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Time Buetefisch is the Co-founder and CEO of Cooltra, one of the European leaders in sustainable mobility solutions on two wheels. Cooltra is a scooter and e-bike rental company with >€60m sales, positive EBITDA, >3 million users, 30k vehicles, 8.7 million rides and a >40% market share in his target geographies.

Before Cooltra, Timo was Assistant to Board of Directors at Bertelsmann, and also worked as an Associate at Booz Allen Hamilton.

Timo holds an MBA from IESE Business School and Northwestern University - Kellogg School of Management.

Link to audio interview

• Listen to the podcast in spotify here (ESP)

Index

1. How did Cooltra started

2. What preconceived ideas needed change in order to scale

3. Major inflection points to win in such an operationally complex market

4. Challenges of working with atoms instead of just bits

5. Blueprint to open a new city

6. Biggest fails in Cooltra history

7. Guidance to a younger version of yourself

8. Present and future views of the mobility market

9. Navigating challenging regulations and politics

10. State of the European and Spanish startup ecosystems

11. Biggest bullshit in the ecosystem

12. Are you financially sustainable

13. What is the endgame for Cooltra

14. Advice for entrepreneurs tackling operationally complex endeavors

1. How did Cooltra started?

Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me as a guest in Views! I hope I can inspire some entrepreneurs to build adventures such as Cooltra.

I started Cooltra 19 years ago in Barcelona. Everything begun with a personal experience, I wanted to rent a motorbike to move around Barcelona because my personal one was being repaired in a garage. The experience was a mess.

In relatively quick fasion we bought 20 motorbikes from China, and we started selling them from a really small workshop close to Sagrada Familia. The company was originally bootstrapped with only €30k and from there on we have grown a lot and changed a bunch of stuff - but the beginning was as simple as this.

Our first business model was purely B2C and the main target were tourists. We did some SEO and SEM and had a very basic website to channel our sales. Not even Facebook nor instagram existed back then. Google was our main go to market, although we also used strategies such as distributing physical promotional brochures in hotels, language schools / academies and so on. All from our small workshop.

You have to keep in mind that back then, technology was not as advanced as now. It really wasn’t a very technological business. Much more retail type of thing. Easy to understand. You are a customer, you have a simple need, we provide a clear solution that was already happening with other type of vehicles such as cars. Communication was easy.

After a year or so, we hit €100k annual sales and decided to go for en external fundraising round. We ended up getting 3 Business Angels and 1 small fund (IESE’s angel fund). If I’m not wrong I thing we raised €700k.

2. What preconceived ideas needed change in order to scale?

Well the initial vision was to copy companies doing the same with cars like Europcar or Sixt. We wanted to play this exact game but for gasoline motorbikes and with a strong B2C focus.

What have we changed from that moment? A lot. From the business model per se (exploring also B2B and B2G), to using technology as main distribution tool (renting with our own app), and the vehicle per se (going full electric and connected with our motorbikes and e-bikes).

Precisely, your question is relevant, because I believe one of the main catalysts of our success is our ability to change in order to adapt to new trends in such a competitive industry.

3. What would you highlight as major inflection points, key to win in such an operationally complex market?

First, my personal resilience. We had some extremely tough moments were the temptation of just giving up was there - but we didn’t.

Second, building a team with a long term focus and being able to retain them while growing together for a long time. Curating that especialized expertise and thick skin in house, has been major for us.

Third, as you already mentioned, from an operational point of view this can be a tricky business. Among other things, being able to have a strong financial position is important. So the management of this angle, from raising equity of angels, VCs, and family offices, to keeping a healthy balance through debt instruments from public institutions, banks, and debt funds, helped us secure the necessary resources to grow aggressively while remaining healthy.

Fourth, cost efficiency. Understanding the deep meaning frugality has for our business has been major. I believe in always keeping costs under control. And I truly thinks it is important that all our team understand we have to be able to exploit great opportunities with limited resources. Based on my experience as well as those from comparable companies, in this market when you have lots of money it can seem that growth is easier to achieve but you are significantly more open to vulnerabilities and loss of efficiency. Plus pursuing great objectives with less resources, forces you to boost your creativity and grit.

And finally, as mentioned in the previous question, identifying paradigm shifts and being fast and flexible to adapt. We detected that traditional renting in physical shops was coming to an end while digital channels were booming - we adapted. We saw how customers were increasingly becoming more driven by fast and easy access to mobility, we started to get motorbikes closer to the customer in the same exact street where they live if possible and accessible through our app. We had some issue in terms of maintenance we quickly started building IoT technology so we are able to keep our bikes always in perfect shape as much as possible, etc.

4. Challenges of working with atoms instead of just bits?

Cooltra is a very complex business from an operational point of view. Executing this type of vision efficiently is quite an endeavor.

Some of the main challenges for us are:

• Screening and selecting the best providers for our fleet

• Monitoring our vehicles to make sure we have the best state-of-the art for our customer

• Taking extremely good care of our fleet in terms of maintance

• Building the best in-house tech solutions we can with a wide range of aspects in mind (connected vehicles, apps, internal tools to improve efficiency, AI implementation, etc

5. What is your playbook to open a new city?

We always have top of mind the profitability potential of any given target geo. So that is our north star, being able to obtain sustainable growth.

To reach that, we need to validate if there is critical mass aligned with each of our go to market strategies. It is okay if one is more relevant than the others, but the ideal target city should have potential for complete growth in B2B, B2C, and B2G. Are there delivery companies such as Globo, Just Eat or Domino’s active in the area that need fleets? Are there citizens or tourists already using or open to use similar solutions? Are there public institutions such as police in need of a high quality, trustworthy, and cost efficient mobility answer?

If we are able to ensure this, another important ingredient is to always keep costs under control. We need to make sure we can exploit the potential of a city with great frugality. Based on my experience, in this market, the more you spend the more vulnerable you are to inefficiencies. We have always been extremely oriented on cost efficiency.

From these facts onwards, then we keep in mind aspects such as regulation or market saturation, among others.

Based on this playbook, we have Milano and Rome as two examples of top performers, and Madrid as an examples of a complex city because market saturation (public bike sharing that works really well, a bunch of car sharing companies active in the urban area).

6. What have been the biggest fails in Cooltra history?

Our biggest fails always were related to HR.

Hiring the wrong person, keeping in the team someone who really isn’t a good fit for whatever reason, or not being able to take proper care of great in house talent and losing them.

It can be tough to get the best talent for your company at all different stages while being able to help them grow and evolve in a way this talent and the company itself are fully aligned.

But at the end of the day, we learnt from all these situations and it helped us improve how we detect, select, and nurture, the best people for Cooltra.

7. What guidance would you provide to a young Timo?

Things that come to my mind are:

• Patience. Be patient in geographical expansion. It is better to grow in a target city with a robust footprint, rather than bite off more than you can chew while stretching resources too thin and not being as focused and dominant in the geos that respond best to your business goals.

• Management of providers. It is extremely important to have a great process for selection of providers from the very beginning. Both software and hardware. Make sure the product is tested, has lots of users, holds strong reputation. Also understand what degree of customization you will need and what effort will it imply, so you can mitigate risk as much as possible. For instance, we changed our CRM in 3 or 4 occasions and it has been a waste of time.

• Inhouse developments. Understand what degree of customization you will need in our Cooltra product offering and tech stack, with a analytical view of the return - effort equation that will imply to build something in-house. Some times it is valuable to do it but it can also be a pain in the ass because too much time, money, and overall risk involved in this.

Obviously we eventually grasped these details by simply having skin on the game and just working in such problems for a while, but it could have been helpful to being familiar with it in advance.

8. Present and future views on the evolution of the mobility market?

Good question!

In the present time, as you know, 10 years ago the industry didn’t exist and it slowly gained some hype - specially with micromobility and sustainable transport as key drivers.

Lots of money went into the game with bikes and electric scooters leading the way, crazy valuations like 50x multiples, very inefficient plays from a financial standpoint, etc.

I’d say now this has changed in part, we are eyeing a market trend that maybe is still committed with micromobility in urban areas and sustainability, but the market punished financially unsustainable models and looks more driven towards consolidation, lower valuations, capital efficiency, healthy culture, high service quality and profitability.

To share some examples:

• Some years ago maybe we were talking about a 100 companies in the market and nowadays we are around 10. Companies like Reby and Seat have disappeared from this sector, and we at Cooltra have acquired a few other companies that were struggling.

• Customers are increasingly prioritizing service equality before price, with factors like availability, security, maintenance or reputation playing a gradually bigger role.

Nonetheless, size and scale are still important and it will be a lie to say they aren’t. Cooltra is getting close to €70m annual sales. Lime number goes beyond €600m and it’s still playing. So there are big logos that even though in the past maybe were burning a lot money, now there are doing a great work.

Additionally, some other competitors that we are encountering in this new period of the industry are Cycle in Northern Europe (e-bikes, B2B), Zoomo (sustainable mobility present in London, Berlin, and Paris), or Acciona Mobility (HQd in Spain, part of the giant Acciona).

If we are talking about the future, I find it fascinating.

There are 3 main trends to be aware of:

• Timings. The industry expected rapid adoption of EVs is having a slower rhythm. Why? Demand behavior is not so open to change in a big part because lack of infrastructure and low degree of harmonization in the existing one. People still has some nervousness regarding the charging aspect of the electric vehicles, both in terms of cars and motorbikes.

• Mobility as a service. Each year that goes by, the population of urban areas decreases their acquisition of vehicles. Same that is happening with real state or even music. People want cheaper and more flexible alternatives. And if we look at young individuals, this trend is even bigger. Income - Expense ratio has gotten so brutal that owning a vehicle is progressively seen as waste that can not be assumed (high vehicle prices, insurance, parking, maintenance). Consequently, there is ever more potential users open to subscription models and ride sharing.

• Intermodal integration. Very important trend, interoperability across different mobility solutions. You use a train to get from outside Barcelona to the city itself, then you get an e-bike to go to work, but maybe after work you want to grab some beers and you’d rather get an Uber. Some time ago people used to think look I have a car for all these stuff. And now is changing.

9. How do you navigate the challenge of regulation and politics?

It was a big thing years ago, it still is. The cooperative work with the regulation bodies in urban areas is a must because local city halls play a pivotal role.

Paris and Singapore are nice illustrations of this being done efficiently. In Spain we are a bit slower and messier. I would love to see more car sharing solutions in Barcelona but what they’ve made with VTC is a bit of a fiasco. In contrast, Madrid is way more advanced.

Anyway, politicians are also learning on the go because everything is relatively new for them. Some are more aggressive, others are more friendly. Again, it’d be great to see more progress and more support because we clearly see the need that citizens have for bigger and better fleets.

Yet these type of processes are very sluggish, need a lot of evangelization, regulatory changes and that sort of things. Good thing though, each one of these city tends to have a team that it’s working on this specific set of problems and you have them as your contact point. So our work is trying to build a relationship and have a positive influence in the mobility development of each target city. Every city is a world in itself and it can have different regulations and visions, so you need to be aware of it and play your cards.

10. What is your opinion on the state of the European and Spanish ecosystems?

Perhaps a bit contrarian here, but I don’t feel like we have been suffering from a lack of access to capital in the ecosystem as some say. To be blunt, it’s just difficult to find good teams and good projects.

We have had lots of VC money raised, but local VC funds, in my humble opinion, have not been able to find enough projects with top tier performance. So VC funds have not been able to show their LPs top tier performance themselves. And now, if you are not the latest hottest AI company, it’s tougher to get money. But again, not because a capital issue but because lack of exceptional opportunities (even taking into account the power law effect). Luckily, I don’t do VC investments for a living. It is not easy.

Also, I think we need a dose of realism. We can not pretend we will have in Barcelona a step up and become San Francisco. We live in a completely different world. What we have made in Europe and Spain is remarkable, extremely positive - but we are what we are. We have outstanding talent and some cool companies, but how many are really building from here organizations attacking hyper painful global problems that are directly impacting the course of history? There are 5 stars hotels and 3 stars hotels, and it’s okay.

However, it is also important to highlight that if I compare the current state of the ecosystem vs when we started 20 years ago, the massive positive evolution we have gone through its undeniable.

11. What is the biggest bullshit in the ecosystem?

Focusing on investment rounds as a priority beyond business sustainability in the long term.

At the end of the day funding rounds can be like a drug: build a business plan focused on raising money, get it, grow fast by any means, burn everything, raise again …

It can work for some type of companies, but in general I think its kind of BS to see major items like positive cash flows and healthy financial situations lost in between a game that acts as catalyst for risk and inefficiency.

12. Are you financially sustainable?

Yes. Qe needed time and capital to get here, but we did.

One of our main risks was to be able to finance our fleet growth while being sustainable, and we managed to do it in 2019. So more or less 6 years of a few millions of Euros in positive EBITDA.

13. What is the endgame for Cooltra?

When talking about this I like to reference great tier 1 athletes.

If you have some talent, train hard and win, eventually exceptional professionals will like to coach you and sponsors will give you money.

So my vision is not necessarily focused on selling Cooltra and exiting. But I truly believe it is more about focusing on building a solid sustainable business with healthy long term growth. Opportunities come when you do that. Or you can create them proactively if you want, and it will be easier.

If you have powerful KPIs and a strong performance, banks will give you money with better terms, investors want to invest in you, and potential buyers show interest. I can see lots of possibilities for this mentioned endgame, but we are just focused on building a profitable sustainable business - that is how you build options. I don’t work for the exit, it will come or it will not.

14. What advice would you share with entrepreneurs building complex operational businesses?

This type of company has some very specific set of ingredients for it to workout. Consequently, it is very hard to provide a generalist answer because what works for us it’s possible that doesn’t work for other companies, sectors, and stages (startup, scale up, and so on).

So my first advice could be to filter very well your learning sources in order to ensure that these external unrelated lessons can be translated to your own path in a meaningful way.

From that starting point, I’d share a couple of advices based on our story (in part already readable from what we have been talking about):

• Comprehend the nature of what you are building. Do you want to build a global leading unicorn company in a hot sector? Get that it will be extremely hard, need lots of money, demand high speed, and require high risk tolerance from you. Do you want to build something more similar to what we are doing? Grasp the different details.

• Own your company. It is my belief that if you are the entrepeneur you should own and control your company ina. meaningful way. From a high level point of view (e.g. having clarity of the path you want to follow) but also regarding details (e.g. management of investors, team …).

• Sector-defined efficiency. As we have talked before and you already know this Pol, we are in a market that has a high operational complexity inherent to its nature. Although to be honest I think this can be applied in a range of markets. Trying to do a lot with self-imposed limitation of resources, thus focusing on efficiency, is a great advantage in the medium-long term.

• Hire based on your stage. At the beginning, you’ll have to do a lot of different things for the rocket to launch, so in my opinion you should focus on a fewer number of generalist talent with high energy that like to fight and build something out of nothing. However when you scale up, the needs of the company change and I believe it is recommended to prioritize creating more defined roles and hiring professionals with a higher degree of specialization.

¡Thank you Timo for sharing your Views with us!

¡Thank you Lucas for the intro!

If you enjoyed it, subscribe and we’ll be back with you. 🙏🏼

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Xavier Brun es actualmente Head of Equity en Trea Asset Management, una de las gestoras independientes líder en España, con más de >€8bn AUM (activos bajo gestión), así como profesor de economía y finanzas, y director del Master in Finance and Banking en la Universidad Pompeu Fabra.

En Trea, Xavier Brun lidera la inversión en mercados internacionales a través de la gestión de múltiples vehículos de inversión pertenecientes al grupo con destacados resultados, cosechando reconocimientos como Mejor Gestor de Fondos 2022 por Rankia Pro, Mejor Plan de Pensiones de Renta Variable Europea por Morningstar, y varias performance top decile y top quartile en múltiples años.

Xavier es Doctor en Economía por la Universidad de Barcelona.

Link audio

• Escucha la entrevista en Spotify haciendo clic aquí

Índice

1. ¿Qué es Trea y cómo funciona?

2. Bajo el capó del dilema gestión pasiva vs activa

3. Dinámicas de crecimiento de AUMs en megafondos

4. Liderar renta variable para un gran fondo

5. ¿Cuál es vuestro blueprint checklist en detalle para analizar compañías?

6. ¿Cómo funciona la evaluación del equipo en targets de tanto tamaño?

7. ¿Cómo accedéis a información diferencial?

8. De métricas cuantitativas de la compañía a retorno para el fondo

9. Lecciones aprendidas de invertir en home runs

10. Aprendizajes de fracasos

11. Visión sobre el complejo panorama económico actual

12. ¿Oportunidades en 2025?

13. ¿Riesgos en 2025?

14. Características de los mejores inversores

15. Consejos para inversores jóvenes

16. ¿Si pudieras montar tu fondo de inversión ideal, que harías?

1. ¿Que es Trea y cómo funciona?

Trea es una de las mayores empresas de gestión independientes en España, manejamos más de 8.000 millones de Euros bajo gestión y principalmente hacemos de marca blanca de dos casas: Cajamar y Mediolanum. Luego, tenemos otros fondos más pequeños de marca puramente Trea. Y al margen de esto, también asesoramos a otros fondos de inversión.

Lideramos estrategias de renta fija y renta variable en estos fondos de inversión de forma independiente, sin depender de ningún banco aunque recibamos su capital. No hay alguien que nos diga que guías debemos seguir para nuestra gestión, salvo nosotros mismos. Esto implica más libertad a la hora de tomar decisión y posibilidad de aportar un valor algo mayor por el simple hecho de no estar tan acotados como pueden ser otras gestoras de fondos bancarios.

Aterrizándolo más, hacemos de nexo de unión entre oferta y demanda de dinero. La gente nos presta ahorros para invertirlos y sacar una rentabilidad. Nosotros lo conducimos a aquellas empresas que tengan necesidades financieras y que puedan devolver un valor superior al cabo del tiempo gracias a la recepción de dicho dinero. Y esta inversión la realizamos vía acciones o vía deuda. Vía acciones es lo que se conoce como renta variable. Vía deuda es renta fija, dicha así porqué tiene un vencimiento y un cupón fijo.

¿Cómo se gana dinero? Pues por ejemplo, inviertes en una compañía, esta compañía utiliza ese dinero para construir un activo, y este activo con el paso del tiempo si hay buena gestión empieza a generar beneficios. El deudor, es decir quien ha aportado deuda, recibe el dinero primero. Una vez restados los intereses de dicha deuda, se genera el beneficio neto, que es lo que se queda el accionista. De forma que fíjate, la renta fija no sólo es que tenga fijo el vencimiento y el cupón, si no que tiene derecho de prelación por encima del accionista. El riesgo es inferior. Y cómo la rentabilidad en un principio va acorde al riesgo, al ser menor el riesgo en renta fija, la rentabilidad también es menor. Cómo en renta variable el riesgo es mayor, en un principio la posibilidad de rentabilidad es superior. Esto lo vemos en especial con el paso del tiempo en series largas, no en 1 mes o en 1 año, si no en periodos de 5, 10, 15 o 20 años. ¿Cuánto es la diferencia a nivel cuantitativo? Normalmente entre un 5% y un 7%.

Así que eso es lo que hacemos, cogemos el ahorro de la gente y en función de su perfil invertimos en una cosa u otra.

2. Bajo el capó del dilema gestión pasiva vs gestión activa

Cómo bien apuntas, en renta variable, que es mi foco, podríamos decir que hay dos escuelas: la gestión pasiva y la gestión activa. La gestión pasiva es invertir en un fondo que replica el índice bursátil exactamente igual, con lo que no hay ningún ingrediente intelectual por parte de la forma de invertir. La gestión activa implica que el gestor toma decisiones activas que determinan que acciones compra y que acciones vende el fondo de inversión de forma diferencial.

Poniendo un ejemplo de futbol. La gestión pasiva sería invertir en todos los equipos de la primera liga del país, con los mismos jugadores, las mismas alineaciones, y todo igual. La gestión activa implicaría mas decisión y variabilidad de opciones - unos equipos si otros no, plantillas particulares en cada equipo, etc.

Por tanto, si inviertes en un indexado (gestión pasiva), consigues la media de los equipos de futbol - es decir, la rentabilidad del índice. Por otro lado, con la gestión activa lo que intentas es dar un valor añadido. ¿Que significa esto en mercados financieros? Obtener rentabilidad por encima del índice para que le resulte a la persona más rentable invertir en nuestros fondos y no en un índice. Por suerte, nuestros fondos en Trea lo han logrado en varias ocasiones, aunque no en todos los años.

¿Cuánto mas superior tienes que ser realizando gestión activa para demostrar tu performance? Miremos los costes de gestión.

En un indexado tienes una comisión de gestión que suele ser un 0.15 - 0.30 %. Es decir, de cada 100€, el fondo se queda 15 - 30 céntimos. En gestión activa, cómo el riesgo es mayor también lo es la comisión. Suele ondear el 1.5%. De cada €100, el fondo se queda €1.5. ¿Qué resultados debes conseguir para demostrar que eres mejor? Como mínimo 1.2% (1.5% - 0.3%) cada año. Pero eso no es suficiente. Con eso el cliente se queda prácticamente igual. Normalmente el standard en la industria para demostrar que estas siendo superior a la gestión pasiva incluyendo costes, es lograr un margen de entre el 2% - 3%.

¿Que porcentaje de fondos activos en el mercado cumple esto? Hay estudios Europeos sobre todos los fondos de inversión de este estilo activos en la geografía que ayudan a poner luz en la pregunta. Si vemos todos los fondos comercializados en Europa, independientes y bancarios, gestión pasiva y gestión activa, encontramos que aproximadamente tan sólo un 25% de los fondos supera al índice - es decir, es mejor que gestión puramente pasiva. Y si nos vamos a Estados Unidos, este % es incluso inferior llegando al 10%, porqué batir el índice es mucho más complejo ya que la cultura financiera en ese país es superior y hay mas calidad general en el tejido inversor y empresarial.

3. Secretos detrás de las dinámicas de crecimiento de AUMs en mega fondos

Buena pregunta y muy vinculado a lo que comentábamos antes. Voy a responder con algo de biología sobresimplificada. Darwin decía que la evolución de las especies se basa principalmente en la capacidad de adaptación a su medio. Si miramos desde fuera lo que comentaba anteriormente sobre resultados de la industria, se podría deducir que si hay un % de fondos tan alto que lo hace peor que el índice, deben desaparecer ya que la gente preferirá lógicamente una inversión pasiva que sea exactamente el índice y sólo sobrevivirán los fondos de inversión top quartile o top decile con rentabilidades superiores. Por lo que la gente que quiera ese resultado superior acudirá a eso, y tanto fondos como clientes se adaptarán al contexto de rentabilidad de forma perfecta y fin de la historia.

Pero esto no ocurre así. ¿La razón? Es relativamente simple. Vamos a decir que a la fuerza en los mercados financieros el poder de una gestora no reside en la gestión per se necesariamente, si no en quien tiene la llave del cliente. De tal forma que, quien tiene la llave del cliente es quien influye en última instancia sobre que debe hacer el asesoramiento al cliente. El cliente, por lo general, no va a estar informándose arduamente de quien es el mejor gestor o la mejor opción de inversión, si no que lo delega en el asesor financiero. Cuando la tía María quiere saber que hace con su dinero va a su asesor del banco a preguntarle. ¿Que hace el asesor? Pues al final va a los propios fondos de inversión del banco que son los que más retorno le dan en base a su esquema de incentivos y a la arquitectura cerrada de su trabajo. Aunque no sean los que mayor rentabilidad logren.

Además no es sólo esto, si no que otra curiosidad que ocurre en fondos de este estilo como pueden ser los bancarios no independientes, es que ni siquiera les encaja en su estrategia ir a por las mejores rentabilidades en su operativa inversora. ¿Por qué? Porqué si lo hacen super bien y consiguen un home run, atraerán a más clientes que querrán invertir en ese fondo que ha tenido un año espectacular. Pero la rentabilidad siempre va de la mano del riesgo y normalmente de no hacerlo de forma espectacular constantemente. Si lo has hecho muy bien es que has asumido un riesgo notable y es posible que algún año la vida no sea tan brillante si no todo lo contrario. Esto es casi inherente a la gestión activa. Quizás en la suma de 5 - 10 años tus resultados son brutales, pero has tenido algún bache fuerte en el camino seguro. ¿Qué pasará entonces con este tipo de cliente bancario? Que se enfadará en los momentos malos, llamará a los asesores, se quejará en las oficinas, etc. ¿Conclusión? Hazlo más o menos como el índice, todo será más tranquilo y suave, y seguirás creciendo en activos bajo gestión igualmente a fuerza de puro crecimiento bancario, que en Europa es especialmente grande.

4.¿Cómo funciona el proceso de liderar inversión en renta variable para un gran fondo?

Realizando gestión activa en renta variable, el objetivo ideal es conseguir un alfa significativo, es decir, que la diferencia positiva entre mi fondo y el benchmark de referencia (el índice de turno) sea relevante. Si lo es quiere decir que tu habilidad a la hora de analizar y elegir compañías es buena.

¿Cuál es el día a día en este proceso para nosotros? No tengo una formula mágica, pero lo que me ha funcionado estos últimos 15 años ha sido lo que llamo análisis bottom up - empezar a mirar compañías desde abajo de todo en contraposición con otros inversores que empiezan desde arriba estilo macro economía y así configuran su cartera de una forma u otra mientras dedican mucho tiempo a estudiar la economía y no tanto a estudiar las empresas en detalle.

Para mi, la macro no deja de ser el sumatorio de comportamientos humanos, y mi visión es que nosotros somos mucho más que las dinámicas económicas. ¿Entonces, cómo lo hacemos? Dividimos en dos cosas: proceso de análisis y proceso de gestión.

Primero clasificamos las compañías en 6 tipos. 3 de ellos se encuentran en lo que llamamos curva de adopción S. Las primeras son Deep Growth porqué el futuro puede ser super brillante pero ahora mismo no estás ganando con ellas (ejemplo actual, empresas de inteligencia artificial). Las siguientes son las Compounder, compañías que están en fase creciente de adaptación donde en los últimos 10 años los beneficios han sido superiores al 10% anual y de forma estable, con poca volatilidad (ejemplo, Hermes). Y el tercer grupo serían las compañías Estables, que son aquellas entidades más sólidas donde todo el mundo ya tiene sus productos (ejemplo, Apple).

Después saltamos a las compañías de corte cíclico y aquí encontramos 2 tipos, las Quality que son aquellas cuyos beneficios suben y bajan pero que después de un ciclo económico de 10 años los beneficios siguen siendo superiores (ejemplo, chips para automóviles), y las Deep, que son compañías puramente cíclicas donde después de un ciclo económico ya no se puede ganar más dinero (ejemplo, minería).

Y finalmente, tenemos el tipo #6 de target al que llamamos Situaciones Especiales, que suelen ser Compounder o Estables, que por alguna razón (por ejemplo, COVID) han bajado muchísimo los beneficios.

Pues bien, nuestra primera clasificación para las ca. 60.000 empresas que cotizan en el mundo, es esta. Agrupamos todas y las clasificamos en estas tipologías.

¿En cuáles estamos más cómodos invirtiendo? En las Compounder o las Estables, porqué si tomamos estudios de periodos de 10 a 15 años sobre renta variable, como por ejemplo el MSCI World en periodos de 15 años, vemos que el 85% de la rentabilidad viene explicada por el crecimiento de los beneficios. El otro 15% porqué se está pagando más por metro cuadrado (sea se, el PER).

Pues bien, si el 85% de la rentabilidad viene explicada por el crecimiento de los beneficios, coño vamos a esas empresas dónde crecen los beneficios. Además, si son compañías Compounder que tienen crecimiento constante de los beneficios entorno al 10% - 15% unido a poca volatilidad a 10 años vista, significa que existe una ventaja competitiva. Algo especial tienen que tener para mantener el negocio así. Si tu y yo nos juntamos ahora y montamos una panadería que es la primera de nuestra ciudad, con precios caros, y nos forramos porqué toda la ciudad viene a comprarnos, probablemente llegará relativamente rápido el momento dónde alguien nos haga competencia y no podamos aguantar ese crecimiento estable tanto tiempo. Pero si eres Microsoft, montas uno de los primeros sistemas operativos mainstream y aún seguimos utilizándolo tanta gente después de tantos años e incluso gigantes tecnológicos de visión operativa cerrada como Apple dejan instalarlo en su hardware, se puede interpretar como una señal de que no es solo un tema de crecimiento en un momento dado si no de defensibilidad para la empresa y coste de cambio para el cliente.

Y esto era sobre proceso de análisis, pero luego nos vamos a proceso de gestión. Y la verdad es que no es todo números. Fácilmente un 80% de nuestro trabajo es entender que hace el negocio, cómo lo hace, y para quién lo hace - gran peso del ángulo cualitativo. De hecho si alguien ha visto la típica película de wall street de turno y entra en nuestra oficina, verá la antítesis. Nosotros somos silencio, parece una biblioteca. El foco principal es entender las dinámicas de negocio, comprender como ese animal llamado empresa se adapta a su entorno, si sobrevivirá dentro de 5 años o no, y si florecerá lo suficiente para generar alfa.

5. ¿Siguiendo esta línea, cuál es vuestro blueprint checklist para analizar compañías más en detalle?

Yo hice el doctorado hace bastantes años, y me ayudó mucho en dos facetas: cuidar mucho las fuentes de información y estructurar dicha información.

¿Qué buscamos? Principalmente tres cosas. Y si me permites, para visualizarlo, nos vamos a ir de viaje a la Edad Media.

Tu y yo, Pol, tenemos un castillo. En la Edad Media todos se pelean entre todos, por aquí y por allá. Por tanto, ¿Qué queremos en el castillo? Que este bien protegido. ¿Qué significa eso en una empresa? Pues oye, tener un buen servicio/producto y que esto tenga una ventaja competitiva. Nosotros vemos 5 principales. Primera, coste de cambio de producto (ejemplo: Whatsapp o Microsoft Office). Segunda, efecto red, es decir que un cliente extra aporte un valor añadido significativo a tu empresa (ejemplo: Visa, más la compran, más se usa, y más establecimientos la aceptan). Tercera, tamaño. A más tamaño, más dominación, y más control del mercado (ejemplo: fabricantes de aviones). Cuarta, Intangibles. Este es el caso de patentes o marcas (ejemplo: Louis Vuitton). Quinta, ser el más barato (ejemplo: Arabia Saudita y el petróleo). Esto es nuestro castillo, que al final se resume en que te permite poner precios superiores o poder vender más cantidad. Y si no puedes ninguno de los dos, que tu proceso productivo sea el más barato. Ventaja en precio, ventaja en cantidad, o ventaja en costes.

Perfecto, ahora tenemos el castillo protegido. ¿Cuál sería el siguiente paso? Crecer. Nos gusta que el negocio crezca, por lo tanto miramos variables de que ha sido el crecimiento, lo que es actualmente, y lo que puede ser. Ya sea precio porqué puedas trasladar la inflación a tus productos, o cantidad porqué estes ganando cuota de mercado o porqué tu sector este creciendo. Por ejemplo, Microsoft pasando de estar centrado en Windows a abrir una nueva línea y lanzar vertical Cloud. Todas las empresas que trabajan con Windows pueden ver como paso natural pasarse a la nube, Microsoft gestiona esa transición natural y crece su cuota de mercado.

Y finalmente, la tercera pata, el Riesgo. No es lo mismo montar tu castillo en un lugar que en otro. Lo ideal es que tenga poco riesgo, por ejemplo que no haya un cliente que aglutine mucho peso de la facturación, un proveedor con mucha más influencia que todos los demás, o riesgo de tecnología / disrupción, entendido como el riesgo de que haya dos chavales en un garaje que me pueden fastidiar todo el negocio.

6. ¿Cómo funciona la evaluación del equipo en targets de inversión de tanto tamaño?

Seguimos tres pasos principales:

1. Análisis de la evolución de beneficios

2. Esquema de incentivos de la compañía

3. Proceso de toma de decisiones

1. Análisis de la evolución de beneficios. Lo primero es analizar el histórico en lo que afecta a beneficios, ver como se ha comportado el equipo gestor. Te voy a poner un ejemplo en compañías Cíclicas. Cuando analizas una de estas, lo que buscas es que cuando el equipo gestor se encuentra en el pico positivo del ciclo, no se haya emborrachado de beneficios y empiecen a hacer demasiados gastos sub-óptimos (e.g. comprar compañías) así como incrementar demasiado su endeudamiento - vamos, que no les pique la avispa de la codicia. En una cíclica arriba de todo, hay que ser de todo menos codicioso. Lo que tienes que hacer en ese contexto, es devolver la deuda. Porqué una empresa quiebra cuando hay demasiada deuda. Cuando estas en la parte baja del ciclo y te encuentras con poca deuda, entonces si que puedes comprar compañías y además a precios más bajos. Por tanto, cuando analizamos un equipo gestor de una compañía de esta tipología, le prestamos especial atención a esto.

2. Esquema de incentivos de la compañía. También observamos que el esquema de incentivos contribuya a la ventaja competitiva de la compañía de la compañía. Aquí, nos vamos a ir a las cuentas anuales e intentamos discernir que tipos de incentivos hay y cómo de alineados están dichos incentivos con el objetivo previamente mencionado. Los incentivos conducen las decisiones, y un buen equipo gestor tiene que tener esto muy dominado. Por ejemplo, si un director general tiene como incentivo incrementar el beneficio cada año, ¿Esto es bueno o malo? En principio podríamos decir que esto es bueno, porqué aumentan los beneficios, cosa positiva para el accionista. Pero fíjate, ¿Qué incentivo tiene ese directivo? Si soy una compañía estable, los beneficios crecen estables. Entonces compro empresas al precio que sea, porqué voy a capturar un incremento de beneficios para mi empresa. Consecuentemente, aquí vemos que el valor absoluto no es lo interesante - si no la rentabilidad. No es tan importante el crecimiento per se, si no el crecimiento rentable. ¿Están los incentivos bien enfocados hacia esto? ¿Estás las decisiones alineadas?

3. Proceso de toma de decisiones. ¿Cómo se toman las decisiones? ¿Qué agilidad y efectividad tiene la empresa en dicho proceso? Por ejemplo, nosotros tenemos una compañía invertida que se llama AAK y hace aceites de origen vegetal para la industria alimenticia. Esta empresa tiene una sede central que determina que los incentivos sean iguales para cada director de planta que tienen por el mundo: retornos y márgenes. Al mismo tiempo, contemplaron la opción de que cada director general de planta tiene una elevada soberanía para llegar a esos objetivos. Empezaron a hacer pruebas piloto con esta nueva forma de trabajar, funcionaron, y poco a poco más directores generales quisieron integrar la nueva metodología. ¿Que implicó estas decisiones que tomó la sede central? Que tenían una previsión de crecimiento de X en 4 años, y la acabaron alcanzando en 2.

Evidentemente, hay que decir que esto puede funcionar para detectar señales positivas pero también negativas. Me viene a la mente otra empresa, cuyo nombre no voy a mencionar, dónde realizando este análisis acabamos encontrando muchos niveles de toma de decisiones y muy poca libertad - capas y capas de personas dónde antes de decidir y actuar tenían que preguntar todo a sus respectivos jefes. Adicionalmente, una compañía grande internacional, que añadía complejidad. Entonces vimos que había tanta fricción en estos mecanismos de incentivos y dinámicas de decisión, que los clientes pedían al equipo comercial modificaciones en el producto que podían permitir un impacto relevante positivo en ventas, pero para cuando esa información pasaba del comercial, a su jefe, al jefe regional, al jefe del país, y al director general, ya habían pasado 9 meses y era tarde.

7. ¿Cómo accedéis a información diferencial?

Nuestro proceso es algo distinto a las demás casas y te explico porqué. Cualquier empresa gestora, al final lo que hace es buscar información. El primer lugar va a ser la información pública, como las cuentas anuales.

El segundo es oye, vamos a intentar hablar con un analista de un banco de inversión que sigue 4-5 empresas en especial y se sabe hasta la talla de camisa de los directivos. Entonces vas, hablas con él un poco para que te sitúe, te dice quien es quien, resumen de la estrategia de la compañía, y demás. Sorprendentemente muchos inversores se quedan aquí y ya está.

A nosotros nos gusta seguir profundizando con la compañía directamente. Así que llamamos, hablar con el de relación con inversores y le preguntamos varias cosas. ¿Cómo se toman las decisiones en la empresa? ¿Quienes son los responsables? ¿Cuáles son los mandos intermedios? Luego, si esa empresa tiene un día del inversor, típico Capital Markets Day, pues ahí aprovechamos la oportunidad de hablar con muchos directivos que no suelen ser tan fáciles de pillar durante el año (por ejemplo, gente de producto o más técnica, que normalmente no esta siempre accesible a inversores para resolver dudas). Adicionalmente, también vamos a visitar compañías in situ. Llamamos, decimos que queremos ir, y nos plantamos allí para ir adquiriendo más información. Y por si fuese poco, también algo bastante diferencial que hacemos es que no nos quedamos sólo con la compañía en si misma, si no que intentamos hablar con ex trabajadores, ex directivos, proveedores, clientes, etc. - vamos a tener escaneado todo el ecosistema de la empresa. Lo bueno de tener más tamaño, es que tenemos más recursos para ejecutar mejores análisis y reducir la probabilidad de fallos.

Dicho esto, se que estarás pensando - es lo más lógico del mundo. Pero cómo decía al principio, te aseguro que la gran mayoría de gestoras no lo hacen. Se quedan con algo de info pública y lo que te dice el banco de inversión, y listos. Que no es que sea mala información la del analista del banco, pero al final son empresas con mucha rotación que te quieren vender el producto de turno que les cuadre. En mi opinión si bien hay que valorar su trabajo, también hay que ser consciente de hasta que punto te aporta. Se debe profundizar más y tener una visión más completa.

Y si quieres más concreción (que se que te gusta), te diría que el 30% de las gestoras ni llega a leerse los informes de los analistas. Y de ese 70% restante, que hable con analistas y hable con las empresas, te diría que somos el 15-20% de los inversores que hay ahí fuera. Muy poca gente va más allá.

8. De métricas cuantitativas de la compañía a retorno para el fondo

Hemos comentado algunas cosas en este aspecto como rango porcentual anual de crecimiento de beneficios que nos puede parecer atractivo, pero me gusta la pregunta porqué es un tema que merece más profundización. Sobretodo en un aspecto en concreto - lo que llamamos rentabilidad del 50%.

Lo que solemos hacer es estandarizar valoraciones de compañías para que nos resulten más fáciles de comparar independientemente de la tipología. Entonces miramos cómo debería ser el beneficio el 5º año y su evolución durante cada año, al mismo tiempo que analizamos a cuanto se paga el metro cuadrado de beneficio. Cómo si fuese una casa, intento entender que puede pasar con este precio por metro cuadrado y con el número de metros cuadrados que tengo en propiedad. ¿Y que busco? Busco que la combinación de precio y cantidad me de un mínimo de 50%. ¿Por qué un 50%? Porqué nos movemos en el sweet spot de una TAE del 10-15% anual.

¿Cómo vamos de estas métricas a retorno para el fondo? Básicamente es por crecimiento, por dividendo, o por un híbrido de los dos.

Un ejemplo por crecimiento sería nosotros detectamos algo interesante y apostamos por ello. Posteriormente los analistas de bancos de inversión revisarán los dos primeros años de una compañía, verán que los beneficios van subiendo y que la cotización aún no ha cambiado, la compañía por tanto está barata y empezarán a hablar positivamente haciendo de cheerleader de la misma. En última instancia esto hará subir la cotización, acercándola a nuestro target.

Casuística por dividendo. Una empresa gana mucho dinero en un ciclo concreto y no tiene alternativas para invertir. ¿Qué hace? Nos lo paga como dividendos. El precio de la compañía no cambia pero los beneficios van subiendo y los reparte cada año. Si cada año me da un 10% de lo que he pagado, mi rentabilidad por dividendo ese año es un 10%.

De igual forma, también pueden darse modelos híbridos como puede ser el caso de McKesson, una empresa líder mundial en distribución de productos farmacéuticos. Un Amazon de farmacias muy enfocado en logística de este sector. Esta empresa crece porqué el precio de los medicamentos sube anualmente un 3% aproximadamente. Aquí ya tienes la variable precio. Por otro lado, la empresa sólo esta enfocada en Estados Unidos por lo que la variable cantidad podríamos pensar que se mantiene más o menos constante. Sin embargo, cada vez se consumen más medicamentos por lo que la Q (cantidad) también crece en este caso, digamos que una estimación de un 3% también.

Como resultado, los beneficios te pueden crecer un 6%. Además, una empresa de este estilo genera tanta caja que dedica parte de eso a recomprar acciones. Fruto de esta decisión me sube el beneficio por acción ya que el mismo pastel llamado beneficios cada año se reparte entre menos gente, con lo que mi porción de pastel sube el 6% equivalente a la recompra de acciones.

9.¿Lecciones de invertir en home runs?

Analizando estos contextos hacemos como el piloto de avión antes de salir, intentando asegurar que todos los checks son correctos. Pero siempre hay que ser capaz de armonizar esto con un empuje fuera de lo normal cuando intuyes algo especial.

Recuerdo una compañía de un sector que me encantaba que era el de aromas, fragancias y sabores. El 30% de los aromas, fragancias y sabores se renueva a nivel global. Estas empresas tienen sus fórmulas químicas, les viene un Nestlé o un Unilever, y les dice quiero que me hagáis este jabón, este desodorante, estas patatas, etc. Y ellos lo hacen y lo venden. ¿Quién les hace el marketing? Sus clientes. ¿Qué reciben ellos? Un royalty. Es interesante por que es un sector asegurado dónde los clientes si o si tienen que acudir a ti y hay un efecto red potente, ya que a más clientes tengo, más inversión puedo hacer en expertos que me va a repercutir en mejor producto y de nuevo en más posicionamiento comercial.

Pues bien, invertimos en esa empresa. Hacemos nuestro proceso de analizar todas las empresas del sector. Habían varias muy buenas. Alto precio por metro cuadrado. Pero nos dimos cuenta, escaneando todo el panorama, que había una muy pequeña que cotizaba en Francia llamada Robertet que no la seguía nadie por lo que apenas tenía información disponible pero que tenia crecimientos buenos y precios bajos. Dije voy a hablar con ellos. Los llamé, solo hablaban francés, me pasaron entre 4-5 personas diferentes y al final encontré a alguien que me entendía. Lo primero que me dijo: “No puedo hablar ahora no tengo tiempo, manda un email”. Y yo: “Pero si no tengo ningún email”. Total apretando un poco, al final forzado me compartió un email. Le escribí si podía tener una llamada de 10 minutos con ellos, dando por hecho que nunca sería posible. ¿Mi pitch? Oye somos un fondo Español de 8 billones de Euros que invertimos a largo plazo, nos gusta tu compañía, no te voy a molestar mucho. Más allá de esto, la única pregunta algo más push que realicé fue para saber con cuantos grandes clientes trabajaban o estaban a punto de trabajar. En ese mercado, es como estar en la lista de un portero de discoteca - o entras o no entras. Uno de los clientes gigantes del sector trabajaba con 3 compañías. ¿Quien resultó que iba a ser la 4ª? Robertet. ¿Que iba a ocurrir con las ventas? Subida. Además desde un punto de vista de producto tenían unos campos de rosas y lavanda bastante únicos que descubrimos que hasta la competencia los usaban como clientes. Y no sólo esto, si no que su evolución de márgenes y retornos crecían positivamente en línea con los otros competidores de sector, con la diferencia de una muy buena relación deuda - generación de caja y unos múltiples de 12x beneficios en lugar de 23x beneficios como otros comparables. ¿Que pasó con la compañía? De un precio de 250 a 1000. Home run brutal.

Los aprendizajes de este caso fueron varios.

• Tener muy claras las dinámicas del sector y muy por la mano la información de la mayoría de compañías en él

• Especial foco en métricas clave que determinan precios atractivos para comprar en el mercado (e.g. evolución de ventas, márgenes, retornos, deuda, etc)

• Atención a eventos que puedan afectar a reducir el precio sin que impliquen deterioro de la calidad de la compañía (e.g. COVID, Trump, etc)

• Comparativa evolución métricas y precio vs competidores

10. ¿Lecciones de fracasos?

Me vienen dos relevantes a la mente, una sobre working capital y otra sobre codicia.

La primera, si el working capital sobre ventas está por encima del 20%, me cuesta. Este ratio significa que por cada incremento de 100€ sobre ventas, €20 debes guardarlo por ejemplo como inventario. Imagínate que tienes un supermercado y que para incrementar ventas €100 debes abrir otro. ¿Para abrir otro que necesitarás? Al menos €20 extra de inventario para no tener las estanterías vacías. ¿Qué implica esto? Que todo crecimiento de ventas debe llevar de la mano un crecimiento de flujo de caja. ¿Qué puede darse aquí si no se gestiona correctamente? Que o crezco y no genero caja, o me endeudo, o dejo de crecer.

Un ejemplo de esto lo tuvimos con una compañía China de grifería invertida por Grohe, que parecía iba a convertirse en una especie de segunda marca de Grohe. Lo veíamos todo muy bien. Hablamos con Investor Relations de la compañía, todo OK. Pero entonces, pasado un tiempo, vimos que el working capital no paraba de subir y subir hasta llegar al 50% de las ventas. Cuando llegó a tal extremo nos pareció una red flag y hablamos con la compañía. Nos dijeron que estaban montando una nueva fábrica, estaban replicando todo el inventario y de ahí el working capital. Dijimos vale perfecto, entonces esto irá disminuyendo a raíz que la fábrica este en marcha y se vaya vendiendo. No fue así. Continúo subiendo y subiendo el working capital. Seguíamos hablando con la compañía y nos decían que no nos preocupásemos ya que las ventas estaban todas apalabradas y que el inventarío bajaría, reduciéndose el working capital. Pero cómo sube el working capital subió también el endeudamiento y llegó un punto que dijimos basta, acabando con una venta en pérdidas. Ahí debimos haber sido mucho más firmes en lo que respecta al monitoreo del working capital.

La segunda, la avispa de la codicia. Nos sucedió con una compañía de audífonos que era una de las líderes mundiales en su día. ¿Que sucedió durante el COVID / post COVID? Todos estábamos en casa y viviendo en remoto, por lo que las compras de buenos auriculares vivieron un boom. Pico de ventas, pico de beneficios. Nos metimos. Se fue dandocrecimiento inorgánico. ¿Pero que sucedía en esta época? El hype de este tipo de productos estaba subiendo mucho los precios. Para poder realizar crecimiento inorgánico se empezó a tirar mucho de deuda. A parte después del periodo post-covid, el mercado para este tipo de productos se relajó. Al final acabamos viendo que se iba a tardar muchísimo en devolver la deuda y que el equipo gestor iba a trabajar más para la deuda que para el accionista. ¿Que hicimos? Vendimos la empresa y aprendimos que a veces hay que aprender a ser mucho más calmados aunque los números y el contexto sean excepcionales en situaciones únicas.

11. ¿Visión sobre el complejo panorama económico actual?

En los últimos 10-15 años, los beneficios han subido casi un 300% en la bolsa Americana y un ca. 130% en la bolsa Europea. Basado en datos, hemos vivido en los últimos años uno de mejores periodos. ¿Estamos en lo alto de la montaña rusa? El precio cuadrado ha estado por las nubes, si. Pero el nuevo crecimiento esperado también es muy elevado ya que parece que entramos en otra etapa de deep growth con más revolución tecnológica, aunque al mismo tiempo cierta sensación de caos global no se disipa. Veremos.

Esto en principio puede ser positivo pero soy algo escéptico sobre los planes de Europa en sectores clave. Europa ha vivido algo de crecimiento este año. El PER (precio de la acción / beneficio por acción) estaba en el rango alto en Estados Unidos y consecuentemente parte de ese dinero se ha ido a Europa en busca de mejores rentabilidades. Europa ha subido un 10% mientras Estados Unidos se mantenía o bajaba, porqué Europa estaba más barata. Quitando esta pequeña excepción, la brecha con Estados Unidos seguirá y quizás se acrecentará. En especial teniendo en cuenta que las compañías Europeas son más Cíclicas tradicionales, y las Americanas más Coumpounder innovadoras dominantes.

Alemania ha anunciado muchísimo gasto público como parte del plan estratégico de refortalecimiento de Europa, pero eso no entra en un año si no que será dilatado en el tiempo. ¿Llegaremos a 31 de Diciembre de 2025 con una diferencia del 20% - 25% de Europa sobre Estados Unidos? Me cuesta verlo. Trump por su lado esta moviendo muchas medidas de desregulación interna para facilitar montar empresas y bajar impuestos, al mismo tiempo que empujando el muy comentado plan de tarifas. ¿Porqué empezar con este ángulo tan doloroso de primeras? Porqué quiere llevar la economía a cierta mentalidad de recesión. Si los Americanos piensan que las cosas van a ir mal, frenan su consumo. Al frenar el consumo, el PIB disminuye, baja la inflación, y la reserva federal puede bajar tipos de interés. Con lo endeudados que están y no pudiendo endeudarse más, bajar los tipos es clave para ellos. La gente lo critica pero está dando un paso atrás para luego poder dar dos hacia adelante. ¿Es esto bueno para todos? Bueno, una cosa es la economía americana y otra las empresas americanas. Por no decir que los no Americanos que no estén alineados con ellos pueden sufrir.

12. ¿Oportunidades en 2025?

Todo lo relacionado con Inteligencia Artificial lo estamos mirando un poco desde la barrera, hay cosas muy interesantes pero al nivel que nos movemos nosotros nos cuesta apostar por quien va a ser el vencedor y cómo. Sin embargo nos parecen buenas oportunidades los escenarios adyacentes vinculados a proveedores y clientes. ¿Qué necesita la Inteligencia Artificial? Centros de datos. ¿Que necesitan los centros de datos? Electricidad. ¿Cómo llega esa electricidad? Cables.

También nos llama la atención mucho la atención el sector salud. Durante el COVID hubo un boom muy grande en varias compañías (e.g. Diagnósticos), y post COVID si bien hubo bache en beneficios y bajaron las cotizaciones, siguen existiendo compañías con unos crecimientos del 10%+ a precios más atractivos. Si, han pasado de estar creciendo >30% al año a mucho menos, pero sus fundamentals siguen siendo sólidos. Ejemplos de compañías interesantes son McKesson, United Health, o Thermo Fisher.

Asimismo también nos gusta el sector de lujo / semi lujo (compañías como Puig), el sector automovilístico (empresas como CIE automotive), y consumo (Nestlé, Danone).

Por último, muy cautivadora la oportunidad que se está presentando en la intersección de Inteligencia Artificial e Industria Armamentística, con esta última viviendo un rally muy llamativo últimamente. Aunque nosotros nos mantenemos fuera por motivos éticos y no invertimos en este sector.

13. ¿Riesgos en 2025?

No voy a decir nada nuevo pero el tema de Ucrania de verdad es tan importante. Ha modificado de forma muy significativa una ficha en el tablero geopolítico del mundo que habitamos. La dialéctica en conflictos se ha convertido en una política monetaria más y esto debemos tenerlo en cuenta.

Por otro lado, sobre el lobo de vendrá una crisis, vendrá una crisis. Siempre estamos un poco así. ¿Que decían los economistas en 2022 con inflaciones super altas por Ucrania? Que en el 2023 vendría una crisis de caballo. No fue el caso. Porqué el problema no era de oferta o demanda, si no de inventario. Veníamos del COVID y se produjo un efecto látigo que se dice en economía.

Pongo esta referencia porqué creo que hoy estamos más o menos igual. Todo se está agitando, el mundo está cambiando, y esto provoca nuevos movimientos. Por ejemplo, más inversión en semiconductores en Estados Unidos y en Europa ya que esto es una industria clave y necesitas menos dependencia externa de países como Taiwan que se encuentran fuera de tus fronteras. Cuando Europa y Estados unidos sean más independientes, ya no hará falta tanta dependencia externa de geografías como Taiwan. Entonces cuando China le busque las cosquillas a Taiwan no pasará nada. Esto es solo un ejemplo de esos movimientos pendulares que se dan en grandes periodos de tiempo donde se alterna caos y estabilidad. Ahora estamos más en caos quizás pero forma parte de la historia.

¿Que más riesgos vemos? Riesgo creciente de polarización de la política en todos los países. En los últimos 10-20 años, el voto a extrema derecha o a extrema izquierda, ha subido de forma exponencial. ¿Por qué? Porqué como dice Ray Dalio, estamos en una fase de desapalancamiento y la polarización es un ingrediente clave. El desapalancamiento o ciclo de deuda dura 100 años. 100 tuvimos los felices años 20 y ya vemos como terminó. Recordemos que Hitler fue votado. Esto es lo que me da miedo, la polarización. Un ejemplo son las tarifas, puro dilema del prisionero. A corto plazo río revuelto y para 2026 pueden pasar dos cosas. O que estas políticas nos conduzcan a una situación aún más compleja (uno de los motivos del crack del 29 fue la introducción de tarifas agresivas) dónde las economías internacionales se resientan y como consecuencia haya una bajada grande de consumo que por mucho que bajes el tipo de interés no se recupere. O que al final Trump diga mira con estas tarifas la gente ya está haciendo lo que yo quiero que es que inviertan en Estados Unidos o que Europa compra más armamento, pues listos fuera tarifas y a crecer. El boom tecnológico de AI quizás empuja la balanza más hacia el segundo escenario y no tanto hacia el primero.

14. Características de los mejores inversores

Pues mira, varias cosas.

• Foco en beneficios. Eso marca la cotización. El crecimiento de los beneficios es lo que a largo plazo te da el éxito.

• Patrones. Escuchando a los mejores inversores en situaciones como por ejemplo atendiendo a los Annual Meetings de Berkshire Hathaway ves que existen patrones de éxito. No todo es la misma música pero el ritmo suena. Importante hacer un esfuerzo en aprender de los mejores e irse familiarizando con esos patrones.

• Convicción, sangre fría y paciencia. Vinculado con el punto previo, uno de los factores que no paras de ver en los mejores inversores es comprar y vender con convicción, sangre fría y paciencia. Los mejores gestores dominan la calma y son poco emocionales.

• Curiosidad. Cualidad esencial de los mejores, es parte de lo que te lleva a estar en constante búsqueda de mejores oportunidades, aprender continuamente, tener pensamiento crítico, tomar decisiones y evolucionar.

15. Consejos para inversores jóvenes

Pues daría un par relativamente sencillos:

• Absorbe información. Lee todo lo relacionado con economía, finanzas, inversión, etc. Desde macroeconomía hasta libros de gestores. Mira charlas. Empápate.

• Analiza. Empieza a analizar compañías. La diferencia entre cualquier chaval y yo son las horas de vuelo. Nada más. Ni soy más inteligente ni soy más tonto.

16. ¿Si pudieses montar tu fondo de inversión ideal, que harías?

Realmente lo que ya estoy haciendo con uno de los fondos que gestionamos, de nombre Global Arrow.

Nos enfocamos en compañías donde los beneficios crecen, que tienen el ya mencionado perfil Compounder. También en compañías que denominamos Pseudobonos, donde los múltiplos son muy bajos pero el flujo de caja grande, por lo que nos van pagando dividendos de forma recurrente. ¿Esto qué implica? Que seas macroeconómicamente y sectorialmente agnóstico, porqué es el bottom up de los fundamentals de la compañía el que te guía.

Esto obviamente con unas capas de riesgo. Prefiero equivocarme un 5% que no un 10%, por lo que ese será el máximo peso de una compañía en mi portfolio. Igual por sectores, no quiero ser un fondo temático por lo que voy a limitar el sector un 25% porqué por muy correcta que sea mi tesis puede tardar tiempo en materializarse.

Y eso sería lo que tendría idealmente, que en realidad es lo que ya tengo.

¡Gracias Xavier por compartir tus Views con nosotros!

¡Gracias lector por tu tiempo e interés!

Si te ha gustado, subscríbete y nos vemos en la próxima entrevista. 🙏🏼

Hi everyone,

After another badge of 10 new interviews, we are back with the State of Views #4 to share some relevant updates and lessons.

Hope you enjoy it!

Best

Pol

Summary

• 🤝 Team: Pol doing new stuff, Gerard growing with Deale, Team changes

• 📈Traction: Getting close to 1.5m Views’ views with great stories

• 🥊 Lessons: What Saint Paul and our Views’ guests have in common

🤝Team

Pol building something new

Something more than a year ago, I (Pol) left my work as part of the Investment team at Kibo Ventures to build something new. Following this, I’ve been heads down working in silence.

Since it has not been shared publicly yet, not much to add until the next State of Views. So there I am enjoying some great views in a biker club. 😂

Gerard fighting and growing

Gerard, like the beast he is, has kept fighting and growing with his company Deale, surpassing €126k MRR, >5k business users, >5k investors users, ca. 100 SME M&A deals closed, and 33 FTEs.

A true statement to become one of the most interesting new players in Southern Europe using tech to pursue the huge opportunity of improving the SME M&A scene.

Changes

After the great opportunity of learning from #40 amazing guests while having some fun, there is a very important update to share … Gerard has taken the hard but more than fair choice of leaving Views to focus on his company Deale.

I could say lots of things but I only feel like expressing how grateful I am for our friendship Gerard. You are a reference as a friend and as a professional, you inspire me constantly and it’s been nothing but a pleasure to share this Views journey with you. Cheers to the new paths that are yet to come for us!

That being said, while this represents a new chapter for Views, I will continue with the adventure adding some fresh extra push while balancing it with my new projects!

📈 Traction

We have continued our growth, but this time in a more moderated pace with few exceptions (post #37 with Samuel Gil being one of them). In part because there is more noise in the “media space”, but also because having less time for frequent posting. Plus, taking decisions that we knew could bring less views but we found more interesting due to its social impact / personal angle.

And beyond just numbers, the new Views badge has been another singular opportunity to learn from truly amazing people.

🥊Lessons

Saint Paul’s grit

Around 57-58 AD, Saint Paul wrote the Epistle to the Romans, which includes Romans 8:18. This writing is widely regarded as one of the most significant writings in human history, and its purpose goes beyond immediate issues within the Roman Christian community. Instead, he tries to articulate the foundations of Christian theology, address unity, strengthen faith and inspire a missional mindset based on God’s redemptive plan.

Interestingly enough (specially when keeping in mind the dark context of Early Christians being so marginalised and persecuted), instead of focusing on the nice sweet things, he extremely emphasised the key role of proper suffering.

His message? Suffering was not the idea of weakness or failure that the traditional Roman culture had. But an invitation of being chosen to participate in redemption, in sanctification. Trials were an opportunity to access the biggest glory. With perseverance, character, and ultimately, hope.

In pasts State of Views, as big lessons earned from our great guests, we talked about significant elements like loving something before is lovable and the importance of hunger. These ingredients are crucial, but there is another piece of the puzzle of success we have detected in the winning patterns of our interviewees and in our own professional and personal lives.

Once you’ve been fighting for a while, both winning and losing, it’s crazy to think how much of everything depends on how do you endure hardships and chaos, and learn to evolve in a healthy way from it instead of falling into fear, confusion, inaction, victim mentality, or resentment. The best entrepreneurs and investors we have met, understand this principle in a profound manner.

And to be honest, from a geopolitical, economic, and technological standpoint, it pretty much looks like we find ourselves in a pivotal moment in human history where embracing this principle is not only essential but also holds the power to elevate us into a whole new realm of progress and possibility.

Después de sufrir falta de acceso a perfiles top cuando empezábamos, decidimos crear Views para compartir entrevistas de calidad de forma gratuita con todo el mundo al mismo tiempo que conocer a grandes profesionales y aprender mucho por el camino!

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Elisalex Löwenstein actualmente lidera Mary’s Meals España, fundación creada por Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow en Escocia, que tiene como objetivo principal luchar contra el hambre infantil con una solución sencilla, dar comida nutritiva diaria en el lugar de educación para no sólo alimentar sino reforzar comunidades vulnerables al mismo tiempo que fomentando la educación como herramienta para romper el ciclo de la pobreza.

La organización empezó en un pequeño cobertizo de hojalata en Escocia y hoy en día opera en más de 18 países en lugares como África, Asia, América Latina, y Medio Oriente, alimentando a más de 2.5 millones de niños.

En 2023, Elisalex fue la receptora en nombre de Mary’s Meals del prestigioso Premio Princesa de Asturias de la Concordia, reconociendo su labor en la lucha contra el hombre y a favor de la educación infantil.

Desde sus inicios, Elisalex vio su vida marcada por los desafíos de un mundo en conflicto, desde nacer en 1944 en Alemania en plena Segunda Guerra Mundial y pasar parte de sus primeros días de vida en un refugio antiaéreo debido a los bombardeos, hasta una juventud como asistente de enfermería en la Orden de Malta dando ayuda humanitaria a los más necesitados.

Elisalex es viuda, madre de cuatro hijos, abuela de dieciocho nietos.

Índice

1️⃣ Los inicios de Mary’s Meals España

2️⃣ Momentos clave en la aventura

3️⃣ Retos de hacer crecer Mary’s Meals

4️⃣ ¿Qué se ha hecho mal para que aún exista tanta hambre y pobreza?

5️⃣ ¿Cómo se mantiene la pasión en medio de dificultades tan abrumadoras?

6️⃣ ¿Si fueses presidenta, cómo resolverías estos problemas?

7️⃣ Lecciones aprendidas de las personas ayudadas que todos deberíamos saber

8️⃣ Consejos para emprendedores de proyectos de impacto social

9️⃣ ¿Cómo te ha ayudado tu Fe Católica en esta aventura?

1.¿Cómo empezaste Mary’s Meals en España?

Empecé con el proyecto hará ya 12 años, cuando tenía 68. Recién me había quedado viuda y decidí ir al festival de jóvenes de Medjugorje, un sitio de peregrinación Católico. Allí escuché el testimonio de Magnus MacFarlane, el founder original de Mar’s Meals, gracias a que mi sobrina trabajaba con ellos. La historia me pareció interesante y sabía que mi marido había mandado 2 o 3 donativos, pero tampoco le di más vueltas. Una cosa como muchas otras sociales que se pueden ver.

Por la noche, sin embargo, terminamos en la misma pensión que Magnus. Era un sitio de peregrinos y en la cena típico que ponen estas mesas grandes compartidas por todos. Y justo, me ponen delante de Magnus. En ese instante, por muy raro que pueda parecer, sentí físicamente una sensación en el corazón como si me fuese explotar si no habría la boca. Lo hice. Le pregunté a Magnus si estaban haciendo algo en España. Me dijo que no. Le pregunte si le podía ayudar. Me miro sorprendido pero al final me dijo que había una reunión en Escocia próximamente y que fuese.

Volví de Medjugore y hablando con mis hijos recuerdo que me dijeron literalmente si me había vuelto loca. ¡A mi edad haciendo estas cosas! Pero seguí lo que me pedía el corazón, fui a Escocia, conocí más sobre el proyecto de la mano de Magnus, junté dos amigas y con la ayuda de un abogado Español empezamos a explorar lo que implicaría montar Mary’s Meals en España. Al cabo de unos meses y con el objetivo de explorar el objetivo de ayuda principal, fui con Magnus a Malawi. Allí vi claro que era lo que tenía que hacer.

En Malawi se empezó dando de comer a un colegio de 200 niños en Noviembre de 2002 y actualmente alimentamos a más de 2,5 millones de niños. No sólo en África si no también en la India, el Líbano, Siria, Yemen, y otros lugares.

En algunos países realizamos toda la operativa, pero en otros nos asociamos con entidades locales confiables cuando es posible, para que sean las mismas comunidades las que asuman la responsabilidad y lideren su progreso, con nuestro apoyo. Por ejemplo, en Sudán del Sur la Diócesis de Rumbek (Iglesia Católica local) es un gran partner, y en la India tenemos a un grupo de sacerdotes que dedican su vida a los más pobres que nos ayuda a apoyar a las castas más marginalizadas.

2. ¿Qué momentos te han marcado más en este proyecto?

Han habido varios la verdad.

Uno fue en mi primer viaje a Malawi, Magnus se tuvo que ir a los dos días por una urgencia en otro lugar pero yo decidí quedarme. Un día me propusieron llevarme a un parvulario y me dijeron, María te conducirá hasta ahí. María era una chica joven, muy capaz, muy educada, y con un inglés espectacular. Fuimos conduciendo y entonces, ya pasado un rato, veo que nos empecemos a meter por una zona honestamente horrible. Barrio asqueroso, desague con necesidades de personas en mitad de la misma calle, todo muy sucio y extremadamente pobre. Yo siendo incapaz de visualizar encontrarme un parvulario ahí en medio, le pregunté con delicadeza si de verdad sabía bien el camino o se había perdido. Ella se rió a carcajadas y me dijo: “Yo soy de este barrio”. Y entonces me contó su historia. Me contó como se quedó huérfana de padre y madre con 8 años. Cómo creció con su abuela en un ambiente muy duro, sin ninguna perspectiva de vida ni sueños ni nada - salvo poder comer un día más. Entonces llegó Mary’s Meals al colegio del barrio y su abuela le dijo: “Mira, no se si sirve de algo eso de la enseñanza pero la comida si, así que no faltarás un día al colegio”. Desde entonces, María empezó a ir entusiasmada cada día al colegio y a esforzarse al máximo. Acabó consiguiendo una beca, pudiendo estudiar más y conseguir un buen trabajo. Y lo más importante, me dijo, dentro de un mes me caso con el hombre que yo quiero - algo muy muy excepcional en el mundo donde ella se encontraba.

Otro de estos momentos, me sucedió llegando a un colegio y encontrándome a una madre que quería hablar conmigo de algo importante. Me compartió que toda la familia estaba pasando mucha hambre, porqué vivían al día de lo vendido en el mercado, y que le preocupaba su hija. Y entonces me dijo: “Quiero demostrar a la familia que mi hija no le quita comida al abuelo.” Esto me extrañó y le pregunté que quería decir. Entonces ella me explicó que aunque la ley del país lo impide, existe el posible riesgo que si en tu familia grande (más allá de padres y hermanos, incluyendo abuelos, tíos y primos), sucede que el abuelo no tiene bastante comida y parece que la niña come mucho, cualquiera de la familia tiene derecho a buscarle marido a la niña. Entonces cuando no recibía la comida de Mary’s Meals, en casa intentaban no darle mucho de comer para que nadie pudiese decir nada. Esta niña tenía 12 años.

3. ¿Cuales son los retos que destacarías en el proceso de hacer crecer Mary’s Meals?

Quizás es una obviedad, pero más allá de lo dura que pueda ser la dinámica operacional sobre el terreno en las comunidades con las que colaboramos, lo más difícil es conseguir apoyo aquí.

El modelo económico de nuestra actividad se basa en donaciones y esto no es fácil. Pero lo afrontamos invirtiendo tiempo y esfuerzo en relaciones, hablando de lo que hacemos con honestidad a través de varios canales como libros o internet, compartiendo testimonios, y buscando a terceros de confianza que nos puedan dar una validación externa como Fundación Lealtad que realiza auditorías externas de fundaciones para acreditar la confianza que merecen.

En esta línea, normalmente la acción se basa en muchas acciones pequeñas pero de vez en cuando cae alguna bendición como por ejemplo una gran donación que recibimos el año pasado de un emprendedor del sector de semiconductores en Taiwan.

4. ¿Qué se ha hecho mal para qué en las zonas en las que ayudáis haya tanta pobreza y hambre?

Se les ha dejado caer.

El final del periodo colonial y la retirada de las colonias se gestionó en general de forma muy agresiva. En pocos años, en lugares como Africa e India se quitó absolutamente todo sin pensar en el impacto negativo que eso podía tener. Estos continentes pasaron de tener al menos un poco de elementos básicos de una sociedad como colegios, a no tener ni personas que supiesen educar. Se les abandonó y se les dejó caer. La URSS y Mao son buenos ejemplos de cómo hacer esto mal, en contraposición con España que en mi opinión fue mejor gestora.

A esto se suma el despotismo de algunas de estas colonias ya previa a la retirada, mucha falta de liderazgo, abundante corrupción, las luchas étnicas internas de varios de estos países, las decisiones separatistas post época colonial que tendían a extirpar y marginalizar de la misma colonia las zonas más pobres, y el cambio climático afectando duramente a ciudadania que aún vive como hace 200 años a merced total de la naturaleza.

5. ¿Cómo mantienes la pasión cuando los problemas que intentas resolver son tan masivos que te abruman?

Cada niño que alimentamos puede seguir en el colegio. Es una oportunidad de seguir adelante. De no tener que vivir siempre escapando de lo malo. Sólo por ese niño, ya vale la pena toda la lucha. Y además el impacto que puede llegar a tener en una comunidad, aunque sea sólo una persona, puede ser muy relevante.

Me viene a la mente un día que fui a visitar un colegio de monjas cerca de la capital de Malawi. A medida que nos vamos acercando, toda la zona de suburbios se veía cada vez peor. Extremadamente pobre, sucia y peligrosa. El camino fue muy desagradable. De repente llegamos a la puerta del recinto, entramos, y nos encontramos un colegio estupendo. Todo impecable, un huerto precioso, y varios corrales con gallinas, conejos y cabras, para comer. Todo muy bien cuidado. Me sorprendió tanto la diferencia de un colegio tan especial en medio de una ciudad poblado tan complicada, que no pude evitar interrogar a las monjas sobre cómo esto era posible. Parece ser que una de estas monjas había recibido algo de educación básica sobre agricultura, sistemas de regadío, ganadería, y cosas por el estilo. Gracias a ella fueron capaces de montar un colegio tan bonito, además de autosuficiente en temas de comida, que llegaba a superar 180 niños escolarizados.

6. ¿Si fueses la presidenta de uno de estos países, qué pasos específicos darías para mejorar la situación?

Intentaría que desde el extranjero se entendiese lo que es mi país y buscaría buenos socios que no me exploten.

Lamentablemente, África tiene una historia pasada y presente de malos líderes no sólo gestionando ineficientemente de forma independiente si no también cogiendo dinero a cualquier precio de socios explotadores que no respetan el país.

Sin embargo, hay personas entre las que me cuento que piensan que esto puede cambiar. Y las misiones internacionales pueden ser una herramienta clave.

Por ejemplo, recientemente el nuevo presidente de Tanzania ha estado realizando varios viajes a ver distintas empresas Americanas con un empresario Español que tiene uno de los grupos textiles más potentes del continente.

7. ¿Qué lecciones has aprendido de la gente a la que sirves que todos deberíamos conocer?

Hay muchas pero podría resumirlas en:

1. Las personas somos mucho más iguales de lo que tendemos a pensar. Todos queremos seguridad, amor y ser felices. Todos sufrimos. Tenemos dones y al mismo tiempo imperfecciones. Tener esto presente creo que ayuda a comportarse de forma más comprometida con los demás y crear comunidades más sólidas y unidas entorno al bien común.

2. El contexto tiene un impacto tremendo. Con Mary’s Meals recuerdo que alguna vez hemos realizado una dinámica que se llama Risky Dinner. Organizábamos cenas en parroquias. Alguien podía venir con dos amigos, pagaban los 3 lo mismo, 5 euros, se realizaba una tómbola y recibías un número al azar perteneciente a uno de los tres grupos que habían. Grupo 1, un amigo tuyo comía primer plato, segundo, postre y bebida. Una comida fantástica. Grupo 2, tu otro amigo se iba a una mesa larga y ahí un señor con cara de agobiado le tiraba en el plato un montón de arroz con un poco de salsa y fuera. Y Grupo 3, de repente eres tu y te toca irte detrás de un biombo dónde sólo hay un vaso de agua sin ni sitio para estar. Te lo bebes fuera. Es la suerte que te ha tocado. Esto te marca de entrada y ahí empieza tu vida. Naces en un sitio difícil, si tienes suerte vas a un colegio justito, tienes hambre, tienes problemas en casa, no duermes, te duermes en clase, en tu vida apenas hay algo que no sea lucha - eso es tu realidad. Al poco tiempo te ofrecen cualquier oportunidad para ganar dinero, te sirve para comer y vivir algo mejor, es lo que hay en tu vida, y lo haces aunque no te lleve por un buen camino. Debemos dar gracias a Dios los que hemos tenido más oportunidades, y debemos sacar a la luz el obvio tabú de que tu contexto socioeconómico tiene un impacto mayúsculo. Hay que reconocer el problema para poderlo atacar.

3. Las generalizaciones sobre grupos llevan a la mentira. Nunca son todos. Ni todos los Españoles, ni todos los Africanos. Eso no existe. Hay ciertos elementos que pueden darse más en ciertos grupos, pero las generalizaciones tanto para bien como para mal pueden llevar a errores grandes. La sobre simplificación de realidades complejas puede llevar a juicios y acciones que no aporten valor, mientras estas cegado al origen del error.

4. Patrón de los supervivientes. Cuando las cosas van muy mal, aunque sea duro decirlo, ves dos perfiles: el que no puede y se rinde, y el que lucha sin parar, siempre quiere seguir adelante y se supera a toda costa. Los que sobreviven suelen ser los segundos. A este increíble espíritu de lucha, se une el no olvidarse nunca de donde han salido, y el agradecimiento profundo por el privilegio de poder progresar.

5. Evitar objetivos incorrectos. Hoy en día, en especial en los jóvenes y sobretodo a causa de realidades alteradas a través de medios digitales, es importante asegurar que la meta que persigas es correcta. No imaginas la de jóvenes que se ven engañados por promesas no realistas, que idealizan materialismo, egoísmo e impaciencia, en lugar de ensalzar principios tradicionales cómo el trabajo duro, la paciencia, la honestidad, la bondad - que suelen ser los que verdaderamente les darán el progreso y la felicidad que anhelan.

8. ¿Qué consejo darías a emprendedores que quieran construir proyectos de impacto social?

Lo resumiría en 3 puntos muy sencillos:

• Sentido común. Mantener el sentido común y tener los pies en el suelo. Hay muchos problemas muy grandes en el mundo, hay cosas posibles y otras no. Es importante saber que mares puedes navegar y cómo, y cuáles no.

• Cuidado con el dinero. Es muy fácil caer en perseguir dinero rápido como objetivo principal. Mucho cuidado, casi nunca suele ser gratis.

• Atrevimiento. Es importante analizar y planear para ejecutar bien, pero al final el atrevimiento impera. Si el problema que atacas es lo suficientemente relevante, aunque no sea imposible va a resultar probablemente muy muy difícil. Si ya ves que estas en el camino correcto, sólo empuja y empuja y empuja.

9. ¿Cómo te ha ayudado tu Fe Católica en esta aventura?

La fe ha sido fundamental en este proyecto porque me impulsa a actuar con más responsabilidad y entrega.

Para mi, ser Católica y haber podido disfrutar de bendiciones como unos buenos padres, comida, casa, protección y oportunidades, implica que mi responsabilidad para con los demás es mayor. Si he recibido este don y tengo formación Cristiana, debo responder con servicio y compromiso o de lo contrario no estoy entendiendo nada y el error es grande.

¡Gracias Elisalex por compartir tus Views con nosotros!

¡Gracias lector por tu tiempo e interés!

Si te ha gustado, subscríbete y nos vemos en la próxima entrevista. 🙏🏼

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Pepe Agell is a founding team member and former CEO of Chartboost, one of the leading in-app monetization and programmatic advertising platforms. Chartboost reached >$100m sales in less than 3 years, received ca. $21m funding from tier 1 investors like the legendary Sequoia ($85bn AUM, early investments like Apple, Google and Nvidia), reached 700m unique users every months across 200k mobile apps, and got acquired by Zynga for $250m.

Pepe is also a Partner at Pear VC, American venture capital firm with 4 funds totalling ca. $700m AUM, >150 deals performed, 3 IPOs, and early investments like DoorDash (NSDQ:DASH; >$43bn market cap) and Guardant Health (NSDQ:GH; >$3.8bn market cap).

Before Pear VC and Chartboost, Pepe worked as Head of US Business Development in 3scale (API management, acquired by Red Hat) and as Product Manager at Hilti Group (construction industry, €6.7bn sales in 2023).

Pepe has a Master in Mgt, Tech and Econ from ETH Zürich, a Business Bachelor from Open University of Catalonia, and a Master + Degree in Industrial and Mechanical Engineering from Polytechnic University of Catalonia.

overView(s)

Curated highlight of the most important Views from Pepe in case you don’t have time to read everything (as it happens to the best of us):

• Key success ingredients in Chartboost story. Founder awareness (being always conscious of what is happening in the company and in the market), culture (facta non verba), transparency (coherence in clarity both inside and outside the company), hiring timing (manage people with company timing in mind).

• Product market fit toolkit. Total clarity of Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), continued fast iteration, founder-led sales, stop selling start helping.

• Lessons from Sequoia. The power of reputation, ready-to-use playbook of real added value for all types of situations, constant inspiration to think bigger.

• Secret sauce of a big exit. Perfect storm (COVID digital tailwinds, focus on bottom line net revenue providing profitability and new growth, personal circumstances, new leadership), owning the sale process of the company, cultivating strategic relationships with potential buyers for long, looking for alignment of values with acquisitor and not only money.

• Working with Midas List VCs. Focus on hardcore networking using persistent help as main path, maximum respect to founders, tough love, portfolio problems awareness, efficient management of biases.

• Pear VC framework. In Dealflow: Universities + Fellowships for students + Competitions + Pre-seed programs (PearX). In Analysis: Unique insight + coachable founders + ability to attract top talent + bottom up market clarity. Being a good board: Planning in advance + listen and ask + tough love + 1-to-1 support.

• VC industry now. VC state: Lots of changes but will remain highly relevant, way more easier to play the game, more competition, funds pushed to more varied strategies, increasingly important to add value that moves the needle beyond just picking. Interesting verticals: GenAI applied to bundle fragmented sales tech stack, optimization of logistics processes and fintech infra.

• Advice for youngsters. Plan frequently to get out of comfort with constructive challenges, have a traveler attitude always open to new insights, surround yourself with people that elevate you, give before even thinking about receiving.

Index

1️⃣ How did Chartboost come to be?

2️⃣ What was your aha moment that changed everything in Chartboost?

3️⃣ What are the most important ingredients for success you experienced in Chartboost?

4️⃣ Recommended toolkit to reach product market fit

5️⃣ Closing Sequoia funding and learnings from growing with a legendary investor

6️⃣ Can you walk us through how the $250m Chartboost exit ot Zynga happened?

7️⃣ High value lessons of working with Midas list investors Mar Hershenson and Pejman at Pear after going from operator to VC?

8️⃣ Could you share a deep dive on Pear VC’s framework for dealflow sourcing, investment analysis, and being a good board?

9️⃣ Reflecting on the current stage of VC investing, proper VC firm building and new exciting opportunities

🔟 Advice for young startup operators and VC investors?

1️⃣ How did Chartboost came to be?

In our twenties, my girlfriend now wife Maria and I used to follow open classes from Stanford via youtube/podcasts and we gradually became fascinated by the amazing stories of founders - enough to jump into the game. So after finishing our university degrees and in search of adventure, we went to Silicon Valley. No visa, no work. But fueled by the hope of learning from the best.

Consequently we started working in a few startups, some with more success other with less. For instance, companies like Tapulous (mobile gaming, acquired by Disney), Abiquo (cloud management, backed by Balderton), or 3scale (API management, acquired by Red Hat). There, we tried to optimize for learning by seeing how things worked from the inside - internal dynamics of interesting startups, fundraising processes, scaling up, getting to exit or failing, etc.

In the early 2011, when we already were living in the Bay Area for 3-4 years, Maria and his coworker and friend Sean (whom she met in Tapulous), started to think more about a new idea of product that could have great potential. While at Tapulous they experimented 2 key thinks first-hand. 1st, how fast was the Appstore evolving (number of users, engagement, monetization, etc). 2nd, how difficult it was to see products providing high quality elements like user acquisition analytics, advertising improvement, and monetization (e.g. in general, developers didn’t even know about the frequency of their company advertising when using the SDKs of the time).

So, as a result and since Sean was a good family friend, we ended up having lots of conversations about this. I still remember moments like going on a mountain hike with Sean, his girlfriend, Maria, and I, overthinking different angles for the idea. Talking about it over and over again. Finally, our conclusion was that a mobile-based programmatic advertising program could make sense, the market timing felt right, the user experience had to be like a 5 star hotel and it wasn’t like that with current solutions (e.g. no analytics, no transparency, etc), and it wouldn’t be difficult to build an SDK with better features than comparables that didn’t crash in the moment of integration like the others.

However when we started we didn’t really have a financial safety net. So we went through a moment of quite a bit of fear because being faced with the decision of stoping being and employee with the salary that it secured, and start not just a leap of faith but also paying employees we needed straight from a few savings that we had. I remember the vertigo of those early days. Maria and I even sold all our furniture and left our home, to rent a small room in a flat that we shared with a mom and his son - because we needed to allocate more resources for Chartboost.

Regardless, we pushed forward and leveraged our network to build our early teams. Also, some time ago we understood how these experienced became a very positive learning since it taught us the importance of culture and some key ingredients that helped Chartboost in the long term, like valuing being lean, capital efficient, working hard in struggling contexts, and taking true care of the team.

Anyway, there we were. Maria and I. 25-26 years old, no safety net, and knife between the teeth. Maria and Sean since the very beginning as co-founders launching the company and product. Me, sometime after that, more focused on sales. This is how the adventure started in February 2011.

2️⃣ What was your “aha moment” in Chartboost that changed everything?

Chartboost has an unconventional story because we grew very fast from the early days. In February 2011 Sean was building the 1st version of the product. Just after that moment, we were having conversations with developers to improve. And in May 2011 we were already selling.

One of these “aha moments” was gaining early traction with internal cross promotion. We went to video gaming studios with more than 1 app, and offered advertising among their gaming portfolio starting with a very easy free SDK which included a control panel to build campaigns and manage basic analytics. So for instance, you work with Candy Crush gaming studio and do promotion of new studio games, within the space of Candy Crush.

However when you start providing a solution for free, you are not taken that seriously. So after this lesson and once we were scaling up our number of integrations, we started exploiting external direct promotion campaigns. When? The same summer of 2011. And this was our 2nd “aha moment”. If with the 1st we blew in terms of user and customer growth, with this 2nd one was time for our revenue we got 10x constant monthly growth.

The mix of a solid product reputation among software developers, strong appetite for new advertising campaigns with superior analytics and great transparency, gave us what I’d say is a rare fast sales growth.

As a result, Chartboost went from $0m to $100m annual revenue in less than 3 years while still having a small team.

3️⃣ What are the most important ingredients for success you experienced in Chartboost?

• Founder awareness. Being extremely conscious about what is happening in your market, even if everything is going great. Maybe specially, if everything is going great. As a good example, we understood that the market was very opaque and wild wild west, so a continued focus on new transparency opportunities could make you a big hit. We leveraged that and won big as a consequence. As a bad example, at times in Chartboost we ended up being so focused on our success that we ended up losing awareness of these new opportunities, as well as flexibility to pursue them. We had a competitor named AppLovin that was born at the same time that Chartboost and ended up being wildly more successful (NASDAQ IPO, >$26bn market cap) because this superior openness to catch new opportunities (on top of everything else they were doing good).

• Culture. Culture is one of the most important elements for us and it really makes me happy feeling like we managed to get a very rare friendly team cohesion. And by culture I’m not referring to posting about company values in social media, but about actually living those values and doing constant push towards its blooming. Since the beginning we were obsessive towards building the best place where you could work, so we took a series of specific actions in that direction. From very simple ones like creating a slack channel named “Tell me something good” where everyone posted something positive about other colleagues,, to more demanding ones like having high transparency standards in all matters.

• Transparency. This deserves a stand alone mention, since even though it is related with culture I think it’s one of the major success ingredients for Chartboost. As I said earlier, transparency was something underestimated by past/current competitors, however we saw that it was increasingly valued by the market (customers, users) - a very relevant agent causing frustration and bad user experiences because it was not being done right. We applied this vision early on in our product, and it worked. But we did some mistakes too. In 2019, after some success, we were burning way too much money in comparison with the results we were getting. This ended up in a forced cost reduction, that among other things implied layoffs. We spent months studying how could we reduce costs efficiently. And I remember at times having quite a bit of friction with some employees, because they were asking about more resources to pursue new ideas while I was super focused on survival and what were we going to do the next quarter. This resulted in multiples inefficiencies and tension. Fortunately though, eventually I understood that part of the team wasn’t aligned with the executive decisions because this transparency angle so used in our product roadmap was not being applied internally with the situation of the company. We ended up sharing the company Profit and Loss account with everyone and it helped Chartboost reinforce its culture and fight with recovered strenght through this tough period. After the fight (layoffs, having to kill exciting projects that were not contributing to net revenue, great monthly burn reduction, etc) it was a beautiful experience reaching a solid breakeven and sharing the happiness with the whole team because everyone understood how important was such a milestone in a critical moment.

• Hiring timing. Finally, another important asset for me is understanding what talent requires every stage of the company. Yes, culture is important and we had an exceptional team union. However at the beginning we were too stuck into the idea of Chartboost team as a family, and I think this is wrong. Why? Because it can have some residual variables with negative impact in performance such as entitlement of early team members, lack of required changes in talent management or irrational sensibility to emotional damage. At times, when a company scales up big and fast, as a founder you need to bring more seasoned executives from external sources that are better fitted for new growth stages. At the same time, when a company scales up big and fast, as a founder you have to accept that there would be great early employees who are super smart and hungry that will leave to pursue other things (precisely because they are smart and hungry). Thus it is important to keep in mind how to manage talent properly and what role plays timing in this game.

4️⃣ Recommended toolkit to reach product market fit

Lots of things come to my mind, but a quick highlight could be the following:

• Extreme Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) clarity. What is the ideal buyer profile for your company? What are all the qualities that would make a best fit for the solutions you provide? Who will generate the most value to your company? Age, gender, income level, location, budget, lifestyle, values, pain points, purchasing habits, product usage frequency, brand loyalty - among other variables.

• Continued fast iteration. Be aware of relevant data for your company (any type, from product to business model, go to market, new market dynamics, etc), understand how to collect it efficiently, and execute fast responsive adaptation. What is your customer enjoying? What is your customer not enjoying so much? How can you improve? Can you generate more value? Can you capture more of the value you are generating? Some examples for Chartboost are constant improvement of ads analytics, simplification of SDK integration, the already mentioned fast change from free to paid version once we realized we were leaving money on the table, etc.

• Founder-led sales. I’m aware this won’t sound like the typical comment of “build a great sales team and delegate”, but based on my experience there is nothing like a founder leading sales. Someone who knows all the in depth details of the product, own a super passionate story telling ability, and truly believes 100% in the company’s vision - it just moves the needle like anything else.

• Stop selling, start helping. To conclude the PM fit toolkit, something that I’m still surprised it doesn’t not seem a widely shared mindset. If you want to grow revenue, stop selling and start focusing on how are you helping your client for real. Be more of an advisor willing to listen and solve problems rather than a guy trying to push a sale. For instance, at Chartboost our vision was providing a liquidity tool for an exciting new gaming industry that was struggling to monetize. We truly believed it and I have no doubt this mindset positively impacted the story telling of the company, helping it evolve beyond just another more advertising project.

5️⃣ Closing Sequoia funding and lessons from growing with a legendary investor

About closing Sequoia funding, everything started when in our 1st investment round an executive from AdMob (mobile ad company backed by Sequoia, acquired by Google for $750m) got in our cap table with a small ticket. Then some months went by and we ended up hiring this person from AdMob and eventually a few more.

The 1st fundraising happened in September 2011, it was around $2.15m. We continued growing and one of the executive hires from AdMob recommended us to talk with Sequoia because we were growing so fast that maybe we could be a fit for them.

To be honest, we weren’t sure about more funding and I don’t think we really were super attractive in terms of team (based on Sequoia standards). However our huge growth meant that we started to annoy the mobile ad divisions of Facebook and Google, and Chartboost lacked the budget to compete properly. So the company needed money.

And again, an unusual story. We didn’t do any term sheet fishing. Got connected to Sequoia, had 3 meetings with them, and clicked. Specially with Jim Goetz who became board member at Chartboost and our “go-to person” at Sequoia. It was curious that the investment process that we experienced was not really focused on our growth (which we thought could be considered the sexiest part) but more about our team and the story telling of the company. Also, the deal was very smooth and we felt super respected. At Sequoia you could feel that deep appreciation for the job of an entrepreneur.

Since then, this good beginning of the relationship did nothing but flourish. It has been a very good experience, a true honor and privilege to have them with us at Chartboost.

About lessons from working with Sequoia, there are a bunch.

First of all, the heavyweight impact of reputation can be wild. Just having them with us was an immediate positive reputational impact. It dramatically boosted our networks. We quickly and easily were starting to connect with CEOs of top companies, that happened to be Sequoia portfolio companies of course. Nice step up.

Second, they weren’t necessarily experts in our vertical, but they had such a state-of-the-art playbook for all type of situations, built after massive iterations of probably one of the best track records of successful VC investments and tech companies ever, that their pattern recognition added a lot of value. Specially in tough times when you need this strategic external perspective for key decisions. Jim played a key role in this.

Third, they simply elevate you. Maybe it sounds cliché but damn, do they help you think big. Constant inspiration. The people that had the more impact in my life have been those who helped me escape from mediocrity and win bigger. People that showed me that better options are real. And Sequoia has this exact same culture. For instance I remember feeling KO after having this bad period where for Chartboost to survive we needed to do cost reduction, important strategic changes, and layoffs. We were growing so much in the past, but suddenly we weren’t any more. The morale was greatly hurt and we presented to the board a new business plan that was quite conservative (and we knew it). At that precise moment, Jim Goetz got up in front of everyone and said “We know you are coming straight out of hell, we know you have been forced to do layoffs that broke something within you, it is normal that you feel pessimistic about the future. But I’m convinced Chartboost can do 30% more than what you have shared. Let’s fight together”. After that we made a new action plan and eventually it resulted in a surprising new era of growth. I’m aware this may sound too “movie-like” but when you feel like shit and you have an investor that cares, knows how to help, and actually does it … it’s extraordinary. Particularly in the worst moments.

6️⃣ Can you walk us through how the $250m Chartboost exit ot Zynga happened?

Firstly, I want to point out that to make an exit like this is kind of a perfect storm. A mix of elements, some in your control and others not in your control, which contribute to the sale happening. In our case:

• Restructuring. Unconsciously well-timed, before COVID and thanks to our restructuring and increased focus on bottom line (net revenue), instead of top line (gross revenue), we became profitable and started growing again.

• Pandemic. COVID period accelerated the growth of mobile gaming industry because there were more people with less things to do other than being at home. This was a tail wind for us.

• Personal circumstances. Just after the restructuring (specially due to the lay offs) and the pandemic, I as on the verge of burnout. Breat experience but also very tough. It was exhausting for me. To be honest, I went through quite a dark period, I wasn’t OK. Plus I had wife and kids, and I wanted to be my best version for them and spend more life with them. So the sale made sense for me personally.

• New leadership. We had a COO who worked in Chartboost for 4-5 years, was more experienced than us, knew the company well and wanted to be CEO.

Following up, and getting deeper into the story, as I mentioned earlier the year before the pandemic Chartboost started to be profitable and grow again after the restructuring.

Then COVID came and it acted as catalyst for the industry. It’s important to be aware of what is happening around and what opportunities may come your way, as we have commented.

Before long, in 2021, we were approached by a public gaming company who was a Chartboost customer, and made us the first offer in the pricing range we were looking for. Interesting gaming company (better than an advertising one like us because we could avoid overlapping teams thus we could ensure a sustainable future for Chartboost), good valuation, good cash option - good offer overall. There was only one problem, something about the CEO of the buyer felt off to us. The CEO was known in the ecosystem for having a too “domineering” style. These small signals were important to us because we wanted to give Chartboost a great home and we needed to trust in the new lead.

That being said, this was the only solid offer that we had. The potential buyer gave us the official offer on a Sunday and told us that the deadline to make a decision was next Wednesday, 3 days after. First thing Monday morning we talked to the board “We have this, there is no other thing, what should we do?”. We started to seriously consider the offer. However we also made a small list of other people that had shown strategic interest in Chartboost before. Important lesson learned here, always be aware of your leverage and never split the difference.

Following that, by pure providence, that same Monday, the CEO of Zynga wrote to us for a catch up call. Few months earlier, Zynga had made a press release talking about how they were open to inorganic growth in Adtech. We had tried to connect with them but they never replied. Then suddenly, this same day of April he contacted us to talk. Our reply was clear: OK but let’s talk today because on Wednesday we have the deadline of an offer to sale the company.

We talked that same Monday and shared with full transparency what was happening along with all the terms of the offer. They surprisingly moved very quickly and were able to send us a letter of intend and a consequential term sheet in a matter of hours.

We knew Zynga well since they had been partners for quite some time and we really loved the idea of being acquired by them. Thus, we moved forward. We told the CEO of the other company, and his first reply was “What would it take for you to come with me?”. We could have probably maximized the selling price but we decided to not play that game because we really believed Zynga was a better home. The following Monday, we signed. Tuesday we started the due diligence process. While we were starting the due diligence, Zynga told us they wanted to announce the acquisition in 1 month time. They had a special event and wanted to leverage the deal for the occasion. Therefore this happened very fast too. In a month we closed the deal and this is the story.

7️⃣ High value learnings of working with Midas list investors Mar Hershenson and Pejman at Pear after going from operator to VC?

Working with Pejman and Mar is incredible. People say VC is the dark side but there are great people and both of them are extraordinary for a number of reasons.

Pejman, simply put, is a person with a spectacular charisma and a fascinating story. True unsophisticated self-made. He was born in Iran, grew up during the Iranian Revolution and started working as radio host and professional football player. He then moved to Germany to play football there on a scholarship and get out of the challenging context of Iran. Eventually he immigrated to the US thanks to a cousin he had, and worked washing cars, then a yogurt shop and as rug salesman. In the last job is where he got introduced to venture capital because some of them were their customers, and the rest is history. He even convinced one of his bosses at the rug store to get into VC, and this boss ended up founding Plug and Play.

From Pejman I got high value lessons such as the importance of people skills and sharp instincts. He is able to hunt for talent like no one else, while also connect with everyone deeply. No preppy sophistication, no harvard type of guy, but great use of skills learnt in the real-world and just a natural born networker. For instance, elaborating more, Pejman is 24/7 in every interaction thinking how we can add value to the other person or to whom he can connect this other person in a way that this connection moves the needle. There are always precious insights floating around when you meet with Pej and he has been doing this for so long, that lots of founders, VCs, and LPs already know, which leads to a good reputational aura to anyone that is working with Pejman.

And then Mar is such a great balance as you already now since it was a Views guest some time ago. Also an incredible story. From Barcelona, then engineering in Madrid, then PhD in Standford and getting to the US with nothing. She built 3 companies, raised money from Pejman, and could sell the last one. Pejman was trying to convince Mar to launch a fund for a while and with the yes of Mar is how everything started.

From Mar, among lots of other things, I learned from her profound believe that entrepreneurs can learn and do pretty much anything, also the relevance of looking for founders that have something to prove and are motivated by a passion bigger than themselves, and how an ideal investor needs to adapt to make the entrepreneur better while doing decisions focused on the long term.

And as an extra, overall lessons from my time at Pear VC:

• Tough love. Maximum respecto with process and people, but saying things as they are. High expectations but unwavering support. Challenge and guidance.

• Problems awareness. In Pear VC, there is an interesting habit of paying attention to crisis signals of portfolio companies, to detect problems fast and even act faster to solve them by facing it straight up.

• Biases management. After some years working in the ecosystem, you end up realizing that there are lots of biases everywhere. Specially with founders. In Pear VC I learned that, in contrast to the life as a founder, you need to be more careful with the entrepreneurs’ biases. They tend to have some very high degree of craziness, passion, opportunistic vision, curiosity and an almost pathological optimism. Which I personally share and I truly believe is necessary to build a company. But as a VC I realized that sometimes you more often than not, need to act as counterbalance to this.

8️⃣ Could you share a deep dive on Pear VC’s framework for dealflow sourcing, investment analysis, and being a good board?

To put into context, I’ll be talking about the US. Because in Europe I wouldn’t say we have product market fit yet.

Dealflow. Summing up, we do lots of different initiatives to build super early stage communities that eventually can generate dealflow. Some examples are the following:

• Universities. We like to be close to universities. Subsequently, we have structured and unstructured ways of always looking for synergies with universities. Particularly, focused on reaching out to exceptional talent studying MBAs or degrees that we categorize as having a relevant entrepreneurial weight, that could be interested to launch something after graduation.

• Fellows. Linked to the previous bullet, every now and then we get some Fellows (like internship opportunities for students) to dedicate a few variable hours every week to do market analysis, dealflow and investment analysis. It works really well, big win-win strategy.

• Competitions. Again, we go to interesting universities for us and work with students to create projects for a competition. We could say the stage is pre pre-seed. Our main goal is to find powerful builders with a hustler attitude, who are super early in their careers. Then we make them checks that can easily get up to ca. $100k. Almost no strings attached.

• Serious pre-seed programs. In addition to everything already said, we also do programs for “more serious teams” that are in pre-seed stage. The main spearhead here is Pear X, our pre-seed bootcamp. We do 2 badges per year and it includes education, mentoring, demo day, and investment. Usually we are talking about $500k - $1.5m tickets. After the selection process, we invite the best companies to work with us for 3 months in-person in Silicon Valley. The training tends to be a very intense period all Pear VC team actively supports the founders in terms of product, hiring, go to market, fundraising, etc. The main goal is to be super ready for demoday and ideally present something with traction and early product market fit signs. Over 90% of PearX companies end up raising a seed round, the average seed round size is $3m, and each badge has 15 companies.

Investment analysis. Pear VC is a generalist fund where every partner has a different style. But more than thesis driven we are people and market driven. We think it’s very difficult to have super clear investment thesis in such early stages. Too much radical pivots, from products changing completely to business models going from B2B to B2C overnight.

• People. The main thing is that there needs to be a very genuine insight, experience, or research that shows how the founder understand the market opportunity with a really different approach. This is super necessary. Who wins in tech are the ones that have an unique insight, and ideally some former experience that is somehow linked to the market opportunity or the pain. From that pillar, I’d say it is important that the founder is able to attract high quality talent (better if this hires have different complementary skills as well as seniority), and that he/she is coachable - it is going to be a long tough road, so they need to know how to liste and show signals of adaptability.

• Market. More empirical than the other element. It is very important to see a compelling bottom up approach to the market. Please, no this is my TAM and I’ll get a 10% of it. We need to see something more on the line of I’ve done a lot of market reserach and customer discovery, and based on that my ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) is X, I can charge Y as ACV (Average Contract Value), and realistically I can get Z number of customers. That is my market now. Maybe it sounds dummy or simplistic, but at the end of the day we all know that these are expectations of an uncertain future, the key is to have more meaningful information about how the founder thinks and how the company could work. Of course as investors we will do our homework afterwards, double check everything and make some risk discounts - but I need to see, understand, and believe the landing of the vision, the logic behind the big dreams.

Being a good board. As mentioned before, it is very important to master the dichotomy of unconditional support and fruitful challenge. From this fundamental, some key aspects in my humble opinion are:

• Planning. Build operating plans from the very beginning. Even though we all know “Excel can take anything”, a plan forces everyone to formulate hypothesis and determine clear objectives. Numbers do not lie and with a detailed plan, you can have more objective and beneficial conversations.

• Listen and ask. Extremely relevant to listen fully and properly, while proactively asking questions valuable questions that can help build the company. All of this without pushing the founder on the defensive.

• Tough love. At Pear VC we are always trying to provide though love. It is our way of making comments and feedbacks - respectful and supportive but firm. We know founders in general tend to have exaggerated optimism. Our role as board member is to not only help dream bigger but also advise about risks, help them see the reality and be there for tough decisions. Tough love.

• 1:1. Beyond the board meeting and the roles that everyone has, there are people. For me, it’s very important to connect 1:1 separately. If possible, outside the office in a more personal setting, specially to bond in terms of emotions, concerns, and fears.

9️⃣ Reflecting on the current stage of VC investing, proper VC firm building and new exciting opportunities

First of all, as the pathological optimist that I am, I fervently believe the importance of VC industry is never going to disappear - regardless of changing times and challenges.

Now getting into the state of VC, the dynamics are changing. I’d say talent is smarter than years ago and the opportunities to access capital are bigger, more diverse and more accessible due to less barriers of entry. Funds are being push towards more flexibility in their way of investing. For example, I remember Sequoia firmly stating “If we can’t ride a bicycle to it, we won’t invest”. This is clearly not true anymore. Talent is more fluid and at the end of the day it is the true center of gravity. Companies go where talent goes. Investors adapt.

Also, investment opportunities are easier to find. The key in mi opinion is redefining value. This is what I’m thinking about all day. Money is a commodity. What I envision as a differential edge is communities that can add value to founders, and we are investing a lot into that idea. Insights are born with friction between talent, with access from one talent to another, and with meaningful connections within communities.

Additionally and on top of that, I think in the current state of VC it is very important the concretion about what that value is. Helping the founders with the go to market perspective, supporting in hiring the best firsts engineers, etc - actions that can really change the trajectory of a company. Founders are gradually becoming more selective, so way more effort in these strategies and tactics than in allocation, can end up becoming a virtuous circle with positive effects in company success, returns and reputation.

As an example, with Pear VC we have multiple communities (Female Circle, Persian Founder Circle, Universities), a 2k squared meters startup hub for founders open to company meetings and events, etc.

And If talking about interesting categories for me, well I must say I’m kind of boring.

I like B2B tools leveraging the new Generative AI boom to radically change how companies sell. In my life as entrepreneur I sold lots of B2B software and dev tools, and I believe there is room for huge innovation in salestech. The current tech stack can be and should be broken. Account executives are sick of having to choose/use from the current sales puzzle made by thousands of pieces. I think the market wants product bundling and with AI you can disrupt the sales process of SDRs and account executives.

I also like workflow automation tools too. From optimization of logistics processes to fintech infra providing liquidity to clients (e.g. empowering SMEs through payment products in order to help them own stronger POS management).

🔟 Advice for young startup operators and VC investors?

• Comfort. Get out of it frequently. Not just accidentally but plan constantly escaping that zone and expose yourself to constructive challenges that fir your vision. It will help you understand your true potential and dream bigger.

• Traveler attitude. When we travel, we are more perceptive and open to new experiences. The best new business ideas come from curiosity, new insights and opportunism.

• Curated circle. Surround yourself with people you admire and who are better than you at something. Notably important for entrepreneurs.

• Give before receiving. Even before thinking about receiving. Really important particularly for VCs/investors. There is a lot of ego out there, but the best investors I’ve seen are the one who live with great respect and service attitude towards founders.

Thank you Pepe for sharing your views with us!

Thank you reader for your time and interest!

If you enjoyed it, subscribe and we’ll be back with you. 🙏🏼

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Ruben Bonet is the Co-Founder & CEO of Fractus, deep tech company licensing antenna technology for telecommunication networks and for wireless devices such as smartphones and IoT, backed by investors like Apax Partners (global leading private equity firm with >$70bn AUM). Fractus has >$200m total sales, customers like Samsung, LG or Motorola, and its antennas are present in >10bn devices.

He is also a Founding Partner of Abac Nest, Spanish early stage VC linked to Abac Capital (private equity firm with >€600m AUM). Additionally, he is an Entrepreneur In Residence at IESE Business School.

Ruben holds an IESE MBA as well as a degree in Telecommunications Engineering from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya.

In his free time, Rubén has finished two times the legendary Marathon Des Sables (250km running race on the Sahara desert with food self-sufficiency), completed 10 70.3 Ironmans, and The New York and Berlin marathons.

Index

1️⃣ What is Fractus and why is it important?

2️⃣ Journey from university spin-off to >$200m sales

3️⃣ Must have skills for deep tech entrepreneurs

4️⃣ Biggest challenges faced and leadership advice to navigate them

5️⃣ How to win in big enterprise sales

6️⃣ Product playbook in highly technical industries

7️⃣ Essentials of building a great team

8️⃣ Is deep tech really a spot of exceptional opportunities?

9️⃣ What is your added value as a VC investor with a technical founder edge?

🔟 Mindset hacks useful for founders coming from competing in multiple Ironmans and Marathon des Sables

1️⃣ What is Fractus and why is it important?

Fractus is a deep tech company building antennas which built something unique and relevant in a very hard industry that is the backbone of the current modern society, while going through all the stages (both good and bad) a company can go through.

It was one of the first ever successful deep tech spin off in the Spanish and probably European ecosystem - which taken into account the high mortality rate of this type of endeavours, is remarkable.

From a product point of view, the company is focused on building antenna technology that is critical for telecom networks, smartphones, IOT devices, etc. Probably ca. 10bn smartphones have Fractus technology right now.

Pre-Fractus, companies designed way more limited antennas for only 1 frequency (or singleband). With Fractus we were able to make the multiband vision a reality, a unique insight that acted as catalyst helping enable mainstream use of the previously mentioned devices.

2️⃣ Journey from university spin-off to >€200m sales

Carlos Puente (Fractus’ co-founder and original CTO) and I met at UPC while we were both classmates studying telecom engineering. Eventually he pursued a PhD in Antennas, I followed a more business-like career, and one day we met, shared some ideas about the Antennas’ research, and we agreed there could be an opportunity interesting enough to try and build a company.

The spin-off process wasn’t really structured at all, it was more about two friends and classmates, one more focused on product and the other more focused on going to the market and building a company, trying to be entrepreneurs and learning as they go. UPC gave Carlos the opportunity to be a founder without losing his placement as professor and also allowed us to build out a private company out of the research with a revenue share type of agreement, so we did it.

Our idea? The world of mobile phones was ready to explode and this brought relevant challenges to the technology of that specific period in time. If that happened (and as we saw it, it was already starting to happen), new challenges would come and the big industry players were not ready to face them. Why? Because all their business was based on different and very inflexible approaches - their inertia was blinding them.

However, I want to make clear that it is not like Fractus brought a crazy global disruption to the world. We just simply saw a wave coming, bet on it, positioned ourselves well and took advantage of a unique insight. And from there, we built product complexity on top of the initial relatively simple idea (e.g. multiband antennas, smartphone integrations, 2g, 3g, 4, 5g, etc).

Additionally, it was very important not only focusing on a great product development but actually being able to find product-market fit (a priority we had from the very beginning and unfortunately a commercial angle that sometimes is too uncommon in deep tech). So we managed to get as much meetings as we could with big customers, demoed our new antennas non-stop, and worked hard on providing crystal clear competitive advantages versus current comparable solutions. By doing so, after more than a year of planting seeds, we were lucky and detected that Telefonica could be open to use a new local supplier. I still remember the 1st purchase order received via fax, 1000 antennas for €1m.

From there on however, we still had lots of work to do. We worked on upselling in that account navigating different levels of management in Telefonica. Also, we build up our production capabilities in order to have more scale up potential. And finally, after a bunch of meetings, our technology ended up gaining more recognition and this helped us follow a product-led go to market where our own product was the marketing we needed in order to connect with new potential customers.

Once we were able to demonstrate the unique value proposition of our antennas, the positive impact on the perception of Fractus by the industry composed gradually. We went from a very personalized B2B sales targeting quick wins with attractive customers that showed how our solution worked, to a more standard productization angle able to grow our sales exponentially.

3️⃣ Must have skills for deep tech entrepreneurs

• Technology knowledge. Understanding your technology in and out, while having the skills to make your vision real through execution.

• Team building. Being aware of where you are good at (which in deep tech tends to be product related) and where are your flaws, while consequently attracting the necessary high quality talent and taking care of them (specially, not only focusing on technical resources while underestimating the importance of other complementary profiles).

• B2B sales. True comprehension of how the sales process works in big corporations and what do you have to do to take care of the most important relationships thus ensuring account maintenance and ideally growth too.

• Future vision. I think in deep tech, failure can result in superior damage since pivoting is more difficult once you are committed into a specific path. So it is very important to be able to see what will happen to the technology and the market 4-5 years in the future. Evidently no one can see the future, but a good deep tech entrepreneur should be able to have a solid thought process regarding what could happen tomorrow.

4️⃣ Biggest challenges faced and leadership advice to navigate them

• Evolving with the company. Probably one of the most important elements that I saw as a founder of a scale up is that it is one story being a couple of friends starting a fun project, and it is a whole other thing to lead a >50 employees international company with a bunch of important companies and solid investors. If you want to create all the value possible, you must evolve with the company professionally and personally.

• New tech requiring customer evangelization. We found quite a few mental barriers with potential customers at the beginning when trying to sell our new type of antenna. Don’t disrespect the doubts. Listen, empathize, and proof your value with prototypes and scientific documents. Show that you understand the customer need and that you are really ready to solve it.

• Fighting fierce gatekeepers in legacy industries. When trying to introduce new disruptive tech into a bigger market, we fought against the opposition of bigger older incumbents. Sometimes you have to accept there would be fierce gatekeepers and just embrace the fight. Sometimes it is needed to be somewhat overconfident, disrespectful, and irreverent. Do not ask for permission. Push forward. For instance I remember competitors copying our tech and we as Fractus fighting them legally and winning. Or big incumbents talking us down and then seeing their sales director leaving and coming with us.

• Protecting healthy independence. Other of the challenges we faced is the influence of relevant potential partners in our independence. I know there are different views regarding this, but I believe you have to be very careful with partners/investors that have other interests beyond the purely financial ones. They can end up being not aligned with you, and the adventure of an entrepreneur is so long and hard … the last thing you need is noise. We have investors and did some key strategic partnerships (e.g. Siemens, Ficosa, etc), but always took care of our independence and that served us good.

• Market discovery when doing new things. In early stage deep tech knowing the details of your target market can be very difficult, and we were not an exception. Fractus struggled with this at the beginning. But we built a portfolio of market opportunities (e.g. at one moment in time we even had up to 10 different P&Ls), we filtered where we saw the most attainable value as fast as we could, get rid of what wasn’t working quickly, and doubled down resource allocation on a few of our strongest use cases.

5️⃣ How to win in deep tech B2B sales

• Technical capabilities. Deep tech solutions can bring with them quite a big amount of technical complexity. The triggers of sales growth are usually hidden somewhere in the intersection of these technicalities and the customer needs.

• Demonstration. When selling new stuff, I believe some entrepreneurs tend to misunderstand the concept of evangelization. Does story telling play a role? Of course. But ultimately, demonstrate your product in a real use case linked to the customer needs and be able to prove differential added value.

• Big targets. If your company allows it, go big. Outstanding deep tech breakthroughs

• Navigation. In deep tech related B2B sales, specially if we are talking about selling to enterprise/big accounts, you must learn how to navigate the sales process of the target customer. Some key factors of this navigation can be: customer strategic priorities, leadership culture, politics of their buying process, key decision makers in different levels (leadership, business, product), etc.

6️⃣ Product playbook in highly technical industries

• IP. In highly technical and product-driven industries, the defensibility of your solution is not like the plain vanilla “digital” type of thing. Incredibly important to consider a sound Intellectual Property (IP) strategy to ensure that you are able to capture ownership and consequently value. By securing your technology/science, you build competitive advantage, encourage collaboration, accelerate commercialization, and increase the attractiveness towards investors and acquirers.

• Continuous evolution. Never stop pushing towards product development innovation. In industries of this sort, your value proposition strongly depends on always being on the cutting edge from a product perspective.

• Technical awareness. I know I’ve mentioned this a few times already, but it is simply a huge must to have a very in depth knowledge of all the technical elements you are building. Deep tech solutions can bring with them quite a big amount of technical complexity and the triggers of success usually are hidden in it.

7️⃣ Essentials of building a great team

Talking about building teams in deep tech, I’d like to highlight:

• Product edge as core. In deep tech you need this from the get go. The technical angle has to be the foundation of the team.

• Commercial element. Surrounding the team with people capable of bringing the innovation to market is one of the most important priorities regarding hiring. Business development, sales, marketing - you name it. A common flaw in great technical founders is that there is a tendency to believe that because you had a breakthrough in a lab the product is going to sell itself, so there is less effort and respect put on the relevance of sales talent.

• Hiring for today and tomorrow. In cutting edge technology and science, things can evolve so fast that you should be hiring for the current state of the company but also thinking about the skills you will need in the next steps that you expect to pursue.

• Quick changes. If for whatever reason some hiring is not working properly, change it fast.

• Strong complementary leadership. Maybe a bit repetitive so sorry for that, but the leadership team is absolutely key. When I mention surrounding technical founders with diverse profiles I’m not only talking about this old school concept of “mere employees” but about providing valuable responsabilities and ownerships to key people that results in a positive sum. Great integration and motivation, good

8️⃣ Is deep tech really a spot for exceptional opportunities?

• Tech and science renaissance. Right now, we are lucky to be living through a moment of multiple technological and scientific breakthroughs in multiple fields that can be encapsulated into the “deep tech” category (e.g. from AI research to bio innovation). This reality is very unique and can fundamentally reshape industries and create entirely new ones, consequently unlocking a lot of value.

• Global challenges. Whilst it seem we are creating exciting new game-changing stuff (or close to), at the same time during this period we are also facing some of the most relevant global problems we have seen in decades as society. Climate change, geopolitical shifts, international conflicts, new health-related issues, etc. The bad part of this is obvious, nobody wants more problems if they can choose to avoid them. However the positive part is that this type of global pressure felt by the whole humanity, tend to push entrepreneurs to contribute to meaningful change through proper solutions that offer avenues for tackling these complex issues.

• Exponential opportunity. At the end of the day, when you go beyond the digital copycat and operate in the realm of the cutting edge of what’s possible, if you are able to navigate the difficulties what waits for you is unparalleled growth opportunity. We are not talking about incremental optimizations but about a new golden era of deep tech with exponential potential to provide great societal benefit and substantial returns.

  9️⃣ What is your real differential edge as a VC investor with technical founder background?

• Translation from vision to execution. I believe that as an entrepreneur with real experience from the early stages to the late scale up period, you end up building a stronger capability of being able to go from understanding market abstractions and conceptualizing solutions, to actually knowing how to translate that vision into the dirty technical and commercial execution required in the daily activity.

• Operational hands-on experience. Strongly related to the previous bullet. It is very different to be someone who does picking and from there tries to provide advice, rather than someone who has spent decades navigating the challenges of building from zero and scaling a company with skin in the game and all the eggs in one basket. Learning by doing instead of by just observing helps you get stronger in providing more valuable strategic insights - ingredient that in early stage can have major impact.

• Cultural alignment. Perhaps this is partially subjective, but in former I see more understanding of the importance of stuff that usually investors underestimate (at least in real life, beyond their PR). Things such as empathy, patience, focus, long-term view, etc. This may seem as not critical, but when tough times come, and they will come, you realize this details influence the accompaniment and support that the founders receive. Thus impacting their results in some way or another.

🔟 Mindset hacks useful for founders, coming from competing in multiple Ironmans and Marathon des Sables

It will be a very long race and you will face bad moments where you will need to withstand suffering.

But if you do things the right way in the good and bad moments, ultimately on the long term you will achieve your goal. The results you get are based on the work you put in. Luck exists, but your effort and resilience can reduce its effect.

It is very important to internalize that there is a correlation between hardwork and results, even whilst at the same time pain and bad things are somewhat unavoidable.

Big thanks Rubén for sharing your views with us!

Big thanks to you, reader, for your time and interest!

If you enjoyed it, subscribe and we’ll be back with you. 🙏🏼

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Samuel Gil es actualmente el Managing Partner de JME Ventures, fondo de venture capital (VC) early stage Español con más de >€120m de activos bajo gestión. Entre las inversiones de JME destacan compañías como Flywire (fintech, NASDAQ IPO, >$3bn market cap), Jobandtalent (job platform, $2.3bn val), Lingokids (edtech, >25 millones de usuarios, inversores como HV Capital y GP bullhound), PLD Space (space tech, >€45m funding) y Multiverse Computing (quantum computing, clientes cómo Banco Santander y Repsol).

Adicionalmente, es también Founder de Suma Positiva, newsletter Española de referencia con más de >26k subscriptores, enfocada en startups, tecnología, innovación, e inversión.

Antes de VC, Samuel era Energy Trading Manager en Iberdrola y Technology Consultant en Accenture.

Samuel es un Kauffman Fellow (una de las más reconocidas fellowships a nivel global para inversores de VC), así como IESE EMBA e Ingeniero de Telecomunicaciones por la UPM.

Índice

1️⃣ Opiniones más contrarias sobre VC, startups, y vida personal

2️⃣ Estado del mundo venture capital hoy

3️⃣ Visión sobre el futuro del venture capital

4️⃣ Bullshit más grande de los mundos VC y startup

5️⃣ Playbook sobre dealflow, investment analysis, y ser buen board

6️⃣ Consejos para LP fundraising en 2024

7️⃣ Patrones de éxito en los mejores inversores

8️⃣ Elementos en común de los mejores emprendedores

9️⃣ Mejor y peor deal + lecciones aprendidas de ellos

🔟 Consejos para el Samuel Gil que empezaba su carrera

1️⃣ ¿Opiniones más contrarias sobre VC, startups, y vida personal?

No se si son muy contrarians, pero allá voy!

Sobre VC dos cosas:

• Intuición. Si has hecho los deberes, valoro más la intuición que las decisiones basadas puramente en datos. Creo que muchas veces se realizan a posteriori ejercicios de análisis sobre deals pasados donde puedes llevar todo al terreno que quieras, pero en el fondo la intuición tiene un peso enorme.

• Value-add. Soy muy muy muy escéptico de los servicios de apoyo a compañías de portfolio. Es más un tema de elegir bien y no molestar.

Startups:

• Iteración. Creo que al principio te haces muchas pajas mentales con la importancia de la ventaja competitiva y ser super defendible. Con el tiempo me he dado cuenta que la velocidad de ejecución e ir de prisa, es más importante.

• Claridad temprana. Desde bastante pronto se puede ver totalmente diferente lo que va a ser un multi billion dollar company de un million dollar company o menos. Incluso aunque las dos facturen cero.

Personal

• Principios del mundo físico. Aquí ya entro con historias en las que me gusta explorar y perderme. Cada vez más pienso que en todo lo que tenga que ver con el mundo físico, los principios a seguir para conseguir los objetivos están más basados en consistencia y show up everyday. Ser un martillo pilón. Consecuentemente los resultados vienen más vinculados al esfuerzo general. Por tanto, eres más fuerte como tu punto más débil y tienes que tener eso en mente en las acciones que tomes.

• Principios del mundo intelectual. En temas intelectuales creo que es menos sobre consistencia y más resultados estilo power law - dónde momentos de genialidad menos frecuentes te dan aciertos más potentes que compensan todo el esfuerzo. Esto me lleva a pensar que en este campo, es mejor hacer double down en fortalezas y los puntos débiles conducirlos al mínimo aceptable.

2️⃣ Visión actualizada sobre el estado de VC en el momento actual

Sinceramente pienso que estamos en una confluencia mágica de muchos factores interesantes ahora mismo.

Reversión de globalización a re-localización, tendencias a resolver problemas grandes e importantes de forma muy enfocada que afectan a toda la humanidad, cambio de paradigma geopolítico, nueva tecnología potente, y en el caso de España (por meter la patita nacional), mayor madurez del ecosistema con superior número de second time founders que traen a la mesa más experiencia.

Es cierto que después de la borrachera de 2021 y 2022, estamos viviendo cierta vuelta a la normalidad. Sin embargo, si quitas la anomalía de los años covid, se sigue viendo continuidad de tendencia positiva. Es decir ecosistema algo más racional, con excepción de ciertas reminiscencias que vienen de categorías ultra hot como AI, pero con un positivismo subyacente realista muy atractivo.

Y ya hilando más fino, en cuanto a trends, bastante obvios temas de AI pero también robótica, spatial computing, bio, healthcare, crypto (desde puro ángulo anarcocapitalista que me resulta fascinante, hasta mundo stablecoins para eficientar el sistema financiero actual) - cosas super interesantes y con una pincelada más deep tech en general.

3️⃣ ¿Cuál es el futuro de la indústria de Venture Capital?

Veo mucha polarización en VC, o vas para boutique o para mega institución - lo que esté entre medias lo percibo super en riesgo.

Por poner ejemplos concretos reales y no quedarme en lo abstracto. Barriendo para casa, en JME somos muy creyentes en ser estrictos con el tamaño de fondo y el estilo. Somos seed España generalistas, y de ahí no nos movemos. Es el ángulo que encaja con nuestra estrategia y que pensamos nos da la oportunidad de retornos. Dicho esto, ¿es tentador tirar para arriba con drivers tal cual management fees? - desde luego. Pero creo que supondría un cambio de estrategia muy fuerte y entrar en un juego dónde no nos veo competitivos, consecuentemente derivando en una alta probabilidad de dañar nuestros retornos.

Esto es importante, porqué el futuro de VC pinta un mundo más competitivo, dónde para irte a otra geografía, especialmente en el early stage, va a implicar o bien que tengas un músculo relevante de powerhouse firm o que estes cerca culturalmente. Yo a un Español puedo leerlo fácil, a un ruso me cuesta más. Y en esos detalles aparentemente pequeños, se esconde ganar o perder buenas inversiones. Sin embargo, al mismo tiempo aquí se esconde algo interesante, ya que veo algunos underserved gaps en geografías tradicionalmente no muy explotadas, que creo que pueden dar lugar a dealflow muy interesante (e.g. Europa del Este).

Y sobre la pregunta, OK pero entonces … ¿Qué pasará a quién se quede entre dos aguas? No me sorprendería ver algún tipo de consolidación de boutiques en algún momento en el futuro.

Finalmente, en relación a LPs - lo sigo sintiendo como predicación en el desierto. Poco conocimiento del asset class, incluido cosas básicas. Falta significativa de sofisticación. Sobretodo hablando de VC boutiques, ya que el LP institucional más profesionalizado tiende a ser sólo accesible para VCs de tamaño significativamente superior. Es una pena, pero hay mucho valle de la muerte vinculado a tamaños que no veo cambiando en el futuro próximo.

4️⃣ ¿Bullshit más grande que ves en los mundos de VC y startups?

En el mundo VC, varias cosas, pero destacaría:

• Value add. No en plan crítica general negativa porqué si que hay inversores que ayudan mucho. Pero en lo que respecta a estos servicios de plataforma que dicen ciertas cosas que no son las que venden. Creo que debe resonar más con los menos experimentados y lo veo una forma de embutir servicios subpar a compañías de portfolio. La casuística es tan variable que es imposible tener in-house al equipo que pueda servir a tanta heterogeneidad de portfolio. Consecuentemente, al final la startup se ve obligada a coger servicios externos flojitos y no desarrollar el músculo interno que deberías. Creo que el value add es más un tema de la ayuda individual que prestan los inversores que de verdad aportan - no tanto el cuento de sistematizarlo via fondo y que eso tenga un impacto alucinante.

• Tesis de inversión. Sinceramente, yo la tengo y la necesitas para hacer LP fundraising. Pero reconozco mi incapacidad para reconocer el futuro. Nadie podemos predecir nada. A veces ocurre que el marketing que en parte es necesario, acaba teniendo un peso mucho más grande de lo que debe. VC tu puedes tener la tesis que quieras, pero es un mundo de excepciones así que el driver de éxito en verdad no es raro que no encaje.

Y sobre mundo Startup, no se si esto es bullshit o más un grito de ayuda o alguna forma de canalizar frustraciones de inversor, pero me viene compartir:

• Emprendedor = bueno, inversor = malo. Sí, el mundo VC a aveces atrae más egos y personalidades no del todo empáticas que otros mundos. Pero basado en mi experiencia he visto mucho más a emprendedores abusar de inversores que al revés. Al final el VC es un repeat game donde vas a jugar cientos de veces y tu reputación la tienes que cuidar. Estos incentivos te animan (o deberían) a tratar mejor las relaciones. Los emprendedores si juegan muy bien, jugarán 1 o 2 veces. Así que sus incentivos siento que desafortunadamente en algunas ocasiones tienden más a criticar al inversor que a ser objetivo.

• Entradas complicadas. Esto de que cuando hay una startup que ha pivotado X veces y les ha salido mal, viene un posible inversor más nuevo cree que después de varios errores pueden conseguirlo, y que tenga que entrar en conflicto con un cap table pre-existente que lo ha hecho mal - me parece un BS muy erróneamente común. ¿Si la ejecución previa ha sido un desastre, porqué le va a salir gratis al previo?

• Compañías que no encajan. Quizás lo típico, pero sigue siendo tan común …. Gente que viene con compañías que no encajan ni a patadas con el VC, intentando e intentando. La persistencia es clave en la vida, pero hay que saber cuándo la realidad del terreno no encaja con el mapa que tienes en aspectos básicos.

5️⃣ ¿Detalle granular sobre tu playbook de dealflow, investment analysis, y ser un buen board?

En relación a dealflow, en JME dividimos nuestra estrategia en 3 niveles diferentes:

• Inbound. Intentar atraer dealflow via posicionamiento del fondo, marcas personales, y contenido. Típico ángulo más reactivo.

• Infantería. Continuamente todos los miembros del equipo estamos hablando con gente, trabajando nuestra network, e intentamos estar atentos a todo lo interesante que se vaya cociendo en el early stage Español que encaja con lo que buscamos. Esta sin duda es la mejor fuente de deals.

• Inteligencia. Adicionalmente, utilizamos ciertas herramientas de data analysis donde trackeamos que cosas interesantes estan sucediendo. Ejemplo: Alguien sale de startups que tenemos predefinidas como interesantes y se pone Founder en linkedin como nuevo rol.

Sobre investment analysis:

• Entrevistas con founders. Sin duda lo que tiene más peso. Algunos de mis elementos preferidos son:

  • Insight. Entender de dónde sale el insight. ¿Qué han hecho previamente los founders? ¿Porqué existe esta oportunidad? ¿Porqué están bien posicionados para aprovecharla?

  • Proceso de decisión. ¿Porqué se eligió una estrategia y otra no? ¿Cuáles son las decisiones clave a nivel de negocio y producto que se han tomado? ¿Cuales son las ventajas y sobretodo, las desventajas?

  • Escalar. ¿Se hace más fácil o más difícil cuando el negocio escala? Si es más fácil según mas crece, resulta más atractivo para invertir.

  • Toque personal. Pregunta robada a LocalGlobe, ¿Qué te gustaría que dijese Wikipedia sobre ti? En el fondo la idea es entender intereses y valores, cosas personales más allá del pitch que te permiten conocer mejor a quien tienes delante y que no sadrían en una conversación cualquiera.

• Sesiones con clientes, expertos propios y referencias de founders. Lo que aprendes en este tipo de actividades es de lo más relevante que te vas a llevar en el proceso de análisis.

Board member:

• Ayuda puntual. Aquí el objetivo creo que es más sencillo. VC me parece más un paradigma de elegir a buenos founders y no tanto del valor que te crees que tu vas a añadir como inversor. Por lo tanto mi estilo es más, dejar al founder hacer, y ayudar puntualmente remando a su favor y siempre respetándolo.

6️⃣ ¿Consejos para LP fundraising en 2024?

Bastante similar a lo que sería levantar dinero con una startup. Es importante conseguir poquito capital, empezar a ejecutar e ir demostrando.

La gente subestima lo difícil que es tener acceso a buenos deals. Demostrar dicho acceso, poder conseguir un huequito de allocation con los buenos emprendedores, es clave para un buen LP fundraising en 2024.

No importa que tengas capital para poco tiempo, céntrate en demostrar y a partir de ahí ya tendrás un punto de apoyo. Igual estoy hablando de €2m total, es decir los economics quizás son un drama, pero el múltiplo puede ser bueno consecuentemente podrías ejecutar mejor LP fundraising como emerging manager. Fondos top han empezado muy pequeños para el standard de hoy en día (e.g. Seedcamp).

Además de esto, es importante entender cual es tu fortaleza, jugar en coherencia con ella, y saber explicarla bien. ¿Es experiencia? ¿Es network? ¿Son conocimientos en un campo en concreto?

7️⃣ ¿Qué patrones de éxito has visto en los mejores inversores?

Me viene a la cabeza una genialidad de tweet sobre jerarquía de inversores que decía lo siguiente:

Hay 6 niveles …

1. Los peores son los que te sabotean las empresas de cartera. De estos hay pocos.

2. Promueven malas ideas por caminos erróneos y con mala leche. De estos también he visto pocos.

3. Distraen a empresas con obligaciones aleatorias que dispersan al founder, suponiéndole trabajos extra que no aportan. Aquí ya he visto más, incluyendo alguno de cerca últimamente.

4. Pasivo neutral y generalmente da apoyo, pero no excesivo y sin molestar.

5. Contribuyen de manera significativa en pequeño número de momentos clave de la compañía. Por ejemplo, intro al Sequoia de turno, traer al COO super clave, etc. Destellos de vez en cuando y nunca más que esto.

6. Suficiente contexto y experiencia para ser miembro valioso continuo del equipo del CEO.

Yo aspiro a estar en el 4, y me parece el nivel higiénico en el que todos deberían estar y sorprendentemente no están. Y quizás en algún momento poder llegar a estar en el 5, pero puntualmente y ni de coña siempre.

En VC, siendo medio normal, creo que ya estas en el percentil alto.

8️⃣ ¿Qué tienen en común los mejores emprendedores?

Hay muchas variables pero destacaría una gran orientación hacia la acción. Ingenio puesto en marcha para resolver problemas concretos con soluciones. Es decir, un estilo basado en aprender haciendo y viendo el resultado de lo que se hace.

Así mismo, no se si suena raro pero creo también que una de las definiciones de inteligencia es que una persona sea capaz de tener comportamientos interesantes opuestos. Por ejemplo, un founder testarudo con lo que ve claro pero capaz de escuchar. Excéntrico pero fácil de estar con él. Distorsión de la realidad pero a su vez con los pies en el suelo. Esa capacidad de mantener al mismo tiempo cualidades atractivas pero alejadas en el espectro.

Y por último, un par de ingredientes extra para mí serían esas personas que incluso aunque tengan poca experiencia son capaces de evolucionar con la compañía, y también aquellos que pueden construir grandes equipos alrededor suyo. Confiando en sus capacidades pero viendo dónde no llegan.

9️⃣ ¿Cuál ha sido tu mejor y peor deal, y que has aprendido de ello?

El mejor deal del que he podido estar medio cerca (yo no estuve cuándo se invirtió, pero si en el consejo y en la desinversión) fue Flywire. Aunque como ejemplo es raro porqué por lo general excedían presupuesto y todo solía ser super alegre ya que todo iba bien.

Dicho esto, si que recuerdo un par de lecciones que me parecen sobresalir. Una fue un reto negativo interno de la compañía que varios inversores ayudaron a aplacar y cuya resolución acabó siendo determinante en el éxito de la compañía. La otra, ver a inversores top del board cómo después de pasar tiempo sin rondas recomendaban hacer price discovery de cara a sacar algo de secundario para el equipo y algunos key players. Esto me pareció super alejado del típico playbook que yo tenía en mente de sota caballo rey - no sacas nada hasta que lo sacas todo. Sin embargo el punto de llevarte fichas de la mesa y seguir empujando con más tranquilidad, creo que puede ser una decisión estratégica muy sana llegado cierto punto en el scale up de la compañía.

Y respecto a fallos, sin entrar en nombres, pero quizás el más relevante sería invertir en una compañía porque te gusta la idea y/o el modelo de negocio, aunque no te convence el emprendedor. Me ha pasado varias veces y me ha parecido un error cada vez. La lección es algo que intentamos llevar a cabo en JME, siempre estaremos con el fundador (salvo fraude o extrema negligencia). Al final acabas aprendiendo que inviertes más en las personas que en la compañía, y nosotros no nos vemos capaces de cambiar este punto de vista. Si nos equivocamos en la persona nos equivocamos, pero ese es el riesgo que nos sentimos cómodos asumiendo.

🔟 ¿Qué consejo te darías a ti mismo cuando empezabas tu carrera?

Tres cosas principalmente:

1. Curiosidad. Sigue tu curiosidad y deja rastro de ello. Como hacéis Gerard y tú con Views. Ayer hablaba con una chica que quiere hacer doble grado, sobre la selectividad. Qué pasión hay en España por carreras largas. Creo que es mucho mejor hacer algo más corto y salir ahí fuera y probar cosas. Si no, no tienes ni idea de que va la realidad.

2. Acción. Aprender haciendo es lo más recomendable. En especial, si eres joven, aprovecha el poco coste de oportunidad. Ya irás viendo aunque no sepas qué hacer. Prueba cosas que tengan sentido.

3. Complejos. Esta va para Españolitos específicamente. Sal fuera y quítate los complejos. Los de otro lugar son tan listos o tan tontos como tú. Tenemos una narrativa en nuestro propio país que parece establecer que en España todo funciona mal y que fuera es una utopía. Hay mierda y cosas buenas en todos lados. Debemos ser más agradecidos y dejarnos de victimismos limitantes.

¡Gracias Samuel por compartir tus Views con nosotros!

¡Gracias lector por tu tiempo e interés!

Si te ha gustado, subscríbete y nos vemos en la próxima entrevista. 🙏🏼

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Rubina Singh plays a key role as investor specialized in climate tech and deep tech at Octopus Ventures (one of the largest and most active venture capital investors in Europe, with over £1bn under management and investing over £100m a year). Octopus is also part of Octopus Investments (a UK based financial services company managing £13bn on behalf of over 63,000 investors, with over 750 employees).

Rubina is also an advisor in the European Innovation Council’s deep tech programme (European deep tech community backed by the European Union) and in the Solar Impulse Foundation, as well as a Non Executive Director at POWERful Women (initiative to empower leadership development of women across the UK’s energy sector).

Before Octopus, Rubina was Head of Innovation Delivery at Centrica (public-listed energy services company with >$10bn market cap, >10m customers, and currently UK’s biggest retailer of zero carbon electricity). Previously to Centrica, as part of Gemserv, she worked in the electric vehicles and smart energy division. Earlier, Rubina was as solar engineer at Fraunhofer (non-profit entity dedicated to the advancement of applied research) while heading Fraunhofer TechBridge (division to validate and support early-stage cleantech).

Rubina holds a Bachelor of Engineering and Master of Engineering in sustainable energy engineering from Australian National University and University of Michigan, respectively.

overView(s)

Curated highlight of the most important Views from Rubina in case you don’t have time to read everything (as it happens to the best of us):

• There is a unique opportunity in deep tech investment. Fundamental macro paradigm change, global big critical problems, hard tech breakthroughs, and potential wild upside, are giving birth to a huge opportunity period for deep tech.

• Different game with different rules. Bigger problems, more meaningful products, extremely technical founders, bigger upside, need for more technical/operator experience from investors, understanding new risks (product, market, timing, capital) and how to mitigate them, fighting against common misconceptions, real contrarianism being important again.

• Top engineering and VC advice to make a dent in deep tech. Finding tough tier 1 technical founders with frontier vision and helping them engage the market, need for improved detailed technical understanding of product development, frequent customer discovery, systematizing risk mitigation, boldness to pursue what others don’t, building up network while contributing to ecosystem.

• The strategic relevance of improving the frontier tech ecosystem. Bridging the gaps among universities and research labs, incubators, corporates/industry, public gov, and other investors.

• Hot interlinked investment opportunities. Energy (building a new energy system, new electricity, smart grid, off grid, transformation of automobiles, new intelligent systems to match demand, new ways to monetize, renewable sources, improved batteries, evolution of buildings/homes, etc), materials science (new steel manufacturing, green cement, etc), construction (sustainable and more efficient), decarbonization (applied climate tech transforming multiple verticals), alternative fuels (hydrogen, ammonia), transportation and shipping (electrification, autonomous vehicles, new infra, AI applied to route optimization, sustainability) - among others.

• Yes, huge returns and huge positive impact is a real equation. More people driven to do well while doing good and more proven success cases, but there are still challenges. We need to build better ecosystems, get more breakthrough tech from lab to market, and improve capital available in general but in pre-seed and late stage in particular.

Index

1️⃣ Engineering lessons for investing in meaningful frontier hard tech

2️⃣ The extraordinary opportunity happening in deep tech right now

3️⃣ Why investment in real breakthrough tech and science is uncommon

4️⃣ Measures to mitigate risk and boost deep tech investing

5️⃣ How can we improve an ecosystem for superior tech sovereignty

6️⃣ Advice for new investors in deep tech

7️⃣ Hard tech analysis blueprint from a tier 1 VC

8️⃣ Global state of VC and deep tech

9️⃣ Hot verticals today and tomorrow

🔟 Is it possible to optimize for huge returns and huge positive impact?

1️⃣ Engineering lessons for investing in meaningful frontier hard tech

First of all, it is important to highlight that I’m talking from the point of view of someone who is focused on investing in breakthrough technology and science such as deep tech and clean tech. I’m making this clarification because in some sense it influences the applicability that I believe my engineering lessons can provide.

From there, I’d say:

• Extreme focus on understanding technology, from generic fundamentals to specific details. As an engineer, it is part of your daily job to grasp all the technical details of the task in front. As a venture capital investor trying to invest in really groundbreaking companies, having internalized this detail-oriented product-driven approach that goes beyond basic elements can help you illuminate the future potential of a technology that in the present moment and without that angle, could seem too much like a leap of faith. I know it seems obvious but in practice it is not as common. I believe sometimes the need to find clear market fit limits the exploration for product innovation. Yes, great tech won’t translate to a great product if the customers don’t want it or aren’t willing to pay for it. But as an investor you need to be open to new angles.

• Exploration of product adjacencies to improve visibility on hidden value. Strongly related to the previous bullet. An additional lesson that I think engineering provided me with and that can be applied to investing, is that when you truly understand the full technical ins and outs, you can actually leverage the knowledge and go one step further from the current product stage (and even current product roadmap) to explore adjacencies that may hold great value.

• Systematic iteration to improve data feedback and reduce risk. Again, probably more meaningful when investing in hard tech (where the risk can be more about actually achieving a breakthrough product) rather than in traditional digital. I don’t believe this is a game about doing an investment analysis at moment 0, placing your bet, and then just waiting. One big lesson from being an engineer in new climate tech projects, is that it is super important to allocate time and effort in understanding tech validation during the development process (steps required to evolve, risks that can be a danger and how to mitigate them, scaling up in the right place, building up confidence internally and externally at every stage, making sure the product path includes working with customers and having proper feedback loops with the market, etc).

2️⃣ The extraordinary opportunity happening in deep tech right now

Now we are going through a potential revolutionary opportunity. There is clearly a paradigm change where critical problems to humanity are becoming increasingly evident while at the same time we are having access to the best technology potential ever available. We have a very exceptional chance to create a new world to live.

Steam engine, lightbulb, … some of the most important improvements ever for the world came from deep tech.

Climate, energy, transport - you name it. The possibilities in deep tech are mesmerizing and there is a clear gap in investments that can hold interesting value.

3️⃣ Why investment in real breakthrough tech and science is uncommon?

I believe there is a mix of real difficulties and not-so-real misconceptions.

About difficulties, real breakthrough tech and science, often categorized within deep tech, is complicated work. True technical advancements take some more time and some more capital intensity than traditional digital venture capital investments.

But there are major misconceptions: culture, data, and upside. First, studying the past we see that investments that could’ve been categorized as deep tech where some of the most important ever in history, however culturally deep tech has become this tough struggling category in the minds of the mainstream VC industry (specially when it comes to investing in hardware). Second, data shows that even though more time and money can be required by this type of companies, it is feasible and not as extreme as some current narratives say. Third, the upside of having a home-run investment in this thesis can actually be more interesting than it may seem.

4️⃣ Measures to mitigate risk and boost deep tech investment

• Going after the biggest problems. Maybe could sound paradoxical, but going after the biggest pains implies three key upsides: huge markets, more upside if you manage to provide a proper solution, and evidently a more transformative impact for society. Looks obvious, but It will surprise you how many people allocate significant focus on solving stuff that is too marginal and far from the market sentiment. Deep tech is complex anyway, let’s make it worth the effort at least.

• Improving clarity regarding potential future upside. As we already mentioned, tactics such as close follow up and understanding of product development, and having frequent feedback loops with markets/customers, can improve visibility on ultimate potential even when the current stage of the company is too early and abstract to build conviction.

• Close and detailed tracking of tech development. As we already mentioned, tactics such as close follow up and understanding of product development, can improve visibility on ultimate upside potential even when the current stage of the company is too early and abstract. This is key to have awareness of the risks along the way and be ready to mitigate them, since in really game-changing investment like deep tech, product risk is one of the biggest challenges.

• Better understanding of the market and customer. Also as commented, it is very important to have frequent feedback loops with markets/customers, since it can greatly influence both, product development and go to market. This risk mitigation measure tends to be the missing piece in quite a lot of deep tech founders, who usually are highly technical and extremely focused on product.

• Building up the ecosystem. Last element but extremely relevant. From engaging super early with potential customers or having the support of public gov, to building bridges with the industry you are targeting, empowering universities and research labs, or easing the path for more capital to be active in the game. For tech breakthrough investment to flourish, we need to the whole ecosystem to flourish.

5️⃣ What are your top 3 advices to improve an ecosystem for superior tech sovereignty?

Following up from the previous question, my 3 top factors are:

• Building bridges. We need to build more bridges involving technical academia, research centers, private industry, public gov, and capital. It is a must to take more tech out of the lab and focus on commercialization, make a significant improvement of the relationships with startups, and ultimately empower all the stakeholders in the ecosystem so they are more willing to go the extra mile.

• New policies. Special focus on bringing in policy makers is a major need. They tend to be reactive and defensible but times are changing, and we need them 100%. For instance, I personally participate in some groups bringing together investors to work with the government in order to communicate challenges within the startup ecosystem (specially around cleantech), and it is quite helpful.

• Pre-seed and B+ funding. There is a big opportunity gap for investors paired with a big need for the ecosystem. In Europe and UK we are seeing a clear lack of appetite in deep tech / breakthrough tech investing, specially in the earliest and latest stage. I’m looking forward to see a generational change in this aspect in the coming years.

6️⃣ Guidelines for new investors in deep tech

Some things that come to mind:

• Do your homework on LPs. Study the strategy of your target LPs. Some of them are not exclusively focused on financial returns but also on the chance of doing an impact. Find them, study them, build a good strategic alignment, and articulate well the fit.

• The power of being different. Some LPs look at new emerging managers more interested in seeing what differential angle to the current status quo can be useful, rather than seeing the n+1 version of the previous thing. Maybe it is some specific industry experience, maybe it is a rare but exciting technical background. But whatever it is, contrary to what it may seem in this VC world at times, resisting your natural urge of blending in with the current state of things can help you. Explore your differential edge and empower it.

• Building verticalized networks. Ok, so you want to focus in a specific industry like deep tech? Allocate time and money to nurturing relationships with key stakeholders in this specific target. Deep and wide. In this case, universities, research labs, well-known technical experts of some of the segments you find more exciting, gov entities close to this world, other investors either active in the space or with some deal activity in it, etc.

• Dealflow access. Evidently, a must for any manager regardless of your target. You need a strong proven dealflow access that somehow can show unique aspects of what you can bring to the table in terms of good investments.

• Technical insight and operator experience. I’m aware this is still today a big debate in the VC world, but my honest opinion is that for something like deep tech, the difference between an investor having technical and operator experience or not, is huge. Not just in terms of picking the project and making your bet, but also in the much needed support and advice you’d need to provide along the way.

• Seeing what others don’t. A no-brainer in VC in general, but I believe even more important in deep tech. A trend follower style only gets you so far. The interesting thing for me is, do you really have that depth of technical knowledge and market vision that you are able to see opportunities that others may overlook? Because if we are talking about highly complex breakthrough technologies with extreme transformative potential, you really need to see things differently. A bold approach to not be aligned with conventional wisdom is a fundamental requirement.

7️⃣ Hard tech analysis blueprint from a tier 1 VC

Based on my point of view, at Octopus I don’t really have a standard blueprint for investment analysis, but it is true we do have many portfolio companies providing a lot of ongoing data that we can leverage.

Based on that, my top 3 elements for analysis are team, tech, and market. But without a doubt, team is probably one of the most valued elements.

Everything can change but great founders remain. We value tenacity, never giving up type of attitude, good reactions when things get tough, resilience, determination, love/passion for what they are building, constant drive to engage and understand their market, and openness to change approaches if needed. Can this be subjective based on the investors eyes? No doubt, that’s why it is important compounding valuable experience as investor to improve detection of those patterns.

Then, if talking about deep tech, what we usually see are 2 founders with at least 50% being extremely technical. They see and understand the technology opportunity and want to build up from that. It is true though, that from a team perspective, in this investment target you tend to find a lot of super technical profiles more similar to the CTO role than anything else. So even in the analysis stage it is already important to provide valuable support for team building, specially when talking about the sales aspect.

Besides team, tech + market equation is the other key element. A good example of the importance we give to this is the Springboard program of Octopus. Springboard is a deep tech programme created to help founders in the earliest stages. Our main focus is analysis and work towards understanding how a very ambitious high impact technology can go from the lab to engaging a market successfully. So we are concentrated on understanding target and adjacent markets, customer discovery, product triggers that will enable product-market fit in the future, leveraging expertise of our extensive network of corporates across several industries, what steps will the company require to be investor-ready for next stages, what are the short term and medium term pilots and projects that can be achieved, etc.

8️⃣ Global state of VC and deep tech

In terms of VC, the market is a bit off and conditions aren’t as great as they were a couple of years ago. Everything feels a bit slower.

However if we talk about deep tech, I see appetite for investing with verticals such as climate tech going through quite a sweet momentum. Problems are perceived as bigger and more critical than ever (e.g. needs for better future sources of energy, water, and food), US + UK + Europe policies are increasingly pushing hard towards tech sovereignty, incredible amount of research is happening in multiple areas, local deep tech ecosystems are getting a lot of attention, and there is a global rise in the understanding of how important this adventure is (e.g. India’s recent deep tech push).

9️⃣ Hot verticals today and tomorrow

So many exciting things now and in the future!

To name a few (some of them interlinked):

• Materials. Materials science sector is attracting considerable attention who want to capitaliza on the potential of advanced materials to disrupt traditional industries. Specially if we are talking about adding a climate tech angle. Some examples are new forms of steel manufacturing and the quest for “green” cement.

• Decarbonization. Climate tech solutions trying to mitigate climate change risks, impacting other verticals such as “green” materials or energy.

• Alternative fuels. More advanced and efficient fuel sources that are not only aligned with environmental goals but also can have transformative effects in other industries. Some examples are hydrogen or ammonia.

• Transportation and shipping. Electrification of transportation, autonomous vehicles, new infrastructure development, AI applied to smarter route optimization, growing sustainable focus, etc.

• Energy. My background is in energy so I find this particular one very interesting. I’m very excited about stuff like the revolution we are going through in electricity, evolution of automobile industry, new renewable sources, massive potential in more intelligent systems to match demand and monetizing in new ways, evolved buildings and homes, improvement in batteries, smart grids, off grid alternatives - I believe we are experiencing an almost once in a lifetime timing to build a new energy system.

🔟 Is it possible to optimize for huge returns and huge positive impact?

Good question!

I see a lot more of people driven to do well while doing good and I believe it is being proven that you can make a lot of returns while making huge positive impact (e.g. Tesla). However at the same time, to be honest, I also see key milestones that haven’t happened yet and lack of interest in achieving this returns+impact binomial coming from some industry players and investors.

But regardless of the challenges, I do think that we are in an amazing standpoint. For instance, we are in the break of building better ecosystems, having more success cases, exploiting more breakthrough tech such as in the intersection of solar energy and EVs, or in energy transition and decarbonization of traditional heavy industries.

Maybe not everything follows the traditional VC way of doing things, maybe not everything is even VC backable and we need new hybrid funding systems, but it is possible to do well while doing good.

Big thanks Rubina for sharing your views with us!

Big thanks to you, reader, for your time and interest!

If you enjoyed it, subscribe and we’ll be back with you. 🙏🏼

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Manuel Silva is General Partner and founding member of Mouro Capital, venture capital investment firm focused in the future of financial services, with $400m in investment commitments across Europe, North America, and Latin America. Portfolio includes companies like iZettle (mobile payments, acquired by Paypal for $2.2bn), Creditas (Brazilian lender, raised over $1.1Bn from Softbank and many others), Socure (identity verification, over $750m funding from Accel, Citi, Capital One), and Securitize (blockchain based access to digital alternative asset securities, >$50m funding by investors like Morgan Stanley Tactical Value and Blockchain Capital).

Mouro is born from a VC spin out of Banco Santander Innoventures, a $100m AUM corporate venture arm focused in fintech of Banco Santander where Manuel was Partner and Head of Investments, lather further funded with an extra $300m upon spinning out into the current Mouro Capital. Banco Santander is one of the worlds’ leading financial powerhouses with >150 years of history, >160m customers worldwide, €1.15t in customer funds, €9.6bn profit in 2022, and a €57.7bn market cap.

Before Santander adventure, Manuel helped lead the creation of BBVA Ventures in San Francisco Bay area, the corporate venture capital arm of BBVA and at that time one of the 1st ever VC arms in global banking. BBVA is a Spanish bank with >89m customers, presence in 25 countries, >115k employees, €6.4bn profit in 2022, and a €48.0bn market cap.

Manuel is also a strong supporter of Included VC, the best fellowship focused on empowering individuals from diverse and often overlooked or excluded communities, with potential of having significant professional and social impact in the worlds of venture capital via education and unique access.

Summary

1️⃣ Career beginnings and the curious role of China

2️⃣ Leading the creation of one of the 1st ever corporate VC arms in banking

3️⃣ Lessons from exposure to one of the hottest periods in Silicon Valley

4️⃣ The adventure of leaving to create something bigger

5️⃣ From zero to building a €400m VC

6️⃣ Secret hacks for a successful LP fundraising

7️⃣ Firm building advice for new emerging managers in 2023

8️⃣ Opportunities and challenges in fintech right now

9️⃣ Present and future of the banking system

1️⃣ Building VCs, having hundreds of millions under management, playing a key role in fintech VCs and banking innovation, … however your career beginnings was quite unusual and even related to some interesting situation in China.

Curiosity has been my bedrock. I was raised in Belgium in a very international environment, and I had the luck that my fathers worked for the European Commission so I could experience quite a lot of exposure to people from all around the world. I’d say I was a pretty weird kid and this background helped me flourish - it woke up my curiosity.

As a young student I remember feeling pretty bored. I enjoyed economics, maths, and computer science, but in general university felt like kind of a bummer. I got an offer from McKinsey but I was 100% sure I didn’t want to join them so I said no. Yet I didn’t know what to do as an alternative.

To get some inspiration, when I finished my undergraduate studies I went to the director of the education entity where I was and told him: “look, I’m 21 and I don’t have any idea about what the heck I should do with my life”. I was thinking about maybe becoming a diplomat or getting a PhD to get into teaching. And this man, in 2003, told me “ey, there is a thing named China that is going to be relevant in the future, look into it”.

To that end, I decided to go to Paris to start with an MSc at Sciences Po, which could give me the option to then move on to a PhD focused on Chinese economics, for which I also had to learn Chinese. I like to be open minded and experience more things in other places. I wasn’t thinking about being in VC either, but more about letting reality guide me.

Shortly after finishing my MPhil (having also spent a year in Hong Kong), I started working at the BBVA Corporate Development team with focus on Asia and other emerging markets. I did some econometrics models for China as well as other deals (acquisition of minority stakes, advisory for entry market strategies, structuring) linked to finance players in Asia and Latin America.

Then something happened. I took a leave of absence to get deeper into my PhD, but I started to see some red flags. For instance, I remember a guy helping me get into a relevant Chinese communist library to get some statistics that could be useful for my econometrics model and finding it impossible to get good data. This struggle of not being able to access trustworthy information just grew bigger and I ended up giving up on finalizing my PhD.

Back at BBVA, I wanted to keep following my curiosity and ended up coming across a rare opportunity to start investing in technology companies from within the bank. None of my corporate colleagues back then really wanted to be travelling around looking for startups in a garage - but for me the chance of being able to go around the innovation community to find and support founders building something out of nothing was extremely exciting, so I pursued this path.

2️⃣ How was the journey of helping create one of the 1st ever corporate VCs in banking?

I feel like during the last years everyone is asking “how do I break into VC” and trying to have clear paths into the industry - my journey wasn’t like that at all.

As I mentioned earlier, 2 years before “starting in VC” I was in China trying to finish my PhD. 2 years before China I wanted to be a diplomat. And before that I even thought about going into the Army. I believe it is important to be 100% clear about this type of career stories because if not young people get an incorrect idea of what it truly looks like to “make it in the industry” - any industry really.

That being said, I’d highlight 3 things about my 1st VC experience in BBVA:

• Right place right time. Sometimes serendipity just happens in your favour. At the time I made my move, the chairman of BBVA had been talking about the impact of technology in banking way before it was fashionable to do so. I am not sure how much people were embracing that vision at such an early time of the digital transformation of the industry. But we talked the same language and we just clicked around the idea of technology and banking. I have no doubt that starting at BBVA during the same period in time that he was driving the early technology agenda, was totally providential, and helped me feel like you can be innovative even against the tide.

• Long-term complex problems. I always enjoyed very complex problems where there are a lot of multidisciplinar stakeholders and a tough project to execute in the long term - and this also helped. Building a corporate VC is not the same as just being a VC investor, specially if it is one of the 1st in your whole industry. But I love building something from zero and having ownership to manage a lot of very diverse professionals to achieve a meaningful goal that can bring relevant upside in the long term. I get excited by challenges where there is not a set solution from the beginning.

• Personal fit. Maybe this is not so common to share, but the personal situation where you are at any given moment obviously has an effect in your actions. In my case, at that time, I was single and bored of Madrid (Spain). Getting my bag and going to San Francisco to fight for a new compelling adventure was an extra incentive.

From this starting point, what followed was 4-5 years of a lot of work. We went to the Valley to study the best and learned by doing. Our thesis was going after a $100m Fund 1 focused on innovation in finance that could have synergies with the bank, in order to become a catalyst for innovation which could accelerate the whole BBVA innovation agenda. We had lots of fun with great colleagues and amazing experiences!

3️⃣ What were the main lessons of the exposure to one of Silicon Valley’s hottest periods?

• Relationship of investors and entrepreneurs. If you ask me about lessons, maybe one of the things that impressed me the most was how different the dynamic between investors and entrepreneurs was, in comparison to what I saw in Spain and Europe at that moment in time (and some times, I still see). In less developed ecosystems the vision of this relationship was somewhat based on antithesis where the investor is coming to make something more serious out of the founder, and the founder is the young bold guy with ideas but who is also chaotic and who spends a lot of money. Kind of an equation that tries to generate a positive outcome but through opposing roles. In Silicon Valley though, I learned about how precisely the understanding of this relationship as a true partnership becomes one of the most relevant catalyst of outstanding success. The culture regarding this bond was absolutely different. One based on everyone being on the same ship where each individual is expected to contribute something different - maybe the founder comes up with the enthusiasm, super hard work, and smart brains; and the investor with the duty of providing valuable support because having had the chance to allocate money, not with the entitlement of judging the founder and telling her what to do.

• Dimension of ideas. This maybe sounds like the classical self-help book type of learning, but people in SV just thought way bigger than what I saw in Europe. Funny thing though, is that with time you realize it is not like these thoughts are more valid than someone in any other ecosystem. However I learned there the importance of having a flexible and ambitious mindset when building a company

  based on pushing hypothesis to the limit in order to test the maximum positive scenarios that your ideas could reach. In Europe we lacked this back then and we still could improve nowadays. I see entrepreneurs proud because they reach their business plan expectations, but I’d love to see more drive towards crazy qualitative jumps.

• Ecosystem and networks. More fundamental and probably obvious stuff, yet very significant and not always executed properly. It is important how the most successful periods in this specific ecosystem were in part defined by the existence of a collective intelligence fruit of an hyperconnected network of entrepreneur and investors with valuable experiences both in terms of success and failure. Sometimes it is more about being able to ask to the right person at the right time whatever you need (how should I approach the execution of X idea, how can I better understand this market, how can I build a superior team with this angle, etc) rather than having yourself the biggest brain in the world. I disagree with the motto of people working harder in Silicon Valley or being more intelligent, however I do believe that they are smarter in the way of building this collective intelligence and being able to access it in order to collect the value that they need. And one of the secret ingredients for this it is the mindset of “I will give you something and let’s see if in the future it comes back somehow”, rather than Europe’s style of “I’ll give you something if you give me something”.

• Value of reputation. Strongly related to the previous one. This super basic concept of the people’s perception of your worth being firmly interconnected with your acts, is another big lesson I experienced. Way beyond the investment firm or company you represent, what matters most is your personal brand. When an entrepreneur wants to work with a fund, they want a specific investor. You want the specific individual that you know personally, who truly helps, and who wakes up in the morning focused on supporting you.

4️⃣ Why leaving BBVA spearhead to start again the arduous journey of launching a new VC with Santander?

Well, during my 5 years in the US the world changed a lot and my life too.

About the world:

• Standardisation. When we started doing venture capital with BBVA, if I’m not wrong I think Citi was the only bank doing it too, at leat in the US or at a global scale. After some years though, it turned mainstream which resulted in the rise of new exciting opportunities with other entities.

• From 1 hub to multifocal. When we were in Madrid with BBVA and we decided to launch in San Francisco, it’s not just that Spain scene was almost non-existent, but even London or NY weren’t very relevant. Either you went to Silicon Valley or you lacked enough ecosystem density to play the game. However after some years you could do the work from more places and in more ecosystems.

• Geographical arbitrage. As a result of going from one global center to multiple ones, you could leverage the edge of already having experience in a more advanced and sophisticated ecosystem, to position yourself with more dominance in new ones that were starting to gain momentum. Prior knowledge gives you that advantage.

• Availability of capital. The huge increase in global availability of capital changed the dynamic of the Valley a lot. After a while it went from being a place with a unique combination of elements that resulted in an extremely exceptional ecosystem to work in, to being one of the important places but not the only one. Gradually this collective intelligence went from having a beer or grabbing a coffee in some Palo Alto techie spot, to zoom. And at the same time the area became a worse place to live.

However I must say that even though they are true, the factors mentioned before are more of an afterthought - at the moment probably personal were more important for me. Specifically, what had a bigger weight in my decision to leave probably was the fact that my mum passed away and I wanted to be closer to Europe for family reasons. Additionally I felt like life quality in San Francisco was starting to decrease considerably.

Finally, whilst all these macro and personal elements were compounding, at the same time Santander started to consider the creation of a corporate venture capital arm and they were looking for someone who had experience building a corporate VC (not just investing but also creating a fund out of nothing in key matters such as team construction or portfolio management). I came across the opportunity and I ended up joining a few months after they launched as a partner in the investment team, responsible for new investments but also but fund operations.

5️⃣ How was the journey from zero to building Santander Innoventures ($100m AUM) and eventually Mouro Capital ($400m AUM)?

One of my biggest lessons from my time at BBVA Ventures was that in order to succeed in this type of corporate venture capital strategy you need to be able to help the corporate but also forge a differential identity. And this can be a big challenge at times as you need to wear many hats in a smart way.

So when I landed in London (where the headquarters of the new VC were going to be based) this was a priority for me. But there was an important difference versus what I experienced in BBVA Ventures. Back in San Francisco, not so many people knew BBVA so I had a lot of freedom to construct this personalised identity, it was like a blank canvas. Santander in London was way different, the brand was really strong and carried a strong weight that had a decisive influence on the program.

Consequently, I remember starting off by having some relevant conversations with key executives of the bank in order to understand how we could help them so an initiative like this could win. They understood the “freedom approach” and how it could give us access to better dealflow, thus to potentially superior performance. We were sponsored by the bank as main LP, and we had independence to position our unique personality in the market, but we had to be very mindful about synergies with the bank.

Regarding the team, I had the opportunity to help in leading the initiative together with Mariano Belinky, who previously worked in places like Bridgewater Associates and McKinsey - the relationship was great, very complementary with lots of thought provoking moments. Additionally we managed to get many of the top key Santander executives in our investment committee, which helped the program and gave us tremendous insights.

We started with a clear investment thesis pointing towards synergies with the bank, which for us meant fintech related to the bank activities and the digital agenda. Over the years, as the market matured, so did our investment thesis, and we started complementing our investment scope with longer term investment strategies, sometimes at the adjacency of fintech (e.g. sourcing a logistics startup because some interesting fintech ingredient that we can help build up with our expertise). As a result, the companies in our portfolio did a lot of stuff with the bank (e.g. at some point in time 70% of our companies worked with Santander), and we also explored much more long term trends. All of this ended up yielding a pretty nice fund performance (including significant executed distributions back to the bank) - fact that developed into an improved reputation and a virtuous circle of increasingly good deal flow and market brand.

The internal recognition we earned at Santander, together with the support of many executives, allowed us to evolve our structure into an independently managed fund (while still managing 100% Santander money), predicated on the basis of better talent capturing and retention, more efficiency in managing assets, better incentives alignment, and lower risk for the limited partner via a stronger legal separation. This is how Mouro came to be, in 2019 - 2020, with a fresh injection of an extra $300m.

To this day, I am extremely thankful to Santander for the trust in the program and backing us since 2015, and I believe it is a win win relationship that has also brought lots of financial and non financial benefits for the bank.

6️⃣ What secret hacks would you recommend for a successful LP fundraising?

A few things come to my mind, all of them closely related:

• Understand. Put yourself in the LP point of view. Being able to have a high degree of empathy with the LP vision and mission, thus avoiding the natural tendency to only focusing on selling your story without adapting it to why it is relevant to your audience, can help tons. Specially important to understand the details about what is the relationship any given LP wants to have with the GPs in important areas like relationship wise, reporting, ESG, etc. It is very relevant to learn what are their principles and having solid alignment with them to build up relationship, close fundraising commitments, and maintain that relationship in the future. There are some things you can’t improvise so you have to do your homework if you want to reach your product market fit with LPs as a VC fund.

• Help. You must believe in serendipity and in the power of generosity. Maybe you’ll meet LPs that are not a fit for you, but try to understand when you could help, and do it even though there is no clear quick win for you in the short term.

• Ask. An LP fundraising it is not about spitting out your pitch nonstop until you get a yes. I’d recommend to not start by losing too much time on selling your story, but more about asking the LP what are they looking for. Lots of GPs kick off the meeting by playing their song due to fear of time constraints and losing the opportunity to present to the LP, but it is better to collect as much info as you can from your potential targets to make the conversation relevant.

7️⃣ What advice would you give to new emerging managers trying to build a VC firm in 2023?

• Not promises but facts. We are not in a world of unproven promises but in a one of facts. Do not lose too much time on telling stories about how are you great in doing X and how much money are you going to make in 10 years. It is better to show some old school hard work. “You don’t believe me? OK, I’m going to bring you a couple of deals to create value for you from day 1”. Doing small SPV deals before getting to your 1st closing can be a great approach. Accept you are trying to do something exceptional and difficult, and that you will need to work for free for a while without knowing if you’d see anything back.

• Be honest and trustworthy. Do not lie about your skills, knowledge, and networks. Well, do not lie in any way. In this business there is a lot of cockiness and people who likes to talk but can’t back it up when it is time to perform. Be real and take care of your trustworthiness.

• Long term relationship building. Nurture relationships with multiple LPs following a long term approach. Understand their problems and incentives. Then target providing value on a >10+ years time frame. Do not start relationships with the idea of getting a cheque in a couple of weeks - it will backfire.

• Identify your uniqueness and share it properly. This is similar to what we (VCs) ask from entrepreneurs. Detect your uniqueness and show why you can execute on it. How can you generate value in a given space, and capture part of that value? If you are targeting a big investment opportunity but you don’t have a differential advantage, you will struggle in your LP fundraising. Do not start with “my VC TAM is this big”. Prove why your new vc has a unique insight that can provide distinctive access, thus increasing the probabilities of reaching a great product market fit.

• Be a specialist. Being a 1st time VC manager acting as generalist is a tough one. I believe it is better to showcase a specialist angle, which even though can reduce your market exposure (so consequently your number of target LPs), at least it increases your changes of standing out from the noise of competition. Also, I believe it can help increase your trustworthiness and reputation. Being a 1st time manager with limited money and stating that you are a generalist going after everything, doesn’t seem an honest investment thesis.

8️⃣ Opportunities and challenges in fintech right now?

The fintech world is in a very interesting moment.

On the one hand, it earned a “not so good” reputation (unfairly) among investors that do not fully understand the sector. Mainly because corrections of sky-high valuations, business that got too entangled in the crypto bubble, or IPOs that happened earlier than they should. Many generalists got stuck in many deals they did not understand, and many of them happened to be in fintech unfortunately. This does not give credit to a myriad of amazing startups being built at all stages.

On the other hand, the underlying motives serving as bedrock for innovation in financial services are more present than ever. Banking (and insurance) keep transforming, and record profits being obtained by many banks can potentially translate in an acceleration of digitalization as well as superior allocation of resources into technology, both internally and externally. Additionally, if talking about the startup ecosystem itself, we should see more movement too. Rationalization is necessary. We should see exciting consolidation plays which could bring new big players to the game, thus impacting the current competitive landscape and making it more interesting.

Regarding new vertical trends, the regulatory push of open banking (increasingly extended on a global scale) or the new focus on consumer protection, are expected to continue thriving in the future. Artificial intelligence application to banking problems, from servicing to channels and creation of new products, is expected to leave room for major opportunities too. Even blockchain, besides crypto prices noise, keeps being implemented in some key uses cases under the radar. And who nows, maybe we are even able to see some great scalable quantum computing breakthrough in the short/medium term (actually starting to see some of it already, specially in capital markets applications).

I believe we are in a moment of rebirth for some fintech and insurtech verticals, that will bring more opportunities than challenges - specially in the early stage.

9️⃣ The banking system seems to be experiencing a lot of movement during the last years and the impact has already proven to be potentially significant. What are your views on the future of the banking system?

Similarly to fintech, I also believe banking is experiencing some sweet timing in terms of the innovation cycle.

After lots of years of digitalization, we are starting to see a polarization of the banking world. A few entities, either big global ones or local with significant market share in their main geography, jumped into the digitalization train with open banking and banking-as-platform as spearheads. I think these are the players that are going to endure the test of time and be able to compete in a world progressively technological. But then we have the ones which haven’t been able to understand and adapt to this tech evolution. And I’m afraid the latter type will end up succumbing under the weight of its structure.

Yet that’s not all. As we are all experiencing just reading everyday news, we live in a world more and more uncertain from a geopolitical point of view. In this context new technological fundamentals are going to open new strategic angles, where value is going to be found at the crossroads in between financial services and other industries - crossroads that are evolving very rapidly as we speak (mobility, e-commerce, identity, etc.).

Big thanks Manuel for sharing your views with us!

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Daniel Cuthbert is a renowned hacker and cybersecurity expert, currently working as Global Head of Cyber Security Research at Banco Santander, global financial powerhouse with >150 years of history, >160m customers worldwide, €1.15t in customer funds, €9.6bn profit in 2022, and a €57.7bn market cap.

He is also an advisor in matters of intelligence and cyber security to governments such as the US and UK, Board member at Sentinel Foundation (non-profit organization mixing tech and combat experienced professionals to fight against child sexual exploitation), and co-author of OWASP ASVS or Open Worldwide Application Security Project Application Security Verification Standard (OWASP is a greatly recognized non-profit foundation playing a pivotal role in promoting application security via community-led open source projects, and ASVS is one of its highly valuable security frameworks).

Previously, Daniel held multiple cybersecurity roles, highlighting his work as COO at SensePost (reputed company in the cybersecurity industry, focused in offensive security testing and research). SensePost eventually became Orange Cyberdefense after an acquisition by Orange (multinational telecommunications company with 287m customers, 136k employees, €43.5bn in revenue in 2022, and a €27.7bn market cap).

Summary

1️⃣ Starting as self-taught hacker

2️⃣ Becoming COO of Orange Cyberdefense and cybersec lead at Banco Santander

3️⃣ Sentinel Foundation and using tech to fight against child abuse

4️⃣ Lessons from a hacker life

5️⃣ Biggest threats in cybersecurity right now

6️⃣ Hottest opportunities in the space

7️⃣ Insider view of the future

8️⃣ Surprising facts about cyber attacks

8️⃣ Are we on an escalating global cyber cold war?

1️⃣ How did you start in cybersecurity and why?

I started not in security but in hacking.

Maybe a normal cliché for the space but I just had great curiosity around this new thing called the internet and started to pursue it on my own as a hacker.

It was not so much about going to school to learn about this stuff (we could say the real security industry didn’t even exist back then), but more about self learning - the best way to grow in this world still today if you ask me. And in the mid-90s and early 2000’s there were a lot of opportunities to do so. A big chunk of hacking happened in that period since lots of things were being built horribly wrong on the internet which left room for really exciting hacker creativity.

Following a deep rooted curiosity, having huge excitement for new tech, always looking at new stuff, learning on my own, reverse engineering it … that was my beginning!

2️⃣ How was your path from hacker to leading security roles in relevant players like SensePost / Orange Cyberdefense and Banco Santander?

One of my first dedicated security roles was at Financial Times helping build ft.com. I had a title of systems engineer but my main task was trying to break what they were building. A penetration tester type of role. So I grew up into that angle.

Afterwards, I helped set up KPMG’s Penetration Testing capabilities. The main idea was analyzing systems and applications for vulnerabilities and security gaps, and then attacking to test them while providing measures to reduce risks.

Eventually I joined SensePost (now Orange Cyberdefense after an acquisition by the Orange Group) which became a renowned cybersecurity company focused in offensive security testing and research. This mainly involved simulating real-world attacks to identify weaknesses in systems and providing recommendations for risk mitigation. There I started as Assessment Manager responsible of evaluating risks associated with client architecture and software whilst providing support to the client, and ended up as COO helping lead in a strategic role global operations while still involved at a technical level. At SensePost I had the chance to build really exciting things with some of the baddest hackers in the world. Having this chance to work with the best people and really become a force in the industry was exceptional.

After almost 7 years at SensePost and working with a lot of finance world players along the way, I wanted a change, and I came across what to me seemed a unique opportunity in a unique place - Banco Santander. Even though I understand it is a challenge in the hacker world to convince people that Santander is not a normal bank, I have truly experienced a singular place to develop best in class cyber security research capability. The bank’s leadership mentality was aligned with my vision and ultimately I became responsible for leading the research direction for cyber security.

3️⃣ What is Sentinel Foundation and why does it matter?

Sentinel Foundation is a very interesting and important non-profit endeavour leveraging tech and combat experience to track down and stop child sex exploitation.

Glenn Devitt, the Co-Founder and CEO, was one of my students in a course I gave to U.S. intelligence units on tracking. We met, became friends, and I remember sharing our thoughts regarding how every day there are increasingly more undesirable uses of tech to mask the awful ugliness of abusing children. Sentinel was born from saying “look, we have the capabilities to do something about it, so let’s go, let’s help”.

Child sex trafficking is a huge problem. It is not like I have a big concern about what adults prefer to practice with each other, but if you abuse a child you have crossed the line. We know how to track and we find those people.

4️⃣ What positive and negative lessons would you highlight from your journey as a hacker in cybersecurity?

The positive lesson would be, without a doubt, learning about the great importance of how to attract and work with the best people. Lots of times, you see the huge need for great technical talent however at the same time the weak efforts to make them feel properly welcomed and free to create. If you force people (specially in a highly technical realm like cybersecurity) into an old fashioned culture, and you are expecting them to come and do the job without respecting idiosyncrasy - I don’t think you are going to leave room for the best work to happen. Giving people the creative space to be cool and giving them the proper tools, is something I learned that showed me very positive fruits.

About the negative, well, there are quite a lot of hard lessons I can’t talk about because the nature of confidentiality in the industry. But I’d say probably the biggest one could be helping develop tools that end up being used by undesirable people with bad intentions.

5️⃣ Biggest threats in cybersecurity right now?

What I see most is that lots of companies struggle with the basics. Simple things like understanding what they have are the origin of some of the most significant threats.

Related to that, I’d add that we have a growing number of software vendors that build products which are not fully secure. This ends up as catalyst of the pre-existing vulnerabilities of the company, thus brings to the table more potential hacks.

Attack surface has dramatically increased in the last years. We went from small isolated networks to remote, hybrid, on prem, mobile devices, etc - having all this secure is an ongoing threat.

6️⃣ Hottest opportunities in the space?

There are lots of things I can’t talk about (again because confidentiality issues), but a couple of opportunities come to my mind: quantum cryptography and AI.

I know quantum cryptography quite well and I’ve been personally working on it for some time. If we put aside the threat that it will imply to traditional cryptography, I believe it is a really exciting opportunity because it can give everybody a much needed kick in the butt to finally fully understand where are you using cryptography. OK, men and women who wear sandals with socks say that this works, but do you understand what is truly happening under the hood? Quantum is making people finally discuss the fact of how do you use cryptography in a world where a lot of people uses it (or at least needs it), but struggle to understand what they have and how they use it.

And about artificial intelligence, this year’s hot topic, I’d highlight three things. First, I don’t thing it is going to take everyone’s job. Second, copilot is phenomenal at doing documentation for code and unit test, it just makes it easier. And third, if you can train GPT models on lots of documentation that people might find boring or complex, that could be very interesting.

7️⃣ What are your views regarding the future of the industry?

I am amazed about the power we have unlocked during the last years regarding how to make huge impacts with relatively low resources, maybe specially regarding media manipulation.

At the present time, individuals, entities, and governments can access data easier and almost have an industrial approach to hacking in a way. Media hacks or misinformation at mass scale was an expensive endeavour not so long ago and now is so much easier. This will bring (and in fact is already bringing) a lot of interesting new things happening in the intersection of cybersecurity and geopolitical stuff.

A few examples of this:

• ISIS built a far-reaching manipulation of social media to spread Islamic State propaganda and exhort online followers to carry out attacks. As a result, key players in the war against terrorism like the U.S. ended up thinking that ISIS was way more big and influential than it really was

• A Chinese spy used linkedin to hunt UK secrets on an industrial scale for at least five years, targeting thousands of British officials

• Struggle to find clarity regarding the truth about what is happening in the Russia-Ukraine war in key contexts such as the fatal plane crash of Wagner’s Yevgeny Prigozhin

8️⃣ What fact about cyber attacks surprised you the most?

Probably, the most surprising fact for me it is how effective ransomware ends up being. The impact that it has had on the industry is so profound. It still surprises me today how a small group of people can make such obscene amount of money through crime and escape any consequence - so lucrative and unknown.

The effort that criminal bands need to do for any given crime tends to be huge, however with ransomware it is easy to do crime at scale with relatively low effort. Also, everything kind of happens in the shadows. No one is seeing the big picture because when this happens, victims such as well-known companies end up paying in silence to avoid admitting they have been hacked.

9️⃣ Are we on an escalating global cyber cold war with targets such as the definition of truth?

Interesting and tricky question. I know some argue in this direction and I do not really want to comment too much on this, but I don’t think so.

To me, it looks like the history of mankind is always full of this type of conflict situations and lately some governments are starting to be more interested on using technology to shape narratives on massive scale. But I’m not really into the cyber cold war scheme.

I believe it is more about needing a superior collaborative approach between tech communities and governments policies to ensure proper security while at the same team being able to attract the best talent so we are as ready as possible to face any challenge that can come across.

Big thanks Daniel for sharing your views with us!

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Lluc Torcal is a physicist specialised in quantum mechanics and theologian Catholic monk in the legendary Order of Cistercians, as well as the General Procurator of the order in charge of leading its relationship with the Holy See (the central governing body of the Catholic Church).

The Order of Cistercians is a monastic religious order within the Catholic Church founded in 1098 in France with the vision of reforming monastic life. It was born with a strong emphasis on returning to the principles of humility, simplicity, austerity, manual labor, supporting their communities, and living a more disciplined spiritual life. The Cistercians rapidly expanded throughout Europe, establishing numerous monasteries, becoming a significant religious and economic force during the Middle Ages, and ultimately having a deep historical impact in key areas like agricultural innovation, water management, Gothic architecture, and large-scale industrial enterprises like milling or textile production.

Lluc holds a Summa Cum Laude PhD in Interpretation of Quantum Physics from Pontifical Gregorian University, a degree in Theology from Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, a degree in Philosophy from Pontifical Gregorian University, and a degree in Physics from the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

Summary

1️⃣ From physicist to Catholic monk

2️⃣ Importance of human dignity in an extremely technological world

3️⃣ Science and Faith

4️⃣ Criticism and conflicts

5️⃣ Opportunities and challenges in the intersection of religion and tech

6️⃣ The marvel of quantum mechanics

7️⃣ Belief systems for positive impact

8️⃣ Advice to not get lost in a noisy world

1️⃣ Physicist focused on quantum mechanics and Catholic monk for the last 30 years … how did your story reach such rare intersection?

It kind of happened at the same time in a very smooth and synergetic way. I started having Catholic Faith when I was around 10-12 years old and at 17 I already wanted to be a monk. However while I was receiving this calling for monastic life, I also started having a deep interest to know more about the world.

I think I wanted to understand in the best possible way everything about the reality that we are in as well as about human nature. So I ended up pursuing physics, philosophy, and theology. Eventually I got my physics degree and ended up joining the Cistercians as a monk in the Monastery of Santa Maria de Poblet.

I always felt this deep rooted fire to learn more about what are we doing in this life and why. And even though I comprehend in today’s world this might sound weird, I never struggled to see the relationship between my Catholic Faith in God and science - because I see God in everything.

2️⃣ Why is religion important in a world where postmodernity and technology advancement seems to dominate?

Exclusive focus on technology can lead to a degradation of the human spirit. The greatness of humanity is not just doing things but being able to understand the why behind it.

I believe our culture, specially during the last years, does it backwards. There are always exceptions but it seems like in the current era it is more about 100% focus on technology advancement at the expense of a profound understanding of the consequences of what we are actually doing.

Given this context, religion can play an essential role in terms of helping establish a proper direction that allows us to use technology to improve dignity of human condition - reversing what still seems to be the current dominant order of the world, based on using human dignity to boost technology evolution just because technology evolution itself.

Again, not saying there aren’t exceptions to this as well as good intentions, but when we look at the tech world there seems to be a lot of blurred lines covered with nice story tellings but lacking contemplation (understood as a deep reflective thought of truly building for the good of humanity).

3️⃣ The compatibility of science and Faith has been questioned many times. Are religion and science friends or enemies?

What is incompatible are Faith and ideologies.

Regardless of someone being a believer or not, the truth is not only what can be discovered through mathematic language or scientific method. Those are very important ways of seeing certain aspects of the world, but it is important not to confuse science with science-based ideology. For instance, there are other ways of thinking and reasoning such as art, poetry, music, or even philosophy, that can not necessarily be fully understood through the scientific method.

It is going to be tough trying to understand love through a mathematical formula, as it is appreciating the functioning of a human cell using physics and not biology. The scope of human reason goes way beyond one unique way to look at things and there are still more questions than answers.

And if you have faith, I’d say there is even less incompatibility. From a theological point of view, God, in the Genesis, created the world with a notion of it being good and intelligible. There is truth and there are methods to know truth, such as our intelligence. You can’t follow your Faith using your intelligence and end up finding incompatibilities - it is more about limits of knowledge rather than that.

4️⃣ What are your thoughts regarding the criticism of historical conflicts between science and religious institutions such as the Church?

Well, first of all, institutions such as the Catholic Church are made of people and absolutely no one is free from flaws. We, as humans, are capable of good things and also of bad ones. The Church is no exception.

In terms of conflicts related to science we find examples like the very well-known situation with Galileo. And for sure there are more. But when this type of controversies are pointed out, it could be interesting to know more about the context. For instance in this Galileo situation at that time, some people within the Church showed support for the astronomer’s scientific findings.

Despite the prevailing negative narrative, I don’t believe the Church has been systematically against improvements. From education to health or other social services, the institution has fostered very relevant positive developments for the world. Denying this is simply a matter of ideology going against historical facts.

5️⃣ What future opportunities and challenges do you see in the intersection of religion and technology?

In my opinion, the key for the future is the harmony between humanity and technology. How to integrate technology evolution in our daily lives while respecting and enhancing personal dignity.

Tech is a fruit of human intelligence and it strongly depends on how we develop it. If everything we build serves to positively improve the person in a good way - welcome it. But if not, it needs to be denounced, combated, and stopped.

Also, technology must integrate itself with the human dignity, and we need to land these sometimes abstract ideas into very concrete facts.

One example of this type of opportunity and challenge binomial is transhumanism (in the hardcore sense, not just using technology to enhance human capabilities but extremely pushing the boundaries undermining essential aspects of what it means to be human). Why? Because it reduces the person to an individual entity, limits intelligence to calculus excellence, and removes the issue of pain inhumanly. So basically turns the person into an inmortal individualized calculating machine without relations. It doesn’t integrate tech and humanity, and it doesn’t integrate the person with the human condition of the others because some will be able to do it and others won’t (which could result in the creation of yet another vulnerable class of people - maybe even worse than what we have already seen before).

And alternative to this is positively enhancing human conditions in areas like regenerative medicine. Not aspiring to alter the core of what a human is (even to the genetics if needed), but helping nature express its full capabilities.

Another examples of exciting frontiers in the intersection of religion and science could be artificial intelligence and climate tech.

In AI we are hearing a lot of noise lately about creation of intelligence, however beyond the hype it looks more like we are focused on providing great enablers of information. The human brain is quite a lot more than that. It is going to be very interesting to experience what approaches to surpass current limitations are being implemented and shared with the world.

And in climate tech seems like we are finally realising the huge challenges humanity has to face to ensure a favourable future. Very compelling opportunities in key areas like energy are getting momentum. Innovation in this realm is very interesting because how it integrates the individuality of the person, human communities, and the global ecosystem as a whole. It kind of forces you to avoid human reductionism that some political fractions try to impose. Pope Francis wrote about this themes in “Laudato Si”, an encyclical letter focused on the topics of the environment, climate, human ecology, social justice, technology, and progress.

6️⃣ Can you share a moment where a science related discovery has impacted your Faith?

In my journey both faith and science have moved quite in parallel so it is not like I focused in this type of moments. Nevertheless it is true that the more you learn, the more you marvel about the miracle of life and the world.

I remember studying quantum mechanics and just being in awe of the complexity that underlies the beautiful reality we live in. Learning about concepts like entanglement (where two particles are intertwined even if they are apart and changing the state of one particle instantly affects the other regardless of distance) influencing the way we think about the unique interconnectedness of the world, or uncertainty (principle stating fundamental limits on how to precisely and simultaneously know certain properties of a particle) provoking the thought of mysterious indeterminacy where interaction in general (e.g. observation) can play a major role actually affecting the behaviour or state of a particle - it’s amazing. And then on top of this incredible complexity that forms the basis of our physical world, having things like love … it just makes me admire even more the creation of God.

7️⃣ We are in a world where the belief system of a few number of individual builders can end up having major impact. Based on your experience, what should be taken into account so the impact ends up being more positive than negative?

Talking from the point of view of a belief system based on Christianity where God becomes man in Jesus Christ, saves us, and reaches full communion with humanity; maybe the first step is to have a more complete vision that transcends individuality and has a very strong commitment to improve the life of humanity. Not just winning for oneself alone.

If you have Faith and your believe system is not fundamentally focused on winning to improve the dignity of humanity, your Faith has not truly conquered your heart. You must have hope against the problems caused by evil and you must work for justice in this world.

If you don’t have Faith, sometimes it can be tougher to obtain and sustain this hopeful vision of serving humanity in the long term, since the difficulties and pain inherent to life can push you towards exclusive focus on your own path and living a bit more closed to the rest.

8️⃣ What advice would you give to make a meaningful positive influence in life and avoid getting lost in a noisy society that sometimes feels increasingly less human?

Our life is a way full of challenges where we will need to take decisions that will have consequences. We have been given life and capacities to make an impact in the world. Let’s be conscious about the mission for which we are here, be responsible of our development, and take risks to serve others.

Specially, I want to emphasise the call to truly and honestly serve others as much as you can. Make the best you can to improve the life of those around you. If you don’t fight for it, things will not change. Add your “little grain of sand”.

Finally, be mindful about the fact that absolutely everyone makes mistakes. Do not let fear dominate and freeze you. There will be uncertainty, steps forward but also steps back, moments of rising and moments of falling. Trust God’s hands and let him guide you.

Big thanks Lluc for sharing your views with us!

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Ariadna Farres is an Astrodynamics Specialist working as researcher for the Navigation and Mission Design Branch at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, a legendary NASA space research laboratory, currently home to the largest organization of scientists and engineers in the United States dedicated to increase the knowledge of Earth, Solar System, and the Universe.

At NASA, Ariadna’s main role is astrodynamics and solar radiation pressure specialist for the Roman Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope, where she analyzes different models for solar radiation pressure accelerations and how this force affects the trajectory and station-keeping cost during mission operations.

She holds a PhD in Applied Mathematics from the University of Barcelona, a degree in Mathematics from Autonomous University of Barcelona, and completed multiple post-doctoral research fellowships at the Institute de Mathématique de Bourgogne, at the Institute de Mécanique Céleste et Calcul des Éphémérides, and at the University of Barcelona.

Summary

1️⃣ Starting from zero in Barcelona

2️⃣ PhD in Mathematics and space navigation with solar sails

3️⃣ Breaking into NASA

4️⃣ Insights from a legendary NASA’s space research lab

5️⃣ Present and future of the best space tech

6️⃣ Education fails that explain STEM deficiencies

7️⃣ US secrets to be a global leader in technology

8️⃣Advice for young people who want to build a STEM career

1️⃣ From normal origins in Barcelona to space research in NASA, what was the beginning of such an adventure?

Well, my “beginning story” is not an “I always knew I was going to make it” type of thing. In fact, if I’m being honest, it wasn’t like that at all and I believe it is good to share that not all paths are perfect and crystal clear.

I felt the calling for technical stuff since I was quite young, I did better in high school on subjects closer to the science/engineering worlds, than in more humanistic subjects like languages and history where I was not as good. As a result, and based on how the education system is built, I could not get to the university I wanted. My initial idea was to get into the double degree of Mathematics and Telecommunications Engineering at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, but my average grade was not good enough because the negative impact of non-technical subjects and I couldn’t get in.

So, I ended up doing just Mathematics at another institution, and I choose the Autonomous University of Barcelona because it felt like a fun environment. Then after getting my Maths degree, when I had to choose what to do with my life, I just didn’t know. I couldn’t see myself pursuing a career in Didactics of Mathematics, neither wanted to be a high school teacher, nor follow any type of consulting/finance type of career - so I decided to delay the decision, pursue a PhD in Mathematics, and find out along the way what to do with my career. This would eventually lead me to NASA, but at that time I was just focused on the next step and trying to have more clarity about what I wanted to become.

2️⃣ When did you come across the world of space tech?

When I was thinking about where to do my PhD, I spoke with a professor at the University of Barcelona who was working on the application of dynamical systems (a field of mathematics) into space related problems context. I found really cool the possibility of using mathematics for space mission design and I chose this uni.

I loved mathematics, space, and sailing with a small ship as a hobby whenever I could, so I ended doing my PhD in the intersection of these elements - specifically around the dynamics of a solar sail in the Earth-Sun system. Which oversimplifying could be explained as a sail used on a spacecraft (e.g. a satellite) that is propelled by sunlight. So as photons collide with it, momentum is gained without fail because the pressure of solar radiation, and it can act as a new mean of propulsion without the need of traditional fuel or engines. Really interesting for space exploration use cases for example.

3️⃣ How was getting to NASA?

Again, not a clear path but more of a rollercoaster!

When I finished my PhD, I continued pursuing postdoctoral fellowships. My goal wasn’t to get to NASA or ESA, I just wanted to protect my freedom of research and improve my profile with new ingredients like international experience, since I had in mind trying to get a job as a university professor and I was told that the exposure to research in other countries could help my candidacy for the position.

Long story short, I did some research in France at the Institute de Mathématique de Bourgogne and at the Institute de Mécanique Céleste et Calcul des Éphémérides, but I just couldn’t get a tenure-track position at the university back at home. They rejected me over and over again.

I think I had a profile that was too different, and I just didn’t fit. I had a hybrid profile between mathematics, aerospace engineering, and other stuff more “applied”. And this profile was simply not a fit for how the education system was set up in Catalonia at that time (some years ago). Interdisciplinary angles were undervalued.

Anyway, I had an existential crisis because I wanted to come back to Barcelona and teach but I only received negative answers. I was very lost and felt like being in the wrong place. I even considered taking maybe 6 months or 1 year off, detox, and travel the world.

However, I talked with a university professor, I shared my situation with him, and asked for advice. He told me that I could try to do a research stay for some months at NASA taking advantage of a past collaboration that the space agency had with the University of Barcelona. This professor knew some people at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). I couldn’t go to JPL because at that time there was no need for my profile, however in the GSFC they gave me a green flag. Thanks to all the process being done through the University of Barcelona, it ended up being quite easy for Goddard to have me working for them, and I ended up doing a 4 month research period with them in Maryland, US. Sometimes the struggles and rejects are signals that ultimately get you to the place where you belong!

4️⃣ Insights from thriving at NASA as an outsider?

Well now looking back it’s kind of fun, because after my first period at NASA I was actually looking forward to coming back to Barcelona as a tenure-track. I felt it was my moment to finally achieve what I wanted for so long! And … I failed again!

I couldn’t get placement as tenure-track one more time and I told NASA: “look, thank you for everything, it has been amazing. I can’t tell you what I’m going to do next because I don’t know because I just realized I have no job”. But they were happy with my work and they asked me if I was willing to come back to Goddard in case they’d manage to get more funding for the project we were working on. I said yes, they got the funding, and I came back - this second time for a 7-month period.

My first project was more about modelling the pressure that solar radiation has on any satellite. Basically, dealing with a lot of mathematical models to describe how factors like the shape and orientation of the satellite with regards the Sun can affect the trajectory of the satellite, or how to be able to forecast with maximum precision its orbit in the long term.

To grow within NASA from there, what I tried to do was to understand how my very specific skills fit the big picture. I started getting in contact with other projects and I tried to make myself useful for these other teams. Maybe from the dynamical system point of view we could improve the control manoeuvres of the satellite instead of just using an optimization black box, or we could leverage the solar radiation pressure insights for other satellites where this knowledge was not being applied, or see how to optimize fuel use, or we could better adapt to any changes that can happen in the launch stage.

5️⃣ What are your views regarding space tech future being exciting again?

Everything that goes around the Earth is more of a routine right now because I’d say we already know pretty well how everything works. There is a lot of state of the art, the main space agencies have built procedures, and things are very systematized. For this reason, private companies like SpaceX, Blue Origin, … are coming up to play the space game. The new thing, in my opinion, is more about the moral doubts of having so much stuff flying around our planet and not enough regulation.

This introduces one of the most relevant challenges that we see in present and future space tech right now, and it is that the main global powers do whatever they want, and the rest of the world does what they can. Everything is evolving really fast lately, but we need more collaborative work. Global fear of repeating the climate change issues could alter this “feudalism”. In space tech the answer to having too many satellites has historically been more of a “well, we will see” and not so much a collaborative urgency to tackle the problem together. Especially now that we are going through a very intense geopolitical paradigm shift. The space used to be considered something that belonged to the whole human race, but this could be disrupted with the private industry becoming a key player.

It will be interesting to see the derivatives of this context since for instance there are new problems such as astronomers not being able to have clear views due to so much satellite from different players orbiting Earth, also not having established rules about what to do when satellites finish their design life, or countries operating in a way that can be efficient for them but a pain for others (e.g. China planning a launch/mission without expecting to save any fuel for a more controlled landing resulting in something falling from the sky out of control forcing another country to close airspace).

However, it is not all about the nature of the political behaviour of these big players. New technology like artificial intelligence is also making a lot of noise in this industry with very exciting potential use cases such as exponential improvement of solving optimization problems in astrodynamics or being able to operate spacecrafts remotely instead of strong dependance on ground stations. How? Thanks to leveraging AI that can absorb data, process it, manoeuvre, and monitor by itself without the need of a big team of people on Earth controlling every detail and taking every decision. Enabling an autonomous satellite to explore space regions far from earth through AI with less need of human supervision is an exciting future view for space tech.

That being said, still a lot of noise in the factors that I mentioned so it is important to continue tracking the development of the industry in order to add clarity.

6️⃣ What are we doing wrong in education to have big deficiencies in STEM?

Three main elements come to my mind:

• Lack of role models. First, there is simply a lack of proper role models, and if we talk about diverse profiles, this problem is even bigger. In my opinion, to get more young people to get into STEM careers you need to make them feel some connection with these career paths. You need to show them that there are people like them thriving in it.

• Bad storytelling. Unfortunately, story telling around science, technology, engineering, and maths, is super boring most of the time. So many times, the education system teaches young students that science is about a boring teacher writing cryptic stuff in a blackboard and solving problems by himself. It is a shame because STEM is the door to so many awesome things, however I don’t think the education system manages to explain this appropriately.

• Inefficient evaluation. It is cool to talk about references, storytelling, and new education methodologies such as learning by projects - but if we continue doing evaluations on students with the same old systems based on pure memorisation without understanding, I don’t think the situation is going to improve significantly. We need innovation in the way we measure student’s success.

7️⃣ What should other ecosystems learn from the US in order to be more competitive in key industries like space?

Again, I’d highlight 3 things:

• Less bureaucracy. Europe should learn to be less bureaucratic about everything. There are so many examples of this like for instance to apply for a research fellowship in Spain I remember having to share papers to justify almost every step I have ever done since I was a baby - in the US with a CV I was done.

• Bridging education and real world together. Building more solid bridges connecting the education world and the real word is important too. In the US there is way more interaction between universities and relevant private/public entities where you can do pretty cool jobs. Companies in the States have a lot of programmes to attract students, from summer internships to fellowships and any other stuff. The impact that this has in the American ecosystem is huge and extremely different to what I experienced in Europe and specially in Spain.

• Tech startup culture. In the US you can feel an incredible heritage that orbits around praising the importance of building new impactful things and accepting that failure is a likely outcome, yet not being discouraged by it. In Europe the feeling is more about the need of having a very clear idea of what you are going to do and how, because failing will be considered more negative.

8️⃣ Advice for young people that want to make a career in technology?

It is very difficult to give this kind of advice to anyone, but I’d say optimize for the intersection of passion and context that drives you towards happiness.

Maybe it is a bit simplistic, but I’d say try to focus on what you enjoy the most. This seems obvious but so many times you see people more focused on building up their CV and then eventually end up feeling miserable in a place where they don’t like what they do.

On top of that, understand the context you are in and if it is good for you. Enjoying what you do is great but evidently, you’ll also need this to be somewhat aligned with a context where you can live a decent life. At the same time, you can be pursuing something you like in a solid context but start pushing too hard driven by factors like money or prestige which can get you into a shitty toxic environment. Be careful about what you choose and the impact on your wellbeing. If you are happy, you’ll be better at your job and more fulfilled anyway.

And at last, try to be peaceful and avoid extreme obsession. Choosing educational paths as a young student doesn’t necessarily determine your future 100%. Sometimes we have the feeling we must build perfect paths to succeed and reach true happiness, but that is not true - take advantage of the opportunities that are presented to you but also be open to the unexpected that is aligned with your vision.

Big thanks Ariadna for sharing your views with us!

Big thanks to you, reader, for your time and interest!

If you enjoyed it, subscribe and we’ll be back with you. 🙏🏼

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Oscar Farres is the Head of Venture Capital (VC) - Digital Economy at the European Investment Fund (EIF), a specialist provider of risk finance to SMEs across Europe part of the European Investment Bank (EIB) Group, acting as the the biggest Limited Partner (LP, investor in venture capital funds) in Europe with >€19bn deployed in >750 venture capital funds supporting ca.12,000 companies.

Previously, Oscar worked as venture capital investor in Debaeque and Caixa Capital Risc, after co-founding 2 startups: Kineto (wearable devices for fitness applications) and Witur (online marketplace for local tourist guides).

He started his career as a semiconductors engineer after graduating from Electronics Engineering at La Salle School of Engineering. He holds an MBA from IESE including an exchange term at MIT.

Summary

1️⃣ First step in the tech world

2️⃣ Breaking into the investment scene

3️⃣ Journey from VC to LP

4️⃣ Biggest fail and lesson

5️⃣ Key opportunities and challenges in European tech and VC right now

6️⃣ What is an LP looking for

7️⃣ What is the LP description of a great investor

8️⃣ Advice to new emerging managers

9️⃣ Lessons for youngsters that want to break into the industry

1️⃣ What was your first step in the tech world?

I grew up in an regular family from Barcelona and had great parents who taught me a lot about hard work and humility with their example. And although I was originally really far from this “sexy” tech/investment world, I wanted to be an engineer since I was a kid. Probably because I enjoyed just taking things apart and understanding how they work. For instance I remember being 6-7 years old, dissembling a remote control car and being amazed at everything that happened in there.

Later on, slowly, I started getting interested in computers. I think someone in my class got one and it caught my attention. Then I could get a Sinclair ZX Spectrum + with 48 kB RAM, and I fell in love with computer science which ended up with me learning to code at around 9 years old.

Before the Internet I connected to BBS with modems, which usually resulted in having to pay huge phone bills. But that way I could play on-line computer games like Dungeons and Dragons which I loved, and I just followed my passion spending a lot of time in this type of geek stuff. From there on it was crystal clear for me that I wanted to study something technical, I went from coding to electronics, and I ended up pursuing an electronics engineering path since it fascinated me.

After university, my first job was in the semiconductors industry, designing chips in a research center. Programming was more of a hobby but I realised what I truly wanted to do was hardware. Being able to design a microprocessor was extraordinary to me, like magic - 0s and 1s transforming into a logic process and ultimately multiple interesting applications in the real world? That was absolutely incredible.

2️⃣ How did you break into the investment scene?

I really enjoyed working in semiconductors but after some time doing it and experiencing first hand how the technology industry started to grow exponentially while suddenly the weird “geek” people were becoming hot assets, I got really hooked on the idea of an engineer being able to transform society as an entrepreneur.

Consequently, I decided to learn more about the business aspects of technology, started to read a lot of books about entrepreneurship, and completed an MBA at IESE which included some months at MIT as well as the opportunity to meet great professors like Joan Roure.

After my MBA I struggled to find places really committed to innovation in Spain (this was almost 20 years ago and the ecosystem was really underdeveloped). Thus I decided to try and pursue my entrepreneurial dreams, which ended up with me founding a couple of startups with some friends. The first one was a motion capture wearable device with video games as use case, we failed our first go to market and ended up pivoting to fitness use case, specifically spinning classes. The second one was a traveltech platform to book personalized travel experiences including a marketplace for local tourist guides. Both companies failed but the experience was hugely valuable.

Thanks to these adventures I accumulated some knowledge of the Spanish startup and venture capital scene, then I saw an investment associate opportunity at a new Spanish venture capital fund, and I applied. My first interview was with an external headhunter and I vomited everything I knew about the ecosystem. I still remember she said to me “look, I don’t know anything that you mentioned but I think you should go to the next stage and talk directly with the partners of the fund”. Afterwards I met with the partners and they told me that even though they saw a lot of investment banking and consulting candidates, they really appreciated my passion and drive for the industry - I was in.

3️⃣ Journey from VC to LP?

As mentioned earlier, I started as a VC associate in a new Spanish firm named Debaeque with around €35m AUM. I worked together with 2 partners and my main goal was to present new deals to the partners every week, with quite a lot of freedom regarding my daily tasks. So I was able to do deal sourcing, due diligence, and support portfolio companies, learning tons. We did some interesting investments like BuyVIP which later on would be bought by Amazon in 2010. However the firm ultimately failed.

After that I joined the Spanish VC named Caixa Capital Risc, where I could have more exposure since it was one of the leading players in the geography at that time, investing from seed to growth in multiple industries.

Nonetheless I must say that in between I came across the 2008 great financial crisis and it was very tough. It coincided with my first years in VC and to be honest I had big doubts whether there was a future in Spanish venture capital. So maybe in part influenced by this but also because I saw it as a very exceptional growth opportunity, when an opening at the European Investment Fund appeared, I applied.

I started at EIF 10 years ago, the largest LP in European Venture Capital Funds. First as an Investment Manager in the ICT team where I could play a role in investing over €560m in 17 VC funds, next as Head of Business Angel Investments where I was in charge of deploying the €700m BA focused European Angels Fund impacting 110+ angels in 9 countries with 1000+ portfolio companies, and now I am Head of VC focused on digital economy leading a 10 people team to invest €2.6bn in around 110 funds.

4️⃣ Biggest fail and lesson in your journey?

Good question!

My biggest professional fail was probably in the first VC fund where I worked. I began with expectations of becoming a partner some day and it all ended up falling like a house of cards. We got hit hard by the financial crisis, we ended up fundraising way less money than expected, but the partners decided not to change the investment strategy. The result? I’d say a bad investment thesis execution which ended up with the liquidation of the firm.

It was extremely frustrating. When I started I was super hyped, really happy. Then the mix of the great financial crisis together with not so good fund management, was professionally and personally a huge negative impact for me. My pay was greatly affected and my future was at stake. I had an existential crisis and maybe even a part of me considered leaving the industry.

That being said though, the lessons were equally important. I had a lot of exposure to investments and portfolio companies, from generating dealflow to getting to know the ecosystem and helping founders as board member. I also got to know the importance of taking care of your LPs (the investors in your fund), being transparent, doing what you say you are going to do, building a solid portfolio, adapting your investment strategy to any contingency that may appear, and having proper healthy team dynamics specially between partners to avoid dangerous situations.

Despite the struggle, it also helped me reinforce the fact that I truly loved the investment world and I wanted to continue in the game, even though maybe more from an LP angle.

5️⃣ What are the key opportunities and challenges in the current tech and VC scene in Europe?

Regarding tech, to me it seems like until relatively recently we have not had maximum support for local European ecosystems. Then COVID came, we started experiencing a severe health crisis, supply chain problems such as the semiconductors one, and war making forgotten key industries like defense and space a priority again. And on top of that the feeling of Europe being behind US and Asia. As a result, I’d say we started going through a very important geopolitic paradigm shift that implies an increasing range of opportunities for the local scene. I still remember this book titled “The World Is Flat” by Thomas L. Friedman where he talked about the huge impact of globalization, how all countries are one big community, and we were going to collaborate in economic matters without significant problems - I believe this is already changing. We are experiencing a different situation where great powers are colliding and this fact is permeating the political establishment. Europe is not self sufficient in many critical industries and we need to pursue tech sovereignty. Sectors like health, semiconductors, AI, space tech, defense, cybersecurity, blockchain infrastructure, climate tech, or quantum computing are now more important than ever.

Regarding VC, a couple of bullets.

First, It’d be interesting to see more European startups bringing research to the market. Historically this area lacked enough capital to flourish, but it could be fun to see a bit of change and have more capital available for bold technology bets. I think the generalist digital tech space is better served and there are other verticals within tech where we are seeing new exciting movements. An example of this could be gender-focused strategies and climate-related solutions.

Second, in European VC in general we are in an exam type of moment, given the current macro context. We are going to see in the coming period some winners and some losers, this will impact portfolio valuations, and it will reveal which VC firms have been more loyal to their investment thesis. Some will come out successful from this situation but others will have big problems. But anyway the European VC industry regeneration is quite flagrant, so there are always teams being born with new emerging angles. The European ecosystem is really dynamic. However if we are thinking about challenges, we have an LP problem when we compare us with the US. Right now it is still difficult to fundraise from private LPs if you are from peripheral markets like Spain, and even in some hot markets like Germany we have seen established teams struggling to reach target fund size. Tough moments for everyone but that is also the reason why public intervention is valuable.

6️⃣ What is an LP looking for?

It can vary depending on the LP, there are LPs more driven towards a pure financial goal and those who have more of a strategic vision.

In any case, oversimplifying, probably the most important thing is to find a great team able to implement a solid investment thesis with strong conviction and without weird things. For instance I remember situations of teams claiming to do early stage with conviction bets where they plan to get around 15% - 20% ownership of the company where they invest, but then you look at their portfolio and they have some 0.5% ownerships. You ask about it and they say that is because a growth opportunity that came across. But as an LP you are already diversifying and when you are building your portfolio you already planned for some very specific requirements that depend on the VCs doing what they are supposed to do. You need your VC fund to execute the strategy as it has been initially determined because if not they create distortion for your portfolio as LP.

What do you find following this team rabbit hole? The need to check backgrounds of the partners leveraging lots of reference calls with other investors and entrepreneurs, understanding how have they met and how they have worked together in the past, learning about their track record, etc. However this is not just about the raw data but also more subtle things like how do they answer to your questions, how is their story telling, how are team dynamics, who is talking and who is silent, who is more dominant …

At the end of the day this is very much a people business so it is important to deeply understand the dynamics of the people you have in front. An example that we take as priority in our investment analysis and where these elements crystallise is fund governance. Having solid clarity around how the team is organized, ownership structure, power balances, and economics in terms of commitments and incentives for each team member, is hugely valuable.

Obviously there are more things on top of what I shared like believing there is an opportunity in the specific asset class that is coherent with the investment thesis presented to you, but the team is the most important one.

7️⃣ What is your description of a great investor?

Well, first of all we should need to divide the concept of great investors into two angles: investing and firm building. This is important because even though ideally the two factors should be combined, we find them dissociated lots of times and we can see great individual investors unable to build exciting multigenerational firms.

Talking about purely investing, in my opinion a good performance needs selection of good opportunities and value creation within your portfolio. Historically, specially in Europe, we have only valued getting to the good opportunity and we haven’t had much emphasis on portfolio management. Maybe for lack of exceptional European references, not having enough knowledge of how to do it, suboptimal historical industry heritage, or lack of portfolio depth. I think this is changing lately though. Moreover, a great investor needs superb discipline to know when to invest and when to get out without being too dependant on signalling and emotions, a good reputation in the ecosystem via strong personal network that can provide high quality access, and ideally some operating experience. Also, some stuff that people don’t talk about that much is just giving back to the ecosystem and helping others - that is a great way to obtain a sound foundation to become an investor since in this VC world everyone knows who adds value and who can destroy a company.

Regarding firm building, I believe it is even more complex. We find a strong dichotomy here. Usually the individuals that lead the creation of a venture capital firm have strong personalities, and to be honest it can be necessary to thrive in this type of industry. However at the same time you need to be really generous for the firm to grow in the long term, since you’ll need that other team members augment their responsibilities to be able to grow beyond the fund founders and scale up your value. Yet sometimes people with such strong personalities lack this generous side. The beautiful thing about firm building is to evolve beyond the founders while keeping up with the high quality, thus avoiding dependance from a few figures because everyone can have a bad day or simply lower their activity, and consequently mitigating risks. A great VC firm builder is able to see this and render a healthy balance between VC founders and the rest of the team. Additionally, to me there are other factors that are interesting such as: seeing how the firm is built beyond exclusively investing and into providing support to portfolio as well as the ecosystem as a whole, or being able to have multiple strategies that can help them evolve with the market and capture new opportunities along the way.

I strongly believe that optimising the execution of this “double punch” together with the vision of building more firms which are sustainable in the long term, can help European players attract bigger LPs.

8️⃣ What advice would you give to new emerging managers?

It was never easy for 1st time teams and today is not different.

We are in a worse situation for new emerging managers than 2 years ago due to the current macro context, lots of LPs are overexposed to the VC asset class, and/or have low liquidity for new commitments. But on the positive side I’d say the LPs have more conviction in the asset class per se.

I’m saying this because first of all, it is very important to read the market very well. Since I got in this sector over 15 years ago, things have changed a lot. Peripheral markets are much more developed, we have more firms and proposals than ever, and more people is knocking on more LP doors. This is good but it also increases the need of having a very unique and differential proposal. Being a digital generalist is not enough anymore. Thinking “because we are a good team we’ll raise a good fund” without a unique proposal, I don’t think is a good path to pursue in the current period. For a new emerging VC fund manager, LPs could be more interested on very specific proposals targeting new segments that can have potential and where there are few competitors positioned. Fresh air and renovated drive is the way to go. For instance, we are seeing a lot of activity in climate tech and its derivatives like blue economy, circular economy, or other thematic funds. Also strategies around social impact where the investment thesis include not just financial targets but also impact ones, can add a new layer of attractiveness for LPs.

That being said, there are a lot of different types of LPs, and some of them will continue to look for established firms, so get used to roadshows and rejects since it is the daily bread of a 1st time VC founder. Still keep in mind that there is quite a lot of money out there and more LPs than it could seem are increasingly open to bet on new teams that they find exciting. As a new manager, you need to constantly take the pulse of the market, have your thesis aligned to it, and then understand how your value proposition fits the LP - you need to tune your message to your LP audience frequency as much as possible. Some will hear you out and others won’t.

And finally, do not be afraid. If it works out, that’s great. But if not, or if you have to make any change such as reducing your expected fund size or asking for an extension of your fundraising deadline - do it. People will understand the value of trying and failing, and sometimes closing something smaller if you are able to execute with good performance can be more valuable in the long term.

9️⃣ Lessons for young people who want to break into the technology investment world?

In the first place, it is important to be mindful about the fact that everything depends on the situation of the person and the passions this person has.

From that starting point I’d like to highlight the following elements:

• Education. I’ve seen a lot of different backgrounds but my recommendation if you want to thrive in our industry would be to study a degree close to technology and later on touch a bit of business/finance stuff. If somehow you didn’t do that when you could or you don’t want to pursue this path, get exposure as startup operator.

• Privilege. Again even though you can see lots of different people in the game, I think we have to be real and accept the truth that the ecosystem tends to favour those with a privileged background. So if you are an outsider and you have no links to the industry (like my case when I started), be aware of it and understand that you’d need to have a stronger and more focused CV.

• Actionable passion. Evidently success in startups and VC is not an easy path, but there are no excuses - specially right now that there is so much info available out there. If you truly have a passion to make it, increase your exposure to the learnings that can get you where you want to be, and absorb everything you can. Maybe you’ll come across some closed circles since areas like venture capital can be tough to access, but right now you can learn tons by reading great sources like this Views newsletter, listening to the right podcasts, going to events, and following key industry people in social media. Access has improved quite a lot lately and if you take action on your passion, your odds will increase more than you think is possible.

• Fear management. Everyone has had to fight with his own fears at some moment in his life. Impostor syndrome, feeling unworthy of being given a great opportunity, believing that you shouldn’t reach out for help or advice because it is going to be awkward or embarrassing - you name it. Accept the lack of comfort and learn to improve the management of such emotions and thoughts so they don’t work against you.

Fundamentally, the environment where you come from will have a notable weight on you, and depending on it your journey can be easier or more difficult. Nevertheless with a fired up drive and working very hard, you can get far.

Big thanks Oscar for sharing your views with us!

Big thanks to you, reader, for your time and interest!

If you enjoyed it, subscribe and we’ll be back with you. 🙏🏼

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Hi everyone !!

We are Pol and Gerard (VIEWS co-founders), after reaching our #30 post we believe it’s time for a new State of Views moment in order to reflect on the experience of the last 10 interviews.

Even though due to both professional and personal reasons (some of which we will share below) we reduced our posting frequency, we still believe that the vision to openly share singular curated access to some of the best entrepreneurs and investors in the world is a worthy endeavour and we are happy to continue having the blessing of building such exceptional relationships and learnings along the way.

Thank you to all readers and guests for making this possible as well as the constant heartfelt support you make us feel!

Best,

Pol & Gerard

Summary

• 📈 Pol & Gerard: a year of relevant evolution for us

• 💡 Update: Views growth, getting some cool references

• ❤️ Lessons: learning from the best founders and investors

📈 Pol & Gerard

Pol learning as VC investor

The last few years have been quite an exciting period to be in VC, with learning opportunities mixing some great success cases, and a few of the most relevant global paradigm shifts in more than a decade.

And Kibo Ventures is maybe the leading example in Spain and one of the most exciting cases in Southern Europe, which helped Pol have exposure as an Investment Manager to over €150m+ raised in 2 new oversubscribed funds, 4 new unicorns in portfolio, 6+ exits, 1st NASDAQ IPO from Spanish origins, $1.5bn raised by portfolio companies, selling Fund I to an $80bn investment firm, and closing 14+ new investments.

Gerard building something that matters

And then comes Gerard, who made the bold decision to leave his role in the NY based Strategy & Operations team of Coverwallet after NYSE:AON acquisition and go back to Barcelona to launch a new fintech adventure envisioning the creation of a new solution to the significant lack of fairness and efficiency that he experienced first-hand in SMEs M&A scene.

So what happened during the last months? Going from nothing to >€30k MRR, >1.2k business users, >1.3k investors users, 3 SME M&A deals closed, 24 FTEs, and €1.5m+ from top investors like Nortia Capital and Tekpolio.

📈 Update

KPIs

We have continued our growth since the last State of Views, reaching 1m+ total views and 550%+ growth across our target channels (substack, linkedin, twitter):

Our #30 guests allowed us to further expand Views network and increase our access to some of the best players in the world:

Getting some cool references

But not just that, we also had the blessing of receiving some surprising really cool references from readers such as Keith Rabois (GP at Founders Fund, CEO at OpenStore), Josh Wolfe (Co-founder and Managing Partner of Lux Capital), and the University of Oxford:

❤️Lessons

The power of hunger

As you know, there is a question that we ask ourselves a lot and that we got ask a lot: lessons from Views. We don’t mean this as an essay but more as an easy way to share some golden nuggets of stuff that clearly caught our attention when having the chance to connect with extraordinary guests.

We talked about the importance of loving something before it is lovable in our previous State of Views. We believe now could be the time to talk about another ingredient, specially remarkable in the current period of macro challenges we seem to be experiencing lately.

Probably like the vast majority of you, we spend a lot of time trying to learn from the best and implement it in our journeys, or using it to predict and influence positive outcomes that can be valuable.

During years, we have come across factors such as pedigree or intelligence as predictors of success. It seems everyone likes to believe that the logos you accumulate in your CV are the key, maybe because it is a signal easier to monitor and keeps the status quo wheel going. Or that it’s more about natural raw brain power, maybe because it makes a better and cleaner story to be spread. And while factors like these certainly help, they doesn’t seem to be the deciding element.

In our Views guests, we repeatedly see a different ingredient as more relevant: Hunger. It’s not negatively deterministic if you are an outsider, if you are not appropriate, if you are from the margins. A disciplined strong-willed hunger focused in the direction of good will move the needle. Having a vision of good and pursuing it fiercely no matter what. Through fire if it comes (and it will come).

Thank you interviewees, for sharing your views with us!

Thank you readers, for your great support!

If you enjoyed it, share & subscribe and we’ll be back with you in September for a new season. 🙏🏼

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Elisenda Bou, recipient of Princess of Girona Award 2022, currently is the Head of Media Knowledge and Content understanding at Apple, focused on leveraging multimodal AI and Knowledge Graphs to enhance experiences and products worldwide.

Previously, Eli was the Co-founder & CTO of Vilynx, Spanish AI tech startup that ended up becoming the 1st ever acquisition of Apple in Spain. Vilynx, founded between Barcelona and the US, was devoted to the creation of one of the 1st AI self-learning multimodal architectures for video processing, and it turned out to be the-facto standard for video summarization and understanding, serving 100M+ daily videos worldwide with a 40+ people team, and raising >$10M from Kibo Ventures, Caixa Capital Risc and Ridgewood Capital.

Academically, Eli also works as a Professor at UPC (The Technical University of Catalonia), providing support in teaching related to Artificial Intelligence, Deep Learning, Machine Learning, Complex Software Architectures, and Autonomous Satellite Systems. She additionally led the Software Architecture group at UPC NanoSatLab, a laboratory involving more than 30 students and professors working on scalable distributed software architectures.

Eli holds a PhD from UPC and MIT focused on system architecture for satellite constellations and exchange of resources among them (wireless energy transfer), and worked as a Research Assistant for the MIT in a number of NASA projects tested on the International Space Station, receiving multiple recognitions such as the Thales Alenia Space fellowship or the Google Faculty Research Award.

She graduated with Highest Honors in a Telecom Engineering degree at UPC, in an Electronic Engineering degree at ULPGC, and in an Aeronautics and Astronautics MSc in MIT (where she won the Best Aeronautical Thesis Award by GMV Aerospace and Defense).

Eli is from Barcelona and loves technology, science, working on positive impact projects, teaming up with good people, and helping others.

Summary

• 👤 Story: engineer from Barcelona, MIT, NASA, AI founder, Apple

• 🥇 Win: kindhearted help from good people along the way

• 🚫 Fail + lesson: bad situations out of your control + there is always a silver lining

• 🚀 Great founder: good/kind person who wants to help others

• 💸 Great investor:  trustworthy “unblocker” alway supporting no matter what

• 📈 Markets: AI based self-supervised learning able to work with lots of dirty unstructured data

• 🦄 3 startups: ChangeDyslexia, MiCuento, Marsi Bionics

• 👍 3 investors: Kibo Ventures, Nina Capital, Pear VC

• 📖 3 books: “The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty” by Peter Singer, “The Age of Empathy: Nature’s Lessons for a Kinder Society” by Frans de Waal

What is your story?

From a very young age it was really clear for me that tech was my thing. I always felt like an outsider in the “normal world” but at home with tech and science. Specifically I loved programming and maths, but to be honest also had no clue of what I wanted to focus on.

I was born and raised in Barcelona, and had always lived there. So eventually I began to study Telecom Engineering at UPC (Technical University of Catalonia). In my second year, I wanted to try to live somewhere else, and decided to move to Canary Islands. What started as an exchange period at ULPGC (University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria), ended up with me working for a really interesting tech research institution linked to this university named IDeTIC, where I was given the chance to take part in so many different projects. I loved it so much that I decided to stay there. However, my exchange period was coming to an end and I was already in the middle of another degree in Barcelona.

What can I do? - I thought. No problem, let’s enroll in Electronic Engineering at ULPGC and continue with the Telecom Engineering degree at UPC remotely, just attending for the final exams.

Then, I believe that it was around the same time when I saw an opportunity to take part in the NASA X-Prize Space Elevator Centennial Challenge. I had read about the concept of Space Elevator in Carl Sagan’s science fiction books and thought it was really cool. It is about the concept of a new type of planet-to-space transportation where there is a cable anchored to the earth surface and extending into space, with a design that would permit vehicles to travel up the cable from a planetary surface, directly into orbit without the use of large rockets. The contest was about testing some capabilities that would later become technology enablers for this, which was super exciting, so we formed a team and decided to participate.

We didn’t have any money at all to begin with nor any sponsor to reach out for help. I loved to read science books, at that time there were very few Spanish authors publishing that type of stuff in Spain (one was Jorge Wagensberg and the other one José Manual Sánchez Ron, I was a fan of these two true pioneers of the Spanish science scene with a strong focus in physics), and we decided to do reach out to one of them to ask him for a sponsorship. Best case scenario, he would be and we would go to the US and build a robot for this NASA contest. Worst case scenario - I thought - at least I had an excuse to meet one of my idols. And surprisingly, Jorge Wagensberg said yes, and he even let us space in CosmoCaixa (one of Europe’s most renowned science museums) to use as a lab - my favorite place in the world at that time!

So there I was, with 19 years old, building a robot in my beloved CosmoCaixa, with my idol Jorge Wagensberg as sponsor and ready to go to the US to compete in the challenge. But … something happened when we were shipping all the hardware to US ... our robot got stopped at customs in some country, so it didn’t arrive to New Meixco. Bye bye robot. We finally got there but we couldn’t compete without it, so I decided to join another team and help them anyway.

While competing, some MIT talent scouters reached out to me, told me they were building up a research team within MIT where I could be a fit and asked me if I wanted to join them. I really didn’t know much about MIT but enough to be aware about the fact that legends like Richard Feynman studied there and that it was a very special place. However, I was already doing 2 degrees at the same time, MIT (and US in general) was super expensive, my family never had money to pay for that type of uni and cost of life, and me neither. But again, fortunately a new way opened. I was invited to join them during the summer period (from June to October) for the following years, UPC helped me with some financial support, and I also received a scholarship from Vodafone. That help was instrumental for me and I’m deeply thankful for it.

And yes, all that was good. Yet, to be transparent, not everything was so clear as it may seem now. I loved to do a bunch of different things from robotics to electronics, software or satellites, but I did not know yet what I wanted to devote my career to. I started to gravitate more towards distributed software architectures and AI for space. Particularly, applying them to what was back then a new paradigm: satellite constellations (versus the old paradigm of bigger satellites and fewer number of them) and focused my PhD on that, but also started to feel like I wanted to come to Spain and have more of a local impact.

But what could I do? In the EU the tech that we were building was simply not there, they were years behind and I could not just simply take my experience and work somewhere else. Then a friend connected me with Juan Carlos Riveiro, who also studied at UPC, had experience with AI and just sold Gigle Networks (system-on-chip integrated circuits for home networking applications) to Broadcom (NASDAQ listed global tech infra company), and we started to talk about how we thought the paradigm of AI had to change.

When I was working in satellite software, there was no way to manually retrain our systems, and it didn’t make sense to apply supervised training. Juan Carlos had a very similar experience in his company too. We both agreed that the future of AI would be through autonomous self-learning systems, which are systems that can evolve even when the data is unstructured or dirty, and we both wanted to work on this.

At the same time, there was a big problem in media, since companies had huge catalogs and very tough access to the data in them (for instance, they couldn’t search for specific content in thousands of hours of videos based on a quote that someone important said). But with autonomous learning, we could create a system that would read a feed of data and extract knowledge, potentially being able to develop really exciting new services on top.

Juan Carlos and I clicked on that vision and we founded Vilynx. Juan Carlos moved to California to focus more on sales, marketing, etc as a CEO. I remained in Barcelona as CTO, where we had most of our team (mainly engineers). We struggled a bit in the beginning because the Spanish ecosystem back then was not very much focused on deep tech, but eventually got great backers such as Kibo Ventures and started to progress.

We worked in Vilynx for 8-9 years and finally got acquired by Apple.

What is the biggest win in your life?

The people along the way who have helped me without expecting anything in return. I won’t be here without those small details of kindhearted help. I am deeply thankful and I appreciate it very much.

I couldn’t have gone to the NASA competition in the US if it wasn’t for Jorge Wagensberg saying yes to meet at CosmoCaixa and talk about the sponsorship. I never ever could have been able to attend MIT if UPC didn’t help me with a sponsorship when I needed it most. And those are just a few examples!

It’s crazy to think that those simple and humble gestures played a role in my career, in eventually building Vilynx, and in being acquired by Apple.

That’s why I always try to provide these opportunities to those coming behind. The impact of such small stuff that you can think doesn’t really matter at all, can be so huge.

What is the biggest failure and lesson?

Being in bad situations that in part are out of your control and kind of failing in the sense of seeing it as just a really negative moment. The lesson? realizing that failure happens a lot of times and pretty amazing things can be at the other side of it.

As an example, a couple of moments come to my mind.

First, when I went to Canary Islands for the exchange and ended up studying there. Everyone said to me that I was crazy, that I was going to lose opportunities in a key moment of my academic career, etc. In part, even I started to think it. But I ended up meeting Rafael Perez who was leading the IDeTIC, learned tons and had the chance to work in the coolest tech transfer projects ever for me at that time. No one can take away from me the exceptional learnings and experiences I had during those years.

And second, when we lost our robot at customs while traveling to the US for the Space Elevator competition. It was a huge failure for us. You are so young, you have this extraordinary opportunity that means the world to you, you have been working super hard on it for a lot of time, you manage to get people who trust in you and supports you … and you fail because a super silly and unfair reason! But also you learn to do what you can with what you have and it obviously ended up as a key moment in my life anyway just because being able to be there, help any other team and connecting with the MIT for the first time.

What is your description of a great founder?

For me the best founder is a good and kind person. Because good persons create good opportunities and make good things happen.

I have had the luck of meeting a lot of nice people along the way and they positively impacted me in a big way. Also, kind people always look for a way to help others which tends to act as a catalyst for the growth of individuals, companies, ecosystems and societies.

What is your description of a great investor?

An “unblocker”. Someone who is always paying attention to you and helps you avoid blockages. Also the first person you call when you have a problem.

It’s like parenthood. There are two types of parents, the ones that make you think “damn, I have a problem how I am going to tell them now? they’re going to get mad”. Or the ones who you know for sure are always there supporting you no matter what. And the first thing that comes to your mind when you have some challenge in the road is to talk with the latter type.

For instance, before starting with Kibo Ventures at Vilynx we were connected with a few of their portfolio founders. And I remember talking with one of them that said to me - “look, in my phone, if you click #1 you call my mum, and if you click #2 you call Aquilino (one of the Founding Partners)”. That’s a signal to detect a great investor.

What markets are you most interested in?

Obviously biased but I’d say AI. Specially self-supervised or autonomous learning. I believe the key in AI is the stuff that can work with a bunch of dirty unstructured data.

There are use cases for clean data like for instance an AI that can differentiate among cats and dogs. But if we are talking about applying AI to more ambitious problems like fighting climate change, improving energy management or curing rare diseases, you end up finding current solutions quite limited. Why? Because now you are facing a significant increase in complexity and superior need of lots of different data models. Improved self-supervised learning can unlock exciting new value in this sense.

On top of that (and very related by the way), I’m very interested in systems able to understand more. We are seeing a lot of language models in AI making noise lately, but the truth is they don’t really truly understand much. These new sexy models have great statistical training but from a technical perspective is not as impressive as it may seem.

The fun thing though is that stuff like GPT-3 from OpenAI is surprising the world, when in reality it is just scratching the surface of what it’s possible. Going from systems that require very clean structured data to new groundbreaking ways of self-supervised learning is an opportunity I find super interesting.

3 startups you like and why?

3 companies come to my mind founded by women and with a cool tech for good angle:

• ChangeDyslexia. Tech tool focused on helping kids with dyslexia improve their skills related to reading and writing through games.

• MiCuento. Startup working on encouraging kids to read more thanks to high quality personalized books/stories.

• Marsi Bionics. Company doing R&D and production of exoeskeletons for optimal personalized physical therapy to people who suffer musculoskeletal complications as a result of different health disorders, including a specific product for pediatric care to help children with this type of problem in a way that it’s easily adjustable to the child’s growth.

3 investors you like and why?

• Kibo Ventures. Obviously. My investor at Vilynx. Specially Sonia Fernandez and Aquilino Peña, who always treated us extremely well and helped us tons.

• Nina Capital. I find their positioning refreshing and I think there is great value in how they are bringing an exciting health angle to the Southern Europe ecosystem.

• Pear VC. It’s really cool to see exciting American VCs start to explore new high potential ecosystems like Barcelona. Also, having Pepe Agell as lead in our geography is awesome. Interesting VC and interesting successful founder turned investor. Also, a kind person!

What books do you feel everyone should read and why?

• “The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty” by Peter Singer. Great book about how our current actions against world poverty are insufficient and immoral, and what we can do about it. It helped me see the world in a different way. I believe sometimes as entrepreneurs we are extremely focused and obsessive about our stuff, and sometimes we forget about working on important problems.

• “The Age of Empathy: Nature’s Lessons for a Kinder Society” by Frans de Waal. This one is about the importance of empathy from an anthropological perspective. From how empathy comes naturally to a great variety of animals to humans themselves.

WILDCARD QUESTION

What advice will you give to young people coming from underprivileged backgrounds wanting to make it in tech/science?

Two things.

First, when we are young we tend to worry a lot about what we are going to do. However at the end of the day it can end up being less about what we are doing and how, and more about with whom we are doing it. For instance if I am a great specialist in a specific area (whatever it is), but I’m working in a place where there is a bias against women or against people coming from low socioeconomic backgrounds, my options to prosper will be reduced. Being in a certain type of environment that increases your odds of coming across the right people who would get out of their way to help you somehow, it’s a big factor. Being with the right people can change your life. Maybe you can’t fully control that, but you should try to increase your exposition to this type of good people as much as you can.

Second, don’t be afraid to knock on doors. And that being said, and being honest - I was scared of it. But I managed to do it and what I found on the other side of fear and shyness was that there are people out there willing to help. On top of that, based on my experience, the people I've loved working with the most have been people who if you do some cold reach out, they’ll answer one way or another. And if not, who cares. Overcome the fear. Ask for help. You are not less of a person for asking for help. Yes, it feels weird. Spoiler - it probably will feel weird in the future too regardless of how many times you have done it, let me tell you that. But it is great to recognize you need help and to ask for it.

Big thanks Eli for sharing your views with us!

Big thanks to you, reader, for your time and interest!

If you enjoyed it, subscribe and we’ll be back with you. 🙏🏼

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Rick Wolter is an iOS software developer and the founder of Underdog Devs, a US based community of software engineers supporting formerly incarcerated and socioeconomically disadvantaged aspiring developers who want to get into tech and change their lives for the better.

Underdog Devs provides high quality education opportunities that lend jobs to those who need it most, via key factors like mentoring, pair programming, network, guidance to get hired and even taking care of the living expenses (from food to housing) of the mentees that can’t balance education and work because significant lack of basic resources. Everything, for free.

But that’s not all. Rick has an unusual background since he himself has gone through something similar to what his students experienced. Rick had a rough upbringing and after a mix of horrible decisions and bad circumstances, he was sentenced to 21 years in prison at 18 years old, after getting involved in a fight while protecting a friend who was getting jumped, that ended up with a man dying at the hospital and with Rick charged with 2nd degree murder. In prison Rick discovered he liked programming, pursued this passion, eventually made it into tech and started helping others with similar backgrounds change their lives and have some hope.

Summary

• 👤 Story: challenging background, trouble, prison, developer, helping others

• 🥇 Win: helping formerly incarcerated students make it into tech

• 🚫 Fail and lesson: struggling to get resources to help the bottom of the bottom

• 🚀 Great founder: hardcore passion, deep meaning, take action

• 💸 Great investor: understanding real underlying value, have strong conviction

• 📈 Markets: mobile development, QA

• 🦄 3 startups: Pilot, Udacity, Big Nerd Ranch, Checkr, Dropbox

• 👍 3 investors: John Carmack, Alex Marcy, Wil Reynolds

• 📖 3 books: "Deepwork: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World”, “Atomic Habits”, “A Confederacy of Dunces”, “The Signal and the Noise: Why so Many Predictions Fail - but Some Don’t”, “How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking”

What is your story?

I’m from Orlando (Florida, US), I grew up in a dysfunctional middle-lower class environment, moved around a lot, got into some trouble and by 18 I already was in and out of jail a lot.

At 18 years old I was involved in a street fight that ended with me stabbing a man who later died at the hospital. At the time I felt like I was protecting my friend who was getting jumped but it was an overreaction and I was out of control. 

I was charged with 2nd degree murder and sentenced to 21 years in prison. I had many issues, I made terrible choices and going to prison I think was the right thing for me at that time.

After that, my brother made sure I understood the importance of education and helped me get whatever educational resources I needed, which was really important for me especially since in the Florida Prison System at that time we didn’t have many educational options. Thanks to this and some other friends and family who shared books with me, I was able to obtain something resembling an education.

Then, after reading about the The Last Mile program in San Quentin State Prison doing stuff like teaching incarcerated people to code, I got inspired and started to learn programming on my own. At that time we really didn’t have much access to computers with one exception, a drug treatment center within prison which had some computers. I had a thumb drive with Python and some YouTube videos on programming snuck in and installed on those computers. With those resources I took to learning to program until the warden found out and transferred me because of it.

But it was not only about me, I really liked teaching in prison to other inmates and at the same time got help from my colleagues. I remember sharing articles about programming while learning together with people from all walks of life. Weeks before, you could see them with their gangs not doing anything good and suddenly you are learning all together in an exciting environment, sharing job demand, average salary - nurturing that spark.

Eventually I got out and to be honest still struggled quite a bit. But I had the blessing of having the gigantic support of my best friend, my wife. We grew up together, she knew me before all this prison stuff happened, she was there through all the shit despite my felony and has been there ever since.

After getting out, It took 3 years for me to get hired. I focused on getting a college degree and acquiring valuable programming skills while building a network, trying to overcome the setback that my poor decision-making had caused.

Following all of this, I thought damn it could be really interesting to help the people coming behind me who are also struggling because their disadvantaged profile, so they have a high quality network to support them. Consequently I founded Underdog Devs and started helping other formerly incarcerated people become developers, providing mentorship, high quality education, an opportunity to better jobs and ultimately an improved life quality.

What is the biggest win in your life?

I think the individual success stories of our students is that win. Seeing that crazy life change that probably won’t happen if we weren’t there to help, is incredible.

A special one that comes to my mind is Ryan. Ryan was with me in prison for over 6 years, we sneaked in together that Python thumb drive to put it on the computers and learn, and he listened to all recommendations and acted accordingly. Got out of prison, worked in construction while continuing learning at the same time, changed from web development to android development when I mentioned that web dev was getting saturated as a result of bootcamps activity (again listening to advice and acting accordingly) and eventually he got a job as software developer.

It was fun because he is this “alpha male / formerly incarcerated / construction worker” type of man, and my wife and I used to wonder if he would get emotional when he finally got a new job. Then it happened, I got a call and it was just him grunting on the phone for a while and then saying: “Dude, they made me an offer”.

What is the biggest failure and lesson?

I guess there are lots of things I could mention here, but I’d like to mention the difficulties we have experienced with funding.

When you are building high quality education for free while getting 0$ money from it and allocating 100% of resources to the mentees you are trying to help, and at the same time you see money flowing in other directions to organizations that you know are not really as impactful as they claim, it is a bit disheartening.

Sometimes it can be tough to come from the real true bottom and work on helping people overcome the same situation, in a world that not always care, while you see projects or people with more privileged backgrounds acting as if it was the same case when it really isn’t.

Maybe I underestimated how much politics, relationships or time play a role in obtaining the resources to get more people out of the gutter.

What is your description of a great founder?

Passion. I know it is a cliche but there is truth to it. I don’t see how are you going to do it if you lack hardcore passion that provides you the motivation and meaning to take the life changing actions you need to be a good entrepreneur. For instance in the case of Underdog Devs, I remember that in addition to working, studying and helping others, I used to do 50-100 personalized cold reach outs every weekend just to see how we could improve the help we provide.

What is your description of a great investor?

It’s not like I have a lot of experience with investors and maybe it sounds too simplistic, but based on what I’ve seen in the software development world I believe the two major factors for a good investor should be to truly understand the underlying value of the business and to have real faith in whatever it is they are getting into.

Regarding understanding the real value, I don’t really like when investors let politics and other type of subjective bias cloud their analysis. However I think this happens way more than it seems, more than what it is shared transparently.

And about having conviction, when I think about an scenario like looking for supporters that can help us literally change the life of people in need with Underdog Devs, it’s just too difficult to imagine a great investor that hasn’t a huge believe in the team and what we are trying to accomplish. Similar to the passion factor of the entrepreneur, it can be a very hard and challenging adventure so even though there is asymmetric information and you’ll always take risks, a moment in time comes where you need to have solid faith if you want to win.

What markets are you most interested in?

Talking from the point of view of a software developer / software engineer, I think there are a lot of interesting opportunities in mobile development. There are so many choices in web tooling that it is paralyzing, but mobile is a pretty clear cut and a nice target for new devs that want to get skilled quickly and play a role in the space.

I also like QA (Quality Assurance). I’m aware it is not super popular nor super highly paid, but again I think it is a pretty interesting and differential angle to get into tech. In all honesty never helped someone become a QA expert like I did with mobile profiles, but it feels somewhat similar to what I saw with people specializing in Android. Not a lot of devs focused on it, you can learn pretty fast, shape your resume in a distinctive manner and get hired pretty quickly.

3 startups you like and why?

I am going to be very biased but I will mention:

• Pilot. Fintech startup whose Founder and CTO Jessica McKellar helped us make Underdog Devs what it is today, hired developers from the initiative and it is lead by incredible people who are very mission driven and extremely supportive.

• Udacity. They also have helped us so much with curriculum and content to articulate what we do at Underdog Devs - we are very thankful for it. Being able to do our real time pair programming while combining it with that platform knowledge, adds a lot of value for our students. As an example, they gave us 10 free nano degree seats.

• Big Nerd Ranch. A web & mobile app development agency that offers expert training and services - so they basically teach, design and build digital products. I am a big fan because they are super purpose driven and very helpful, always donating stuff like book courses to help us get started. And they also invited me to chat and gave me some ideas for Underdog Devs.

And I would like to give an extra special mention to:

• Checkr. Employee background screening solution for companies. Their team has been super supportive with formerly incarcerated people and I’ve seen them do a lot of things, not just talk. Like for instance they actively hire people who have been in prison and give a lot of second opportunities in that sense.

• Dropbox. Another cool company supporting our case. They gave us 20 terabytes for free and it’s not just the help but the product itself, highly valuable.

3 investors you like and why?

Sorry because I am going to be impartial again:

• John Carmack. He is the legendary programmer creator of the video game Doom and ex CTO at Oculus, and he helped us a lot with support and donations to Underdog Devs.

• Alex Marcy. He is the Founder and President at Corso Systems, US based company providing a wide range of software services to businesses. Also a provided a lot of support to our initiative.

• Wil Reynolds. Currently a VP of Innovation at Seer Interactive, a big data digital marketing agency. He is one of the coolest people ever and again, super helpful.

What books do you feel everyone should read and why?

A few come to my mind but some I could mention are:

• "Deepwork: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World” by Cal Newport. Great book to recognize how important it is to focus and learn a bit more about how to improve in that aspect. I found a great deal of value in it.

• “Atomic Habits” by James Clear. Well-known and maybe a bit too basic premise, but I really liked how it shares the clear idea that we should be focusing less in setting goals and more in building habits that can actually lead us to these goals.

• “A Confederacy of Dunces” by John Kennedy Toole. When you are in a shitty place like I was in prison, sometimes is the simple and funny things what brings some light to the dark. That’s the case with this one.

• “The Signal and the Noise: Why so Many Predictions Fail - but Some Don’t” by Nate Silver. Interesting reading about the world of prediction and how to distinguish a true signal from a world full of noisy data.

• “How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking” by Jordan Ellenberg. Using the mathematical method to analyze life, the author pulls from key historical developments of this area and ends up exposing some hard-won insights to understand the world in a meaningful way, beyond the sometimes chaotic surface that we experience. It helped me deal with some heavy personal stuff such as the hard time I went through when growing up, and also provided somehow a support to expose some basic fallacies that I was carrying with me.

WILDCARD QUESTION

What is Underdog Devs, why is it important and what advice will you give to underprivileged profiles that want to become software engineers?

Underdog Devs is a non profit community of software engineers who are dedicated to help people from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds get into tech. To do so we help them build a network, acquire skills with high quality pair programming and get hired, while also taking care of their living expenses (housing, food, etc) if they need it and even allocate more resources if for whatever justified reason they need more time to make the transition. For now, we had 3 cohorts, 24 mentees and some cool shout out by top companies like Apple.

Why is it important? Providing life changing help to those with a truly disadvantageous background is why. It is tough for me to see a solution for people who truly come from the bottom and this is what we are trying to build. Because a life changing impact in someone with a middle-upper profile is not the same as someone with a middle-lower one and I see much more focus in the former, even if sometimes is camouflaged as the latter. For instance how are you going to pay a bootcamp and take 3 months off to learn to code, when you are too busy surviving just fighting to get to the next month with whatever job you can get and no support? With our high quality education and guidance for free, pair programming from Monday to Friday every week, paying all the bills and allocating all our resources to our mentees without getting anything back, is how we envision providing this unique help that can improve access for real. It is not about doing this stuff to pick flowers and look good, but to plant them and help them grow out of nothing.

And finally, regarding advice, I want to say 2 main things: skills and network. No bullshit.

• Network. Choose 1-2 dev communities and engage. Constantly being around developers in initiatives like technical meetups or volunteering in interesting projects is one of the biggest factors contributing to your success in tech as a software engineer. If a job opens up, you are going to get it because people tend to hire from who they know and it will give more chances than being a random applicant, specially if you come from a disadvantaged background.

• Skills. Get your skills ready as soon as possible and ideally in something different that can help you stand out. Get depth. And beyond that specialization angle, I’d recommend focus and consistency as the key ingredients of the not-so-secret sauce. The bootcamps boom maybe has given the image that becoming a software developer / software engineer is easy. It is not. You need a lot of commitment, put in the hours, do what you said you were going to do - be extremely persistent.

One example of this that comes to my mind is with my friend Ryan (with whom I was incarcerated and who eventually got into tech as a mobile dev). Ryan was really into powerlifting and when he was already out of prison, he used to train a lot and compete every weekend while at the same time working in construction and learning to code. I’m very transparent with my mentees and I remember a situation when very clearly I said to him “man, at this pace you are going to need 10 years to make it into tech, you have to sacrifice some powerlifting time”. He did and as I mentioned earlier eventually he made it.

Maybe it sounds like simplistic advice but if you are coming from this type of background, you need to understand that you don’t necessarily have a great signal in your story (at least not as a typical privileged tier 1 profile), so you’ll need to get the skills as soon as possible, work hard, sacrifice, be super persistent and have more courage than others in order to win. And don’t be your worst enemy, don’t get in your own way.

Big thanks Rick for sharing your views with us!

Big thanks to you, reader, for your time and interest!

You can support Underdog Devs here: underdogdevs.org/donate

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Jose Fernandez da Ponte is Senior Vice President at PayPal and currently leads its Blockchain unit focused on ensuring end-to-end management of PayPal’s underlying crypto products, technology infrastructure, partnerships and regulatory foundations to drive growth in the space.

Previously Jose was Executive Vice President at BBVA New Digital Business (the San Francisco based innovation team of the Spanish bank where he played a leadership role in multiple investments, acquisitions, venture creations and in-house developments), Co-Founder & Partner at Quercus Equity Partners (Private equity firm where he invested and had operational roles in airlines and digital advertising companies, including being an investor and board member of Clickair, low cost airline eventually merged with Vueling), Engagement Manager at McKinsey and Tech Manager at HP.

Jose studied business at Universidad Pontifica Comillas and has a Master of Science from The London School of Economics and Political Science.

Summary

• 👤 Story: Galicia, HP, McKinsey, PE co-founder, BBVA digital, PayPal

• 🥇 Win: launching crypto at PayPal, building digital at BBVA, being an investor in Clickair through merger with Vueling

• 🚫 Fail and lesson: launching a business for the wrong incentives, passion + impact over money ends up as better driver of success

• 🚀 Great founder: differential believe, bet on tech breakthrough

• 💸 Great investor: technical talent in-house, support relevant tech innovation

• 📈 Markets: Web3, stable coins, NFTs linked to real utility, AI applied to fraud prevention, quantum computing applied to fintech

• 🦄 3 startups: Anchorage Digital, QCentroid, Wazuh, Lana

• 👍 3 investors: Alfonso Villanueva (PayPal), Hans Morris (Nyca Partners), Spencer Bogart (Blockchain Capital)

• 📖 3 books: “Complexity: A Guided Tour”, “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”, “The Design of Everyday Things”

What is your story?

I’m born in Ferrol (Galicia), studied in ICADE (Madrid) and did a postgraduate degree at the London School of Economics.

Professionally I started working in HP and then McKinsey in 98 doing projects related to banking, telecom, private equity (PE) and payments.

Around 2005 and after 7 years in the firm, I left to join a PE fund as partner, helping fund, build and scale companies. As PE partner I worked in deals ranging from airlines (such as Clickair merge with Vueling) to digital advertising, including having very operational roles like CEO of a portfolio company for a few years.

In 2010, after the peak of the financial crisis, I had a serious sit-down with my family to think about the future and what made sense to do next. I came across a really interesting opportunity at PayPal and joined the team as Head of Strategy for Emerging Markets with a special focus on South America.

However after 5 years there I got approached by BBVA to help as one of the leads in a new digital unit based in San Francisco. This was an amazing experience and we were one of the 1st banks to be so committed to innovation, making acquisitions, building companies, investing, and closing tech partnerships with giants such as Google and Alipay.

Finally I came back to PayPal in 2019 to live the adventure of launching the crypto business here and helping bring this exciting technology to the company’s millions of users.

I know there is people who’d rather have all their path planned but it really wasn’t my case, I tried to optimize my actions based on working in something I loved and being with good talented people. This is how I walked my way.

What is the biggest win in your life?

Three things come to my mind.

First, being able to launch a strong crypto platform in PayPal, with great impact and pushing tech to production in such a massive scale. PayPal truly believes in the opportunity and it is fantastic to be in the center of something like this.

Second, I’d say my years in BBVA and the work we completed. I think what BBVA did with its digital unit it is not appreciated enough (specially in its origin country Spain), but BBVA, its president Carlos Torres, and all the team, really worked hard to pursue relevant commitment with innovation which resulted in the bank being one of the earliest corporate players in fintech. When you are leading an aircraft carrier it is not always easy and fast to move into new directions, but once you do the impact can be major. You need guts and I believe we had them and acted accordingly.

And finally, I really enjoyed the role I could play in Clickair as PE and board member, getting to the operational level, going from ppt to 6M passengers per year and ending up merging with Vueling.

What is the biggest failure and lesson?

I have more scar tissue around a situation with an education project we tried to launch but unfortunately failed. There was some value proposition and business sense but it wasn’t really mission driven and we lacked domain expertise.

I think it is okay to tackle a market opportunity even if you don’t know a lot about the market itself so that way you are not carrying any limitations from “the old ways of doing it”, but the big lesson coming from this experience is that having some unique market insight and a strong mission/vision fire within you, is of great importance.

Stuff like knowing how to make a business out of an opportunity and having exit awareness is obviously positive, but if you are in the game only for the money, I believe you’d probably risk following the wrong incentives and missing the shot.

After this moment, I applied the lesson to other decisive moments that came across and when I chose based on mission and impact rather than just money, I achieved more success and was able to navigate in a better fashion those inevitable rough patches that we all face.

What is your description of a great founder?

If you are going to build something from scratch, better be something you believe in. What do I see that others do not agree with? A great founder has more differential believes and less copycat consulting approach.

In this line, I’d add: better take technological risk than market risk. This is a personal view but I find much more interesting those teams that decide to go after a very challenging technological breakthrough that if it works out can conquer a market, instead of those who do a low risk product which implies high market risk, since you have to go and compete on pure sales execution with very similar players.

The company pitch decks of doing the Uber for X or copycats with geography as main differentiator are not something that excites me. Not because I don’t think they can be good investments (and much respect to this companies because they deserve it), but because I believe more in the sustainability of network effects based on technology advantage.

In Spain unfortunately I’ve seen a lot of the opposite culture but I hope to see more unique bold initiatives being done by Spaniards like those of AlienVault and Curai Health.

What is your description of a great investor?

Again, just sharing my personal view rather than giving advice because at the end of the day we are all students who learn constantly.

That being said, I believe venture capital funds could benefit from having more technical talent in-house. I have the chance to provide support to PayPal Ventures every now and then, and I see a bunch of companies that claim their product has an edge that it really doesn’t have. But we have a lot of technical talent to make this type of assessments constantly so it kind of shocks me when I see how a lot of VCs do not really have these skills inside the fund.

To build a more impactful portfolio, support relevant tech innovation and quickly understand what makes sense and what not, a great investor should be able to cover this gap.

What markets are you most interested in?

I love Web3 and being more specific, I think future development of stable coins can get very interesting.

Also, I find NFTs really exciting, not just as collective or art use cases, but because the potential of its digital property rights angle. The possibility of having an NFT linked to any asset such as a digital identity or a product/service with real trustworthy utility is compelling.

Beyond that, at PayPal we are constantly exploring new AI applications applied to fraud prevention and we believe we will see much more things in the future within this area.

And in the long term, even though it is more than likely that we will see many ups and downs in the space, quantum could be wild and as a corporation it makes sense to us to pay serious attention to its developments.

3 startups you like and why?

If I can say a few I’d say:

• Anchorage Digital. I think infrastructure is one of the most interesting opportunities in blockchain and Anchorage does a great job making it simple for institutions to build products and use digital assets through an advanced and secure architecture for custody.

• QCentroid. Early stage Spanish startup providing quantum technology solutions for Web3 use cases, lead by Carlos Kuchkovsky, a former colleague at San Francisco based BBVA digital unit where he had relevant tech lead roles and major impact.

• Wazuh. Open-source security platform by the Spaniard Santiago Bassett with early backers such as Julio Casal, ex founder & CEO of AlienVault (Spanish threat intelligence company acquired by AT&T for $500M after raising over $100M+ from investors like Kleiner Perkins and Intel Capital).

• Lana. Tech platform providing financial services to underserved clients in LATAM, with special focus on gig economy workers. Led by Pablo Muñiz.

3 investors you like and why?

• Alfonso Villanueva (SVP of Strategy, M&A and Ventures at PayPal). In my opinion, the best Spanish angel that nobody knows about. He was the Senior Partner in McKinsey in charge of the Asia Pacific tech area, now he is close to PayPal’s CEO office and PayPal Ventures, and he is an exceptional investor with early bets in companies such as Spanish unicorn Jobandtalent. And a good friend I must add.

• Hans Morris (Managing Partner at Nyca Partners). Hans plays a key role in one of the best fintech VCs I know, and he has a pretty impressive career, with previous positions as Managing Director at global growth equity fund General Atlantic, President of VISA and CFO of Citigroup.

• Spencer Bogart (General Partner at Blockchain Capital). I have found in Spencer an investor who really understands the Web3 ecosystem, with a special sensibility towards the importance of the technical angle in this world as key factor to provide spectacular returns.

What books do you feel everyone should read and why?

• “Complexity: A Guided Tour” by Melanie Mitchell. Good intro to the theory of complex systems. This book changed the way I look into many things - understanding how behavior appears without apparent cause, the effect of layers of complexities resulting in extraordinary outcomes, etc

• “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” by Thomas S. Kuhn. Even though it is a bit dense, I think an investor should really look into this book in order to increase clarity with regards how science evolves, differences between lineal improvement and total disruption, and how to optimize discovery.

• “The Design of Everyday Things” by Don Norman. Great guide about how to keep the customer in the center of every product design decision you make, starting from the most common and simple building blocks.

WILDCARD QUESTION

How does the future of Web3 payments look like, what opportunities does it hide and what advice would you give to founders and investors?

First of all, bear markets are for building and now is a good moment to get in.

About the future of payments, from infrastructure to use cases, payments with crypto on a massive mainstream scale needs more stable systems and solid regulations. New protocols and layer 2s such as Solana, Avalanche or Polygon are advancing impressively, but as we have recently seen, some approaches like algorithmic stable coins have taken a severe hit. This is obviously a challenge, both in terms of product but also in terms of adoption and reputation. However I still believe that in the midst of the mess we could find even bigger opportunities

Precisely, regarding opportunities that can end up as a very worthy pursue even tough we are navigating a tough winter, right now I’d like to highlight:

• Crypto payments leveraging improved stable coin tech. As I mentioned earlier and despite the difficulties, I still think exciting possibilities are yet to be exploited.

• Custody of NFTs. It is being solved in part but there are still pending problems such as the management of un-hosted wallets or trade off between security and usability (e.g. high friction workflow in order to participate in the market, made by discord + metamask + centralized exchange + decentralized exchange + NFT platforms).

• Identity. The elephant in the room. How to properly manage attestations of federated identities on chain, identity related regulation impacting use cases such as mainstream payments, again management of un-hosted wallets, prevention against money laundering, validating payments business to business or human to business - to name a few.

Finally, some advice to founders and investors is: Do not underestimate technical nor regulation complexities. What I’ve experienced at PayPal is that during the last bull period we have seen a lot of flashy hype around proposals exclusively talking achieving user adoption virality (even if at times it was a bit by leveraging speculation), and not so much about technical nor regulatory muscle. Not covering these two factors in a proper way can kill the business in the long term.

Big thanks Jose for sharing your views with us!

Big thanks to you, reader, for your time and interest!

If you enjoyed it, subscribe and we’ll be back with you. 🙏🏼

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Ander Michelena is one of the Founding Partners of All Iron Group, an alternative investment firm including Venture Capital and Real Estate, with over €250M AUM. In VC, All Iron stands out for being the biggest 1st time fund in Spain, a clearly defined “help but no interfering” approach and its unique operator insights that are leveraged to help their portfolio companies scale.

Previously, Ander was the Co-Founder & Co-CEO of Ticketbis, a secondary ticketing marketplace born in 2009 that scaled from nothing to $100M sales in 40+ countries until it was acquired in 2016 by eBay for $165M.

Ander started as an Investment Banking Analyst at Morgan Stanley and studied Business at Universidad Pontifica de Comillas.

Summary

• 👤 Story: Spain, banker, founder, $165m exit, VC founding partner

• 🥇 Win: building and scaling Ticketbis, selling it to Ebay

• 🚫 Fail and lesson: lack of product focus in Ticketbis

• 🚀 Great founder: execution machine, top hiring, fundraising

• 💸 Great investor: not interfering at all, helping if asked

• 📈 Markets: web3, specially metaverse and NFTs

• 🦄 3 startups: Jobandtalent, Preply

• 👍 3 investors: Jose Marin (FJ Labs), Sequoia, Tiger

• 📖 3 books: Lord of the Rings and other fun stuff, no work related

What is your story?

I was born in Bilbao, lived 9 years in Madrid, studied at Lycée français and then did a BBA at Universidad Pontifica Comillas. While at uni, I started to see movement in the entrepreneurial ecosystem, stuff like Tuenti being built. More importantly, I met a wonderful woman with whom I have four kids.

After graduating from university, I started working in investment banking but the entrepreneur vibe was already growing within me. I had no one in my family doing anything similar to that but I wanted to try, however I thought I had to learn more so I joined Morgan Stanley with the idea of being there 2-3 years doing M&A and then going out and build something.

Since the second year working there I started to see that the intensity of the job was only increasing, and even though I was learning a lot, the fire to do something on my own was getting stronger. As a result, I started to brainstorm about potential projects, with the support of friends such as Felipe Navío from Jobandtalent, and I ended up connecting with Jon Uriarte to launch a startup named Ticketbis which mainly was a webpage to buy and sell tickets.

The idea came after a bunch of hours studying early stage ideas that could make sense in Europe and seeing a problem without a solution. In 2009 after the financial crisis we left the bank and started Ticketbis, we launched the site in 2010 and it was quite complex to get the initial funding after such a crisis while also the Spanish ecosystem being so immature. Almost nobody was investing! Kibo Ventures, Bonsai, Cabiedes … really few investors then.

The 1st year we did €1M sales, the 2nd €5M, the 3rd €12M and then €28M and €56. Almost 100%+ YoY constant growth since the early days. Internationalization also was a key asset for us, starting in Spain, using Portugal as a test and then opening UK, France, Italy, LATAM and even Asia. In 2014 there were very few e-commerces with the guts to go to Asia but we tried and opened Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong. And then we did Australia and New Zealand too. Thanks to hiring top local teams and developing a replicable well engineered sales machine, we obtained a pretty interesting execution of our international expansion.

In that same 2014, we got approached by eBay and the story is actually quite fun. In my first contact with them, they clearly expressed interest to meet with us, so I was thinking “wow that’s cool”. They invited us to Wimbledon, football, great restaurants - all the full pack VIP type of thing. Anyway I was so hyped that I came back to the office and one of my team members was like “did they said something about an acquisition?” and I thought “damn, forgot to talk about that”. Later on, I understood that was their way of fishing the feeling of our culture in order to get to know more about who we were not just on a professional level but on a personal one too.

In 2015, we finally got an acquisition offer and we rejected it. For us the 1st offer was ridiculously low and we answered with a clear no. We thought that if they were truly interested, rejecting the 1st offer would give us a stepping stone to go up in price and if they were not, no problem, we continue with our vision and prepare a powerful funding round. But to be honest, given the nature of that offer, we felt like that was it, no second chance would come.

So we launched our 1st big round, talked with lots of funds, advanced significantly in the fundraising process, and while we were in a roadshow between London, New York and San Francisco, once in SF I got contacted again by eBay to have lunch with them. A guy from Bilbao like me can’t simply just reject free food, so we met. They changed the whole team, told me they were wrong with the 1st offer and asked me what was my price to close the deal. I told them 3x-4x the previous one, they asked me to help them understand the price and I mainly said “Take it or leave it, this is my round price right now. If you want to buy in the future the price will be at a whole other level.”. I came back to Madrid from SF again thinking that nothing would happen, and after 2 weeks they wrote us with a 3x offer. We said no. They went up again. We said no again, but this time was a “light no”. And then we got a new offer and we said yes.

Finally we entered in due diligence process in 2015 and we went through 9 months of complete hell. The process was so long and tedious that we closed the exit just 2 months before running out of cash.

When we sold Ticketbis to Ebay, we had to stay as lead of the international unit, mainly focused on doing Ticketbis in the UK and Germany for 3 years. We fought for our freedom and managed to stay only for 2 years in the company, which was important for us since being an entrepreneur and then working in a big corporation can be tough, specially when you are used to going fast and do everything yourself and suddenly, you have to adapt to your boss and play corporate politics. That was not our DNA so we were happy to be able to continue with our lives.

My Co-Founder Jon realized all of this before me and left faster than I did. I stayed a bit more, pushing against the wall until I saw it made no sense at all, so in 2018 I was out. We thought about what could be next for us and we wanted to invest in other startups (in fact we were already acting as business angels and we were getting quite a lot of dealflow because of our exited founder profiles), so it was kind of a no brainer to professionalize our activity and build a venture fund. Hugo Mardomingo and Diego Recondo joined and we started All Iron Ventures’ 1st fund in 2019.

We currently manage €200M+, we started with VC but also launched later a real estate arm with two main focuses - buying centric buildings and transforming them into short and mid-term services apartments, and managing building for third parties leveraging technology, automating as much as possible and improving margins.

What is the biggest win in your life?

Coming from a very corporate world and ending up being 20 something years old and getting people to invest money in you to build and lead your business - all of this limited knowledge of the internet, marketing or tech and figuring things out as you go while learning and growing along the way.

I very much value this whole experience of going from one world to another and realizing how gratifying it was to do it. I also loved working with other good people in the adventure of scaling up, opening countries and selling to eBay.

What is the biggest failure and lesson?

At Ticketbis, when we started, we wanted to launch a bunch of stuff early and fast, and a moment came when it was way too much distraction.

The marketplace was the core business that generated most of the money, however at times we experienced significant lack of focus since we had other business lines that even if less important still generated good results, up to €5M - €6M annual sales in some cases.

Finally we learned and decided to close everything except for the marketplace, thus focusing exclusively on that core product. The big lesson here was clear, do not bite off more than you can chew. If something works great, focus until the end and make it giant.

As founders we saw this clear and now as investors we try to keep that vision, looking for founders who are 100% focused day in and day out, until the end.

That being said, the moment of closing the side projects was tough, there were people we couldn’t re-use, we had to fire them, etc. Very complex situation but you learn a lot and thankfully, we finished on good terms with everyone.

What is your description of a great founder?

There are lots of important qualities, but if I have to pick one I’d say execution. Being an execution machine once you have the strategy and the market opportunity is absolutely key. Let’s go to A, if A does not work let’s go to B, if B does not work let’s go to C. Iterating fast and without stopping is a very relevant factor for a founder.

Then other thing that I believe is important to keep in mind: to be great at hiring and fundraising. Attracting talent and resources is a must.

What is your description of a great investor?

When we built Ticketbis, we looked for investors who did not interfere while we were working. We did not find anyone who knew about our sector so to hear stuff that wouldn’t make sense we’d rather have freedom to execute and not be slowed down by interferences. We were lucky and had some investors who didn’t interfere while supporting us a lot when we needed it, specially with key introductions when we were scaling up internationally. This is the ideal for me.

Consequently, what I appreciate the most as VC right now in All Iron, is to help but without disturbing. We let entrepreneurs fly free and learn from their mistakes, we will always be there for whatever they need but we will not be too noisy. For instance, a concrete example of this is that we do not really look for board seats, if they need something they can tell us directly. We believe this is quite unique and adds a differential value. In fact, his availability is something our entrepreneurs do appreciate.

As an extra factor, I’d like to add the fact that if an investor has previously been a founder, it is even better. In VC there are lots of PE/M&A/consulting type of backgrounds but few investors with startup experience, which I believe is an asset that can add an extra edge.

What markets are you most interested in?

We are going through one of the best moments in history to learn - more money, more drive to do big things, more skills to build impactful and scalable technology, great entrepreneurs, extensive markets, good ideas, exceptional fundraising opportunities … So I’m interested in quite a lot of things!

One of those things is the revolution we are experiencing related to web3, specially the metaverse and NFTs. The concept of the digital persona becoming more important than your physical persona, is starting to build a whole new reality layer that we can not even begin to understand.

I’m also very interested in the infra that makes web3 possible and acts as a catalyst for new digital projects to be created.

Not a fan of cryptocurrencies at all though, I might be wrong and it is a personal opinion, but too much of a casino feeling.

3 startups you like and why?

• Jobandtalent. A startup making something really cool which I think will become the 1st Spanish decacorn. I know the founders and they built something amazing, turning around 4 really challenging situations and not just surviving but thriving. Great business model, proven scalability and as I mentioned, close to putting the Spanish ecosystem in a whole new level.

• Preply. A language tutor marketplace and another of our portfolio companies (sorry for the PR!). The company is impressive and has been growing 6x since 2019. The founders are execution beasts with a great network and they have impacted a lot of lives in geographies where people have very low income and language learning can have a relevant added value to students while tutors can significantly benefit from being helped to connect with people that need their services.

3 investors you like and why?

• Jose Marin (FJ Labs). Good business angel with very interesting approach. He helps if you need him but will not be interfering, he has with a great track record and also he was a Ticketbis investor who helped a lot.

• Sequoia. I don’t know them in person but it is the classic mythical animal of the VC game. Anything they touch seems to turn to gold.

• Tiger. I love how they disrupted the market and I had the chance to take a look at their numbers and I have to say they are pretty good. Tiger is securing 2-3x while getting in with bigger and faster money, breaking the game and evolving from fund to fund. New tickets, new valuations and new speed resulted in them single-handedly changing the industry. Additionally, the possible scenario of the VC paradigm changing and resulting in the asset class becoming more of a commodity that could end up with returns more similar to PE rather than the traditional VC exponential ones, makes Tiger’s approach even more interesting.

What books do you feel everyone should read and why?

You know what? I haven’t read almost any book about investors and founders, not because of some particular reason but I just prefer to read great articles that are shorter and faster and I’m always so busy working that I’d instead read something that can get my mind out of the work mood and into simply having fun and being entertained.

One example of this would be The Lord of the Rings, I read it, I fly out my busy mind and I love it. Being 24/7 reading about work related stuff gives me a bit of anxiety.

WILDCARD QUESTION

Given your experience as successful founder disrupting an industry, now that you are an investor what are your views regarding the current paradigm shift that venture capital is going through?

Each fund has to find its particular angle because everything is getting hyper competitive and if you are not able to be different you will be just one more. And this is only the start of the change in VC.

For us at All Iron Ventures, we try to embody what I mentioned of helping but not interfering, so we made the conscious decision of not leading rounds, not taking board seats in general and providing good platform services. This allow us to be cooperative with everyone in the ecosystem positioning ourselves in the international landscape as the investors who can help in expansion in Spain and also in LATAM due to our previous operating experience. And this is our edge to be different in this crazy market.

I believe each fund has to find its own way, there is not a unique path. Tiger has its own one that I mentioned before, the Sequoias and Accels of the game with their great reputation have another one, and in my opinion those who really are in danger are the ones in the middle. That is the space that is getting disrupted in VC right now. If you are there, you need to find a differential angle, you need to think about it a lot and you need to act because if you don’t, you are going to be left out of the game. Everyone should be thinking about fund strategy right now.

From that starting point and if we start talking about investment thesis, we find new challenges. If you are a specialist in a very concrete market, you can gather more specific experience and you can help more. If you are one of these traditional tier 1 monsters like Index or the ones already mentioned, it is natural to attack everything. If you are one of the new big players hitting hard like Softbank and Tiger, it makes sense to go after the existing tier 1s and challenge them. In any case, what is important to keep in mind is that everyone has to understand and decide who they are and who they want to be, but also get who they can not be. You can not be everything and risk succeeding in nothing, you cannot have $100M and invest in all stages, be a lead in everything and do all types of deals following the most generalist style possible. There will be room for a lot of players but the VC world is changing fast and if you don’t adapt and stand out, it is going to be tough in the long term.

And finally, regarding crypto … right now I’m not sure it would be a huge disruption for the VC business as we know it. It is my opinion and I could be wrong, but I’d need to see more data about returns on token-based VC investments to change my mind. Also, there are some qualitative characteristics versus equity like governance stuff (lack of control, etc) that makes me doubt about it substituting equity based VC. You can do a lot of money with crypto and a lot of super interesting projects are being born in the ecosystem though; it is just that I see it as a different thing.

Big thanks Ander for sharing your views with us!

Big thanks to you, reader, for your time and interest!

If you enjoyed it, subscribe and we’ll be back with you. 🙏🏼

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Aubrie Lee is a Brand Manager at Google, where she have been for 7+ years in various roles in the Marketing team and more recently also as President of Google’s Disability Alliance, a Google employee group for people who care about Disability inclusion with the goal of improving contributions of disabled people to our workplaces and economies, making disabled employees feel welcome and supported, and embodying the principle of “Nothing About Us Without Us”.

She is also an artist at heart with special love towards digital art and awards such as the 1st place in Stanford’s Urmy-Hardy Prize in Poetry, as well as a disability activist fighting for change so all people with disabilities can have a dignified life and be proud of who they are.

Aubrie earned an engineering degree from Stanford University’s Mechanical Engineering department graduating with honors.

She was born with a rare form of muscular dystrophy where the more she uses her muscles, the weaker they get. She is disabled and proud.

Summary

• 👤 Story: disability, struggle, community, Stanford, Google

• 🥇 Win: disabled pride besides challenges, helping others

• 🚫 Fail and lesson: struggling w/ easy tasks, using tech to improve

• 🚀 Great founder: 1st hand pain linked to fire, top execution

• 💸 Great investor: disability focus

• 📈 Markets: disability in arts and entertainment, accessible travel

• 🦄 Startups: All Wheels up, NMD United, The Kelsey

• 👍 Investors: n.a.

• 📖 Books: “Disability Visibility”, “Thinking in Systems”, “Potter Who and the Wossname's Thingummy”

• 🔥Wildcard: how to improve the live of people with disabilities

What is your story?

When I read some of your Views posts and specifically this question, I thought about how I could explain my story properly, since it is not a very easy one but I do not really want to sugarcoat it neither.

I grew up in California in a family pretty linked to Silicon Valley, starting with my grandfather who was an electrical engineer and moved here to work on silicon chips, so we could say in some sense is part of my family history.

My father is a heart surgeon who also likes art, and since me being a little kid he showed me to draw and I felt in love with it. As I grew up I loved art more and more, and started thinking of myself as an artist. That is a big part of who I am.

But there is more, when I was a baby my parents noticed I could not close my mouth so I could not do things apparently as easy as saying mama, while also they realized I had a hearing problem. Then as a child in school, kids starting noticing too the fact that I couldn’t move as they moved nor hear, which was not bad since that helped me not listen to uncomfortable things they were saying to me. Consequently, it didn’t take me very long to see I was different from most people and I fell back into art and getting good grades - if others will see me as different, let’s make it exceptionally different.

Eventually, I got diagnosed with a severe and rare form of neuromuscular dystrophy and in high school, I joined a program for students with disabilities. However, when I entered the room and saw other people with disabilities, in wheelchairs and all that stuff, my first reaction was “I don’t belong in here”. I spent my whole life trying to prove I could be a fit for the abled majority, trying to earn their respect and love, and now I had to be there with the disability label? No way.

I struggled significantly and it took me a while, but finally I found myself among other people who are outcasts, outliers. That forum was a turning point for me and helped me go from rare minority to welcoming majority, going from shame to finding a beautiful community and later on committing to building new communities to help more people with disabilities to the point where we can say we are disabled and proud, there is nothing to be ashamed of and this is who we are.

Your substack is all about startups, investors, and building the future, and my views on my disabilities is that they are my course towards the future, the nature of my dystrophy is that all deteriorate over time and I get weaker, so I can not afford to keep doing the same. I must change, innovate and find new ways to interact with other people to keep working in tech, creating my art and living.

I said that Silicon Valley is in my family history, in my blood. Also change is in my DNA, my genetics are mutated, they changed and it is the core of my future. A future where I can contribute to disabled people living a decent life, a future where I can not only survive and cover basic needs, but also achieve my highest dreams. There are so many things I want to do. Not just disability activism but also tech and art. I want to be an activist because I feel I can not just sit by and allow the world to continue on this status quo os ignoring the disability community, but I am an artist because I feel is who I am in my soul. If I could live in a world where I didn’t have to worry about fighting for access, I believe I’d spend my day making art projects.

I try to embody this in my studies and work, I have a Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering focused in Product Design, from Stanford University and I currently work at Google as Brand Manager, where I had the opportunity to push initiatives for the disability community.

What is the biggest win in your life?

Finding myself and learning to be proud of my identity as a disabled person is one of my biggest wins, specially in a world where disability is so negatively viewed to the point where for instance many villains in movies tend to have some type of physical or psychological disability, where there are so many aspects that end up in people with disability being left behind, when half of covid deaths are from disabled people not just because our bodies but because society force us in some way or another to live in segregated institutions or does not prioritise efficiently helping us before it is too late…

Given all the ways society tell us we are not welcomed, still being able to find a way and be proud of who you are, it is something important for me.

But it is not just about me being ok with myself, there are more than 1 billion people with disabilities around the world, but most of them unfortunately have not found the disability community and have not learned to be confident about it. So for me is also a win to learn the importance of helping create spaces for others, helping other people with disability feel as worthy as they truly are.

Specifically, thanks to having a good job (which is rare since unemployment and poverty rates for disabled people around the world in developed and developing countries is double of those not disabled) I pushed for the creation of communities for people with disabilities that can take concrete action to make our lives better. For instance some people with disabilities need a lot of personal care to the point where I can’t use safely the bathroom because the difficulty of transferring myself in and out of my chair, some can not even drink water by themselves, etc. So other employees with neuromuscular disability and I advocated for a personal care attendant program at Google, and even though it was a fight that took long time and we heard many noes, I learned that when you try to change the status quo you are going to face a lot of reject and if you have a strong good why, you should not take that no with you.

Eventually we succeeded, new employees with disabilities came by afterwards and where very happy and thankful to us about it (which was amazing to see) and even though I wish I didn’t have to say it, being able to use the bathroom at work was a revolutionary win. We just want the same dignity that every human being can have and the opportunity to fight to help others, against a world where not everyone has that privilege.

What is the biggest failure and lesson?

I find this to be a really important question and before answering I’d like to express a couple of things, first that I am aware I’m pretty unusual, and second that my answer probably has to be seen under the light of this concept known as antifragility, understood as a system that responds to stress by improving, not by breaking (fragile system) or by returning to its original form (resilient system).

That being stated, sometimes I think that my biggest failure is being the human that I am, maybe even feeling more like an animal at moments. Every day I wake up and I can’t get out of bed fast and I need to summon major motivation to accomplish the simplest tasks, it is a failure. Every time I am frustrated by something or angered and I respond without thinking, it is a failure. Every time I feel like trapped in some type of animalism, it is a failure.

I have done a few interviews and I tend to not get so deep, I am conscious about this not really being super sexy to say, but that is what I honestly think.

I try to overcome this failures through cultivating a strong internal fire, thinking deeply about purpose in life, personal ambitions, drive - you name it. I have my life plan where the marketing professional, the artist and the engineer, everything comes together to face this challenges.

And I believe all of this gravitates around the power of technology and how I can leverage external tools to improve my life and be able to significantly help those around me in similar situation. Becoming more machine to win the fight against the flaws of my humanity and consequently being able to achieve more and have a superior positive impact in the world, would be a big win for me. Not being there yet is a temporary failure.

What is your description of a great founder?

When I was at Stanford I saw how much they cared about entrepreneurship and the effort they put on curating a really exciting ecosystem to act as catalyzer for new founders to be created, and after meeting with a lot of people there and asking a bunch of questions, what I found is the best entrepreneurs tend to have experienced first hand something in the world that does not work so well and could be done better, something that ignited a fire of passion to improve a concrete situation linked to an extreme drive to execute.

What is your description of a great investor?

I like investors that are focusing on helping build companies that dramatically improve disabled people lives. I think more VCs can act as allies and I hope for more relationships being built between disabled entrepreneurs and investors to the point where it can materialize into more investments flowing into this direction.

It really hasn’t happened yet in a big scale, that could mean there haven’t been enough disabled founders and investors or that the model is simply not a match for VC and returns are not there, but I think the best way to figure it out is to get together and try. Whoever is committed to do that is for me a great investor.

What markets are you most interested in?

I am interested in disability in the arts and entertainment. I think if we can change how the public sees and treats disabled people we can end up having a superior improvement in this area so I like how stuff like films, music or other forms of entertainment can honor disability culture and inspire pride. We do have some examples of disabled superheroes but it is far from being enough.

Another market I like is travel with an accessibility angel. What people like Srin (one of your early guests at Views) did building an accessible travel startup and being acquired by Airbnb is amazing and I’d love to see more things following this angle. It is very difficult to travel when you have a disability yet is something so importan to have that freedom. I find super exciting the opportunity to unlock this privilege.

What startups do you like and why?

• All Wheels up. Right now air travel is a pretty horrible experience, a big problem for disabled people and they are working to improve accessibility and provide more freedom as a result.

• NMD United. Its board is 100% people with neuromuscular disabilities. I’m on the board and am proud of how we give direct grants to help adults with neuromuscular disabilities afford things like wheelchair equipment and medical supplies.

• The Kelsey. Really interesting project innovating in accessible housing for disable people with the vision of building more inclusive communities. I’m on their board and like their mission very much.

What investors do you like and why?

Unfortunately based on what we have talked previously I can’t tell you, not even one. Maybe that is a bad signal of the true focus on inclusion but also how people like myself should do something about it and build more bridges.

What books do you feel everyone should read and why?

• “Disability Visibility” by Alice Wong. Collection of contemporary essays by disabled people, from activist Alice Wong. It is an important book for me.

• “Thinking in Systems” by Donella Meadows. When I was a kid I loved reading but school eventually killed my love for books. Thankfully that loved came back to life and this is a book that contributed. Basically it takes systems thinking out of the realm of computers and equations and into a concrete skillset useful in the tangible to make sense of the complex world of today.

• “Potter Who and the Wossname's Thingummy” by ForrestUUID. I’ve never read something like that but it ended up being quite delightful. Between Harry Potter and Doctor Who. I love languages and having fun with words, so I truly enjoyed it.

WILDCARD QUESTION

What could we do to improve the lives of people with disabilities?

If I had power either in public or private sector, I think I’d focus on raising our standards right now.

We need to build on key cornerstones such as the Americans with Disabilities Act, to make disability inclusion required at least to a fundamental level where standards that allow a dignified life to happen for disabled people can exist - promoting access to spaces, schools, employments, etc. Without this act I wouldn’t be here and I believe it is time to improve and scale this type of initiatives.

However that is not enough, I don’t think the way to go is to simply force people to do it. We need to go beyond this and build communities of individuals who want to do the right thing.

If you are disabled I say please find a disability community because it will help you navigate the challenges and also find your own way to do disability activism because we must work together to amplify our voices. If you are not disabled I’d say help these voices be heard. If you go to a restaurant and is not accessible as why even if you are not disabled, if you get a linkedin message from a recruiter ask about the company’s disability accommodations, if an opportunity to create better laws exist, lend your efforts, call your representative, send letters and show your support.

Engaging with disability culture as an ally is important in this process, so I’d also recommend to do research on it. For instance if you want to add some link to a post do an hyperlink do not copy and paste a normal link to it because people using a screen reader to navigate the page are going to have a pretty bad user experience.

Life as a disabled person is a triple tax, physical inaccessibility, social exclusion and advocacy labor. Let’s unite and fight for change.

Wonderful to talk with you, muchas gracias!

Hi, Pol writing here just to say that this Views edition is dedicated to Marta, a lovely girl and great friend of mine who had a rare neurodegenerative disease causing severe disability and who passed away a couple of years ago.

In case someone would like to help the foundation supporting families affected by this (who need big help, receive very little and truly move the needle) you can do it here:

https://www.aefat.es/dona/

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Austen is Co-Founder & CEO of Bloom Institute of Technology (formerly Lambda School), an ed tech startup focused in helping people rewrite their futures by providing a coding school to train people remotely and supporting them in becoming software engineers or data scientists, that raised $122M+ funding from tier 1 investors like Gigafund (long term focused VC by one of Paypal Co-Founders and Founders Fund Founding Partner, investor in companies like SpaceX and Neuralink), GV (Google’s VC, $5B AUM and companies like $17B+ IPOed DevOps platform Gitlab), John Danner (investor and serial entrepreneur with experience in education and exits including 1 IPO), Stripe (leading fintech infra startup valued at $95B) and Y Combinator (world leading startup accelerator, $575B+ total value created and companies like $79B+ IPOed crypto exchange Coinbase).

He and his team built a state of the art school where beyond education, students get unique career coaching, job sourcing and community support, with a unique business model that only makes money if the students succeed and earn an annual income of $50,000 or more. As a result, lots of lives changed and new builders created, with thousands of Bloom grads hired by companies such as Apple, Google and Goldman Sachs.

Before Bloom, Austen was the Co-Founder of a media platform named GrassWire and co-authored a best seller growth hacking textbook. Originally, he was born and raised in a low income background, was a missionary in Ukraine and even lived in his car for a while, experiences that ignited a fire in him to rethink education and build a new way for people from different backgrounds to thrive and succeed without having to go through the old school inefficient and expensive university system.

Summary

• 👤 Story: Utah, low income background, founder, improving education

• 🥇 Win: great relationship with wife and kids, working in what you love

• 🚫 Fail and lesson: bad partner and bad hiring, always learning

• 🚀 Great founder: attacks big problems smartly and never gives up

• 💸 Great investor: not being bad, providing zoomed out view

• 📈 Markets: education, ecommerce, infrastructure

• 🦄 3 startups: Replit, Riogrande

• 👍 3 investors: Jonh Danner, Luke Nosek & Stephen Oskoui (Gigafund), Shaun Maguire (Sequoia)

• 📖 3 books: “Les Miserables” by Victor Hugo, “Twilight of the Idols” by Friedrich Nietzsche, “The Wright Brothers” by David McCullough

What is your story?

I grew up in a small town in Utah in a low income type of environment, in my teenage years I went as missionary to Ukraine, knocked a lot of doors and learned my piece about being resilient while working in challenging situations without immediate outcomes.

After Ukraine I came back to Utah and when I was thinking about what to do in life I came across this predetermined system we all know about going to college, spending a lot of money to study a bunch of years in something that seems way less practical than it should, being a slave to your loans and then crossing your fingers and hoping to be able to pay for all the crazy amount of debt you have accumulated.

Probably influenced by being raised in a low socioeconomic environment in a family very averse to debt while seeing people around me get crazy loans, I started to seriously consider that this expected way to go didn’t made sense for someone like me.

This experience really stuck with me at the same time that I started to love tech more and more, so I dropped out of college wanting to work in tech, taught myself to code and got my first job that way. Then I went to Silicon Valley to try out in the big leagues but at first it didn’t worked out as well as expected and I ended up broke and homeless, sleeping in my car for a while.

Eventually I could earn a decent living and this idea of how to make education provide life altering outcomes started growing more and more, became Lambda/Bloom and ended up changing the life of a lot of people for the better.

What is the biggest win in your life?

First of all, my family.

My family and my relationship with my wife and kids is the biggest win and the thing I am most proud of in my whole life. Based on my experience I do not think is common to build a company while raising kids and being happily married so I am extremely thankful for this.

Second, the fact of waking up everyday and working on a problem I care about whilst supporting my family doing it. I do not believe Bloom is wildly successful yet - yes we have a lot of money raised, big number of employees and many students lives changed but there are still a bunch of things to do. Yet I am extremely happy about it all. With minimum wage I’d still do the same.

No one would have expected this things by the way I grew up, and I am hugely grateful for it all.

What is the biggest failure and lesson?

There are a million things I’d have done different before and after founding Lambda/Bloom.

For instance, before that, I started a company, a tiny company that failed miserably and went out in flames pretty much overnight. We ran out of money after a billionaire (who I am not going to name to not fall into lawsuit zone), with all the documents signed way beyond term sheet stage, ended up not sending the wire. After that I learned to have at healthy alert but also got a mindset where sometimes I’d focus too much on not failing instead of focusing in succeeding, which can be a wrong lesson and a big fail too.

After founding my current company, one that comes to my mind is that at first I was not very good at hiring, I didn’t know what really great talent looked like and I didn’t set up the infra for the school to be able to grow more seamlessly. It was way more bumpy than I’d have liked and I learned how to correct this mistake.

What is your description of a great founder?

Someone who attacks a big problem in a smart way and refuses to give up.Those two things are key and you need them both.

I never talked to a great founder who didn’t question if they should be working on that, if it is possible, if they are wasting time and money, etc. You do not give up but you also have to solve the problem in the right direction. Not giving up doing useless things is not a great way to go neither.

What is your description of a great investor?

Stage 1: not being a bad investor. And there are infinite ways of not being a bad one like avoiding not sending the wire when you signed and committed.

Then, based on my experience as an angel investor and raising money for my startup, I’d say that the job of an investor is to help a founder see blindspots, see around the corner. As investor and even founder in later stages, you have seen so much that early stage founders have not seen yet, you have a very zoomed out view versus the zoomed in view the founder tends to have - the idea is to use that to give the founder a more complete picture of the adventure.

Best investors acknowledge that is the founder who at the end of the day knows better all the operational details and context. Most investors could not even understand it, less match them. But as an investor what you can do is help the founder see the zoomed out version, help see what is happening that the founder is not seeing and guide towards the right direction, focusing in the right things and pointing out the risks the founder is not aware of, while making connections to make it happen.

What markets are you most interested in?

Good question, a few come to my mind. I am not the kind of investor with a thesis, I just stumble with companies in my day to day and if they are interesting I get in.

• Education. I tend to not get in but I’m seeing really interesting stuff happening in areas such as homeschooling and K-12. There are new schools providing superior outcome than any preexisting private or public ones, taking kids from the bottom and bringing them to the top. Finally the software is there making this a reality.

• E-commerce. Companies helping small business by providing a layer of support via tools, acquisitions, rollups, etc

• Infrastructure. There is a lot of infrastructure online that needs to happen, specially with an open source angle. For instance I’ve seen fascinating stuff being built around devops tools trying to redo the javascript stack or nft labs trying to create infra/rails for NFTs. In general, stuff for others to built on top.

3 startups you like and why?

• Replit. I am as big investor as I can be in the company and it is one of my favourite late stage startups. They have powerful tools that used to be on desktop and now are in the cloud and I believe they are one of the drivers of this new paradigm of being able to have software that is incredibly powerful without the need of it working in your local computer, but using a virtual machine that leverages the infrastructure (both software and hardware) of Replit, happening in a super powerful computer far away.

• Riogrande. One example of the ecommerce market opportunity I talked about, a company buying and doing rollups of all sorts of ecommerce business in Latin America.

3 investors you like and why?

• Jonh Danner. There are very few people who understand education and sold a company for a bunch of money and took a company to IPO. He is one of these and his expertise has been really great for us.

• Luke Nosek and Stephen Oskoui (Gigafund). Luke is one of Paypal’s Co-Founders and also Founders Fund’s Founding Partner and Stephen was a Venture Partner at Founders Fund and Founder and CEO of a marketing company that drove $1B+ in sales for its clients. They are both impressive and invest very differently, when they look at something they don’t focus on the classical 10 years cycle but look for companies which can be astronomically big 50 years from now and orient everything around that. Also they are very careful with who is on the board and take care of incentives for the lung run. Is the founder for the long haul? Is the market big enough for it to be a world changing company? To see an investor focused so much on the future, bold to do big bets and willing to get huge returns instead of the average 10 years and 10x, is something exciting.

• Shaun Maguire (Sequoia). He led our Series A when he was at GV. Incredibly helpful and among the smartest people I’ve seen. You can say that of a lot Silicon Valley investors since the level is so high, but he stands out. PhD in physics from Caltech, worked in DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency of the US Dept of Defense), founded two companies one of them being aquired for $800M - great investor.

3 books you feel everyone should read and why?

• “Les Miserables” by Victor Hugo. A favourite without a doubt.

• “Twilight of the Idols” by Friedrich Nietzsche. It impacted the way I look at the world.

• “The Wright Brothers” by David McCullough. Fascinating to learn more about their creative path and the way they built the first plane. It hit me in the right time.

WILDCARD QUESTION

Tech is changing the world fast and the education system seems to be falling behind and get broken by the day. Critics abound but alternatives do not. What do you think is wrong with the current education system and how would you improve it?

More felt in the US but true internationally, we really have just one education system, the 4 years university path. A lot of funding goes there, to an old type of school with a specific style accredited by a specific system. If you build a new great school that that does not fit that profile, there will be no funding for you. In the case of the United States, if you are not a Title IV school following the traditional 4 years university system, you will not be backed by the federal system. So this this type of incentive scheme ends up pulling the entire education system to a very specific profile where inefficiencies grow, there is no deviation on what is though and a small deviation on how it is taught.

If I could so something about it both from a public and private angle, first I will empower a vocational education system where everything will start over, from teaching to learning. Universities were originally intended to be for academia or some specific degrees like law and history, very liberal arts were the main priorities. Now we have to do sciences and engineering but we don’t have a vocational super practical system that is actually the most efficient for that. Yet it has been done that way because that is how the preexisting incentives scheme is fixed. We need to change it.

Second thing, if schools are going to take government funding and loans, I would have them guarantee outcomes somehow. Right now schools simply do not have to really care about the success of students, about their wellbeing, about if they can pay loans or not - it is just about if students show up and write a check. Schools don’t care about nothing more. Incentives are misaligned.

There are a lot of new opportunities for improvement and it is time to consider thinking about this problem very differently.

Big thanks Austen for sharing your views with us!

Big thanks to you, reader, for your time and interest!

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