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Daniel van Binsbergen

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26
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2015-12-18
most recent
2015-12-18
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1
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  1. “Well, Alexu, I feel that we've really hit our stride. I mean, we figured out what the problem is we're solving and our solution works. So it's all about scaling up. So first taking the UK and then going to the rest of Europe and the US. So that's the next five years for the business. And the next five years for me is that I hope to be continually to learn and to develop myself and loving every minute of it.”

    2015-12-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 027: Risk, Incentive and Opportunity in Starting A Company with Daniel van Binsbergen, Founder @ Lexoo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “I think the riot is just insane. Like my life got 10x more exciting, so I think that's one great thing. But most of all, it is the learning curve. So I feel that every stage of the business brings its own unique challenges. So I really feel like I'm cramming basically five years of experience in every year that your startup is around. I feel that I'm learning at a much more accelerated pace.”

    2015-12-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 027: Risk, Incentive and Opportunity in Starting A Company with Daniel van Binsbergen, Founder @ Lexoo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Oh, Broy, bro. Well, I absolutely love it. I mean, it's indispensable when scheduling meetings. Before I had the Sunrise app, I was always shooting across 12 times, and by the time they got back, one of the times had already disappeared because I booked another meeting. So it was just a nightmare. So I would definitely recommend the Sunrise Calendar app.”

    2015-12-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 027: Risk, Incentive and Opportunity in Starting A Company with Daniel van Binsbergen, Founder @ Lexoo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “The ones I use most often is Trello. We do a lot in Trello. It's not just my own to-do list, but we actually also put all our monthly and quarterly goals in there as well. It's been great. And when I was fundraising, Microsoft's Sunrise app. They acquired this app called Sunrise.”

    2015-12-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 027: Risk, Incentive and Opportunity in Starting A Company with Daniel van Binsbergen, Founder @ Lexoo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Well, I kind of split the blog. Blogs I like are, for instance, Seth Godins or James Eltucher, and they're a bit more philosophical. What I also read every day is for actionable stuff from entrepreneurs, I check the mattermark, daily digest. Absolutely. Founder's notebook. On the VC side, I tend to read Mark Suster, Fred Wilson, Bradfeld, and forward zone Nick Brisburn, who blogs at the Echo With Kicker, which is great.”

    2015-12-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 027: Risk, Incentive and Opportunity in Starting A Company with Daniel van Binsbergen, Founder @ Lexoo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Well, there are a number actually. I suppose there are so many giants in the industry now, but one of them I might mention is Brian Chesky of Airbnb. What I really like about his approach is that he seems to seek out people he wants to learn from. So he never rests on his laurels, really. And there aren't just people in tech. So, you know, I read he would interview a former CIA director or Warren Buffett or Disney's CEO, Bob Eiger, just to ask how they solve common problems. And I think that must give him a way, wider range of influencers than would otherwise be the case.”

    2015-12-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 027: Risk, Incentive and Opportunity in Starting A Company with Daniel van Binsbergen, Founder @ Lexoo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Yeah, much better way to just ask about their problems and how they currently solve it without even talking about your idea. So I would definitely recommend that book, not just for the customer development phase of building a startup, but also whenever you're releasing a new feature that you think solves a problem, it really helps to pose the questions in the way he suggests.”

    2015-12-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 027: Risk, Incentive and Opportunity in Starting A Company with Daniel van Binsbergen, Founder @ Lexoo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “My favorite book, I would have to say it was The MOM Test by Rob Fitzpatrick. And the MOM test is great. It's called the MOM test because it teaches you how to ask your customers questions in a way that even your mom who would always say that your business idea is great, you would actually be able to get useful feedback from her. So it was quite a transformational book for me because it made me realize I was asking questions from customers in completely the wrong way. You know, I'd ask questions like, would you use my product if it did X, Y, and Z? And most people are really nice. So they say, oh, yeah, absolutely. And then, you know, I would say, oh, would you pay for it? Oh, definitely, definitely. Whereas in reality,”

    2015-12-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 027: Risk, Incentive and Opportunity in Starting A Company with Daniel van Binsbergen, Founder @ Lexoo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “I think I would have maybe stressed out a bit less about not knowing the exact path to making Lexu a big business. So when I started out, there are so many parts of the journey that you don't know yet or you don't know how to handle. And I think what I've learned in the past year and a half that, you know, as long as you have a true North Star of where you want to end up, even if it's a bit fuzzy and you know what you need to do in practice over the next three to six months, then you're fine because the path for the next six months keeps kind of revealing itself. So six months in, I could kind of see what the next six months should be, even though I wouldn't have been able to see that when I started out. So I think it would have been helpful if somebody had told me, like, don't worry about that. That's normal. And you'll figure it out.”

    2015-12-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 027: Risk, Incentive and Opportunity in Starting A Company with Daniel van Binsbergen, Founder @ Lexoo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “It's been great. It's been great. They're quite hands-on, especially during the first year, because we share office space with them. And they've got quite a great team of subject matter specialists, so they might have a product person, Darmesh, marketing, design, developer. So when I joined or signed a deal with them, I immediately could hit the ground running because I could tap into that team as and when we needed it. And now we've hired in the expertise ourselves aren't relying on their team anymore. But that's what I really liked about the model is that you can move so much more quickly by having a very experienced set of hands at your disposal.”

    2015-12-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 027: Risk, Incentive and Opportunity in Starting A Company with Daniel van Binsbergen, Founder @ Lexoo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Well, it was because I wasn't looking for investment. It was also my first meeting with investors. So, you know, they ask a lot of questions that I had not known to even think about. They would say, what do you think your cost for acquisition is going to be? Or what do you think your lifetime value is going to be? And to be honest, I just had not given those questions any thought. So, you know, I basically told them I'll send you something over in a spreadsheet and then got to work when I got back home.”

    2015-12-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 027: Risk, Incentive and Opportunity in Starting A Company with Daniel van Binsbergen, Founder @ Lexoo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “What would surprise me is how excited they were. I always felt that I would have had to sell a lot more. We've just closed another investment round now, and I've noticed this again, that the people that end up investing are the ones who are genuinely excited about the idea and about what you're doing from the get-go. And they're doing their due diligence to find out why they maybe should not invest if there's anything wrong that they spotted. Some other investors, they might initially think, well, I don't know, why don't you convince me? You might spend just as much time on those investors. They might have free meetings with you, hoping to be convinced. And I feel that they might be driven more by the fear of missing out, whereas the investors that end up actually committing tend to be driven more by the sense of opportunity. So I think I got really lucky with...”

    2015-12-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 027: Risk, Incentive and Opportunity in Starting A Company with Daniel van Binsbergen, Founder @ Lexoo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “So it's a funny story, actually. So, I play squash once a week with a friend of mine who is a banker, but he lives in the street and is befriended with a guy called Romain, who is the CEO of UTLY and just a generally great guy. So my squash body introduced me to Romain and said, oh, you should definitely meet him for a coffee, he'll have loads of suggestions. So I did. Romain liked the idea and it's pretty close to the guy's head forward. So introduce me. And I wasn't actually actively looking for investment at that stage. I thought I'll first bootstrap a bit further down the line because I thought that most investors would need to see significantly more traction before investing. And I think Forward is quite unique in that they are willing to come in at the idea stage, basically. So I got introduced to Forward, had a number of meetings with them, and yeah, signed the...”

    2015-12-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 027: Risk, Incentive and Opportunity in Starting A Company with Daniel van Binsbergen, Founder @ Lexoo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “I would suggest to focus on a business idea where the tech isn't necessarily the big solution. It could be a market innovation like Lexu innovates in the market by giving you access to specialized listers you might otherwise not find, but it's not the technical background isn't necessarily what sets us apart. We don't have patents or anything like that to protect it. That might come in the future, but that's not necessarily necessary to get it off the ground. So I would definitely focus on an idea where the tech isn't, you don't need the teched to get going. So, you know, most marketplaces don't require that sophisticated tech in the beginning. You can get going in a very manual way. So I would always focus on finding a business idea where the manual first approach works.”

    2015-12-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 027: Risk, Incentive and Opportunity in Starting A Company with Daniel van Binsbergen, Founder @ Lexoo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Yeah, I had, I had it was just the hours that I was working were quite horrendous, so I recognized I wasn't ever going to really start something unless I committed. So that might not be the best thing to do when you do have time in the evenings, but I just recognized I was never going to do it unless I actually quit. So I had quit my job and did a lot of customer development and then had this prototype made.”

    2015-12-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 027: Risk, Incentive and Opportunity in Starting A Company with Daniel van Binsbergen, Founder @ Lexoo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “document and convert that into a PDF and then I would attach that PDF to the client saying well here's your report with all the quotes in it and the crazy thing is that the clients just said okay great you know that solves the problem so that was quite interesting for me to witness that you don't really need fancy tech if you're solving the problem so we only ended up building the tech and automating things when we couldn't handle the number of inquiries coming through every day”

    2015-12-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 027: Risk, Incentive and Opportunity in Starting A Company with Daniel van Binsbergen, Founder @ Lexoo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Part of it was that I didn't have the technical skills, and the other part of it was that although I had a vision in my head of ultimately the problem I wanted to solve, I didn't necessarily know the best way to solve the problem. And fortunately, I didn't go ahead and build a full-scale solution without having done a lot of trial runs. So how we started out, it was just a bootstrap thing. It was like $15 off of one of these theme websites. And it just had a simple form. And it said, you know, it explained what we did. And it said if you want quotes from specialized lawyers, just fill in the form. And whatever they fill in that form just ended up in my inbox. And that was the extent of the tech we had. And then I would contact the lawyer, send them a word template, ask them, can you fill in this word template with your quote? You know, I would collect the responses, drag and drop them into one.”

    2015-12-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 027: Risk, Incentive and Opportunity in Starting A Company with Daniel van Binsbergen, Founder @ Lexoo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “Yeah, maybe not. Actually, maybe not in the sense that if I just listen to most lawyers who were giving me advice when I started out, you know, it might just be friends or colleagues. They focused on elements that never turned out to be any problem. And they might miss the blindingly obvious problems of having to grow and things like that. So I don't necessarily, I wouldn't advise any potential entrepreneur who's now in high school to follow the legal route as a stepping stone to becoming a lawyer. Having said that, it doesn't hurt. I suppose it depends on your mindset. I always felt a bit frustrated by having to only look at risk instead of opportunity. So what I do like about my legal background is that it has made me less afraid of contracts. I think it has made me a better negotiator. And it has made me”

    2015-12-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 027: Risk, Incentive and Opportunity in Starting A Company with Daniel van Binsbergen, Founder @ Lexoo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Yeah, and I think what's driving it is that I suppose my generation of lawyers don't necessarily want to become a partner at a large firm. That isn't necessarily the highest goal anymore. So all of a sudden you're getting a large number of high quality lawyers starting their own practice billing in a way more innovative way, often fixed fee, sharing risk with their clients, and they are much more open to innovating because they're running their own practice and all those other constraints don't apply to them. And I think once that trend is continuing, clients are waking up as well. They will then compare, let's say, an Alan Overy lawyer with an ex-Alan Overy lawyer working on a much lower overhead basis. And it's that competitive dynamic that is now also causing larger firms like Alan Ovary to really innovate.”

    2015-12-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 027: Risk, Incentive and Opportunity in Starting A Company with Daniel van Binsbergen, Founder @ Lexoo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “So that's another reason. And the fact that virtually all law firms are run by a partnership. It's often the most senior partners that have the heaviest voice in that partnership. And they're also closest to retirement. A senior partner might vote against a proposal that would mean”

    2015-12-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 027: Risk, Incentive and Opportunity in Starting A Company with Daniel van Binsbergen, Founder @ Lexoo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “I think there are a couple of reasons. One is that the incentives are in the wrong place. So most law firms still bill on an hourly model, whereas a lot of innovation takes place in industries where the person doing the innovation will be able to reap the rewards. So if you introduce a new efficiency in a law firm, which means that you spend less time on a task, funnily enough, the law firm will actually make less money. As a result, that has been, I think, a big threshold in law firms investing significant sums of money to become more efficient. Another element is that lawyers by nature are slightly more risk-adverse than other business people might be. I mean, they're often paid to spot risk for a living. So they will often spot risk as well when it comes to innovations to their own business models.”

    2015-12-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 027: Risk, Incentive and Opportunity in Starting A Company with Daniel van Binsbergen, Founder @ Lexoo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “Yeah, it's a difficult hypothetical. I think I would just because I did feel that sense of future disappointment weigh on me a bit. I thought what if I don't do it and I stick in the law and then in 30 years time I'm close to retirement and looking back on it, it would feel like I copped out a little bit. So I think I would have just gone for it, knowing full well that if it doesn't work out, I would trust I would be able to find a job somewhere.”

    2015-12-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 027: Risk, Incentive and Opportunity in Starting A Company with Daniel van Binsbergen, Founder @ Lexoo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “Yeah, I suppose I don't have any kids yet. So in that sense, maybe my position was a bit easier. But I tend to think if you feel in your gut that you'd be really disappointed in yourself if you didn't give it a go, then part of you has already made the decision. And in my view, it's always better to just do it and figure it out later if it doesn't work. Because the risks you think of things going wrong will always be slightly less bad in real life than you might imagine them ahead of time. And it turns out that if you actually go for something, the universe somehow seems to line up and help out in ways where you didn't anticipate it.”

    2015-12-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 027: Risk, Incentive and Opportunity in Starting A Company with Daniel van Binsbergen, Founder @ Lexoo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “Yeah, it's an interesting question. I always knew I'd have to take a big step back salary-wise. And even when I was practicing as a lawyer, I knew that I was going to take the leap. So what I did is I made sure my lifestyle never really got out of control. So, you know, when you start work as a lawyer, they already pay you a pretty decent salary. And then they give you a significant raise every year. So what I did is that every year, when I got that raise, I would save 100% of that raise to make sure that I build up a little bit of a war chest. And also, it meant that I would have to keep being used to my trainees salary and never let that go out of control. So that was one thing I did. I suppose it never really felt like that much of a risk. Doing a startup means you learn so much that I felt that I'm really investing in myself. And after having done a startup,”

    2015-12-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 027: Risk, Incentive and Opportunity in Starting A Company with Daniel van Binsbergen, Founder @ Lexoo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “often a week later they be back and saying oh that that lawyer seemed great they quoted 3000 pounds and then they would ask me is that good is that bad and it started to dawn on me that there's really no way of knowing what you should be paying for legal advice and also that lawyers tend to quote you know very different amounts for the same job all based on a different you know perception of the complexities of the matter so so that was more or less the aha moment where I thought hey there's something here there's a massive lack of transparency in the huge market and if I build a curated marketplace where we screen all the lawyers on one end and make sure they're good and that we know what they're good at and on the other side businesses can submit inquiries and you know get quotes within 24 hours there could be a real solution there”

    2015-12-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 027: Risk, Incentive and Opportunity in Starting A Company with Daniel van Binsbergen, Founder @ Lexoo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “Sure. So I used to be a lawyer. So I practice as a finance and M&A lawyer for about five and a half years. First couple of years in Amsterdam, then the last couple of years in London. I noticed that being a lawyer means that all your friends in business usually ask you for lawyer recommendations. Now quite often they were aware of the larger firms and that they would be able to get quality legal advice there. But similarly they were aware that they would be paying through the nose for that. So they always ask me do you have a recommendation? So I started to keep a bit of a short list of lawyers that I knew that trained at the larger firms and were really good, but who for lifestyle reasons had either started their own practice or joined a smaller boutique firm. And generally speaking, they would charge themselves out for half their previous hourly rates. So I would tend to give my friends a short list of those lawyers.”

    2015-12-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 027: Risk, Incentive and Opportunity in Starting A Company with Daniel van Binsbergen, Founder @ Lexoo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source