Patrick Wolfram

Founders who have raised VC funding I need your advice on a potentially tricky situation with an investor. I was engaging with what I thought was a VC firm based in Berlin to learn more about their thesis and investment categories. When I asked if they had their own fund or were an intermediary, They responded: "No, we do not have our own fund but we know investors that invest and as a result for the investment round of £1M we will ask for 10% ownership." This response raised some red flags for me. I'd greatly appreciate your thoughts on: 1. Is it common for intermediaries to request equity in exchange for connecting founders to investors? 2. Does a 10% ownership stake for a £1M round seem reasonable or excessive? 3. What potential risks or pitfalls should I be aware of when dealing with intermediaries rather than direct VCs? Your insights and experiences would be incredibly helpful as I navigate this situation. Thank you in advance for your guidance! #startup #venturecapital #fundraising #founderadvice

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Ambience Healthcare -- backed by OpenAI Startup Fund -- has spent the last 4 years meticulously creating the most capable foundation models for medicine. Ambience's AI operating system was designed to understand the differences across specialties, as well as important contextual factors that drive differences in documentation between settings of care -- such as reimbursement frameworks and prior authorization. #AI #Technology #Healthcare

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After closing a Series A funding round, companies enter a pivotal phase where the right approaches significantly influence their journey toward Series B. In brutkasten, Jan Lozek and I recently shed light on the critical strategies companies should adopt after securing Series A funding. 👉🏻 Here are the more top priorities companies should focus on post-fundraise: 📈 Optimize cash flow:  Investors are particularly interested in startups that efficiently manage their cash flow, maximizing growth and revenue while keeping expenses in check. 💰 Show them the money: Show investors how exactly you are making money: real customers, real sales, economies of scale. In other words, show you have a plan and that the plan is working. To outline flexible sales models, and exchange various key parameters, will also be a win. 🚀 Partner up, big time: Leverage your existing networks instead of spending more capital. Corporates can be great partners at this stage and could vouch for your startup. Be it for accessing a market or for increasing your sales, it always pays off to have the right partners. What additional tips would you add for companies navigating this crucial transition? 💡 #SeriesA #Funding #StartupGrowth

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Incredibly excited for our new product, #Secondaries, enabling automated #blockchain-based secondary transactions of #tokenized shares. Private equity has inherently limited liquidity and interest mostly comes from existing stakeholders or funds directly in contact with the founders. "Secondaries" automates processes for matching parties and settlement, which is typically done manually. It's a clear use case for having part of your equity tokenized and therefore programmable. It's perfectly integrated with the rest of our toolset such as our Corporate Dashboard and Investor Apps, giving issuers and users a seamless experience. We are also proud to push boundaries of #web3 user experience, creating products that remain non-custodial and use open, permissionless blockchains (#Ethereum) for settlement, yet abstract away all technical complexities of #blockchain transactions from the end user and can be used by even the least #crypto-savvy users. Buyers and sellers can simply use their bank accounts, if they like, where on- and off-ramping happen in the background automatically. Huge thanks and kudos to our brilliant team Konstantinos Zavoudakis, Piotr Bladek, Tasos Bekos, Silvio Morelli, Yaroslava Selivonchyk and of course to Luzius Meisser for making all of this possible. Also big thanks to DFX.swiss and Frankencoin for their efforts. See it in action on our Investor Relations Page: https://lnkd.in/d65s_HqQ

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4️⃣ SaaStock Fundraising Chatter: Finding the Right VC for You. A key takeaway from Tuesday’s post was how important it is to qualify your investors. With so many options, here's how to be strategic: 🔎 Qualify ruthlessly. Treat your investor funnel like a sales funnel. AlbionVC, for example, invests $1-10M in UK-based B2B software and deeptech. If you’re a Paris-based consumer marketplace raising $20M, it’s a non-starter. Founders waste precious time crafting outreach to funds outside their scope. 🥇 Prioritise Smartly. Rank your target funds by both appeal and likelihood of success. 💘 Find a Warm Intro. If you don’t know the fund directly, network like you would for sales. Get a concise, compelling intro via a mutual connection. Remember a “pass” could even lead to a referral to another, better-fit fund. 🎮 Sequence Pitches. Start with lower-priority VCs to refine your pitch with early feedback. Then, approach your top picks with a polished narrative. Generating interest early creates momentum in your process. ⚠️ Requalify Your VCs! It’s as important to assess us as it is for us to assess you. ➡️Ambition Alignment: Are their expectations aligned with yours? ➡️Personal Fit: Grab a coffee, breakfast, lunch, go on a walk: will you enjoy working with them for years? ➡️Support: What do you need? Do your diligence to ensure they deliver it. ➡️References: Talk to portfolio companies, successes and struggles. Were they fair? were they kind? ➡️Partner Stability: The partner who leads your investment will be emotionally and intellectually invested in you and your vision. They will be on call. They will fight for you when things get tough (bridge rounds, etc)…far more than someone who replaces them later. Also, high turnover at a fund could signal cultural issues. #SaaS #Fundraising #VC #AlbionVC

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Pleased to partner with re:cap and offer a 𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘤𝘪𝘢𝘭 𝘥𝘦𝘢𝘭 to the Berlin startup ecosystem. You can check our deal on their website - but I want to take this opportunity to talk a bit more about re:cap. re:cap enables companies to grow with flexible debt funding and real-time, automated liquidity management software. That's a very compelling funding alternative, especially if your business starts to be more predictable. Ok but 9x is bootstrapped, so why team up with re:cap? Because they also launched 𝘐𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵𝘴, a solution to manage and optimize liquidity, reports, forecasts with all your bank, revenue, customer, and accounting data. And as much as we like building our own tools, we're very happy to take out of the shelf SaaS tools when they 𝘯𝘢𝘪𝘭 𝘪𝘵. 𝘐𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵𝘴 falls into this category. It instantly replaced our house made setup - we were piping multiple spreadsheets and Airtable bases and retrieving Qonto data via API. Our setup was a) breaking every second week and b) eating Pierre-Yves Garcia's time. More time for us. Check it out!

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Three biggest learnings from a fundraising journey. Shared by Rainer Märkle, General Partner at HV Capital at EUVC 1/ Have a time box with a deadline attached. Have a defined horizon & create a clear plan. Have some urgency to get things done at some point. Execute very transparently and reliably. 2/ Stick to your narrative. But don't do it blindly. Tweak it when necessary. Adapt it. Don't let yourself be surprised by major changes. Keep focusing on delivering according to your strategy & plan. 3/ Fundraising is a marathon with many sprints. There are moments when you'll ask yourself - Why do I do this? Is it gonna work out? But don't get too negative during the down phases. Adapting and pivoting is part of our job. As it is for the founder of a company. How about you? What fundraising lessons have you learned? Join the conversation. 🔽 #venturecapital #angelinvesting #startupfunding #europe

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🙃 💸 Flink raised $1.5B... and is now valued at less than $1B Let's move beyond the snarky comments of how such a feat is possible. The German quick-commerce startup just raised an additional $150M. And that's actually quite interesting: 1️⃣ If valuation has been slashed (from a peak at $5B) to below $1B, it is a first sign of maturity. 2️⃣ There is a focus on profitability: the startup has broken even in its two main markets: Germany and The Netherlands. It wants to use the money to further strengthen its position there. Done are the days when startups were only focusing on growth and expansion. 3️⃣ That's the last European pure player operating in Europe (JOKR now only operates in Latin America). It is also among the last players operating at scale in developed economies. So, what it does and how successfully it can grow will be key to the future of quick-commerce. 📈 I am quite confident in the future of quick-commerce. It answers a consumer need, but it needs to be operated with care, notably in developed economies, due to high labour costs. 👉 : https://lnkd.in/gmpcNhNP #startup #commerce #grocery #delivery #foodtech

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#fundingalert 💼Company: Langdock 💰Funding: $3Million ⚡Round: Seed 👥Investors: General Catalyst and La Famiglia, Y Combinator, Rolf Schroemgens, Hanno Renner, Johannes Reck, Erik Muttersbach Langdock, Maintain complete control on your data while enabling your staff with LLMs. Build personalised assistants, automate whole workflows, and have conversations with your internal experts. The money will be used by the business to grow both its operations and growth initiatives. Under the direction of CEO Lennard Schmidt, Langdock offers a platform with enterprise-grade security, on-premises and cloud-based solutions, and a chat interface that lets coworkers access LLMs from different departments. Tobias Kemkes, Nono Konopka, Niklas Hoelterhoff, Justus Tölle, Thomas Plattner, Karl Richter   Read more - https://lnkd.in/gaHs-B6f To share your startup story write us on - [email protected] #Langdock #security #business #growth #funding #fundingnews #startupnews #news #startuprise

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You want to build your own corporate innovation studio and build your company's future revenue streams? Then this whitepaper is for you! We distilled all our learnings from our venture studios with DB Schenker JobRad | Deutschland Volksbanken Raiffeisenbanken how to build successful new ventures.

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Series A Engineering: How does Dreamcraft Ventures support startups towards a successful Series A? 🚀 Find out in our Bits & Pretzels Masterclass in Munich on 30 Sep, which will be hosted by Nico, Founder Enablement Partner, and yours truly 🙌 We will cover how we invest and support portfolio companies. Using Hiber as a case study, I will talk about our collaboration with Michael and his team, and give you insights into how they raised their $15m Series A led by EQT Ventures 🤩 Nico will do a deep dive into crucial building blocks for early-stage startups. Based on his +15 years of experience from VC-backed startups like Trustpilot and Platypus, which he co-founded, Nico will provide hands-on advice for hiring, creating structural trust, retaining talent and building a performance culture 💪🔥 Are you going to Bits & Pretzels? Then join our Masterclass or reach out to myself, Nico or our colleague, Mads, if you want to meet up elsewhere! 💬 #Bits24 #venturecapital #vc #startup

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#Germany's Funded Startups Directory. You can view the list of startups funded in #Germany whenever you need it. Access the directory here https://lnkd.in/dc9emGbb #startup #startups #vc #venturecapital #investmentbanking #privateequity #managementconsulting #b2b #founders #entrepreneurs

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B2B SaaS Entrepreneurs on Mastering the Exit I wanted to let you know that I will be moderating a panel at ARRtist Summit 2024 in Berlin. The theme is ‘Mastering the Exit’, and I will be joined by three people who have as much up-to-date insight into this subject as anyone in Germany – all three are B2B SaaS entrepreneurs who have recently sold their companies: Nader El Ali, CEO of DemoUp Cliplister, acquired by Bregal Unternehmerkapital Emil Beck, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Remazing, acquired by IK Partners Manuel Hinz, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Cross Engage, acquired by Spotler Group, Founder of Toroleo GmbH, acquired by Delticom AG, and CFO at DailyDeal, acquired by Google. The panel will take place on October 10 at 16:00-17:00 CET. If you’re planning on attending ARRtist Summit, do come along, it will be great to see you and we’re confident you will learn a lot from the discussion. Since space is limited, you’ll need it to indicate it as one of your preferred sessions on the online from ARRtist provides. For those not currently planning to attend, you may wish to consider doing so. ARRtist is the most relevant event for the European SaaS community, bringing together 500 high-profile Founders and CxOs with 125 top-tier investors for a day of networking and knowledge exchange. You can learn more here: https://www.arrtist.net/ Feel free to reach out if you have any questions about the panel or ARRtist Summit. #manda #saas #berlinsaasweek #saasalon

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A question I like to ask founders: How does your company look like in 5 years, if you are successful? Which companies are not going to exist? Which market or user behaviors are going to change? What does your product look like? The answer does not have to be a true prediction of the future, but it is a strong indicator of the founder's vision and strategic thinking.

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Today I visited the GREENTECH FESTIVAL in Berlin with my dear friend Andreas. 💚 To make it short: Good vibes, busy floors and a big startup space. But tbh I wondered if it's really worth it for startups. I remember from my active time as an exhibitor that we weren't honest about the hard costs per lead. We argued a lot: being there is everything, you have to be seen, brand building is important, it's where the industry meets, serendipity happens, if we just get one big order it will pay off... not to forget the parties! That's all true, but the opportunity cost of attending a trade show is very high, especially for startups. And while this isn't meant to be a trade show bashing at all, here are a few suggestions from my experience, on how to make the most of it... - Train your team to proactively approach people. - Initiate a challenge to see who can get the most leads. - Prepare in advance and market your attendance by actively inviting customers. - Consider a small side event, such as a VIP dinner. - Try to book a package with a speaking engagement at the conference, that has always paid off for us. - Use the exhibitor directory for your own prospecting. - Calculate cost vs. lead conversion after the show with real data and decide whether to repeat. - Push your presence on social in real time. Good luck to all exhibitors and happy selling 🚀 ____________________________ Sharing my experience as an entrepreneur and angel investor. Investing in early stage B2B SaaS startups. Happy to connect 👋

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What to look for in Co-Founders? Having the right Co-Founders is probably the most important success factor in the early days of a startup. Drawing from my (outstanding) experience with Jonas Hess, here‘s my summary of the top-5 things to look for. 1️⃣Work ethos and commitment This is about each Founder’s willingness to suffer. If things get serious, are all Founders willing to get stuff done even if it means working nights and weekends? 2️⃣Commercial contribution Early startups are simple. The first days are just about generating traction, based on a superior product that is shipped faster and sold better than every competitor does it. Contribution to these things should somewhat feel equal among the Founders. 3️⃣Having fun Many Founders that come from corporates underestimate this point IMO. Co-founders are not like a normal professional relationship, they are more like a marriage. Imagine sitting alone in the office with your co-founder at 11pm or sleeping on his/her couch for a few nights. If this feels wrong, it’s probably not going to work out. 4️⃣Growth culture Do you appreciate your co-founder’s opinion even for your areas of responsibility? The more you treat mutual feedback as opportunity to grow versus personal criticism, the stronger your growth culture. Having a growth culture is just more fun and leads to better outcomes, but it requires Founders to get rid of their ego for the benefit of the startup. 5️⃣Blind trust This goes without saying. If all of the above are given, and you still don’t trust your Co-Founders, you should probably work on yourself first. This picture was taken in 2022 after a sports session.

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👑 Earlybird Venture Capital and HV Capital are considered the best German venture capital funds across ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini. 🚀 finleap is considered the best FinTech investor, and Point Nine the best in B2B SaaS. 🙌 HTGF | High-Tech Gründerfonds ranks best on Perplexity for GenAI and HealthTech. While the results for "Overall" are quite stable, the sector-specific results have very high variance! Sector-specific funds like Merantix Capital, Laika Ventures, AI.FUND & Heal Capital appear more frequently in AI search results compared to Google search results. The models seem to use "activity" as a main criterion for "best," with many sources referencing the respective deal count of the funds. Gemini's sector-specific variance was so high that we did not include the results (about 25% of answers were not even venture capital funds). Top Perplexity sources include Dealroom.co, EU-Startups, and Seedtable. Top ChatGPT sources include Sifted, Failory, and PitchBook. Sources used are mostly overlapping. If you try to replicate this, please keep in mind that your prior search history may impact your results. For most accurate results test on virtual machines. With a fundamental shift in search on the horizon, the way AI models perceive your brand will become increasingly important. Daniel Drabo and I are very interested in AI search and will continue to explore this space. The future looks really exciting. Follow for more 🫶

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