Podcasts about notion capital

In today's episode of the EUVC podcast, Andreas talks with Stephen Millard, Operating Partner & Chief Platform Officer at Notion Capital, a London-based fund exclusively investing in B2B SaaS. With roots dating back to early SaaS pioneers like Message Labs, Stephen brings deep operational know-how and a data-driven approach to venture investing. Notion Capital's Cloud Champions latest report unpacks European SaaS companies' unique challenges, from navigating fragmented markets to scaling revenue rapidly, emphasizing the need for constant reinvention.Using extensive experience and real-world case studies, Stephen explains how today's well-informed buyers reshape the traditional seller-buyer dynamic. He outlines the critical transition for founders: from a hands-on, experimental phase to a disciplined, outcome-focused strategy, ensuring that teams align across sales, marketing, and product development. Stephen also shares practical insights on adapting go-to-market strategy and building enduring, high-growth businesses in a rapidly evolving market landscape.Go to eu.vc for our core learnings and the full video interview

Celebrating one of the finalists in the Firm of The Year-category at this year's European VC Awards, this episodes dives deep with Stephen Chandler, Co-founder & Managing Partner of Notion Capital. With 1.1 bn€ under management and 5 flagship funds under their belt, Notion is one of Europe's absolute top firms and in this episode, Stephen dives into a level of detail rarely seen discussing everything from the guiding principles building Notion to the process and learnings from raising their latest fund. I highly encourage you to read Stephen's notes below and tune in for this episode. I truly think this is one of our best to date. Notion at glimpse:Fund Name: Notion CapitalFund size: €300m (Fund V)AUM: €1.1bnHQ Country: UKTarget Stage: Series A focus, but invest across pre-seed to growthTarget Geography: Pan EuropeanTarget Sector/Vertical: Business Software & FintechNotable Investments: CurrencyCloud, Easol, GoCardless, Mews Systems, Paddle, Upvest, YulifeFrom the principles building Notion to the learnings from raising fund V oversubscribed and the decision to clone his dog, this episode is one of our best to date. Don't miss Stephen's notes on eu.vc - they're legendary.Big shout out to our Firm of The Year Sponsor Haynes Boone.And you don't have to take it from themselves, take it from one of their long term clients, Joe Schorge: "Having worked together for many years now, they fully understand the Isomer ethos and process, and we really appreciate the value that this long-term relationship brought to this mandate from start to finish. We look forward to continuing to work with Karma, Ronan, Will and the rest of team.”  Naturally, we're incredibly excited about having the Haynes Boone team with us as sponsors of the Firm of The Year Awards - yet another testament to their support for the EUVC ecosystem. We strongly encourage you get in touch with Karma and the team for a great experience

Itxaso del Palacio is a General Partner at Notion Capital. Since moving to London in 2010, Itxaso has been an entrepreneur, investor and educator. Having invested in more than a dozen businesses and taught entrepreneurship to around 2,000 students at UCL and Imperial. Itxaso has a passion for helping entrepreneurs build their businesses, supporting them with her network, knowledge and positive attitude. Itxaso joined Notion in 2018 from M12 (formerly Microsoft Ventures) where she launched their UK office and led investments in Onfido, Beamery and Unbabel, a company we are also investors in.

In this episode of the SaaS Sales Performance podcast, we're thrilled to host Stephen Millard, Operating Partner and Chief Platform Officer at Notion Capital. With over 30 years in enterprise software, Stephen shares invaluable insights into the challenges of scaling from one to twenty or fifty million in recurring revenue. Explore the transformative journey of building go-to-market strategies, overcoming growth hurdles, and the pivotal role of people and growth in SaaS success.

Richard Valtr is the founder of Mews — which provides a cloud-based hotel property management platform with tools covering reservations, payments, and more. It has raised $223 million of funding, from notable investors such as Kinnevik, Goldman Sachs Asset Management, Revaia, Derive Ventures, Orbit Capital, Battery Ventures, Notion Capital, Salesforce Ventures, Thayer Ventures and henQ, with a potential company a post-money valuation of $865 million.Mews are streets (for example, in London) full of usually small houses or flats converted from horse stables for bigger houses nearby. Ironically, though, Mews the startup is not that small at all. In the year that travel “came back” post the peak of COVID and the various restrictions imposed on people moving around, Mews saw revenues grow 174%, with gross payment volume in the period up 227% and now standing at $2.3 billion. It has customers in 85 countries, and 5,000 hotels in all.Where to find Richard Valtr:• Website: The Hospitality Management System of the Future | Mews PMS• LinkedIn (12) Richard Valtr | LinkedInWhere to find Hadi Radwan:• Newsletter: Principles Friday | Hadi Radwan | Substack• LinkedIn: Hadi Radwan | LinkedInIf you like our podcast, please don't forget to subscribe and support us on your favorite podcast players. We also would appreciate your feedback and rating to reach more people.We recently launched our new newsletter, Principles Friday, where I share one principle that can help you in your life or business, one thought-provoking question, and one call to action toward that principle. Please subscribe Here.It is Free and Short (2min).

In der Rubrik “Investments & Exits” begrüßen wir heute Daniel Wild, Gründer und Aufsichtsrat von Mountain Alliance. Daniel bespricht die Finanzierungsrunde von Retorio und Aikido.Das KI-Startup Retorio, ein Spin-off der Technischen Universität München, hat in einer neuen Finanzierungsrunde 9 Millionen Euro erhalten. Angeführt wurde die Runde von SquareOne aus Berlin. Weitere Investoren sind unter anderem Porsche Ventures, Storm Ventures und mehrere Family Offices. Mit dem frischen Kapital plant Retorio die globale Expansion, insbesondere den Markteintritt in den USA. Das 2018 als KI-Recruiting-Plattform gegründete Unternehmen bietet mittlerweile eine videobasierte KI-Coaching-Plattform an. „Auf diese Weise können sich Unternehmen deutlich schneller auf neue Marktgegebenheiten einstellen und im immer härteren globalen Wettbewerb behaupte", erklärt Dr. Christoph Hohenberger, Co-CEO von Retorio.Aikido Security, eine Software-Sicherheits-App für wachsende SaaS-Unternehmen, hat in einer von Notion Capital und Connect Ventures geleiteten Seed-Runde 5 Millionen Euro eingesammelt. Hinzu kommen Investments von Inovia Capital Precede Fund I, angeführt von den Partnern Raif Jacobs und dem ehemaligen Google-CFO Patrick Pichette, sowie eine  Reihe von Angel-Investoren, darunter Christina Cacioppo, CEO von Vanta. Das 2022 gegründete Startup  hat es sich zur Aufgabe gemacht, die SaaS-Sicherheit mit einem All-in-One-Tool zu vereinfachen, das verschiedene Funktionen für die Anwendungssicherheit zusammenfasst.

In der Rubrik “Investments & Exits” begrüßen wir heute Pablo Karnbaum, Associate von SquareOne. Pablo bespricht die Finanzierungsrunde von Qomodo und Langfuse.Das italienische FinTech Qomodo hat in einer von Fasanara Capital geleiteten Pre-Seed-Finanzierungsrunde 34,5 Millionen Euro erhalten. Unter den Investoren befinden sich Exor Ventures, Proximity Capital, Ithaca Investment, Notion Capital, Octopus Ventures sowie Angel-Investoren wie Simone Mancini, Freddy Kelly und Mark Ransford. Qomodo plant, die Finanzierung zu nutzen, um Zahlungslösungen wie SmartPOS, Tap-to-Phone und Buy Now, Pay Later auf den Markt zu bringen und so Händlern verbesserten Cashflow und Kunden flexible Zahlungsoptionen zu bieten. CEO Gianluca Cocco betont, dass die Lösungen Online-Vorteile in physische Geschäfte bringen sollen, und erwartet, monatlich Hunderte bis Tausende von neuen Händlern zu gewinnen.Langfuse, ein Berliner Startup, hat in einer Seed-Runde 4 Millionen US-Dollar von Lightspeed Venture Partners, La Famiglia und Y Combinator erhalten. Das Unternehmen entwickelt eine Open-Source-Lösung zur Überwachung von Large-Language-Model-Produktionsanwendungen. Die Plattform ermöglicht es Entwicklungsteams, Metriken und Debugging-Informationen zu erhalten, um komplexe Probleme bei der Integration von Userfeedback und LLM-Analysen zu lösen. Langfuse zielt darauf ab, Entwicklern fundierte Entscheidungen zu ermöglichen, basierend auf realen Daten und Benutzerfeedback. Das Startup wurde 2022 gegründet und hat während seiner Teilnahme am Y Combinator Programm verschiedene Anwendungen entwickelt.

Nella puntata "speciale" di oggi parliamo con Gianluca Cocco e Gaetano De Maio, i founders di Qomodo, la nuova startup fintech italiana appena uscita da ‘stealth mode' che ha chiuso un dei round pre-seed più importanti di Italia.  Nell'arco di pochi mesi, sono riusciti a raccogliere un round di pre-seed da €34.5 milioni da Fasanara Capital, Exor Ventures, Proximity Capital, Ithaca Investment, Lumen Ventures, The Techshop, Primo Ventures - oltre a fondi stranieri quali Notion Capital, Octopus Ventures e Plug&Play. Di cosa si occupa esattamente la startup? Qomodo porta negli store fisici una suite di soluzioni per i pagamenti smart, compresa la formula Buy Now Pay Later, per le spese essenziali, spesso impreviste. Effettivamente vi potrebbe aiutare a pagare una spesa come una riparazione imprevista della propria macchina o una spesa veterinaria importante.  Ma sentiremo tutti i dettagli direttamente da Gianluca e Gaetano nella loro prima intervista podcast dal lancio.   SPONSOR Made IT è powered by ⁠Alchimia⁠, società di investimento che opera principalmente nel settore del Venture Capital. Investono e co-investono in opportunità ad alto potenziale di crescita, offrendo capitale e risorse strategiche e operative dedicate. SOCIAL MEDIA Se vi piace il podcast, il modo migliore per dircelo o per darci un feedback (e quello che ci aiuta di più a farlo diffondere) è semplicemente lasciare una recensione a 5 stelle o un commento su Spotify o l'app di Apple Podcast. Ci ha aiuta davvero tantissimo, quindi non esitate :) Se volete farci delle domande o seguirci, potete farlo qui: Instagram ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@madeit.podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ LinkedIn ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@madeitpodcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

In der Rubrik “Investments & Exits” begrüßen wir heute Jannis Fett, Investment Manager bei HV Capital. Jannis bespricht die Finanzierungsrunden von MarketLeap, Paul-Tech und Mecaware.Die E-Commerce-Plattform MarketLeap aus Luxemburg, ehemals Gonuggets, hat zusätzliche 1,5 Millionen Euro in Seed-Finanzierung gesichert und damit insgesamt 2,6 Millionen Euro gesammelt. Zu den Investoren gehören Notion Capital, Kima Ventures, Motier Ventures und Expon Capital. Diese Mittel werden für die technische Weiterentwicklung des Betriebssystems, die Einführung neuer Serviceangebote, die Expansion in die USA und die Skalierung im Vereinigten Königreich verwendet. MarketLeap ermöglicht es digitalen Marken, ihre Präsenz auf globalen E-Commerce-Marktplätzen zu erweitern und so den Umsatz zu steigern. Das Unternehmen hat bereits gezeigt, dass seine Plattform Marken ein 4-faches Umsatzwachstum ermöglicht und Kunden in mehr als 30 Ländern bedient.Das estnische Startup Paul-Tech, das Echtzeit-Bodenerkenntnisse bietet, hat in einer Seed-Finanzierungsrunde 1,4 Millionen Euro gesichert, um im britischen Markt Fuß zu fassen. Die Agritech-Firma mit Sitz in Tallinn unterstützt Landwirte und Grundstücksverwalter mit Echtzeit-Einblicken, um ihre Bodenbewirtschaftung zu verbessern. Angeführt wurde die Runde von dem estnischen Fonds Superangel, mit Beteiligung von SmartCap, Honey Badger Capital, dem estnischen Business Angels Network (EstBAN), Tatoli AS, Overkill VC und einigen schwedischen Investoren.Das französische Batterie-Recycling-Startup Mecaware hat eine Series-A-Finanzierungsrunde über 40 Millionen Euro abgeschlossen. Die Finanzierung besteht aus einer Mischung aus Eigenkapital, Krediten und staatlichen Zuschüssen, um die Technologie von Mecaware zu skalieren und ein präindustrielles Pilotprojekt in Zusammenarbeit mit Verkor, einer der bestfinanzierten Gigafabriken Europas, durchzuführen. Angeführt wurde die Finanzierung von Crédit Mutuel Innovation, einem französischen Risikokapitalgeber, gefolgt von SPI2, einem Fonds für Industrieprojekte, verwaltet von der öffentlichen Investitionsbank Bpifrance. Rückkehrer unter den Investoren waren EIT InnoEnergy, UI Investissement, Kreaxi und BNP Paribas Création, alles Unternehmen mit einem Fokus auf nachhaltiger Energie.

This week we're joined by the fabulous Sebuh Mesfin, Head of Digital Marketing at the VC, Notion Capital, Co-founder of Blocks2Bags, and ex-Fanbytes working with Timothy Armoo in the early days of TikTok. Sebuh's energy is palpable and very refreshing, you're gonna love it.   Here are 3 key takeaways from this episode: 1️⃣ The Power of Partnership: Sebuh and his co-founder, Bejay, formed a strong friendship before diving into their entrepreneurial venture. They took the time to build a solid foundation and trust with each other, which ultimately led to the creation of their media platform. 2️⃣ Consistency is Key: Sebuh emphasized the significance of consistency in the growth of their podcast. They started with monthly releases and gradually increased to weekly episodes. 3️⃣ Making Business Fun: Sebuh's philosophy with Blocks2Bags is to make business content enjoyable and fun. He believes that presenting content in an engaging and entertaining manner is crucial. By sharing their unique approach to business and making it relatable, they have been able to connect with a wider audience and create a positive impact.  

Our Social Media Pages, follow us and engage with the Pill-grim community!Join our Entre CommunityInstagramTwitter YouTubeTikTokLinkedInAnd now for this week's prescription:On this week's dose, (1:50) you will hear about Peppermint, a new online community for adults 55+, and their $8M seed round from Primetime Partners and Redesign Health. Next, (8:14) you'll hear about Dalan Animal Health, the pioneering biotech company that recently raised a $4.5M Series Seed 3 led by Prime Movers Lab. The company developed and launched the world's first honeybee vaccine. Lastly, (13:45) stick with us for a breakdown on Resistant AI, a Prague-based startup that helps protect financial services firms from the evolving financial crime landscape. The company raised an $11M Series A extension from Notion Capital and has won b2b Digital Crime Fighter of the Year awards.Sources:https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230719845294/en/Peppermint-Launches-Groundbreaking-Online-Community-to-Promote-Peer-Connection-Engagement-Amongst-Adults-55https://join.mypeppermint.com/ https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230627720385/en/Bee-Vaccine-Pioneer-Dalan-Secures-4.5M-to-Fuel-Global-Expansion-and-Product-Developmenthttps://finance.yahoo.com/news/bee-vaccine-pioneer-dalan-secures-130000686.htmlhttps://www.dalan.com/https://resistant.ai/news/resistant-ai-extends-series-a-to-27.6mhttps://news.fintech.io/post/102ii3v/resistant-ai-raises-11m-in-series-a-extension-fundingMusic Credit: Chapter One by Cole Bauer and Dean Keetonhttps://www.colebauer.com/https://www.instagram.com/deankeeton/?hl=enDisclosure:The views, statements, and opinions, expressed herein by the hosts and guests are their own, and their appearance on the podcast should not be construed as reflecting the views or implied endorsement of Independent Brokerage Solutions LLC or any of its officers, employees, or agents. The statements made herein should not be considered an investment opinion, advice, or a recommendation regarding securities of any company. This podcast is produced solely for informational purposes and is not to be construed as an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy a security.

In der Rubrik “Investments & Exits” begrüßen wir heute Otto Birnbaum, General Partner von Revent. Otto spricht über die Finanzierungsrunde von ConstellR und Quench.ai sowie den Exit von Opinary und den neuen Fonds von United Ventures. Das deutsche Startup constellr, das intelligente Landwirtschaftsdienste für den Agrarsektor anbietet, hat eine Seed-Finanzierungsrunde abgeschlossen und erhöhte damit den Gesamtbetrag der Seed-Runde auf 17 Millionen Euro. Die Finanzierungsrunde wurde von Karista angeführt, mit Beteiligung von Einstein Industries Ventures und bestehenden Investoren wie FTTF, Lakestar, Vsquared, Amathaon Capital, Natural Ventures, OHB Ventures und EIT Food. Das Unternehmen plant, die Mittel zu nutzen, um den Einsatz seiner Wärmesatelliten zu beschleunigen und seine Aktivitäten in Nordamerika auszuweiten. Die KI-Coaching-Plattform Quench.ai, gegründet von Husayn Kassai, dem Mitbegründer von Onfido, hat in einer Pre-Seed-Finanzierungsrunde 5 Millionen US-Dollar aufgebracht. Unter den Investoren sind Firstminute Capital, Tuesday VC (ehemals CrunchFund), BY Venture Partners, Ada Ventures, Plug and Play Ventures, Notion Capital, IFG, Antler, Ventures Together, Northzone scout und mehr als 50 Gründer. Die Plattform nutzt Künstliche Intelligenz als Coach und bietet den Nutzern geeignete Videos zum Erlernen neuer Fähigkeiten an. Ziel ist es, Probleme wie "Entscheidungsparalyse" und zeitraubende Ablenkungen zu vermeiden. Das Unternehmen plant, mit der Finanzierung sein Team zu erweitern und moderne Lernende, die ihre Fähigkeiten verbessern wollen, anzusprechen.Das indische Werbetechnologieunternehmen Affinity hat das Berliner Startup Opinary übernommen, wobei der Kaufpreis nicht bekannt gegeben wurde, aber geschätzt wird, dass es sich um eine einstellige Millionensumme handelt. Opinary, bekannt für seine Online-Umfragen zu aktuellen Themen, wird durch die Übernahme die Möglichkeit haben, international zu expandieren und neue Produkte von Affinity anzubieten. Die bestehende Geschäftsführung von Opinary bleibt erhalten, während das Unternehmen durch die Unterstützung von Affinity in den USA und Asien sowie in Deutschland und Europa wachsen soll. Die italienische Risikokapitalfirma United Ventures hat den ersten Abschluss ihres neuen Fonds in Höhe von 65 Millionen Euro bekannt gegeben, mit einem Ziel von insgesamt 150 Millionen Euro. Der Fonds wird sich in den nächsten fünf Jahren auf 15 bis 18 europäische Technologieunternehmen im Frühstadium konzentrieren, insbesondere im italienischen Ökosystem. 

PrideStaff launches accounting and financial staffing division, William D. Cohan criticizes Fox's corporate culture and Smartmatic lawsuit, Currys reports annual loss before tax, Samsung expects 96% drop in profit, US job openings decline by half a million, Notion Capital raises $327 million for fifth fund, China exerts more control over businesses, Bradford Business School prioritizes inclusion and social mobility, Saudi Arabia and Russia reaffirm commitment to oil production cuts, and Strategic Response Management Market predicted to reach $22.74 billion by 2028.

In der Rubrik “Investments & Exits” begrüßen wir heute Katharina Neuhaus, Principal bei Vorwerk Ventures. Katharina kommentiert die Runde von Vev und ZeroPoint.Das niederländische Startup Vev hat 5 Millionen Euro in einer Finanzierungsrunde von Notion Capital und Point Nine Capital erhalten. Vev bietet Dienstleistungen für angehende Unternehmer und will ihnen helfen, ein Unternehmen zu gründen, indem es ihnen "alle Werkzeuge" bereitstellt, die sie brauchen. Das Unternehmen möchte die Überwindung der Komplexität der Gründung eines Unternehmens erleichtern, da eine Studie zeigte, dass 28% der angehenden Unternehmer aufgrund der Komplexität aufhören, bevor sie überhaupt anfangen.ZeroPoint hat 3,2 Millionen Euro von Investoren eingesammelt, um Rechenzentren bei der Reduzierung ihres Energieverbrauchs zu unterstützen. Das Unternehmen kombiniert ultraschnelle Datenkompression und Datenverdichtung in Echtzeit mit transparenter Speicherverwaltung, um den Energieverbrauch von Rechenzentren um mehr als 25% zu reduzieren. Mit dem frischen Kapital will ZeroPoint seine internationale Präsenz ausbauen und neue Produkte auf den Markt bringen. Die wachsende physische Präsenz von Rechenzentren und der damit einhergehende steigende Energieverbrauch stellen eine wichtige Herausforderung für die Entwicklung einer nachhaltigen industriellen Basis dar.

​This episode is sponsored by Fiberplane. Your platform for collaborative debugging notebooks!Episode Resources:Try Fiberplane hereFiberplane websiteFiberplane DocsNP-hard Ventures About Micha Hernandez van LeuffenMicha Hernandez van Leuffen is the founder and CEO of Fiberplane. He previously founded Wercker, a container-native CI/CD platform that was acquired by Oracle. Micha has dedicated his career to improving the workflows of developers. Read the whole episode (Transcript)[If you want, you can help make the transcript better, and improve the podcast's accessibility via Github. I'm happy to lend a hand to help you get started with pull requests, and open source work.][00:00:00] Michaela: Hello and welcome to the Software Engineering Unlocked Podcast. I'm host, Dr. McKayla, and today I have the pleasure to talk to Micha Hernandez van Leuffen. He is the founder and CEO of Fiberplane. He previously was the founder of Wercker, a container native CI/CD platform that was acquired by Oracle. Micha has dedicated his career to improving the workflow of developers, so he and I have a lot to talk about today.I'm really, really happy that he's here today and he's also sponsoring today's episode. Welcome to the show. I'm happy that you're here, Micha.[00:00:36] Micha: Thank you for having me. Excited to be on the show.[00:00:38] Michaela: Yeah, I'm really, really excited. So, Micha, I wanted to start really from the beginning. So you are the CEO of Fiberplane and you are the founder of Wercker, which you already sold.So, can you tell me a little bit about how you actually started to this entrepreneur journey of yours and what brought you to the developer experience area.[00:01:03] Micha: Yeah, sure thing. So I have a background in computer science and I did my so, I'm originally from Amsterdam, but I did my thesis at USF.And the topic was autonomous resource provision using software containers. This was all before Docker was a thing, you know, the container format that we now know and love. And I sort of got excited by that field of, of so containers and decided to start a company around it. That company was Worker, so container native CI/CD platform.So we helped developers build tests and deploy their applications to the cloud. We went, I would say, so we went through various iterations of the platform. You know, eventually, you know, we started off with Lxc as a container format and then eventually ended up, you know, having to, to platform on Docker.And Kubernetes. But, you know, it was quite a, quite a journey. So that company eventually got acquired by Oracle to bolster their cloud native strategy. And then, you know, spent a couple years in a Bay area as a VP of software development focusing on their cloud native efforts.Tried to do a little bit of open source there as well, and then, you know, move back to Europe. And so sort of started thinking about what's. Did some angel investing. We're still doing some angel investing as well actually in the sort of same arena. So developer tools, infrastructure building blocks for tomorrow.So I run a, a small precede seat fund with to other friends of mine. But then also started, you know, thinking about what to build next. And you know, we can get into that, but sort of from our experience at running work or this sort of large distributed. Sort of fiber plane was, was born.[00:02:26] Michaela: Cool. Yeah. And so how, how was the acquisition for you? I, from the time I'm, you said you were studying at the university, but then did you write out of university, you know, start worker or maybe already while[00:02:40] Micha: you were Yeah. More or less studying? Yeah. Yeah, more or less just out of university. So it was around 20, 20 12, 20 13.And then, you know, expanded the team. Of course we got an office in San Francisco and, and London. And then 2017 we got acquired by Whirlpool. Oh,[00:02:56] Michaela: very cool. Wow. Cool. So, and you were the, you were the founder of that and also probably cto, CEO. At, at the beginning you were one person shop, or was this, or have this idea and I get some funding and I already, you know, have a team when I'm starting out, or was it more bootstrapped way?How, how was that?[00:03:16] Micha: Yeah, yeah. We both gates, both fiber plane and, and, and worker. We got some funding early on. Then eventually got a CTO. For worker was one of the co-founders of, of OpenStack. So also, you know, very early in the, in that sort of, mm-hmm. container and, and cloud infrastructure journey.And then if for fiber plane, Yeah. There, there's no cto. I'm. I'm both CEO and cto, I guess[00:03:38] Michaela: at the same time. Yeah. Cool, cool. Can you tell me a little bit about fiber plane? What is fiber plane? You know, what does, what does it has to do with containers and with developer experience? What, what kind of of a product is it?[00:03:51] Micha: Yeah, sure thing. So, so guess coming back to the worker days, right? So we, we, you know, we're running this distributed system cic cd, so we were also running users arbitrary code. You know, any, any sort of job could happen on the platform on top of Kubernetes, inside of containers. So one of the things that, you know, stuck with me was it was very hard to always sort of debug the system, like figure out what's really going on when we had some kind of issue.You know, we've going back and forth between metrics, logs, traces, trying to figure out what is the root cause of an issue. So sort of that, that was sort of one thing. So we're thinking a lot about, you know, surely there must be a better way to, to, to help you on this, on this journey. . The other thing that I started thinking about a lot was sort of just challenge the assumption of the dashboard, mm-hmm.So if you think about it, like a lot of the monitoring observability tools are modeled after the dashboard, like sort of cockpit like view of your infrastructure. But I'd say that those are great for the known knowns. So dashboard is great. You set it up in advance, you know exactly what's gonna go wrong.These are the things to monitor. These are the things, you know, to keep tabs on. But then reality hits and you know, the thing that you're looking at, at the dashboard is not necessarily a thing that's. Going wrong. Right? So started thinking a lot about you know, what, what is a better form factor to support that sort of more investigative explorative debugging of your infrastructure.And not to say that dashboards don't have their place, right? It's like still that sort of cockpit view of your infrastructure. I think that's a, a good thing to have. But for debugging, you might wanna sort of more explorative a form factor that also gives you actionable intelligence. I think the other thing that you see a lot with dashboards, like everybody's monitoring everything and now you get a lot of signal and a lot of inputs, but not necessarily the actionable intelligence to figure out what's going on.So that's sort of the other piece where it, then the other, like, the third like I would say is collaboration sort of thing that stuck with. Was also like we've come to enjoy tools like Notion, you know, Google Docs obviously. You know, in the design space we got Figma where collaboration is built in from the get go and it is found that it was kind of odd how in the developer tools and then sort of specifically DevOps.We don't really have sort of these collab collaboration not really built in. Right. If you think about it you know, the status quo of, of you and I debugging an issue is we get on, you know, we get on a. You share your screen you open some dashboard and we started talking over it or something.Right. And so it's, and it's, you know, I guess sort of covid accelerated his thinking a bit, but you know, of everybody going remote you know, how can you make that experience more collaborative?[00:06:22] Michaela: Mm-hmm. . So it's in the incident space, it's in the monitoring space, and you want to bring more collaboration.So how does it work? Yeah,[00:06:32] Micha: yeah, yeah, exactly. So what's your solution now? Yeah. Now I've explained sort of the in inception. Yeah. But yeah, but what is it? What is it? Right. So it's, it's it's a notebook form factor. So very much inspired by data science, right? Like rc, like Jupiter. Yeah, we can Jupyter Notebooks.Yeah. Think of, think of that form factor. Mm-hmm. . We don't use Jupyter or anything like that. We've written everything from scratch. But it's a sort of, yeah, a notebook form factor and you know, built in with collaboration. So you can add, mention people like you would on Slack. You can leave, you know, comments or discussions and all and all that.But where it gets interesting, we've got these things called providers, which are effectively plugins. So they're web assembly bundles, which we can sort of dive into into that as well. But they're providers that connect to your infrastructure, right? So we have, for instance, a provider for Elastic Search for your logs.We have a provider for Prometheus for your. And it allows you to connect to these observability systems and kind of pull 'em together into one form, factor the notebook, and then, you know, start collaborating around that. Mm-hmm. . So, you know, imagine if Notion and Datadog would have a baby . Yeah.That's kind what you get. Yeah.[00:07:41] Michaela: That's cool. So I can imagine that. Let's. I'm on call and hopefully I'm not alone. A call. You are also on call, right? Yeah, and so we would open a fiber plane notebook.[00:07:52] Micha: Hopefully we're in the same time zone and we don't need to like wake up in the middle of that. Yeah.[00:07:57] Michaela: Hopefully. Yes. And then we want to understand. How the system is behaving. And so we are pulling in observers. These are data sources. Yeah. More or less. Right. And then we can do some transformation with those data. Data sources or[00:08:12] Micha: Yeah, yeah. That, yeah, exactly. That, that might be the case. The other thing that we integrate with is, for instance, PagerDuty.So an alert goes off indeed we are on call, but an alert goes off and we have this PagerDuty integration. And subsequently a notebook is created for us already. Mm-hmm. . Okay. Maybe, maybe even with, you know, some, some charts and logs that are already related to the service that might be down.Okay. So depend, So depending on the alert, obviously you're, as you know, you're as good as how you've instrumented your alerts. But say we've written some good alerts, we now have a notebook ready to go. Based off a template. So that's another thing that we, that we have as well, which is this template mechanism.And now, you know, we're ready to, to, to go in, get in into things and start debugging. So we might have a checklist, you know you look at the metrics, I'll look at the logs, sort of this action plan. We pull in that data we start a discussion around it. Mm-hmm. , hopefully we come, we come to the, to the, you know, the root cause of, of our issue.[00:09:11] Michaela: Okay. And so this discussion and this pulling in data, this happens all in the notebook. Can you explain me a little bit more, and also our listeners Exactly. When we are on this, you know, on this call now, having a fiber plane notebook in front of our, what do we see, right? How does that, how does the tool look?[00:09:28] Micha: It's, it's very similar to, I would say, like a Notion Page or a Google Doc page. Mm-hmm. . So we've got like different, different headings. The other thing that we have is, so you might have a title for a notebook, right? You know, the billing, the billing API is now. The other thing that we have is sort of this, this time range.So maybe usually when there's an issue, you know, we've seen this behavior over the last three hours, so we can sort of have that time range locked into place. So we only want to see our. For the last three hours. And that means that any chart that we plot or any log that we pull in will adhere to that global timeframe.So that's what we see. Mm-hmm. . We have support for labels, so, you know, obviously big fans of Kubernetes and, and Promeus. So we, you know, labels are. A first class primitive on the platform. So you're able to sort of populate the notebook with the labels that might maybe be related to our service.Right? So it's a US East one, which is our region. It might, you know, say service is the billing. It might be, you know, environment is production. And the status of our incident is, mm-hmm. ongoing, stuff like that. So we have, we've got, go ahead.[00:10:34] Michaela: Cool. Yeah. And, and so is it then from top to bottom we are writing and we are investigating and we are writing out down the questions that we have and the investigation.Yeah, exactly. We do.[00:10:44] Micha: Yeah. Yeah. And so, so[00:10:45] Michaela: we might have, Is it an Yeah. Is it Yes,[00:10:48] Micha: we our work? Yeah. Yeah. It's sort of Exactly. And I think in the most ideal use case, right. And I do it most ideal scenario, you're kind of like writing your postmortem as you go along. That's what[00:10:59] Michaela: I, I was thinking exactly that.Right. And then maybe next time I'm on call again and I get PagerDuty and something is down, it's again, billing. Can I search in the fiber plane notebooks to find, you know, what we did last time and then[00:11:13] Micha: Exactly. So you'll, you'll search, jump to the conclusion . Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Hopefully, hopefully if you, if you experience, you know, the same issue multiple times at some point, we'll, we'll, you know, do a little commit on GitHub and we, we fix our, fix our, Yeah.Do. But yeah, indeed, so you can search Yeah. Cool. On the notebooks and see if you've, you know, ran into similar issues. So that's, you know, it's great for building up this, this system of record, right. This knowledge base of mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . Of infrastructure issues and, and incidents. And it's also great for onboarding, right?If a new person joins, like, this is our process. These are some of examples that we've run into you know, have a look. And now you've got a sense for you know, how we, how we handle things and some of the issues that we've investigated. Yeah. Cool. One more thing on the, on the product. So the other, so, you know, sort of explained the, the notebook form factor.We've got these providers, right, that pull in data. From different, different data sources like Elastic Search or, or Prometheus. The other thing that we have is a command line interface which is called fp. Mm-hmm . And apart from, you know, being able to create notebooks from your terminal and you know, even invite people from the terminal, all this sort of usual stuff that you would, you know, expect from interacting with an API, with, with a product like this, there's two other things that we do.So one is a command called FP Run. And it allows you to, if you are typing a command like cube, ctl logs for a specific pod, you can pipe that the output of that command to a notebook. And why that is useful is of course, you know, when we're de debugging this issue, you and I, and you're start typing things in your terminal.I have no idea what you just did. And this is a way sort of to capture that. So you're piping these these, these outputs from your, the stuff that you're typing into your into your. into the notebook. And the cool thing is, you know, in, on your laptop you just, you know, sort of see text, right?Monospace output. But for certain outputs such as the cube CTL logs command, we actually know the structure of the data and we're actually capable of formatting that in the notebook in the structured manner that you can start filtering on, on the logs and you know, select certain columns and sort of highlight even certain loglines for prosperity that you say, Hey, these are the culprits, these are the things that you need to take into, into consideration next.So we have this sort of command line interface companion, and the other thing that it does, you're actually capable of running a long, like, sort of same use case as it just, I mentioned, but like a long running recording, like you actually record your entire shell session session as you're debugging this thing and all the output gets piped into the notebook.Cool. Cool. And[00:13:46] Michaela: so I have two questions for fiber plane. One. Is the software engineer the right person to interact with you know, fiber plane or is it the site reliability engineer that's really designed, you know, or the tool is designed[00:14:03] Micha: for? Yeah, it's, it's, that's an excellent question. So I think one, one site reliability engineers, you kind of see in more larger organizations, right, where you start splitting up your teams.I will say, I think at the end of the day, right, is if you're an engineer, you've built the service, now you need to maintain it now you need to operate it like it's, it's your baby, right? You need to, you probably know best how that system behaves than anybody else. So indeed I would say that, yeah, the target group is, you know, developers.Mm-hmm. .[00:14:40] Michaela: And so the other question that I had around fiber plane is also. When we are on this call and we are writing in this notebook, how does the whole scenario look like? Are we still on a call, like, do we have Zoom or, you know, Google meet open, or are we really in the, in the fiber plane document just writing, Or are we sitting next to each other?You know, what, what's the traditional, Is there a traditional scenario or is this all possible with fiber plane? How would you recommend using[00:15:09] Micha: it? Yeah, Yeah. Yeah. Not a, not a great question. Right. I think back in the day, it would be that, you know, we maybe sit in the same office and I scoot over and we start looking at a, at a screen, right?And start typing together. Mm-hmm. . The reality is, of course, we're all doing remote work now, and we might not be in the same room. So I do think people will still use a Zoom call or a Google meet you know, as a companion to talk over stuff. I think, you know, people will still communicate in Slack and sort of start chatting back and forth.But I think what we hope to achieve with fiber plane is like the pasting of screenshots, right? Well, if you take a screenshot of some kind of chart in your dashboard and you put it in Slack and you know, somebody yells, Oh, that's not the, that's not the thing that you should be looking at. You should, you know, like all that sort of slack glue That, you know, it's our, our goal to do away with that.[00:15:59] Michaela: Yeah. And, and the slack blue is also very problematic for the search. At least I'm never able to find it again. Right. It's like is in the dark, super in[00:16:07] Micha: the dark area. Yeah. Super ephemeral. Yeah. Yeah. You can't, can't go back in time easily. And, and you know, how did we solve this last time? So again, like building up that system of record, I think.[00:16:17] Michaela: Yeah. Very cool. And so how long are you now working on fiber plane already?[00:16:23] Micha: So we've been working on it for about two years now. Which is a, is a, is a long time. I think as a sort of, you know, one of the things that we've, I guess, sort of discovered along the way that we're kind of like building two startups at the same time, Right?We're doing a notion or like a, a rich text, collaborative rich text editing experience, which is kind of like a startup on its own. Mm-hmm. . And we're building sort of this infrastructure product. So it's, you know, it's taken quite some time and, and energy to, to get the product to where it is now.[00:16:54] Michaela: Yeah. And do you have already users? Is it like can people that listen today, can they hop on fiber plane already or.[00:17:02] Micha: It's, it's in it's been in private beta, mm-hmm. , but I think by the time this gets aired it's will be in public beta and people can sign up and take it for a spin. And, you know, we would love to get feedback on, on our roadmap, right?And Okay. People can suggest what other types of providers we need to support, what are types of integrations we, you know, would love to, to have that convers.[00:17:23] Michaela: Cool. Yeah. So is there, There is the provider side. Is there something else that you want feedback on that you are exploring[00:17:30] Micha: maybe. . Yeah. Yeah. So we've got the providers that's one thing.We've got sort of our templating stack. Mm-hmm. So curious to sort of see how people sort of start codifying their knowledge, right? What's, what, what kind of processes people have to debug their infrastructure and sort of run their incidents or write their postmortems. So curious to see what people come up with there.Other types of integrations. Right? So we have as I said, sort of PagerDuty what other type of, sort of alert, alert to notebook or other types of external systems that we need to plug in with. I would love to get some feedback on that as well. Yeah,[00:18:04] Michaela: I think I had page Bailey over on the podcast.She's from GitHub and she was she was also, they were releasing something with copilot and you know, For data scientists, some, some spaces here. And she also said like, well, we really need input from the users, right? So try it out, you know, tell us how it's working. I think it's so valuable, right, to see not only like you have your vision and obviously.It's going one way, but then if you have your users, sometimes they take your product and they use it in a very different, you know, way than you anticipate it, which can be very informative. Right. I dunno. You have done two startups already. Have you seen that? And how do you react to it? Do you instrument the data a little bit?How do you realize that people are using your product in a different. . Yeah.[00:18:50] Micha: So, so obviously we have metrics and analytics on sort of usage patterns of the, of the product. But I think, I think that data is excellent, right? But also qualitative data is, mm-hmm. , especially at this stage is probably even better, right?Where you can get somebody on a call and, you know, tell us about your use case. Tell, tell us about the problem that you're trying to solve here and how can we be, be helpful in like what types of integrations should we support? I think sort of the difference between. Worker, I would say, and, and fiber plane is that, you know, worker was a pretty confined piece of surface area, right?Cic, c d the whole goal is so you either have a, you know, a green check mark next to your build or a red check mark next to your build. Like it either, you know, failed or passed. And we need to sort of do that fast for you, get, get that result quick. Mm-hmm. . And with fiber plane, it's a more. I think that the interesting thing here is like, it's a, it's a more explorative and a sort of rich design space, right?It's this notebook, which already you, you know, you can start typing and text and images and headings and check checklists and whatnot, right? It's a very open form factor and design space. And then of course, with the integrations, it can even, you know, be richer. So I'm very curious into your point, right what direction people will pull the product into.Cause you can take it into all sorts. Use cases and scenarios. Yeah,[00:20:05] Michaela: exactly. And I think as a founder also, or as the design team, product team, it's it's also a little bit of a balancing act, right? So how far, you know, let me, are we going with what the user are doing with our product and where are we setting some boundaries that they can't do everything right?So there's also often the talk about opinionated products, right? That you can actually do one thing and on one thing only, and we have an opinion on, you know, how. Supposed to use our product. And you know, we try to, if we see people deviate from that, we try to put an end to it. And then there's the other way where you say, Well, you know, if you take fiber plane and you do X with it and we haven't thought about this maybe, you know, we are okay with it.Or maybe we even support that path, right.[00:20:48] Micha: Yeah, I think, I think we're more on indeed on the, on the ladder, right? I think what we've sort of, we talk about this a lot internally, sort of everything is a building block. You know, you've, we've got the notebook, you've got these different cell types, you've got providers, you've got templates.Mm-hmm. You've got the command line interface. So like for us, like everything is a building block and we, we actually want to retain that flexibility. Not be too prescriptive. Cause maybe you have a, a if you think about sort of the, the incident debugging or, or investigating your infrastructure, like you might have a certain process, I might have a completely different process and we need to be able to facilitate, you know, these different workflows.So, you know, thus far sort of our, our thinking around the product has been everything is a building block. And it should be this sort of flexible form factor that people can pull into into different scenarios and use. I mean,[00:21:36] Michaela: we have infrastructure as code, right? And we have like security as code.Maybe we have debugging as code. Maybe, you know, this is what's coming next. Can, can you envision that, that it's going in this direction? Because while we have building blocks, maybe right now it's not you know, programming language for debugging, but it could go a little bit into the distraction, right?No code coding for debugging.[00:22:02] Micha: Yeah, we've actually, we've, we've had some of, of that sort of discussion internally as well. If you think about the templates right. To, to some extent that is a, you know, we use J Sonet as a, as a sort of language, but we sort of codified them in a certain way and you can, you could argue that the templates is, you know, sort of a programming language for at least, you know, that debugging process, right?Yeah, exactly. Right. Yeah. And. And, and we, you can take that even further and make it kind of like statically typed and make it adhere to, you know, certain rules and maybe even have control flow. So I think that, that there's, there's a piece there. And then maybe, you know, obviously we have you know, some YAML configuration on how you set up your providers, right?Like how to connect to your infrastructure. So there's some, you know, observability as code in mm-hmm. in that realm. Yeah. Yeah. I think that'll be an interesting part of the journey, right? Like to figure out can we, and some even.[00:22:55] Michaela: Yeah, in some parts should be well, don't repeat yourself, right?Like, for example, pulling in these providers, configuring that, you know, I get the right data. This would actually be something that I'm, you know, pulling in again. And probably that's what your templates do, right? So you say billing, oh, and then check, check, check, check, check. I have, you know, all my signals here and they're configured in a way that it's useful.And then for this investigation, hopefully, One at a type thing, right? So I'm investigating, and as we, as we talked before once I realized what's going on, hopefully in my postmortem I'm going to, you know, make sure that this is not happening again. So this code probably is not going to be reused that often.Maybe some, you know, some ideas from it, but hopefully we won't reproduce the same sect completely exact thing again.[00:23:44] Micha: Yeah. Cool. Yeah, that's, that's a super great point. And I think coming back, sort of the early part of the conversation around dashboards, right? I think thus far what we've sort of experienced as, you know, engineers ourselves, like, I think, I think we probably had sort of a phase around information gathering.Like all these dashboards are great for information gathering, but now with Kubernetes and containers and microservices like the, the, the number. Services that we're running and the complexity has increased. So I think, I think there's sort of an opportunity for more exactly what you're describing. So it's more about action, right?Mm-hmm. , what? What are we doing? We want to have the information, we want actionable intelligence that informs us what to do.[00:24:20] Michaela: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Because now I'm looking at this dashboard and I'm seeing the signals. But then everything else is outside of, you know, this realm, right? So what actions do I take?Do I go, go to the console? Do I restart that service? You know, or, you know, whatever I'm doing. And, and it's also vanishing, right? So I'm doing it, but then. Who can see it, What I did. Right? Yeah, exactly. And so now we are capturing this, which is very nice, and then we can learn from it Right. Postmortems as well.Yeah. So I looked a little bit through your blog and and, and your Twitter, and you were also talking about blameless postmortems. So how do you think about psychological safety? How should people. In an organization look at on call and incident management to really make it sure that we are ending the blame game.Right. You probably have some thoughts about that as well, because you're working in this area.[00:25:19] Micha: Yeah. I, I think it's important to, and you like not have put any blame on any person. Right. It, it is a, and I guess sort of, you know, that's also why we're building this product. It is a collaborative process to debug an issue or resolve an incident.Like, and what you want to achieve is to put the entire team in the best possible position to solve the issue at hand and and, you know, a support structure around it. So, you know, coming back to the product, like being able to, to open discussions. Point people in the, in the, in the right direction.[00:25:52] Michaela: So maybe also if it's easier to find a problem to root cause it, and, you know, incidents become no issue or at least a lesser issue. So maybe the blame game is not that important. Can, can we say it that way?[00:26:08] Micha: I think so. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. If, if, you know, if the process becomes repeatable and we codify that and we collaborate on it and we build up that, again, that system of record and knowledge base I think that, you know, puts us in a safer position to, to solve the next one.That's[00:26:25] Michaela: true. Yeah. Another thing that I was thinking of when I looked through, you know, fiber plane and what it does is KS engineering and I thought like what KS engineering is where you try to prevent not only the knowns, but also the unknowns, right? So really think about, you know, what, what could go wrong and then, you know, make a fallback so that your system is reliable.Or, you know, if this database goes down that not the whole system goes down, but only a part of it and so on. Do you think that KS engineers can act. Source or, you know, use those notebooks that you're creating as input for knowing, you know, what we should actually look at and, Yeah.[00:27:02] Micha: Well, I think it, well, one thing I think it'd be a great provider yeah.integrating with, with, with, you know, one or many of the, the chaos engineering services out there. I think it's a great way to train your team, right? You, we plug in some K engineering provider. The, the provider communicates with your infrastructure and such, pulling out wires from from, you know, your, your system.And then now go ahead and start, you know, debugging this issue and mm-hmm. and you know, use different templates and you can, you know, sort of trial all sorts of different issues. I think it'd be super fun. Yeah.[00:27:37] Michaela: Yeah. So Micha, one thing that I also saw is that some of your of fiber plane is open source.So what's your vision for open sourcing that are, you know, are some parts being open source? Can people help with the building fiber plane?[00:27:51] Micha: Yeah, great question. So right now what we've open sourced is a project called fp bind Gen. So this is actually of SDK bindings, generat. For how you would create full stack web assembly plugins.So this is what we use to build our own elastic search and our Prometheus plugins. So we've, we've open sourced that. It's on GitHub we've already got some, quite some feedback on it. So, but would love some more. And then going forward we'll be open sourcing sort of our templating stack the proxy.Which sort of sets which you install inside your cluster and sort of sets up the secure connections between the providers and your infrastructure and then the fabric plane managed service. And then the command line interface that I mentioned will also be open source. So expect more to hear from us on the open source front.[00:28:36] Michaela: Yeah, Cool. I think that's so important, especially for developer tooling, that people can also really get it into their hands and then help, you know, shape the, or make the best product for their, for their environments that they have. I think this is such a success strategy.[00:28:50] Micha: Yeah, exactly. And you know, we, as I said, we would love to get feedback on the, on the providers and the, the plugin model, but maybe even, you know, once we open source the the, the provider stack would be great if people maybe come up with crazy ideas.Right? You can think of any type of provider that you could surface data inside of, inside of the notebook. Yeah. Doesn't need to be observability or like monitoring data. Like could be. Yeah.[00:29:14] Michaela: Cool. Yeah, I'm super excited. What, you know, what will come out of that. Yeah. So I want to come back a little bit to your founding story because I know a lot of people are interested in developer tools and, you know, and, and Startup founding as well.And you did it twice already, right? And maybe several more times in your life, I dunno. But right now we know of two instances. Yeah. There, there. So, and and also for fiber plane, you already got funding, right? Several million dollars. And so how do you do. How do you do it out of Europe is also some of my questions that I have because I think it's a little bit a different game here in Europe than it's in Silicon Valley.Yeah. It doesn't look like, you know, opportunities around the corner everywhere. I, I have been studying in the Netherlands, so I know that actually Netherlands is really a good place, I think for, for tech startups and, you know, also a little bit out of the universities I saw there like You know, you get a little bit of help and, and, and funding and things like this, but still, I would assume it's harder than in Silicon Valley.So how did you make it work? How did you get funding? You also said that worker had some funding at the beginning. Yeah.[00:30:26] Micha: Yeah. It's a good question. Well, how did we do the second time around, to be honest, Because it's the second time. Yeah. It was a bit easier. I mean, it's never, It's, Yeah. Yeah. It's obviously, you know, never as easy.But it was definitely easier. I do think in Europe, if I also compare it to the worker days to where we are now, Like I do think the funding climate and sort of the, the, the, the thinking around startups has improved a lot, right? There's there's more funding out there, there's more feess. I think more importantly though, what we've seen is that now.Sort of the European unicorns have exited or gone ipo. And we have actually more operators inside of Europe that have experience in either founding a startup are able to sort of start doing angel investing or have worked at multiple startups and we have just more operating experience you know, versus honestly like bankers, right?That That, you know, help you out or are, are investing in you? So actually the, the, the funds that funder does were Crane Venture Partners which is actually a seed fund out of London that's actually focused on developer tools and infrastructure. So I would highly recommend, you know, talking to them.If you're thinking about, you know, building a developer tool company and you need some funding, of course my own fund is also focused on developer tool. So shameless plug there on MP Hard Ventures. You can just Google that and find me. And then we have North Zone, which is a, you know, very like multi-stage fund.Also out of, well actually quite different geographies and Notion Capital out of out of London as well. Okay. We've got some have several micro VCs, several things. Yeah. We have somebody funded West Coast Alana Anderson was doing with base case capitals investing in a lot of infrastructure and enterprise startups and Max Cloud from System one in Berlin.Is another one. So yeah, we have a good crew of, you know, a diff different experience and sort of different stage type of funding as well.[00:32:19] Michaela: Yeah. This was my next question that I had for you. It's probably not only about the money, you said experience, right? It's also about the knowledge that people have, right.How to do things. Probably, yeah. The people that they know, right? So that they can Yeah. To be Yeah, exactly. Can consider the right people have the right network and so.[00:32:36] Micha: Yeah, I think, I think the most, yeah, it's is, is introductions, but it's also. You know, if you, if you think about the, the funds that actually do developer tools, right?So they, in their portfolio, they, they've seen, you know, startups trying over and over to tackle some kind of go to market issue or trying to build an open source, mm-hmm. company, right? So they have some, some pattern matching and some, some knowledge about, you know, what to do and what, what not to do.Of course, it's all advice, but it's good to sort of have some people in your corner that have at least seen this, these types of companies being built. Over and over again. Right. That's, and then, and then other VCs have more experience in, you know, more, more like how to build up or scale up a sales organization and thinking about how to run a SaaS company.So yeah. Different experience from different, different funds.[00:33:20] Michaela: And so now you listed quite a lot of different investors. Do you reach out to each one of them or do you have like a whole group meeting and they're all in there and you ask them for advice? , how does it[00:33:33] Micha: Yeah. No, it's, it's sort of one on one chats, right?Either over, over chat or, you know, we meet up for coffee or, or or breakfast, mm-hmm. . But yeah, we try to do that on a, on a regular cadence. And then of course, when, you know, something exciting happens, such as our launch know, we try to group them together and get them all on the same page around the same time.Or of course if an issue arises, Right, which could also be the case. Yeah. And then sort of all hands on deck and everybody in the same room or zoom.[00:34:01] Michaela: And what about your biggest struggle on your, on your entrepreneurial journey, maybe now with fiber plane or maybe with Worker? Did you ever think that, you know, worker, when you started it, did you think that somebody is going to buy this and.This is going to be huge.[00:34:16] Micha: Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think the ambition was always there. Mm-hmm. . And, but, and, and sort of that drive to just make better developer tools. I think that sort of, that, you know, that's been true for all the companies or all too. Yeah, that's,[00:34:30] Michaela: Yeah. And what[00:34:32] Micha: I struggle. Yeah. Yeah. So I think, I think as I think for fiber plane now, it's not necessarily a struggle, it's just the real, which this mission of this flexible form factor, just the fact that we're doing sort of two startups at the same time has been sort of mm-hmm. An interesting thing to to build now, right? You're doing this rich, collaborative, rich tech editor and trying to build this infrastructure oriented company, and I think that's been yeah, just an interesting experience with building out a team.You know, the technology and the product that we.[00:35:01] Michaela: Yeah. Yeah. So maybe can you tell me a little bit more about again, if people want to hop over to Fiber plane now and try it out how does that work? Do you have to, you know is there a sign up? Is there a waiting list? I mean, you said probably when this airs there is a public beat, but still do you have to, you know, what do you have to reach out to you, you give me a demo or I just fill in my credentials and I'm off togo.[00:35:25] Micha: you can just sign, sign up with Google and then you're off to the races. And then of course, if you want a demo and sort of get some more, more more help or onboarding we're happy to help you and get on a call and walk you through it. But yeah. Okay, cool. Try playing com. Is there[00:35:40] Michaela: also a, Yeah, is there a video or something that we can look[00:35:44] Micha: at?Yes. The, the website and there's a video.[00:35:50] Michaela: Okay. I will link that so that people can go Yeah. And it will explain everything to them. Right. What about pricing? Whatever pricing? Yeah. You have already some idea around pricing. Yeah.[00:36:01] Micha: We've got some ideas on how to charge, but I think right now for us, it's important to get the product market fit, mm-hmm.and as such, you know, get, get the feedback. From these companies and these teams using the product. So we'll introduce pricing at a later stage. So for now it's, it's free to use, mm-hmm. . And you just give us your time and your feedback, and then Yeah, we're grateful.[00:36:20] Michaela: Yeah. And what about my data?Is it safe with you? Like, do you have some visibility into my data or do I send it over to[00:36:29] Micha: you? Yeah, so we actually so the way the, the providers work the plugins, so they actually get activated through a proxy. So we install a proxy inside of your cluster. The proxy sets up a secure bidirectional tunnel from your infrastructure to the fiber plane managed service.And then we do, for that specific query, we do store the data that's related to that query. So of a result, we do store that in the notebook. And yeah, we probably will come up with sort of more enterprisey ideas around how to self host[00:36:59] Michaela: it, Right? Or something[00:37:01] Micha: as an example. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But again, we'd love to get some feedback on that.[00:37:07] Michaela: How that works. Right? Yeah. Okay, cool. So yeah, that sounds really good. I think you, at least my questions, , you could answer them all, but maybe my listeners have questions and then they can send them to you. I think you will be, Yeah. Quite happy, right?[00:37:22] Micha: A hundred percent. At mes on Twitter, m i e s and at fiber, playing on Twitter, fiber playing.com.Sign up, take it for spin, shoot us a message. Yeah, sounds.[00:37:33] Michaela: Yeah. Yeah, it sounds super interesting. I hope that a lot of my listeners will do that, and I will link everything in my show notes that we, you know, talked about your, your Twitter handle and everything so that people can reach you. And I hope you get a lot of questions and people give it a spin and give it a try and send you their use cases,And yeah. I hope you all the best with your product. Thank you so much for being on my show today Micha. And yeah. Thank you. Bye.[00:37:59] Micha: Thank. Thank you for having me.[00:38:01] Michaela: Yeah, it was really great. Bye bye[00:38:04] Micha: bye.[00:38:06] Michaela: This was another episode of the Software Engineering Unlocked Podcast. If you enjoyed the episode, please help me spread the word about the podcast.Send episode to a friend via email, Twitter, LinkedIn. Well, whatever messaging system you use, or give it a positive review on your favorite podcasting platform such as Spotify or iTune. This would mean really a lot to me. So thank you for listening. Don't forget to subscribe and I will talk to you in two weeks.

In this week's episode we chat with Itxaso del Palacio, Partner at London-based VC firm Notion Capital. Itxaso was born and raised in Spain and now lives in London, where she not only invests as part of the Notion investment team, but also teaches various entrepreneurship courses. In this podKast we chat with Itxaso about the following topics: - Why teach both entrepreneurship and spinning: what does she look to gain from those activities - Her way to VC - The current funding environment and Notion's positioning in the market - Her view on the Spanish tech ecosystem - Her current focus on PLG (product-led growth)companies - What she describes as the "6 Secrets to Building a PLG Business" We hope you enjoy it!

30 000 milliards de dollars, c'est le montant des transactions B2B effectuées à crédit au niveau mondial. Face aux inconvénients qu'imposent les transactions en ligne, comme les délais de paiement, la startup franco-britannique Hokodo veut proposer une méthode de paiement pour le commerce B2B en ligne. Afin d'accélérer sa croissance, elle lève 40 millions de dollars (soit 37 millions d'euros) auprès de Notion Capital, un investisseur européen spécialisé dans les logiciels B2B, avec la participation de Korelya Capital, Mundi Ventures et Opera Tech Ventures. Cette opération porte le financement total de l'entreprise à près de 57 millions de dollars.

In der Mittagsfolge sprechen wir heute mit Stefan Bader, Co-Founder und CEO von Cello, über die erfolgreich abgeschlossene Finanzierungsrunde in Höhe von 2,3 Millionen Euro. Cello hat eine Plattform für benutzergesteuertes Wachstum entwickelt, die es Unternehmen ermöglicht, dass jedes ihrer SaaS-Produkte mit nur wenigen Klicks geteilt und entdeckt werden kann. Dabei werden die User dazu motiviert, ihnen bekannte Produkte weiterzuempfehlen, indem sie dafür mit einem innovativen Punktesystem belohnt werden. Durch die Empfehlungen werden die Benutzerinnen und Benutzer mit einem Prozentsatz des gesamten vermittelten Nettoumsatzes privat incentiviert. Dieser Ansatz für wiederkehrende Provisionen führt zu einer sicheren Betrugsprävention und einer positiven Investitionsrendite. Das Startup wurde im Jahr 2022 von Stefan Bader und Robert Coletti in München gegründet. Bekannte SaaS-Anbieter wie Demodesk, Pliant und Butter vertrauen bereits auf die Plattformlösung des jungen Unternehmens, um die Mundpropaganda zufriedener Kundinnen und Kunden skalierbar zu machen. Cello hat nun in einer Finanzierungsrunde 2,3 Millionen Euro unter der Führung von byFounders eingesammelt. byFounders ist ein Frühphasen-Venture-Fonds mit einem verwalteten Kapital von 100 Millionen Euro. Der Risikokapitalgeber investiert weltweit und in allen Branchen von Pre-Seed-Runden bis zur Serie A. Häufig findet sich bei den Investitionen ein Bezug zu den nordischen und baltischen Ländern bezüglich der Nationalität der Founder oder dem Firmensitz des Startups. Der VC ist kein Impact Fund, aber er hat sich bei allen Aktivitäten einem Impact-Ansatz verschrieben, der die Grundwerte und -prinzipien des Wagniskapitalgebers nahtlos ergänzen. Des Weiteren haben auch die Venture Capital Gesellschaften TinyVC, Possible Ventures und Notion Capital die Runde von Cello unterstützt. Zudem haben auch die Operator Angels von u.a. Youtube, Personio und McMakler die Finanzierungsrunde begleitet. Infos der Werbepartner: ROQ: Gehe jetzt auf roq.tech/daily und erhalte die komplette Plattform 3 Monate lang for free. OMR Reviews: One more thing wird präsentiert von OMR Reviews – Finde die richtige Software für Dein Business. Wenn auch Du Dein Lieblingstool bewerten willst, schreibe eine Review auf OMR Reviews unter https://moin.omr.com/insider. Dafür erhältst du einen 20€ Amazon Gutschein.

In der Rubrik “Investments & Exits” begrüßen wir heute Jan Miczaika, Partner bei HV Capital. Jan hat den angekündigten Fonds von Northzone und die Finanzierungsrunde von Neggst und Cledara kommentiert: Drei Jahre nach der Auflegung eines 500-Millionen-Dollar-Fonds meldet sich das europäische Risikokapitalunternehmen Northzone mit seinem zehnten Fonds zurück, den die Partner als seine bisher "größte Kapitalbeschaffung" in Höhe von 1 Milliarde Euro bzw. 1,01 Milliarden US-Dollar bezeichnen. Unter den 60 Unternehmen in Northones Portfolio finden sich geläufige Vorzeige-Startups wie Spotify, Klarna, Tier Mobility, Personio oder Flink, bei denen der VC sehr früh eingestiegen ist. Cledara hat in einer Series-A-Finanzierungsrunde 20 Millionen US-Dollar erhalten. CommerzVentures führte die Series A an, wobei Carbide Ventures und Massive beteiligt waren. Die bestehenden Investoren Nauta Capital und Notion Capital setzten ihre Unterstützung ebenfalls fort. Das Londoner Unternehmen hilft Teams dabei, die von ihnen genutzten SaaS zu verstehen, zu verwalten und zu kontrollieren, um den Betrieb zu skalieren, Vorschriften einzuhalten und Geld zu sparen. Außerdem konnte sich das Food-Startup Neggst über 5 Millionen Euro an Gesamtinvestment sichern. Das 2021 von Veronica Garcia-Arteaga und Dr. Patrick Deufel in Zusammenarbeit mit Zentis, Ehrmann und Fraunhofer IVV gegründete Startup Neggst will mit seiner innovativen pflanzlichen Ei-Alternative den Lebensmittelmarkt revolutionieren. Es ist laut Presseinfo das weltweit erste Unternehmen, das es geschafft hat, ein pflanzliches Eiweiß und Eigelb sowie eine der Natur nachempfundenen Eierschale zu entwickeln. Geleitet wurde die Runde vom Impact-Fund Green Generation Fund (GGF). Zudem beteiligen sich die BayWa AG, ein Global Player im Bereich Agrar, Energie und Bau und laut UN einer von weltweit 50 Sustainability and Climate Leaders, die RWZ (Raiffeisen Waren-Zentrale Rhein Main eG), das Family Office Corecam Capital Partners (Pte Ltd.) sowie namhafte Business Angels. Infos der Werbepartner: ROQ: Gehe jetzt auf roq.tech/daily und erhalte die komplette Plattform 3 Monate lang for free.

In the latest Seedcamp Deep Dive, Carlos is joined by Itxaso del Palacio, Partner at Notion Capital and Sammy Rubin, Co-founder of YuLife. Their discussion revolves around making employees healthier, happier, and more productive. Sammy shares his inspiration to build the world's first lifestyle insurance company to have personal well-being at its core. He also emphasizes why it is essential to enable companies to build a well-being culture and help employees live their best selves. Itxaso highlights why she backed Sammy and his co-founders and explains the difference between product-led and customer-centric businesses. She also emphasizes how YuLife's well-being challenges have been transformative for the Notion Capital team. Itxaso del Palacio - twitter.com/ItxasoLondon Sammy Rubin - twitter.com/SammyRubin Carlos Espinal - twitter.com/cee Notion Capital - notion.vc YuLife - yulife.com Seedcamp - seedcamp.com Further reading: Game Changers: The impact of hiring amazing people - and how to hire them by Notion Capital [https://www.notion.vc/resources/game-changers-the-impact-of-hiring-amazing-people-and-how-to-hire-them]

Revent. Otto hat die Runde von Upvest und EcoVadis. Der amerikanische Geldgeber Bessemer Venture Partners, Earlybird, ABN AMRO Ventures, Notion Capital, Partech, 10x Group und Speedinvest verkündeten letzte Woche eine Investition in Höhe von 42 Millionen US-Dollar in Upvest. Das Berliner FinTech wurde 2017 von Martin Kassing gegründet und bietet eine Schnittstelle an, mit der Unternehmen digitale Investment-Produkte anbieten können. Investment-as-a-Service. Insgesamt flossen nun schon rund 58 Millionen US-Dollar in das Upvest. Das US-amerikanisch-französische IT-Unternehmen Ecovadis, das auf Nachhaltigkeitsratings spezialisiert ist, hat ein Investment von 500 Millionen US-Dollar eingesammelt. Das gab das Unternehmen am 14. Juni bekannt. Die globale Investitionsrunde erhöht das Gesamtkapital von EcoVadis laut einer Pressemitteilung auf mehr als 725 Millionen US-Dollar und wurde von Astorg und BeyondNetZero, General Atlantic's Climate Investing Venture, angeführt, mit Beteiligungen aus Singapur von GIC und Princeville Capital. Unternehmensangaben zufolge nutzen mehr als 95.000 Unternehmen in 200 Branchen und 175 Ländern die Plattform, um die Nachhaltigkeitsleistung ihrer eigenen Unternehmen und Geschäftspartner zu überwachen und zu verbessern.

Itxaso Del Palacio, Partner of VC fund Notion Capital joins me on Tech Talks Daily. Notion is a European VC fund in the B2B SaaS and Cloud space with more than $700m in assets under management. Having made 80+ investments to date, the Notion team founded, built, and exited two highly successful SaaS businesses – Star and MessageLabs – and today invests exclusively in exceptional founders with the ambition to build global category leaders. The fund's investments include Go-Cardless, Paddle, Currencycloud, and Tradeshift. Notion is also the founding fund of Included VC, the venture capital fellowship for individuals from diverse and overlooked communities from around the world. But I wanted to learn more about Itxaso's unconventional journey to the VC world, which includes a decade of classical ballet, working on the assembly line at DaimlerChrysler, a Masters in Engineering, and, ultimately, a PhD in Entrepreneurship. Once she turned her hand fully to VC investing, since 2010, she moved to London and has invested in more than a dozen businesses in the last 12 years. She has also taught entrepreneurship to around 2,000 students at University College London and Imperial College. And before joining Notion, she spearheaded the European launch of Microsoft Ventures and led investments in Onfido, Beamery, and Unbabel. In the episode, we discuss why there is no one route to entering the VC industry and how product-led growth will be the key to the expansion, explosion, and even domination of European software companies globally. Itxaso also shares what traits she looks for in founders and what the best founders do to blow away investors beyond their entrepreneurial vision.

In der Nachmittagsfolge sprechen wir mit Martin Kassing, CEO von Upvest. Upvest hat sich als erstes Fintech-Unternehmen in Deutschland im Rahmen eines Vergabeverfahrens fünf Banklizenzen bei der Bundesanstalt für Finanzaufsicht Bafin gesichert und kann so seinen Kundinnen und Kunden Zugang zu Verwahrlösungen und Anlageklassen wie Aktien, ETFs oder Kryptowährungen bieten. Für das neue Angebot müssen Unternehmen die Investment-API nun künftig nur in ihre bestehende Infrastruktur einbinden und hierfür nicht mehr – wie bisher – eine eigene Trading- und Verwahrlösung in Eigenregie entwickeln. Das 2017 von Martin Kassing gegründete Startup betreibt Softwarelösungen für den Handel mit Aktien und Fondsanteilen und für die Verwahrung von traditionellen und digitalen Assets. Diese Lösungen können Finanzdienstleister mit eigenem Endkundengeschäft in ihre jeweiligen Online-Auftritte einbauen. Zu den Investoren des Fintechs gehören Earlybird, HV Capital, Notion Capital, ABN AMRO Ventures, Speedinvest, Partech sowie der N26-Gründer Maximilian Tayenthal und der IDNow-Gründer Felix Haas. Im Mai des vergangenen Jahres sammelte das Fintech vier Millionen Euro ein. One more thing wird präsentiert von Sastrify – Die smarte Lösung für das Management eurer Software-Verträge. Erhaltet jetzt eine kostenlose Analyse eurer SaaS Tools und alle weiteren Informationen unter https://www.sastrify.com/insider

[1:57] - About Notion Capital[4:04] - Notion's go-to-market support and building the scaling engine[9:09] - How to build a team for growth[16:10] - When to bring in marketing; and determining the first hire[20:13] - US Expansion: when and how you should expand to the US [28:01] - How do you become a Notion Capital portfolio company[40:35] - Big trends and areas of growth in EuropeLinksNotion CapitalThe Circadian Code

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In der Mittagsfolge begrüßen wir heute Benedikt Ilg, CEO und Co-Founder von Flip, und sprechen über die Series-A-Finanzierung über 30 Millionen US-Dollar in den Anbieter für Mitarbeiter-Apps. Flip, das 2018 von Benedikt Ilg und Giacomo Kenner gegründet wurde, bietet Unternehmen eine Plattform, ihre Mitarbeitenden über alle Ebenen hinweg zu vernetzen und dient somit als eine Art WhatsApp für Firmen. Durch verschiedene Funktionen innerhalb der App können beispielsweise Mitarbeitende des operativen Geschäfts eines Einzelhandelunternehmens unter anderem auf Nachrichten von Corporate Communications zugreifen oder in Echtzeit an Umfragen des Managements teilnehmen. Aktuelle Kunden von Flip App sind unter anderem Porsche, Edeka, Dirk Rossmann GmbH, Magna International, Mahle und toom Baumarkt. Neben den Bestandsinvestoren Cavalry Ventures und LEA Partners investieren nun auch HV Capital und Notion Capital in Flip. Weiterhin sind namhafte Business Angels beteiligt, darunter Matthias Müller sowie Roland Berger, Kurt Lauk und Jürgen Hambrecht. Mit dem frischen Kapital will das Unternehmen laut eigener Mitteilung sein Wachstum beschleunigen und zunächst innerhalb Europas expandieren. Derzeit wirken rund 100 Mitarbeitende für das Startup, das aus der Agentur Pikandpeople hervorgegangen ist. One more thing wird präsentiert von Sastrify – Die smarte Lösung für das Management eurer Software-Verträge. Erhaltet jetzt eine kostenlose Analyse eurer SaaS Tools und alle weiteren Informationen unter https://www.sastrify.com/insider

Mark Hookey bootstrapped and took one startup through to an exit before raising tens of millions of dollars for his most recent company. A venture which is working to empower businesses to get better data, and be able to use it more efficiently and effectively. DeMyst Data has raised funding from top-tier investors like Notion Capital, Singtel Innov8, MissionOG, and SCB 10X.

Mark Hookey bootstrapped and took one startup through to an exit before raising tens of millions of dollars for his most recent company. A venture which is working to empower businesses to get better data, and be able to use it more efficiently and effectively. DeMyst Data has raised funding from top-tier investors like Notion Capital, Singtel Innov8, MissionOG, and SCB 10X.

Jos White is a General Partner at VC firm Notion Capital. In 2000 Jos alongside his brother launched MessageLabs, the first company in the world to introduce anti-virus as a service, which incidentally at the time also made it the first SaaS business ever. Seven years later MessageLabs was acquired by Symantec in 2008 for $700m.The self confessed entrepreneur obsessive sat down with Riding Unicorns for what turned out to be a riveting conversation, which touched on topics such as how Jos overcame his shyness in the early years, his tips on spreading the risk of investing and his feelings behind being an exit founder. Make sure to like and subscribe to the Riding Unicorns podcast to never miss an episode. Also don't forget to give Riding Unicorns a follow on Twitter and LinkedIn to keep on top of the latest developments. 

In deze aflevering spreek ik, Thomas Mensink, met Stephanie Opdam, principal bij Notion Capital, een VC fonds uit Londen. Notion doet graag Series A & B rondes in Europese B2B SaaS bedrijven. Stephanie vertelt in deze aflevering dat ze op zoek zijn naar bedrijven die de potentie hebben om binnen afzienbare tijd 100 miljoen omzet per jaar te doen of zelfs een unicorn te worden. Ze deelt onder andere wat inzichten in hoe zij deze bedrijven herkent, daarbij noemt ze het 'halo effect', en hoe die topbedrijven bij haar terecht komen. At The Money is een podcast van Golden Egg Check, startup-analisten in Nederland.

Fiberplane, an Amsterdam-based early stage startup that is building collaborative notebooks for SREs (site reliability engineers)  to collaborate around an incident in a similar manner to group editing in a Google Doc, announced a ​​€ 7.5M (approximately $8.8 million USD) seed round today. The round was co-led by Crane Venture Partners and Notion Capital with […]

Welcome to the What's Next! podcast with Tiffani Bova.     This week I am thrilled to bring you this episode of the What's Next! Podcast, an encore of my LinkedIn Live chat with my good friend, Melissa Di Donato. Melissa is the Chief Executive Officer of SUSE and is responsible for all aspects of the SUSE business and its worldwide growth. She has spent more than 20 years in technology as a leader delivering innovative and transformative cloud solutions and software technologies for customers around the world. Prior to SUSE, Melissa was the Global Chief Operating Officer for the Digital Core at SAP and Area Vice President at Salesforce.com for EMEA and APAC. Melissa was recognized as one of the Top 10 most influential women in the U.K by CEO Today Magazine's Europe Awards in 2020 and the Technology Woman of Achievement award by Women in the City, amongst many others. She is a Non-Executive Director of publicly listed Burgundy Technology Corporation and Executive in Residence for Notion Capital. Melissa is the Founder of Inner Wings, a charity that was created to help build confidence and courage in young girls with the goal of creating a world of empowered and determined women. She is also the author of three children's books. I am so excited to bring you this episode with Melissa Di Donato on the What's Next! Podcast!     THIS EPISODE IS PERFECT FOR… everyone, but especially for women in tech, women leaders, and women seeking leadership roles.    TODAY'S MAIN MESSAGE… Lean into your potential and your capability.    WHAT  I  LOVE  MOST… Melissa's unshakeable spirit and her drive to inspire the next generation of girls and women in STEM. Melissa shares her own journey and how she pushed past fear of failure to lead Europe's largest software IPO of 202.      Running time: 30:34     Subscribe on iTunes    Watch this episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADYqKHJyXO8     Find Tiffani on social:  Facebook  Twitter  LinkedIn     Find Melissa online:  Twitter  LinkedIn  SUSE 

João Graça is the Co-Founder and CTO of Unbabel, the Portuguese AI-driven translation platform that raised € 83 million from a.o. Notion Capital and Matrix Partners to overcome language barriers for teams.   In today's episode of Leaders of Growth, João shares some of the main tech-engineering challenges, the importance of structure for an organization, and quality of mind for founders.  Discussion topics: 0:50: Background of João Graça 2:48: Can you share some of the challenges you faced while scaling Unbabel? 7:08: Was there a specific period in time where documentation became more relevant? 9:25: What were some of the challenges at Unbabel from a tech-engineering perspective? 13:00: What would be your advice to smaller startups now? 18:07: Did you have certain mentors or support along the founder journey? 20:17: How do you keep quality of mind as a founder?

A robust venture capital industry is one of the pillars of the today's tech boom, because it provides the funding for new companies to grow. But "venture capital is not a job for everyone," says venture investor Dr Itxaso del Palacio in this week's episode. Itxaso is a leading venture capitalist. She launched Microsoft Ventures in Europe and is Partner at Notion Capital today. She also teaches Entrepreneurial Finance at the MSc Technology Entrepreneurship at University College London. Learning notes from this episode: Venture capital is very transactional, it is not operational. "Venture capital is not a job for everyone. Saying no to so many people is not easy," says Itxaso. Corporate venture arms are very different to VC funds and the incentives within them differ. For example, people in traditional VCs benefit financially if a company they invest in becomes a unicorn. This is often not the case in corporate venture divisions. People do not usually begin careers in venture capital straight out of college, but transition into them from something else. The Kauffman Fellowship program is an education program for venture capitalists. Itxaso said it benefitted her career hugely.   Do you have a brilliant app idea and no tech knowledge to build it? Get your FREE guide here. To go deeper, join the Tech for Non-Techies membership community. As a community member, you'll get: Weekly live masterclasses with global experts Mini-course on how to go from idea to live app Supportive Online Community Library of masterclasses Monthly live coaching with Sophia Matveeva, tech entrepreneur & Chicago Booth MBA Exclusive Resources & Perks Learn more and sign up at https://www.techfornontechies.co/membership   Say hi to Sophia on Twitter. Following us on Facebook and Instagram will make you smarter.   

Itxaso Del Palacio is a Partner at Notion Capital, one of Europe's strongest early-stage SaaS and enterprise tech investors. Notion Capital was founded in 2009 and has invested in more than 60 startups and has more than €500 M assets under management. Itxaso joined the team of entrepreneurs and operators turned investors with a laser focus on product led growth and a truly founder-centric perspective that has quickly made her a central figure in the SaaS space. ** In this episode you will learn **•What is product-led growth and why it's one of the best growth routes for B2B SaaS in Europe.•Why product-led growth companies are extra resilient during hard times. •How Itxaso views startups advisors and best practice for working with them.•Key lessons from Itxaso's work with some of Europe's best SaaS success stories.

A very honest conversation about sales with the one and only Jennifer Bers, who lives and breathes sales excellence, and has lost none of her passion and energy around the craft. Her drive and results are incredible.Highlights:- There are four key traits to look out for when Sales hiring: intelligence, integrity, hunger and coachability- In order to structure your team, you need to understand the market you’re going after- Understanding and implementing MEDDPICC when managing a team in order to forecast accuratelyJennifer has had an incredible career in sales, both as an individual contributor and as a leader, in her positions as National Account Executive at Yahoo, UK Sales Director at Bazaarvoice and VP of Sales at Onfido, now taking a temporary break from staring at Zoom for 12 hours a day. In this episode we explore how Jennifer has developed her skills, built teams, grown companies and figured out the GTM formula.Hosted by Andy Leaver, Operating Partner at Notion Capital, and Paul Papadimitriou.Read more about what we talked about: https://notion.vc/resources/the-sales-discipline-and-fintech/

Sonderfolge mit Michael Grupp, Founder und CEO von Bryter. Process Automation Tools sind das Thema der Stunde: Camunda, Signavio, Conny und nicht zuletzt UIPath sorgen derzeit für Schlagzeilen. Jetzt hat sich der amerikanische VC Tiger Global an Bryter beteiligt. Insgesamt 66 Millionen US-Dollar wurden in die Berliner “No-Code-Automatisierungsplattform” investiert. Das von Michael Grupp, Micha-Manuel Bues und Michael Hübl geführte Softwarehaus wird in Folge dessen mit 400 Millionen Dollar bewertet. Erst vor 9 Monaten hat das Startup 16 Millionen eingesammelt – unter anderem von Dawn Capital und Accel. Zu den weiteren Geldgebern des Unternehmens gehören Notion Capital, Cavalry Ventures und die SaaS-Investoren Mike Chalfen und Charles Songhurst. Im Interview nimmt uns Michael mit auf die schnelle Reise des gerade mal 3 Jahre alten Unternehmens und teilt zum einem viele Learnings, zum anderen aber auch seinen Blick auf den derzeitigen Kapitalmarkt. Sehr hörenswert.

Christian Owens started coding at just 12 years old. His startup has now raised nearly $100M, and is bringing in billions in revenue as they empower software startups around the world to scale. His startup Paddle has recently raised investments from top-tier investors like Notion Capital, FTV Capital, Kindred Capital, and 83North

Christian Owens started coding at just 12 years old. His startup has now raised nearly $100M, and is bringing in billions in revenue as they empower software startups around the world to scale. His startup Paddle has recently raised investments from top-tier investors like Notion Capital, FTV Capital, Kindred Capital, and 83North

Understanding a VC firm's investment strategy - focus, stage, thesis and so on - is critical as a founder develops their investment proposition, but so is understanding the individual strategy of each partner in a firm. This allows a founder to tailor their pitch but more importantly, get the right investor excited and committed as soon as possible.Highlights:- Good PLG businesses have a very short time to value, bringing users to the “aha” moment right from the moment they try the product- Founders should think of fundraising strategically; it is important to define a strategy and a process to close a funding round successfully- Lead with the excitement for your vision, backed by the metrics that bring that to lifeFor product-led founders, looking to raise a funding round, Itxaso Del Palacio is probably their best fit. Itxaso is a Partner at Notion Capital, which specialises in B2B SaaS and Enterprise Tech, investing across Europe at Series A. Itxaso was formerly with M12 (Microsoft’s venture arm) where she led investments in Beamery, Onfido and Unbabel. She has more than a decades experience working in the startup ecosystem building and investing in software companies. Additionally, Itxaso is a Senior Teaching Fellow in entrepreneurship at University College London (UCL) and she has taught entrepreneurship to more than 3,000 students in the last ten years.  In this podcast, Itxaso describes herself to Stephen Millard and Paul Papadimitriou as a ‘product-led’ investor and lays out her thinking on what this means and why she thinks this is so important.Read more: https://notion.vc/resources/investing-in-product-led-founders-building-rocketship-businesses/

The journey from startup to global category leader is a daunting task, for a million or less in revenues, when we might invest 100 million revenues, or more, in less than ten years. This is what VCs hope to find, and it’s what many founders plan to achieve. There are strategic challenges of balancing short term operational excellence, with long term transformation and category dominance. One of the most enduring frameworks for this is the McKinsey three horizons, which describes optimising for current performance while maximising future opportunity.Highlights:- Three horizons is a powerful way to combine short term execution with long term vision.- Feeling comfortable in the grey area between the present and the future.- There can be such a thing as too much vision!- Getting the right balance of mindset & resources between the three horizons is critical.Chris Tottman is one of the founders of Notion Capital, but also one of the founding members of MessageLabs, a tech company that went from an idea in 2000 to more than 600 people and $150m in recurring revenue in eight years before its acquisition by Symantec. Amongst many other responsibilities at MessageLabs, Chris oversaw nearly every single senior hire, shaping the leadership team and organisational structure.Since then, over the last ten years with Notion Capital, he’s been investing in SaaS founders to help shape their vision, nurture their ambition and, critically, help them hire ever more extraordinary people. An original thinker in a traditional industry, he uses the three horizon framework to help the founders that he invests in build big, beautiful and enduring companies.A conversation with Stephen Millard, and Paul Papadimitriou.Read more: https://notion.vc/resources/the-three-horizon-mindset-how-visionary-founders-win-big/

The type of companies that Notion Capital invests in are redefining the rules of an entire industry. They become synonymous with a category which they solve uniquely well.Highlights:- Defining a category is about showing the world:-- What problem you solve-- How you are uniquely positioned to solve that problem and finally,-- Building an ecosystem around you to help really launch a new category.- The best founding teams spend time thinking about the problem they're solving, and then map out the "from tos".- Category design is much more than marketing, it is fundamental for tech companies to dominate new markets.Naomi Allen is the co-founder and CEO of Brightline, which is the world's first technology-enabled behavioural health home for children and families. She's an entrepreneur with 20 years of hands-on experience, developing high growth, health tech companies, as well as a former advisor to our friends at Play Bigger. She's also the mother of three children and ascribes to the philosophy of “radical flexibility”. Read more: https://notion.vc/resources/category-design-shows-the-world-the-problem-you-are-uniquely-positioned-to-solve/

We're ending the year- and what a year it has been!- with a bang and a bonus episode. Lois and Petra are joined by a wonderful trio this week; Finn, Annalise and Kamil from Frontline Ventures, Sapphire Ventures and Notion Capital respectively chat through everything from how to progress through the VC ranks to finding your superpower as an investor and beyond. This group doesn't hold back- you definitely don't want to miss this episode! Finn's Twitter Annalise's LinkedIn Kam's LinkedIn

Itxaso del Palacio is a partner at Notion Capital, a venture capital firm that invests in software companies with disruptive technologies in AI and ML, Business SaaS, cloud infrastructure, security, and productivity and communications, among others. Before Notion, she has been investing in software companies in Europe for over a decade. In this episode, Itxaso shared her definition of product-led growth, her thoughts on free trial, and the reason product-led is thriving despite the pandemic. Show Notes [00:48] What she does for work and for fun [02:58] One physical activity she’d do for the rest of her life [04:59] Her definition of product-led growth [06:18] Different keys of success to implementing a great product-led strategy [09:51] Her thoughts on free or free trial [16:57] What a good time to value is [19:39] Why product-led is thriving during the pandemic [23:32] Her advice to enterprises that want to launch a product-led product About Itxaso del Palacio For almost two decades now, Itxaso del Palacio has worked with startups in Silicon Valley, London, Spain, and Latin America. She is also a partner at Notion Capital, an early stage investor in European SaaS, enterprise tech, and cloud. Itxaso holds a prestigious Kauffman Fellowship and is well connected to the global network of fellow investors. Itxaso holds a PhD in entrepreneurship and is an engineer by background. Links SuperhumanZoom Profile Itxaso del Palacio on LinkedInNotion Capital on LinkedIn

Andy Leaver, Operating Partner at Notion Capital, on how do we build on the people, processes and tech to get to the next revenue boundary — the 1s and 3s. Interviewed by Paul Papadimitriou and Stephen Millard.Highlights:- Why, as enterprise tech startups grow, they follow the rule of 1s and 3s- An effective rev ops function is essential- The “people, process and tech” that enable a startup achieve a particular revenue boundary are unlikely to deliver on the next- Why pricing is an art and founders need to become masters- Why your customers are your best salespeople  For any enterprise cloud startup the journey to scale is one that is built around inflection points, which are critical to success. You need to find product market fit, moving beyond founder-led sales to go-to-market fit and then onwards; each layer builds on the previous, with new capabilities and often new people, processes and tech. Few people in Europe have as much pedigree in this than Andy Leaver, Operating Partner at Notion Capital. Andy operated at the most senior levels - from Series A / B to IPO - at Hortonworks, Workday, SuccessFactors, Bazaarvoice and Ariba. He's had an amazing career and is now bringing that experience with him to the Notion Family.Read more: https://notion.vc/resources/scaling-enterprise-software-startups-a-story-of-1s-and-3s/

Notion Capital is one of the major venture capital funds in the UK and in Europe. In the episode, Itxaso del Palacio (Partner) will be presenting her background and Notion Capital, but also giving her view on the success of the UK ecosystem : What are the key characteristics of the UK tech ecosystem that allowed that decade of consistent growth ?  Why is the UK so strong at building fintechs ?  Why has London raised more VC investment than Paris, Stockholm, Berlin and Tel Aviv combined in 2020 ? How did the last financial crisis instigated an entrepreneurship boom in the UK?  Is still a real competitive advantage for UK start-ups to be able to set up in the US more quickly?  and more... Thanks Itxaso for your time, Mehdi

Chris Hitchen is the Germany-based, Australian-born Founder and Managing Partner of Inventures. Inventures invests €100k - €500k globally in early stage tech companies and actively helps founders reach their first institutional VC Round. Chris started out as an entrepreneur; he built and sold price comparison business Getprice to News Corp, eCommerce marketplace Next Commerce to Future PLC and programmatic ad marketplace Hynt to Zalando. He has invested in more than 60 startups. Prior to establishing Inventures, he was an angel investor and worked as Venture Partner with VC funds EQT Ventures, Project A and SquarePeg Capital.In this chat with Phaedon, Chris talks about:His investment thesis and the structure of his portfolioWhat he looks for in a founderWhy he doesn’t join boards anymoreThe backchannels he uses to conduct due diligenceThe LPs that make up his fundRecommendations from Chris:Books - Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Evans, The Road to Character by David BrooksPodcast - The Twenty Minute VC, Notion Capital, Where Should We Begin with Esther PerelNews Source - TwitterHoliday Destination - South Tyrol, Italy Favorite Founders - Bill Gates, Mike Cannon-BrookesProductivity Tool - QatalogTed Talk Topic - "How We Turn Off & Disengage"

Investment & FundingEuropean digital investment platform Bitpanda has closed a $52 million series A funding round led by Valar Ventures. The large-scale investment will drive Bitpanda's expansion, as well as ‘position the company as a leader in transforming Europe's financial industry'. In addition, it will be used to recruit ‘some of the world's leading talent'. Following the investment, Valar Ventures founding partner, Andrew McCormack will join the Bitpanda board.Regtech data company Acin says it will ‘rapidly accelerate its proposition' after securing $12 million in series A funding with Fitch and Notion Capital. Acin was advised by independent investment bank Zelig, with further support from international law firm Withers.PayCargo, the payments network for the global supply chain industry, is excited to announce a $35million investment led by private equity firm Insight Partners. It says it will use the capital to expand global adoption of its electronic payments network, as well as accelerate investments in its technology.Commercial lines insurtech platform Insurwave has raised £5 million to drive continued growth. Led by existing shareholders, the funds will be invested in expanding the features of the platform.Finally, fintech SME lending platform Capify has closed an £8 million equity round. In addition, Capify is actively seeking partnerships with companies with large SME customer bases to provide financing.LaunchesPPRO, the local payments platform-as-a-service, expands global offering with top Indonesian payment methods DOKU and OVO. According to PPRO, the development marks a significant milestone in its expansion across the Asia Pacific region. PPRO's integrations feature a total of four payment types: e-wallet, internet banking, bank transfers, and cash.Lender Distribution Finance Capital Holdings – the niche lender focusing on manufacturers – has secured a licence by Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA). As well as proposing a new name – DF Capital Bank Ltd, the company will offer ‘competitive online savings accounts'.German fintech Deposit Solutions will launch a savings marketplace in the US. The SaveBetter portal offers US banks national reach for distribution of their retail deposit products. While, consumers can deposit money in all products listed on SaveBetter.com without having to open a new account with every bank.Marqeta says it is the first modern card issuing platform to open its technology to any legacy card issuer looking to instantly provision existing cards into mobile wallets. The card issuing platform has unveiled its new tokenisation-as-a-service product, which it says opens up huge new possibilities for companies who are looking to innovate quickly, but don't have access to modern technology.iQSTEL, the US cloud-based telco solution provider, has unveiled a new fintech division. It says the expansion will help it widen its product and digital financial services offerings for global markets.For the first time, European customers of cryptocurrency exchange bitFlyer can access the Japanese Bitcoin market. bitFlyer says it is the first cryptocurrency exchange that is licensed to operate in Japan, the EU, and the US combined. In addition, it is the first to facilitate cross-border access to ‘prized Japanese Yen liquidity'.PartnershipsHuawei offers contactless digital payment with the launch of Mondia Pay on its Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) ecosystem. The partnership will increase Huawei's reach in countries across Africa and the Middle East. In addition, Mondia Pay will also market Huawei's games content in Egypt.Spanish neobank Bnext enlists global fintech as a service company Rapyd for Latin American expansion. As well as allowing Bnext customers to make cash deposits to their accounts in 30,000 locations in Mexico, the partnership will expand to interbank deposits later via Rapyd's global payments network.Business lender White Oak has chosen Provenir Cloud technology to support its digitisation and innovation strategy. It said the partnership will enable it to make real-time risk decisions with a fully automated lending experience.Meanwhile, Standard Chartered Bank Indonesia has forged a partnership with Sociolla, Indonesia's leading beauty e-commerce platform through its banking-as-a-service solution nexus. The bank intends to further roll out nexus to markets in Asia, Africa and the Middle East.Kuwait Islamic bank Boubyan Bank signs a cooperation agreement with FinFirst to offer its digital products and services. The bank says the partnership will help it cope with the latest fintech developments to enhance business environments, as well as support startups seeking digital banking services.And, Ghanaian fintech ZEEPAY has hooked up with Visa to simplify cross border remittances. Through the partnership, ZEEPAY will integrate Visa's real-time push payments solution with its money transfer platformAppointmentsJames Wilson has joined insolvency fintech firm Red Flag Alert as its new chief technology officer. In his new role, James will be responsible for building out sales enablement and digital risk functions, as well as incorporating identity proofing and corroboration technology into Red Flag Alert products.Six graduates and an intern have signed up to a development programme with Oxbury, the UK food and farming bank. In addition to its graduate intake, Oxbury has recruited 10 new team members across its various core business functions.Cavendish Corporate Finance says the appointment of Karri Vuori as partner will further strengthens the firm's mid-market M&A advisory expertise. Cavendish advised on the sale in August of legal software-as-a-service firm CaseLines to Thomson Reuters.Finally, FintechOS, a global technology provider for financial institutions, has hired Dan Brătășanu as business analysis & solution architecture director for Central and Eastern Europe. He will be tasked with creating customised and integrated turnkey solutions for the end-to-end transformation of financial organisations.

Marius discusses his vision for transforming the hiring and recruitment industry.Highlights:-‘Auf Sicht fahren’ - driving the company as fast as you can see ahead- Changing tactics and becoming more digitalised, but keeping the overall company strategy in tact- The ambition to become the leading talent platform by 2025Marius Luther is a serial entreprepreneur and the Founder and CEO of HeyJobs, the predictable hiring platform, matching people and employers with their best job at scale. Marius founded the business together with his co-founder, also called Marius, in 2016 and Notion Capital led the Series A in 2018. HeyJobs is at the intersection of employers and employees so it was fascinating to learn from his experience. 

Andreas Brenner, the founder and CEO of Avrios, shares his COVID experiences of making the tough calls to build a better future for the business: this experience entailed a massive mind-shift from "growth at all costs" to "cash runway and certainty is King.” We are now far more focused and as a result we've become tremendously more efficient.Highlights:- I took the philosophical decision early on to act like a more conservative CEO, to protect the long term survival of the business.- We had to build a plan that had sufficient room for mistakes and uncertainty.-Now it’s all about focus and now I recognise that being more focused isn’t just a factor to survive, but potentially a factor for us to win even bigger as we come out of this.-What has definitely happened is that the whole market has aligned in the short term around priorities of cost reduction or efficiency.-But long term there are some very important trends that will be accelerated.Andreas Brenner is the founder of Avrios, the fleet management and automation platform. Andreas founded the business in 2015 and Notion Capital led the Series A in 2017. 

A focus on diversity in the investment space - especially in light of the recent racial injustices in America, which have gotten much less coverage on this side of the ocean in Europe with Daisy Onubogu, Head of Network and Communities at Backed VC and Joshua Olusanya, Off-Cycle Analyst at Notion Capital. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Melissa shares her thoughts on the importance of professionalism, setting expectations and beating them and why you should never win quietly. Because the sum of every single small success will be huge successes long term.Highlights:- As a startup grows the path to success starts with professionalism.- Success = setting expectations + delivering on them- Introducing the role of the Chief Customer OfficerAs startups grow, we see an interesting layering of capability building from each stage to the next. As they move from founder led sales to team sales, as they find repeatability, as they test and validate different models and sales motions.  Melissa Di Donato is the CEO of SUSE, and Executive in Residence at Notion Capital.Read more: https://notion.vc/resources/winning-loudly-with-melissa-di-donato/

Susie discusses the hot trend of Product Led Growth and why VCs, consumers and founders need to be paying attention to this. She gives practical advice on how to approach VC coffee chats (no coffee please!)

You hear it thrown around quite regularly this statement that sales is a numbers game; but how true is that, what is important to consider when conveying or believing in this statement? Numbers are what we use to measure success most of the time and place our own self belief and confidence in, but why? This was one of the key talking points on this week's episode, alongside; what kind of environment needs to be created to help sales people thrive and how sellers can become more aligned to the customer's needs.  To discuss this I'm joined by Bethany Ayers & Pete Crosby. They bring a wealth of insights, experience and stories from their career so far and raise some interesting angles on the topics above.  Bethany is Chief Customer Officer at artificial intelligence (AI) company Peak, one of the fastest-growing tech businesses in the UK. Before joining Peak, Bethany worked as an advisor to high growth startups such as Codility and Cloud IQ, primarily in the SaaS space. She has a superb track record leading tech businesses, with five years of experience as SVP Strategy at NewVoiceMedia where she oversaw strategy, sales operations and product marketing. She has also held strategic consulting roles with Mimecast and Getronics, and sales/strategy roles at both Computacenter and the Financial Times. Bethany acts as an expert advisor for Notion Capital and is a member of the London Revenue Collective. She regularly writes and speaks on topics including AI, SaaS metrics and women in tech. Pete is a 4x successful scale up sales leader, most recently as CRO at Ometria, who Deloitte placed in the Top 10 growth businesses in the UK with revenue acceleration above 3000%. Prior to Ometria, Pete ran revenues at Viadeo from Series A to IPO, and took Triptease from $2m to $10m ARR and a successful Series B in just 18 months. Pete is one of the 3 founding members of the London Revenue Collective, a private members club for senior revenue leaders which now has more than 200 paying members. He is also a non-exec sitting on the board of Kluster, a seed stage revenue analytics start-up which just closed a $1m round.

Jacco is the founder of Winning By Design and author of Blueprints of a Sales SaaS Organization ( https://amzn.to/2U1TbAf ) and seven other books. He is a Sales Mentor across several VC firms such as Notion Capital, Reach Capital, Astella and Storm Ventures, where he helps accelerate the development of sales teams across their portfolios. Prior to founding Winning By Design, Jacco held roles of VP of Worldwide Sales and VP Strategy at Qumu (acquired by Rimage), Kontiki, and Technicolor. He is proud to have helped marquee customers over the years, including Amazon, AT&T, Dish, and Disney. Jacco holds a BScEE in Electrical Engineering and an Executive MBA from the University of Leicester. Jacco’s insights have been featured in Harvard Business Review, and he is a frequent keynote speaker at conferences around the world including Dreamforce, SaaStock (Dublin), SaaS Growth (London) SalesHacker (virtual), and RD Summit (Brazil).

Maddy Cross, Talent Director at Notion Capital, is this week's guest on The SaaS Revolution Show. She talks about Notion's recent research report: The Unicorn Hiring Trajectory. This looks into the hiring trends of SaaS unicorns compared with other high-performing (but not unicorn) businesses. When Notion invests in a startup, 80% of that capital goes on headcount - growing the team. But how do the choices you make - when to hire, who to hire - affect the growth trajectory of your company?

VC money should be raised when a company is ready to accelerate: At seed stage sell the dream, at Series A sell the growth, at Series B show the spreadsheet. Cristina Fonseca, co-founder of Portugal’s Talkdesk, angel investor and Venture Partner at Indico Capital shares her fundraising experiences with Stephen Millard at Notion Capital, as part of Notion’s Pain of Scale podcast programme. Highlights: Securing the “right type of investors” is critical to startup success. At Seed you are selling the dream, at Series A selling the growth and at Series B showing the spreadsheet! Don’t go chasing unicorns. More: https://notion.vc/resources/how-to-raise-venture-capital-with-cristina-fonseca/

Our CEO speaks with Stephen Millard for the investor perspective of scaling up.

On the latest episode of the SaaS Revolution Show, we take you back to the SaaStock18 stage for a panel discussion on what growth investors look for. Jos White, General Partner at Notion Capital, moderates the panel featuring Nicola McClafferty, Investment Director at Draper Esprit, Michael Brown, General Partner at Battery Ventures, and Tom Mendoza, Venture Investor at EQT Ventures. Growth investors like Jos, Nicola, Michael, and Tom look through a different lens for Series B/C rounds as compared to earlier stage venture investors. How they make decisions and what they see as the key drivers of a high-quality growth round tends to be different at this stage where they expect millions in ARR, a solid product-market fit and an international outlook. They share views on: Growth round readiness and what needs to be in place to even start thinking about Series B Their own key considerations, including metrics and parameters How investors make sure Series B funds will be spend the right way Bringing investors like Jos, Nicola, Michael and Tom and hundreds more to share their insights as well as meet excellent SaaS companies at SaaStock is one of our favorite things. To make sure you can soak up their actionable advice during conference sessions as well as sit down for many potential funding chats with the myriad of investors from around the world, you really want to bring a co-founder or exec along. If you sign up for our Insider Sale , you will get early access to our 2 for 1 tickets for SaaStock19 and bring them along for free. You will double the learning, the networking, and the fun.

First rule of talking to VC’s — Show metrics that support the story you’re telling. We talked with two of the most successful VC firms in Spain — this is what they think of the future. They’ll share what kind of metrics they look at for startups, and how they got started as VC’s. How they raised funding for their own funds, and how startups raise funding from them. They’ll talk about what kind of verticals they like, and they’ll also mention what other investors they think are good. Names like Nine Point Capital from Berlin get mentioned alongside Passion Capital and Notion Capital both from London. Video: youtu.be/uzVtPOggjvU

“We absolutely need more female CEOs that can set a positive example for women of the future, and that will change the world if we can accomplish that” It's Brynne Kennedy’s mission to democratize global mobility for all of the 7.5 billion people in the world. She believes that more open borders and easier global mobility solves global problems, fosters opportunity, and drives economic growth. Brynne Kennedy is the CEO of Topia.com, formerly MOVE Guides, a platform she founded for the world’s mobile workforce. Topia manages benefits, compliance and careers for employees who relocate, expatriate and travel frequently, a growing segment of the current and future workforce. Brynne founded MOVE Guides after being an extensive road warrior herself as an investment banker, and has raised more than $90 million dollars from top venture capital funds NEA and Notion Capital. “Brynne Kennedy is the kind of role model that I want my Daughters to know about” Brynne is also the Founder of #Mobility4All, to which she contributes corporate revenues to help those fleeing poverty and conflict. Brynne is frequently recognized as a leading entrepreneur and thought leader. She has won Entrepreneur of the Year in the Women in IT Awards and Women of the Future Awards, London Business School’s Distinguished Entrepreneur Award and Management Today’s 35 Under 35. In 2017, she was named a Workforce Game Changer, one of 25 people changing the HR industry, and recognized with the Meritorious Service Award from the global mobility industry. Brynne is a former elite level gymnast for the United States. She speaks four languages and holds a B.A. in History from Yale University and an MBA from London Business School. Topia.com moves and manages the mobile workforce. We automate business processes, connect a global partner and support network and uses data science to reduce the cost and friction of mobile employees. We are the only software platform for the global mobility management market, replacing corporate relocation BPOs. We have raised more than $90M to help companies and individuals work everywhere. Links: Brynne Kennedy on LinedIn linkedin.com/in/brynnekennedy Brynne Kennedy on Twitter @BrynneSpeak https://twitter.com/BrynneSpeak Topia (MOVE Guides) Website http://www.topia.com

Hiroki Takeuchi is the Founder and CEO of GoCardless, a London-based fintech that simplifies recurring payment collection for businesses.   GoCardless has raised $47m to date and is backed by the likes of Balderton, Accel Partners, Passion Capital and Notion Capital. Hiroki and his co-founders, including Tom Blomfield, now of Monzo, who joined us on the podcast way back in episode 17, went through Y Combinator in early on and have some interesting stories about that experience.   Today's conversation covers a number of topics, some of which are quite challenging. I'd highly encourage you to listen through to the end. Hiroki is an exceptional entrepreneur with a powerful story.   Check out the show notes at www.bankingthefuture.com for links to the articles mentioned in today's conversation.   If you enjoy today's episode, please subscribe on iTunes, or your podcast platform of choice.   Thank you very much for joining us today. Please welcome Hiroki Takeuchi.

Wolfgang Allisat is the Chief Customer Officer at Unbabel, a translation and localization company headquartered in Lisbon, Portugal. Originally from Germany, and with a background in economics and international business, he joined the company at the beginning of 2017. Founded in 2013, Unbabel has a strong digital focus that is accelerating the shift towards a world without language barriers by enabling trustworthy, seamless and scalable translations between companies and their customers. International businesses trust Unbabel's enterprise platform to open up and grow new markets by harnessing the power of Artificial Intelligence and a global community of mobile linguists. Backed by Notion Capital, Google Ventures, Caixa Capital and Y Combinator, Unbabel is helping customers like Pinterest, Skyscanner, Under Armour, Trello and Oculus VR to understand and be understood. Wolfgang holds a masters degree in Economics from the University of Saarland, Germany. When not in the office, he can often be found sailing around the Balearic Islands.   Links: Unbabel website Unbabel on LinkedIn Unbabel on Facebook Unbabel on Instagram Unbabel on YouTube Unbabel on Twitter Wolfgang on LinkedIn  

Wolfgang Allisat is the Chief Commercial Officer at Unbabel - "The World's Translation Layer". Unbabel - funded by the Notion Capital, Google Ventures, Faber Ventures, Matrix Partners, Schilling Capital and Caixa Capital - utilizes artificial intelligence to enable translations between companies and their customers. Wolf has previously held international sales leadership positions at a number of successful software scaleups including Omniture where he was the first international employee and grew the European business to more than 1,100 customers and 200 employees. Wolf discusses how enterprise software ventures can successfully expand their sales and marketing teams internationally including: The research and planning required to support successful overseas expansion How to recruit your initial sales hires with the characteristics to evangelise your offering and drive customer successes in new markets  How to adapt your business culture to succeed in each local market Wolf also discusses the way Unbabel have created a unique culture to resonate with the millennials they typically hire - including weekly company-wide surfing sessions! For more information on Unbabel's AI-powered translation solutions head over to https://unbabel.com and check out http://alpinasearch.com/clients/ for advice on recruiting A-players to globally scale your software/SaaS venture  

  Jos White is a serial entrepreneur and investor at Notion Capital. In this interview, he shares his life story from growing up in England, to getting expelled from school, starting businesses with his brother & how they managed to sell 3 different companies for more than $800 million.  5 THINGS TO LISTEN OUT FOR:   (1) Growing up in England – going to the same school as Richard Branson and getting expelled from school.   (2) Starting a business with his brother – early signs of entrepreneurship and what it was like setting up a company with his family.   (3) Multiple exits – most entrepreneurs dream of having a multi-million  dollar exit once. But Jos did this time and time again with 3 different companies. We go into what he built and how he sold the companies.   (4) Learning from his entrepreneurial journey – funding their businesses, finding a CTO, navigating the crash of 2000, knowing when it was the right time to sell, common mistakes people make when pitching for investment   (5) Legacy – what he cares most about, what makes people happy & how we wants to keep having an impact     TIME STAMPS  [3m38s] What he was like as a kid [5m35s] Going to same school as Richard Branson and getting expelled from school [9m33s] Can you learn to be an entrepreneur and what he studied at school [10m58s] Earliest exposure to business [15m10s] Moving to Thailand [17m29s] Genesis of RBR Networks [20m25s] Making more than £1m a month and getting their first sale [22m02s] Splitting up responsibility [23m03s] Transitioning from marketing person to leader [24m50s] Knowing his weaknesses [27m17s] How they funded their business [31m42s] Hiring good people [34m06s] Selling the company for $50M [35m47s] What they did the day they sold the company [38m44s] Coming up with the idea for Message Labs [42m05s] Finding a CTO [47m03s] Navigating the crash of 2000 [48m21s] Knowing when to sell a company [54m59s] Switching to an investor, what he looks for in an investment [56m56s] Common mistakes people make when pitching for investment [58m52s] What is keeping him motivated? Having a chip on your shoulder [1hr] What success means to him [1hr2m] Having financial success & social responsibility [1hr5m] Legacy   Sign up for exclusive content, giveaways and my email updates: https://www.creatorlab.fm/subscribe Connect on social:   https://www.instagram.com/creatorlabfm https://www.facebook.com/creatorlabfm https://www.twitter.com/creatorlabfm   Connect with Bilal: https://www.twitter.com/bzaidi https://www.instagram.com/bzaidi212

Chrys Chrysanthou, Principal at Notion Capital, on the future of venture capital in the era of machine learning.

Chrys Chrysanthou, Principal at Notion Capital, on why he invested in SmartUp. We discuss employee knowledge creation and sharing for a fast changing and demanding global workforce.

Stephen Millard joined in January 2016 to lead Notion’s platform strategy. Stephen joined from Eccomplished, a retail tech advisory and strategic partner to Notion Capital. As CEO and Founder, he worked exclusively within the early stage retail technology sector, developing investment and growth strategies for companies including Amplience, Aurora Commerce, Brightpearl, Demandware, Detego, eCommera, Intelligent Reach and RichRelevance. He was previously Oracle European Marketing Director and MessageLabs Global Marketing VP.​

Chris Tottman, partner at Notion Capital, on why he invested in Unbabel, the translation layer for the internet.

Jos White, partner at Notion Capital, on why he's so excited about autonomous vehicles

Jos White, partner at Notion Capital, on team, product and market, the cornerstones of startup success.

In this episode of the Seedcamp Podcast learn about Corporate Development from a strategic buyer and aquihires with Chrys Chrysanthou from Notion Capital and Carlos Espinal. Tune in and listen to Chrys share how going through the military and managing 70 persons helped him get a job at Cisco where he ended up staying for 10 years and learned how corporate ventures work. After his time at Cisco he had the opportunity to join a promising young startup in the space of the Internet of Things space and manage their operations as the COO. Later on Chrys ended up joining Amazon Web Services where had the privilege to work closely with Amazon CTO - Werner Vogels leading Business Development efforts of the startup ecosystem. And finally, in 2014 Chrys moved to the Venture Capital industry joining Accel Partners first and later moved on to join Notion Capital where he is now and focusing more on early stage B2B Cloud & SaaS startups. http://www.seedcamp.com http://www.carlosespinal.com http://www.notioncapital.com https://twitter.com/cchrysan

In this episode, Chris Tottman, Partner at Notion Capital, on taking everything he learnt as a entrepreneur to invest in founders in Europe. Before co-founding Notion, Chris was at MessageLabs Group from 1999 as one of its first employees and held a number of executive level roles including Chief Commercial Officer and Senior VP of HR prior to their $700m exit to Symantec in 2008.

Jos White speaks to TELL about how he has co-founded three businesses helping to grow them all into market leaders each with revenues in excess of $100M. He also talks about his role at Notion Capital, a venture fund and advisory business that focuses on early to mid-stage growth businesses in the Internet based services sector. The TELL series is hosted by the LBS Entrepreneurship club at London Business School. http://tellseries.com/

Jos White speaks to TELL about how he has co-founded three businesses helping to grow them all into market leaders each with revenues in excess of $100M. He also talks about his role at Notion Capital, a venture fund and advisory business that focuses on early to mid-stage growth businesses in the Internet based services sector. The TELL series is hosted by the LBS Entrepreneurship club at London Business School. http://tellseries.com/