thing?"

Rob Lacher 1:08:33 That's a good, that's a good one. Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:08:34 Like, even... The right thing may be hard-

Rob Lacher 1:08:36 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:08:36 ... but what's the right thing?

Rob Lacher 1:08:38 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:08:38 And actually, do... I know it sounds quite simple, but that clarifying question. And you know what? He provides me security.

Rob Lacher 1:08:44 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:08:44 You know, like, your family doctor when you're younger, you feel safe with them?

Rob Lacher 1:08:47 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:08:47 I, when I have my hardest problems, I will go to him-

Rob Lacher 1:08:51 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:08:51 ... and he will give me structure in a world of confusion. (laughs)

Rob Lacher 1:08:54 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:08:54 That's invaluable.

Rob Lacher 1:08:56 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:08:57 That's mine. Uh, final one for you, my friend. To... uh, 2028. Is Visionaries, like, the next BlackRock in venture? Is it a boutique? Where do we want Visionaries to be in 2028?

Rob Lacher 1:09:10 I don't wanna think that way, because then it's a linear goal that you have. Uh, we, we, we, we, we, we try to turn things around. Uh, so what I wanna do, um, I don't wanna retire yet-

Harry Stebbings 1:09:19 (laughs)

Rob Lacher 1:09:19 ... anytime soon.

Harry Stebbings 1:09:21 (laughs)

Rob Lacher 1:09:21 I'm hungry, and, and, uh, I wanna build Visionaries to endure the next 30 or 40 years. And I think the ingredient is the network that we build of those great entrepreneurs, because the likelihood that something great will come out of those people that have already built something great in their life is always very high, no matter if it's a seed fund, or an early growth fund, or a growth fund taking a lead, or another pre-IPO fund. We'll see. I think that, that will... that story will be written by our co-entrepreneurs that we hired in our team that have this degrees of freedom to build it. And we always say, "Calling a dream crazy is not