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Stephan von Perger

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23
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2015-05-14
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2015-05-14
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1
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  1. “You don't know who's making your food. But what you want is that you want to trust all of these people. And so we think that on FIDO is in an excellent position to be the enabler of trust for the... So this type of new interaction between people.”

    2015-05-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 036: The Pitching Process: From Email to Term Sheet with Stephan von Perger @ Wellington Partners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “So my last deal was a comedy from Lenin called Onfido, who do basically background checking as a service, which is very developer-friendly, so you can have an API to include their checks for right to work and criminal background. If you, for example, are on-demand cleaning company and you want to check all your cleaners because you have many new cleaners every week or every month. And we like that team a lot. And when we met them, the three guys from Oxford who were very smart and know exactly what they're doing. But we also got really excited because the immense opportunity in the on-demand economy and sort of the sharing economy where everybody interacts with everybody. So you don't know who's driving your car. You don't know who is looking after your child.”

    2015-05-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 036: The Pitching Process: From Email to Term Sheet with Stephan von Perger @ Wellington Partners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “I mean, I think there's many good ways of reaching out. I think what personally I like the most is when people really refer to something that I've done in the past. So say that I've worked for CityMapper or that I've worked in Stylistic, the e-commerce company, and then ask me specific advice about what I learned there because I think every VC wants to be helpful in every interaction with founders and entrepreneurs. And so, you know, just being a recipient of some information is one thing, but being able to help the founder, even in my first interaction with him, is something that is really rewarding. And therefore, I'd be much easier reachable when I see that in the initial email.”

    2015-05-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 036: The Pitching Process: From Email to Term Sheet with Stephan von Perger @ Wellington Partners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “So I'm usually scrolling to the traction or achievement sort of slide because I want to see what the team has actually built. It's really easy to talk about kind of next year we'll do this much in revenue and we are addressing a big market. But what I'm interested in is typically what have they actually built and how many customers have they reached and what people have they hired.”

    2015-05-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 036: The Pitching Process: From Email to Term Sheet with Stephan von Perger @ Wellington Partners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “I would say it depends on the depth of the interaction that I've had with that person. So if we've had several meetings and we decide not to do it in the end, I usually try to be as transparent as possible because I would ultimately like to help that person to be successful. And there's usually it ends up being a reason of we like what the team is doing, we like the product, but nobody is extremely excited about it. And I think you don't want sort of to marry an investor that isn't super excited about what you're doing. So it's probably better in that case not to invest. But of course, I still would like that personally to be successful. But of course, if I've received an email that says, dear investor, then the pass on that will be extremely short.”

    2015-05-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 036: The Pitching Process: From Email to Term Sheet with Stephan von Perger @ Wellington Partners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “The other thing was that when it takes longer and it usually means that there are still conversations going on where I may be asking someone in our portfolio for feedback on a particular technology or a particular product. And so if the founder in their follow-up emails give me more ammunition to kind of present the case again in our internal meetings, the easier it becomes.”

    2015-05-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 036: The Pitching Process: From Email to Term Sheet with Stephan von Perger @ Wellington Partners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “really interesting problem right and i think everybody has that um i have that and you know founders that reached out to me have that i think it's all about sort of gentle nudges and it's totally okay to to follow up once or twice um the thing is i think as a as an entrepreneur you need to understand that um the investors are working on several things at the same time and while for you the business is like the one thing for the investors probably one of five or ten things they are currently looking at so it's sometimes other things just have to be dealt with more urgently um now that that still means though that you know you want to when you get back and follow up and say hey you know you said that you'd get back to me next week i haven't heard from you i would include success stories so by the way we've signed you know three more clients um we've had a real good um new hire to make it um really”

    2015-05-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 036: The Pitching Process: From Email to Term Sheet with Stephan von Perger @ Wellington Partners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “That's a good question. I think there is no too small. I think if it's too small, then you just need to think about adjacent things that you could involve your product to or other people that you could sell a similar solution to. I think the important thing about the market is that it's easy to make it look big, but it really comes down to a realistic, to being realistic of how much you can address of that market and people are taking, say, a 10% commission in the marketplace, then suddenly a big market is only 10% of that you can actually address. So I think being clear and being honest to yourself when you estimate a market is actually more important than showing that it's huge because it's relatively easy to just make up. Really big.”

    2015-05-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 036: The Pitching Process: From Email to Term Sheet with Stephan von Perger @ Wellington Partners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “So I think it's a combination of connections on all levels of the seniority spectrum, right? So you may know a couple of really good designers, but you also may know someone in the acquisition team at a large Silicon Valley acquisition company. But it goes beyond that. I think it also goes about sharing best practice in the portfolio. And it can mean just really helping founders Do the right thing at the right time because a lot of the times people are doing it for the first or the second time. But of course we've seen similar situations several times in our portfolio and so kind of bringing that experience I think is probably the most important thing we can do.”

    2015-05-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 036: The Pitching Process: From Email to Term Sheet with Stephan von Perger @ Wellington Partners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “trying to understand what the investor is looking for. So what is their vision for the particular space you're working in? What additional data points are they looking to see, especially if you're talking to a more junior person in a fund, trying to understand what the other people in the team are usually asking and sort of as a preparation for the next meeting? Because when you go for that second meeting or second call and you can show that you've listened to the questions and the feedback in the first interaction and kind of bring good answers to those questions, I think that's a really powerful way of showing that you're an easy person to work with.”

    2015-05-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 036: The Pitching Process: From Email to Term Sheet with Stephan von Perger @ Wellington Partners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “I don't think there's any particular questions, but I think a lot of investors will talk about all the introductions they can make. And I always recommend people to really follow up on that and not let any offer for an introduction to a potential customer or potential portfolio company, et cetera, like slip away. I think the other thing is...”

    2015-05-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 036: The Pitching Process: From Email to Term Sheet with Stephan von Perger @ Wellington Partners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “So I would say the 10-page PDF is something where you can get the investor excited. When I go to a meeting as a founder, I would probably have something between 10 and 25 pages with me to explain all the important aspects of the business. But not necessarily look at every slide during the one hour meetings, typically a one-hour meeting, but rather try to tell a story why you started the business, why you're so passionate about this, and why you're the right person to tackle this hopefully huge problem. And it's really important to sort of build friendly atmosphere during that meeting because ultimately it's the people business and we like to invest in people that we want to work with. So if people come across as arrogant or if they're really late or if they're just very cold during the meeting, that I think is not really helpful with getting the”

    2015-05-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 036: The Pitching Process: From Email to Term Sheet with Stephan von Perger @ Wellington Partners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “And we would like to learn from you what you did when you worked in e-commerce, because that's really relevant to what we do. Then obviously, I would be keen to help as opposed to the investor.”

    2015-05-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 036: The Pitching Process: From Email to Term Sheet with Stephan von Perger @ Wellington Partners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “I would try to avoid sending a completely open email to an investor. What I would try to do is find someone to send that email for you and giving this person really good ammunition to get the investor excited, i.e. having like a short PDF PowerPoint, like maybe 10 slides that outline what a business is doing in really simple terms that the founder is comfortable sharing because it will probably get forwarded to other people. And then at the same time, make it really clear why you want to talk to a particular investor because it's really frustrating when people blanket email 10 investors at the same time. And it's hard to spend time on that kind of thing. Whereas when they say Stefan, we've read your blog post on X and we think your recent investment Y is really cool.”

    2015-05-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 036: The Pitching Process: From Email to Term Sheet with Stephan von Perger @ Wellington Partners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “So that's obviously what a lot of people struggle with. And I think the simple answer is it's all about reaching out to the right people. Your initial investors, typically people have invested in companies before someone like Wellington or other VCs do. So those angel investors should be in a position to point you in a couple of directions with regards to more later stage investors.”

    2015-05-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 036: The Pitching Process: From Email to Term Sheet with Stephan von Perger @ Wellington Partners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “We think that if you have money in the bank, you should allocate it to the place where it can generate the most return for your company. So I think stockpiling the way a company like Slack is doing it at the moment seems counterintuitive from my point of view. But I think at the same time, everybody will agree that you should raise while you can raise because there's always a time where you can't. And so if you can raise at decent terms, i.e. a good enough valuation without giving away too much equity, it's probably a good idea to raise now even if it's a little bit more than what you need.”

    2015-05-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 036: The Pitching Process: From Email to Term Sheet with Stephan von Perger @ Wellington Partners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “So for us, we're looking for seed round and sort of series A rounds, which means it's on the earlier stage of the kind of total fundraising cycle from an angel round all the way to an IPO or these days, these huge pre-IPO rounds. But as I said, I think it's really important to define clearly where you are right now as a founder and where you want to get with the money. Because if that's not clear, we're not just a bankrolling machine to cover your costs. And it also comes back to this, it's best to raise money when you don't actually need it, or at least if you can give the investors the impression that you don't really need the money. But if you had the money, you could make X, Y, or Z happen.”

    2015-05-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 036: The Pitching Process: From Email to Term Sheet with Stephan von Perger @ Wellington Partners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “Like to understand okay, the next phase could be really launching it and getting XMI users. And then we try to see whether we believe that the amount of money that the founder is looking for kind of matches our experience in how much you need for that phase. And then we think whether the next phase after we've invested, whether they can realistically reach that next milestone to be able to raise more because ultimately most of these high growth businesses will not just take a seed round and then be finished with that. Obviously when it's a more later stage investment then we look at other things like launching into a new market or fine-tuning your monetization.”

    2015-05-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 036: The Pitching Process: From Email to Term Sheet with Stephan von Perger @ Wellington Partners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “I think that's a really good question. And I think a lot of people come with this preconceived idea that they want to raise money. And it then often becomes a weird situation when they go and talk to investors because they don't do a great job in conveying why they're raising money. Personally, I think if you want to raise external money, then you need to have this appetite for building a high growth company, which you try to grow faster than it could naturally and organically and just by reinvesting your profits. And the way we look at it, when someone wants to raise money is that we try to understand what sort of phase of growth we are financing. And if you're talking to a really early stage company, that has basically maybe a prototype and a few better users.”

    2015-05-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 036: The Pitching Process: From Email to Term Sheet with Stephan von Perger @ Wellington Partners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “I think there's really exciting parts of being in the different roles in the system. When I was at CidIMEpper and we were raising a big ground with Bulletin, it was very exciting to be part of that on the company side. But personally, I find it exciting to see the different viewpoints over time. And so when the opportunity came along to join the investment side, I was keen to jump on that train and see where it takes me. But that doesn't mean I want to be an investor for the rest of my life. I think having worked in startups and a large one and a small one and now working in a VC, I think there's always this kind of urge to maybe go back on the operational side and maybe set up something by myself. So we'll see.”

    2015-05-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 036: The Pitching Process: From Email to Term Sheet with Stephan von Perger @ Wellington Partners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “Everybody would have said, I want to be a banker and I want to be a consultant. And now there's a lot of them say, hey, I want to set up a business. And I think that's really exciting.”

    2015-05-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 036: The Pitching Process: From Email to Term Sheet with Stephan von Perger @ Wellington Partners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “And I worked in the technology part of it, so there were some interesting, but it was quite far away from what I'm excited about these days, which is tech startups and high growth businesses. And I actually sort of wanted to do an MBA, got kind of pulled into a startup, and then got really excited about working in this e-commerce company called StylistPick a couple of years ago. And then from there, I moved to Citimper. And then from there, again, quite randomly moved into VC. But it's been such an amazing journey to be part of this sort of wave of technology, startup, excitement that has, I think, come through sort of the system in the last couple of years. And yeah, it's really exciting also when I now go and speak to students that are probably, you know, when I was a student.”

    2015-05-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 036: The Pitching Process: From Email to Term Sheet with Stephan von Perger @ Wellington Partners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “Sure. So I started sort of getting excited about technology when I was at uni studying computer science. And then I did what most people do after university back in 2009. And I went to work in McKinsey and consulting”

    2015-05-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 036: The Pitching Process: From Email to Term Sheet with Stephan von Perger @ Wellington Partners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source