YouSaid · the spoken record

Stefan Glaenzer

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18
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2015-03-09
most recent
2015-03-09
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1
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  1. “Just sign the term sheet about a fraud prevention product. Fantastic team, very experienced in a very fast-growing startup. So the whole team has shown in an existing startup that they're able to deliver now, have left the company to start their own startup. They took a great market fraud prevention. They have the right capabilities. They have global ambitions and it's quite a plain playing ground out there. So the hope is high. But then again, in the moment of investing, you're going to love them all. And then you see a honeymoon period between six and nine months. And after that you come closer to the truth.”

    2015-03-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 018: Seed Stage Investing with Stefan Glaenzer of Passion Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “It was a transition period during my time at being chairman of last Member, who was very executive chairman, who was very, very involved in the day-to-day business, but still hadn't been the founder and hadn't been the last decision maker”

    2015-03-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 018: Seed Stage Investing with Stefan Glaenzer of Passion Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “You know these diagrams, these competitive diagrams where you see all the competitive companies and by some miracle your own company always ends up in the top right corner in terms of being just a startup. I just see too many clothes.”

    2015-03-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 018: Seed Stage Investing with Stefan Glaenzer of Passion Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “There is no, unfortunately, I'm not having anything clever to say here. I think, again, it's like in football. You can't play always with this. Just about the ability of building a relationship with the investor. Keep in mind everything I'm saying is just true for seed in very early stage investing. The data the game and more changes towards data-driven decision making.”

    2015-03-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 018: Seed Stage Investing with Stefan Glaenzer of Passion Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “You do get a feel whether a team or an entrepreneur or a young person or an elder person but still first-time entrepreneur has a problem he is intrinsically interested and tries to solve by using technology and usually yes of course it's nerve-wracking and it's actually terrible this whole fundraising process is a terrible experience I've been on the entrepreneurial side way longer than on the on the investing side so I do have quite a good understanding but after a while you do get an understanding how the pitch turns into something else the pitch turns into a dialogue into a discussion and then you get more to the heart of the heart of the problem Entrepreneur tries to solve.”

    2015-03-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 018: Seed Stage Investing with Stefan Glaenzer of Passion Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Right now, I mean, we do actually have a strategy here at Passion that we focus on one sector only. And this is a very, very narrow focus sector, and that is great, ambitious entrepreneurs. That is the real sector passion is operating in, and we want to back and help these great, talented, ambitious entrepreneurs. A bit more specific maybe to answer your question, we are quite keen on cybersecurity since quite a while. But then again, we tend not to do any games, gaming investments simply because we just don't understand the segment. It's a bit too hit driven in our view, even though you can create and test the companies in the space. And the European did particularly well, so questionable whether this is good judgment from us or not. But other than that, we are really open for all verticals and for all segments.”

    2015-03-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 018: Seed Stage Investing with Stefan Glaenzer of Passion Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “I'd say this is true in general for the whole financial fintech sector. I mean, in the end, if you look from a little bit of a bird's view on every sector which has been run analog is becoming digital and now the time is ready to have a very, very close look to the financial institutions. Crowdfunding is going to have its place and all the beautiful things that Angelist is doing and is fantastic funding circles, all these credit tech, all these companies, they will form a new understanding of financial instruments for the consumer and for the businesses. We are backing it. It's a huge market.”

    2015-03-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 018: Seed Stage Investing with Stefan Glaenzer of Passion Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Financials, I mean, first of all, it's the market size. Second of all, the existing players are, for whatever reason, relatively lame and slow to react. So this is the perfect ground for disruption and innovation. And I think... the users, the consumers have been treated seriously bad by the existing companies, so they are just ready for disruption.”

    2015-03-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 018: Seed Stage Investing with Stefan Glaenzer of Passion Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Well, that's part of being an entrepreneur. It has been part of my entrepreneurial career. And now this accelerates as being an investor. But that is just part. If you deal with innovation, you have to accept that you can't get it always right. I mean, have you ever heard a football professional saying I regret that I didn't make that goal or that it didn't make that tackle? There are so many opportunities. We are constantly dealing with new opportunities. And of course you do make a lot of mistakes in your judgment and everything.”

    2015-03-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 018: Seed Stage Investing with Stefan Glaenzer of Passion Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “That means it's 250 meetings for every partner, first company meetings. That means that is roughly looking at 250 business days, that's roughly one new company a day, which is manageable.”

    2015-03-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 018: Seed Stage Investing with Stefan Glaenzer of Passion Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “So unfortunately, Harry, I don't have any unique wisdom to offer here, but by far the best is making a contract through mutual contacts, through some form of qualified referrals. As a matter of fact, we see roughly 2,000 new ideas being pitched to us in any given year over the last two, three years. Out of these 2,000 ideas, we meet with physically, we meet with 600 to 700. Most of the people we meet tend to be the ones who made their way via referral.”

    2015-03-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 018: Seed Stage Investing with Stefan Glaenzer of Passion Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “With these companies, I'd say on average we do a kickoff meeting after investing and then we tend to have meetings every one to three month, very much depending on the phase the company is in, whether these are first-time entrepreneurs or seasoned entrepreneurs. I've learned that the hard way as an entrepreneur, as an investor, you have to make sure that you are not wasting time of the entrepreneur. And too many board meetings might have the potential to waste time in very early stage companies.”

    2015-03-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 018: Seed Stage Investing with Stefan Glaenzer of Passion Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “So passion capital runs a co-working space called White Bear Yard here in EC1 in London, so more the east side than the west side of London, where half of the companies in which we have invested choose as their starting office. So with these companies, you do need less formal board meetings because pretty much White Bart is a 10,000 square foot open plan office. We, passion capital, sits in the middle of it. There's hardly any doors other than for a conference rooms. So you do get a pretty good feel of where the company is by just walking through the office and getting the coffee and walking back. It's different with companies who are not joining White BR as their starting office.”

    2015-03-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 018: Seed Stage Investing with Stefan Glaenzer of Passion Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “So with Passion, we have a very dedicated narrow focus. We only invest in seed stage, so the preferred of our engagement is We love to see some technology workings who we rarely invest in a concept phase, but we are perfectly fine with the working prototype, even with the closed beta of maybe 50 or 500 people on the system. That's when we love to get engaged. Most of the time it's the first institutional money. On average, our investment is 200,000 pounds in the first round. From time to time, we are the first external money from time to time. There has been some friends and family money in the company before, but usually we are the first institutional money.”

    2015-03-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 018: Seed Stage Investing with Stefan Glaenzer of Passion Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “That was crazy. So Ricardo was actually not my second startup. So within the seven years before, I think we tried five and six different companies. And as I said, none of them with particular success. It was all pre-digital. So the barriers of entry to start in a way have been way higher. And Ricardo, yeah, I mean, it was unbelievable this was a company growing 1% between 1% and 1.5% on a daily basis. So we pretty much hired everybody who made it into our office. We grew the team from 0 to 200 people in 18 months or so. It was just a very special, very, very crazy time.”

    2015-03-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 018: Seed Stage Investing with Stefan Glaenzer of Passion Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “At some point, it's probably more interesting going after a portfolio approach. So as the founder and CEO, you do put all eggs in your own basket, whether as a venture capitalist or as an investor, you do get involved with various different approaches of starting a company. And I think maybe in my case it has been the older I got, I was more interested in learning more about different businesses instead of going 24-7 in one venture again.”

    2015-03-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 018: Seed Stage Investing with Stefan Glaenzer of Passion Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Ricardo was an online auction site, so the equivalent of on sale or ubid or eBay in Germany and Switzerland and other European markets, which we founded on the 21st of July 1998, went live, so launched a couple of weeks later. And then on the 21st of July 1999, so exactly 365 days later, we went public at the Frankfurter Neuermart with a market cap, I think, of 400 million euro or so. I mean, those were the heydays of where it has been the wild rest days. So that is where I got my bug for working in technology and internet related stuff.”

    2015-03-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 018: Seed Stage Investing with Stefan Glaenzer of Passion Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “Certainly, happy to do so, Harry. Clearly, as you can hear by my accent, I'm Native German speaker. So born and raised in Germany, studied economics and have actually written a PhD way, way back about option pricing. So I pretty much got trained to be an investment banker. But then after university, I decided no banking is not the future, but started a media company with two of my friends way back in 1991, so all pre-digital. To sum it up, it was all pretty mediocre the first seven, eight years. some small successes, some very mediocre results, some failures, and then stumbled across the idea of doing online auctions in 1998, so founded Ricardo, which pretty much changed my entrepreneurial life.”

    2015-03-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 018: Seed Stage Investing with Stefan Glaenzer of Passion Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source