KKR's Head of European PE, Philipp Freise: Do Andreessen & General Catalyst Scare KKR?

I'm a free marketeer. I think tariffs are not the answer. (mouse clicking) We need to work on the underlying issues in our Western democracies. To try to raise money through tariffs is not the right approach. In Turkey, I think we lost around 500 million. What we didn't see was rule of law was a bit of a flexible concept there, and quite frankly, we have so much going on in Western Europe, we just don't take the risk. We stay close to what we can control.

Do you believe the US dollar will be the reserve currency of the world in 10 years? Ready to go? (upbeat music) (mouse clicking) Philipp, I'm so excited for this, dude. Listen, I've wanted to make this one happen for a while. I've heard many good things from Henry and from Johannes at Get Your Guide, so thank you for joining me.

Harry, it's great to be here. Thank you for having me.

Now, when I was chatting to you, Johannes, he was like, "You gotta start with the Venture Park days." Uh, I was about probably four or five years old, uh, not to age you. (laughs) That's a really unfair start. But, um, it was before the SAMwas, and so I had to start here. What are your biggest takeaways from the Venture Park days and that really early Web 1.0?

Yeah, just for your listeners, to put this in context, you're absolutely right, Harry. This was 1999, so this was rock and roll days, the Wild West of venture investing in Europe, really. And I had been a young kid at McKinsey in New York, and I had encountered Thomas Midelhoff, who was that very visionary CEO at that time at Bertelsmann, who loved IdeaLab, you remember, which is still-

I do.

Bill Gross's still going strong today. And really wanted somebody to back, to bring that to Europe. There hadn't been anything like this in Europe, and there wasn't anything. And so we went there in '99, 2000. We raised a pretty big round. Uh, uh, Goldman was our lead investors. There was a lot of people involved. And if you ask me today, what's the lesson, I think... I'm sure Johannes will have, uh, spoken to you about this, because he embodies it perfectly. In bull markets, you just gotta keep perspective and humility, and not take yourself for a genius. So many of us back then, once we had raised, whatever it was, 100 million, thought that was the end of it. I learned very quickly, a few months later, when the dot-com, uh, bubble crashed, and the new n- new market in Germany crashed, that the most important thing, really, was the investors I had, uh, in, on my board. 'Cause there were two camps. One did this to have a quick turnaround, to have a quick IPO, and the other ones wanted to do it literally for eternity, the big corporates, Telefónica, Bertelsmann. They just wanted this to be their window into venture and innovation. And I spent, as a young founder, I think I was 26 at that time, um, all my time intermediating between these two camps. So, my lesson learned is this, and I'm applying it manically in everything I do, and I know Johannes does. As a founder, the investors you choose are so important. So, of course, it makes a huge difference, you know, if you're the founder of Helsing and you choose Daniel Ek, because Daniel Ek understands what long-term business building means. You know, and you don't want those kind of fast buck, financial-orientated, early-stage VCs that, you know, when the shit hits the fan, that drop you very quickly. And I learned that lesson very quickly.