- vor 6 Monaten
Why is Europe lagging behind the U.S. in scaling startups? In this episode, Andy Goldstein (VU Venture Partners, German Accelerator) exposes what’s broken in European venture capital — and how a new investor mindset and proper VC education can unlock global success.
→ Primary Keyword: venture capital Europe
🎙️ About This Episode:
Europe’s VC ecosystem is ripe for reform. 75% of funds fail to generate returns. Andy Goldstein explains why — and what can be done. From investor education to startup internationalization, this is essential viewing for founders, VCs, and policy leaders.
👤 Guest:
Andy Goldstein is Managing Director at VU Venture Partners Europe and Co-Founder of the German Accelerator. He has decades of experience scaling tech startups, educating investors, and bridging the gap between U.S. and European VC practices.
🚀 Meet Our Sponsor Tide.co
Managing finances as a freelancer or small business owner can be overwhelming – but it doesn’t have to be.
With Tide’s free business account, you get everything you need in one place: send invoices, track expenses, and handle taxes with smart tools built to save you time and stress. Plus, when you sign up with the code STARTUPRADIO, you’ll get €200 cashback after spending €500 as a sole trader, or €400 after €1,000 as a registered business.
Don’t miss out – sign up now at tide.co/Podcastsde – use code STARTUPRADIO
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/startuprad-io-europes-voice-on-startups-vc-innovation/id967788304
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3etgUOz5KWKycYHsvQv1yG?si=f0b318b620dc48f0&nd=1&dlsi=1985986692234073
Find all links and show notes here: http://startuprad.io/post/the-transatlantic-investment-divide-why-europe-needs-a-new-vc-mindset
🔑 What You’ll Learn:
Why most European VCs underperform — and how to fix it
How the VU Investor Accelerator is changing the game
What German founders must change to go global
How AI can improve startup sales strategies
The 3 traits that define the top 1% of founders
The music used in our intro is "MF-297 : First Hero" licensed from Musicfox.com: https://www.musicfox.com/detailsuche/?searchtext=297&submit=search
⚠️DISCLAIMER: We do not accept any liability for any loss or damage incurred from you acting or not acting as a result of watching any of our publications. You acknowledge that you use the information we provide at your own risk. Do your research.
Copyright Notice: This video and our YouTube channel contain dialogue, and images that are the property of Startuprad.io. You are authorized to share the video link and channel and embed this video in your website or others as long as a link back to our YouTube channel is provided.
© Startuprad.io - All rights reserved
→ Primary Keyword: venture capital Europe
🎙️ About This Episode:
Europe’s VC ecosystem is ripe for reform. 75% of funds fail to generate returns. Andy Goldstein explains why — and what can be done. From investor education to startup internationalization, this is essential viewing for founders, VCs, and policy leaders.
👤 Guest:
Andy Goldstein is Managing Director at VU Venture Partners Europe and Co-Founder of the German Accelerator. He has decades of experience scaling tech startups, educating investors, and bridging the gap between U.S. and European VC practices.
🚀 Meet Our Sponsor Tide.co
Managing finances as a freelancer or small business owner can be overwhelming – but it doesn’t have to be.
With Tide’s free business account, you get everything you need in one place: send invoices, track expenses, and handle taxes with smart tools built to save you time and stress. Plus, when you sign up with the code STARTUPRADIO, you’ll get €200 cashback after spending €500 as a sole trader, or €400 after €1,000 as a registered business.
Don’t miss out – sign up now at tide.co/Podcastsde – use code STARTUPRADIO
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/startuprad-io-europes-voice-on-startups-vc-innovation/id967788304
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3etgUOz5KWKycYHsvQv1yG?si=f0b318b620dc48f0&nd=1&dlsi=1985986692234073
Find all links and show notes here: http://startuprad.io/post/the-transatlantic-investment-divide-why-europe-needs-a-new-vc-mindset
🔑 What You’ll Learn:
Why most European VCs underperform — and how to fix it
How the VU Investor Accelerator is changing the game
What German founders must change to go global
How AI can improve startup sales strategies
The 3 traits that define the top 1% of founders
The music used in our intro is "MF-297 : First Hero" licensed from Musicfox.com: https://www.musicfox.com/detailsuche/?searchtext=297&submit=search
⚠️DISCLAIMER: We do not accept any liability for any loss or damage incurred from you acting or not acting as a result of watching any of our publications. You acknowledge that you use the information we provide at your own risk. Do your research.
Copyright Notice: This video and our YouTube channel contain dialogue, and images that are the property of Startuprad.io. You are authorized to share the video link and channel and embed this video in your website or others as long as a link back to our YouTube channel is provided.
© Startuprad.io - All rights reserved
Kategorie
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TechnikTranskript
00:00welcome to startuprad.io your podcast and youtube blog covering the german startup scene
00:13with news interviews and live events
00:17hello and welcome everybody this is joe from startuprad.io your trusted source on the german
00:26swiss and austrian startup scene now reaching a global tech audience today we're speaking to
00:33andy goldstein admittedly a former colleague of mine at deloitte even though we never worked
00:39directly together he's a serial entrepreneur co-founder of the german excel reinter former
00:45colleague of mine at deloitte and manager director at vu venture partners europe we'll dive into how
00:54he's reshaping investor education why europe needs to think bigger and what it takes to bridge
01:00the atlantic in startup investing andy welcome great to be here and thanks for your time
01:07totally my pleasure um how would you summarize your admittedly a little bit unconventional journey
01:16from launching companies to building platforms like the german accelerator and now view with a
01:23i would say extensive stint at deloitte in between yeah absolutely so i think i would describe
01:32it as in uh two big buckets one which is reinvention and the other is uh fascination with what's missing
01:41so uh reinvention in the sense of you know i moved over to germany when i was just beginning
01:49in my 20s as the ibm pc was launching i spent 20 years building a business and exiting really learning
01:55it the hard way in the market uh and then started into uh building the entrepreneurship center at the
02:03lmu which gave me access to great technology and lots and lots of founders with a big brand behind it
02:10um we saw then that there was not enough uh and we had to reinvent that and that's where the german
02:18accelerator came in and taking uh really finding category leaders and taking them out and uh also
02:26starting my own angel funds uh was a reinvention where i started to say you know i need to also get
02:32involved in helping startups to to start to get the money and uh and now actually becoming a vc and
02:40and really trying to change the way investors think in europe and all of those things when i say
02:45fascination with what's missing
02:46at the time when i began them it wasn't clear that uh that somebody needed to step up and do it
02:56and now it is of course clear that there should be accelerators but back when in the lmu accelerator
03:03started it wasn't necessarily and i think probably in five years from now it'll be clear that we need
03:09to train our investor community much more as well we may add for our audience most people are from the
03:18dach area but lmu means ludwig maximilian university yes it's one of the premier um universities
03:25in bavaria and i would say also very good one in germany yes of course um they also work together
03:33with a technical university tum in unternehmertum right yes when i that was also one of the things
03:40when i first came on it was uh not so common that the universities work together and i pulled together
03:46the lmu the tu the hochschule munich uh so the university of applied sciences and the bundeswehr which is the
03:54army university and pulled everyone together and started a global summer school which is still
04:00running so kind of thinking out of the box and getting people inside the country to work closer
04:05together for everybody who's interested down here in the show notes we will of course link our
04:11interview with unternehmertum i was wondering what personal experience made you realize europe had a
04:18gap in investor education i think the real experience of that is when i started my two angel funds and
04:27realized that every time we wanted to have a major expansion we ended up looking for us investors so
04:35simply there it's not to say that there aren't uh european investors and it's definitely growing but it just
04:41seemed that there's a real gap in it there's a there's a big uh there's a lot of startup capital
04:47there's a lot of government support which you don't have in sometimes even in the united states
04:52here which is definitely impressive but then once you get much past your a round you're pretty much
04:57looking outside of germany and and hoping that you can find a a growth capital uh partner as well
05:05that's from europe or or from germany but clearly they're in the us and clearly they're in in asia so
05:12that was what really it was the reality that made me realize it what i had in mind when you've been
05:17talking about that like the bigger rounds i've always heard it usually rule of thumb series a is 1
05:23million annual recurring revenue and if you want to go bigger like 10 millions you're talking about
05:28series b what comes into mind is like tiger global inside partners um sequoia but also from uh china
05:37we had for example tencent as a big investor here or a soft bank also pretty big investors but all
05:45from abroad i was wondering from our audience what do you think europe needs more better startups or better
05:52investors drop us an answer in the comment or tag us on linkedin or post with start up
05:58hashtag startup radio debate so let's get a little bit into vu venture partners a fund that actually
06:08trains vcs um can you tell us a little bit about what this exactly is and how is it disrupting the
06:18traditional vc model yeah absolutely so when i um was onto my next step uh
06:28recently i started really looking deeply into why uh why vc doesn't perform that well and when i
06:35what i mean by that is uh around 75 percent of venture capital funds uh as a total number of funds
06:44don't ever produce a carry uh don't pay profit and therefore uh you know don't pay their their lps
06:53back uh more than the money that they invested that's just a huge number and one of the main
06:58reasons if you talk to vcs a lot of them will say the same thing which is that it's the most expensive
07:05training program of all and that's the reason that um people are uh the reason for that is that
07:13people are learning by doing with the money of their lps and what really is different about vu is that vu
07:21is a fund that allows you to do real investing by actually doing it so every quarter uh the name
07:32of the fund vu venture partners we accept uh it's a it's a real program we call it an investor accelerator
07:39we accept between 40 and 60 investors globally into the program and those people uh attend they're
07:48treated as partners they attend every partner meeting they come to every deal flow meeting
07:53they're in every investment committee meeting they are driving deals they are each looking at around
08:00100 deals each during let's say a three-month period so what you have is you you have a situation where
08:08if you have 50 people in the cohort then each looking at 100 deals we're looking at 5 000 deals
08:14a quarter so 20 000 a year that's about 10 times the amount that most uh vcs are able to look at and
08:21the you know what's also very disruptive about it is that the people who are signing up are really on
08:26an extremely high level so whereas most vcs when they go into a specialist area they need to go hire
08:34expert witnesses and things like that and people who are specialized in a specific area with vu we now have
08:42uh vu stands for venture university uh we have now over 800 uh graduates 800 venture fellows which means
08:52that we have a huge network of people and we always have an expert that we can call on and the people
08:58who are in the cohort itself are also tremendously talented so when you're talking about our health
09:04tech investments we have three medical doctors that are in the cohort this time yeah we have professors
09:12when you're talking about deep tech so uh it really is a um a group of people that are able to
09:21analyze deals at a level that is quite uncommon in bc you've already hinted at it you let the participants
09:29of venture university who gets trained there who get trained there as real investors to join the real
09:38investment committees um what kind of impact does this have so it has massive impact because the
09:48the venture partners are actually driving the process so everything is remarkably well templated
09:54out you get help on all of your due diligence you get coaching from the general partners and weekly
10:00meetings two of them where they go through and make sure you understand what topics might be
10:05missing in order to get through the investment committee um but in the end the you learn how
10:12to build conviction for a deal that you're absolutely behind it and unless there's a couple of venture
10:17partners that are absolutely committed to getting a deal done it probably is not going to come to
10:22investment committee because the venture partners are the ones that are saying we're ready to come to
10:28uh to the ic and um because everybody is invited to every ic so the program runs uh global online uh
10:40california time so the key meetings are like you know 6 p.m to 8 p.m uh european time um when there's
10:49an investment committee even if it's a deal that you're not leading you're on the investment committee
10:54and you start to see how uh you're in the meeting yeah the you still have to pass through the two
11:00general partners but actually that's the way every single venture capital fund works right you always
11:06have to get the general partners to approve the deal and last quarter as an example we did six
11:13investments and uh had uh eight investment committee meetings so uh there's a very large percentage of the
11:21deals that are actually getting done and that's one of the big learnings is you come out of the
11:27program being an investor you've done four to six deals in a quarter if you stay for a full year and
11:33you do all four quarters you've done 16 to 25 investments right and you and you become much more
11:40proficient as you go along so and you're also in the cohort with people who have been in already so
11:46you're learning from each other and you're getting strong coaching from two general partners that
11:52together have over 50 years of uh vc experience and remarkable track records of you know actual
12:00paid back investment you already hinted that you came over to germany in your early 20s uh for
12:06everybody who's watching this they can tell that you're not in your early 20s anymore um actually we
12:12we had a conversation at the business angel day and um know very well how mature you are how senior
12:21you are um but um you you've seen over this time quite a lot um in the us and in europe and view is as you
12:32said also based in california so what do you see as the main difference in mindset between the european
12:40and american investors and how does view address them yeah just for clarity by the way we are uh
12:48the main office is in san francisco but we have offices here in munich and europe we're in hong kong
12:53and we opened brazil recently so about 65 percent of the deals come out of the us and 35 which is also
13:00not a bad representation of the number of startups that are really hitting the market so you know the
13:06the main difference that i see between the american and the european investors and any time you
13:12generalize it's already wrong but uh let me say that the americans tend to be much um much more stage
13:20agnostic uh it's here in europe you you get a lot of nose because you hear it's too early for us or it's too
13:30late for us yeah and and you don't hear that so much in the states you see that the uh you see that
13:41even the big vcs are coming in very early and they're staying very late uh here it's much more
13:47what stage are we doing and you're kind of i don't want to say stuck but you're more limited uh in the
13:53stage that you're investing and i think that and the americans are definitely more agnostic because
14:01they're return focused the key focus is not you know what stage it is it's do i believe that there's
14:09going to be a return on this we for example at view we invested um about six months ago in open ai
14:17which you say well you know what is that about but it's doubled since then right and so you know
14:22we get into those kinds of deals because we have access to them via our alumni but we really are
14:28focused on what's the return going to be the other thing we focus on is how transformative is it like
14:34do we genuinely believe that it is transformative and i think that there is a certain belief and
14:42experience in the us that shows that actually yes startups can completely transform industries
14:49and we see that again and again you know whether it's from google to you name it yeah benmo and on
14:55and on it's it's always been startups that have been cutting edge over the last 50 years and so we're
15:01looking for those truly transformative companies and the other thing i think is that we're still a bit more
15:08more the american funds are a little more marketing focused so trying to really understand what is it
15:16that's going to allow a startup to break into a massive market what's the what's the hack that they have
15:24um you know so it's great to have a big market but how are you going to get it when i look into some of
15:31the investments there we grow heal x cell bricks orchid robotics isaac health aoa inside and so on and
15:42so forth pretty interesting and as you already mentioned also stage agnostic more or less right
15:50yes yes yes especially given given the valuation of open ai i would i would say it was a big later
15:58later stage deal later stage deal absolutely and it was opportunistic as well because we had a chance
16:04to come in we've been talking a little bit about the mindset already um i would even go as far as
16:12fixing europe's investment mindset a little bit um i've seen a lot of material about you where you also
16:21mentioned for example what i found pretty interesting born global advantage of israeli startups
16:27where does germany hesitate to internationalize i think uh i mean israel has the there's nothing
16:36like necessity right you know the old saying necessity is the mother of invention when your
16:42company is born in a market of six or seven million people there's no question for you that you have
16:47to be international germany does have the somewhat the disadvantage that um the market is massive in
16:56in germany right so you don't have to go outside germany because you could build a successful
17:02business a very successful business first in germany and then internationalize elsewhere you have the
17:09challenge in germany as well that you don't have the advantage of let's say the uk or of france where
17:17as long as you're in paris you've covered the whole country as long as you're in london you've covered the
17:21whole country it's not enough to be in munich you have to be in munich you have to do business in
17:25berlin you have to do business in dusseldorf you know there's eight different places so i think that
17:31the complexity of the german market combined with the size and the potential of it very often stops
17:40startups from internationalizing soon enough so you would say it they should think a little bit
17:47early about it i have to admit most startups that uh pitching startup radio they already think
17:54internationally because they want to be in an english-speaking uh podcast here um how can they
18:02think more globally from day one i think that it has to do with a combination of thinking and doing
18:12and that was also very much the impetus when we started the german accelerator program was
18:18let's not just think about being global let's let's go global let's get people over into other
18:23countries and and do that so i think it's i think it one of the big things is to have partners on the
18:31ground you know from inside your business as soon as possible who are building the market just like
18:38you're building the market in the local country uh that you're from you know just like you have a team in
18:43germany you want to really try and find people in the other markets as quickly as possible and not
18:50and not wait yeah because the longer you wait the more entrenched you become and the more the problems
18:57in your local market become aware you become aware of them whereas when you're dealing with them in
19:02multiple countries at the same time you just deal with them for our audience i was wondering if you would
19:10join a fund if you train to end lady cole invest in real deals why or why not um as always leave uh the
19:21leave comment here down in the show notes andy we will be back after a short ad break then we will be
19:28talking about scaling startups and sales in europe andy welcome back to scaling startups and sales in
19:42europe um you said europe has a sales problem in one of the interviews one of the publications are
19:50found what's behind that and how can founders overcome it so i'm gonna be very direct and say that at least
20:02in germany people don't like sales they literally don't they really don't like it yeah and so i actually
20:10have to admit when i was starting out by myself january 1st 2021 one of the hardest things that
20:19i had to learn over time is doing sales getting out there getting active and i i kind of know what
20:27you mean here yes i mean i i do a um there's a uh a youtube video of mine which has been out for
20:35well over 10 years it's called entrepreneurial thinking and in that uh in that lecture which i've
20:40done for hundreds and hundreds of people i always ask the question you know who wants to be a salesperson
20:46and almost nobody raises their hand and it's because and this is i think the way to fix it is
20:52people have the wrong conversation going on in their head about sales the conversation is sales people
20:59are annoying people who sell you crap that you don't need that's not true that's a thought that's
21:06not true and i think that as soon as people are able to understand that the conversation if you don't
21:12like to call it sales then go right ahead and call it business development whatever the word is that
21:17makes you feel better but sales is nothing more than speaking your commitment that's what it is what are
21:26you committed to what really what are you and and that's the thing startups you know the thing most
21:33impressive about startups they commit their life to something that is really hard to do and it's
21:38impressive for other people to see startups and people see people just giving it all right but
21:44they need to talk about that you just talk about what you're why are you giving your life for this
21:49why are you so behind this and not to not to get concerned about what's my picture of what a
21:55salesperson is but really to think of yourself as committed i often relate sales to marriage
22:02yeah and i say to people you know it's like you don't want to walk in and and say hey listen you've
22:09you know you're not so terrific but i'm pretty good you want to get married and see how it goes no that's
22:13not a good sales pitch you know a good sales pitch is i love you madly and i don't want to spend another
22:20day without you i want you in my life absolutely and i'm going to be true to you well it's the same
22:25thing with sales for you know anyone this is why i want you to be my client this is what you're going to
22:31get and you can count on me and i think that conversation we need to push out into the market
22:38and i actually i also learned that marriage and raising children is always done uh better if you
22:46do have a certain marketing mindset there there you go there you go yeah um we've been talking about
22:53sales here and or more popping up in my mailbox first were offer for ai sales tools and now i do
23:03have a few suspects who really bombard my inbox with pitches for podcast guests um do you think those ai
23:11sales tools are a game changer for founders with limited sales experience i think they can be
23:19and i and in a way in which they can be is when they're used for focusing on product market fit so
23:30what i mean is helping you to find the right buyers i think that you know the reality of sales is you
23:38spend you know 80 of your time talking to people that probably will not do 20 of your sales and if you
23:45could change that if you could flip that model and spend 80 of your time talking to the people who are
23:51going to really make the sales that can be a real game changer and and i do think that ai tools hold out
23:58that possibility and i also think that they hold out the possibility of dramatic increase in productivity
24:07meaning that you don't necessarily need to hire the same number of sales people um and so i think those
24:15two things put together if you're able to achieve that then yes they can really be a game changer
24:20i actually even had or have still a ai tool that is replying to my landline phone to my office phone
24:29and actually it turns out this is also a pretty great thing because every time somebody wants to buy
24:35something i get a message instantly to my phone and everything else is uh put in a queue so that
24:42that's working out pretty well for me um what do you think is the single biggest mistake when a startup
24:49for example from germany is scaling to and in the us and maybe you'll mention the german accelerator
24:58because that's the next topic we're talking about here i i think it really is the mistake of not
25:07being local fast enough and long enough so i think that people wait too long to get into the other
25:18markets and markets are always developing so this idea that i'm going to conquer one market and then i'm
25:25going to go to another doesn't really work very well and so i think that it's you know it's that
25:31idea of getting in and i think that probably they underestimate the uh power of partners that are in
25:41the market so you don't necessarily need to conquer the whole market you just need to look and see who's
25:47already asking you and wants to be you know is a client already and you all most of them have clients
25:53very very early on you know really leveraging people in the local countries from a client perspective as
26:00well that are already using the product and building that out so building from a uh from a base of strength
26:07rather than trying to go out and and you know do everything all at once i see and personally i've had
26:16the experience um it's a lot of people are doing very very early on those first like uh testing the
26:27waters in different markets with um with co-working spaces and just go from frankfurt to new york and
26:34go there stay there for some time work beat people get to know the park and so on and so forth very very
26:40early on and that's something i see here um we already hinted about the german accelerator um i
26:49actually did a few interviews when i was in new york but it's now seven years ago uh there is a very
26:55nice co-working location where the german accelerator is located and they do have an awesome rooftop from
27:01which you can see in the background um the the the new york skyline as well as the uh one world trade
27:08center um having this picture in mind can you go a little bit back how this all built up at the
27:16origins of the german accelerator and what sparked all of that yeah absolutely so it's great that you're
27:23talking about the new york location because that was actually the second location and the first location
27:28was silicon valley so originally it was called the uh the the german german silicon valley accelerator
27:34right and the real spark was uh professor dietmar harhoff who went over on one of his trips and
27:42walked into plug and play and saw that there were countries that were sending startups over and said
27:50this is absolutely um you know something that germany has to be doing so uh and the other thing i
27:57think that that sparked it was that when the german government was convinced that they needed to be
28:03in the other country um we needed to have a german presence and that was supplied by
28:10german entrepreneurship which was a company i um i co-founded in germany and so we really had people
28:18on the ground who were able to convince the german startups explain to them what they were doing and
28:24could send them over there um as well and then really train them so that was really the initial
28:30spark for the whole program we may also add that you have now way more locations uh for example boston
28:39comes to mind but also in asia you do have offices in singapore tokyo shanghai um in latin america and
28:47buenos aires and san paulo so basically you can uh you can get out into the whole world with this
28:53program um we've been already talking about that you you now support expansion into nine plus global
29:01markets how did the program evolve from being first in a plug of play in silicon valley and then adding
29:08locations was it like a need-based um uh requests from the entrepreneurs it was a combination uh yes
29:19there was uh there was definitely a request from the market size uh side so and there was also i i have
29:28to give a lot of credit to the german government uh regardless of the administration um there's various
29:35people johannes felling is a name that i think uh you can't think about the german accelerator without
29:41him he was really the person who brought it through in the very beginning uh stefan draves um from the
29:49ministry has been and still is the one of the driving forces behind the german accelerator and it really
29:56has a lot to do with the ambition of the of the government to be in and support uh market leaders
30:04uh from germany to become global and so it was very much done hand in hand with uh where where
30:12entrepreneurs were asking but also where the government itself said this is a priority for us
30:18and that also i think shows the power of you know that's what i meant before sometimes when you have one
30:24really great client uh can actually take you very very far and i think that's something we also try and
30:33teach people in the us and when they go to different whether it's singapore wherever they go get some
30:39gets get a great client and expand along with them and that usually makes a lot of sense um it's also
30:47a um recommendation i've heard pretty early on and it's kind of stuck with me over time um
30:57um to wrap this a little bit up because i know you're not currently actively involved with the
31:04german accelerator anymore um i would still be interested to pick a little bit your head about
31:09your framework on for deciding when a startup should expand beyond europe yeah so um
31:18um i think that the important thing is that it's not about our frameworks
31:26yeah it's really one of the things i like to say is uh passion not included
31:32yeah it's not about the it's not about a framework that says you're ready to do this
31:38it's are you passionate about being in the country yeah are you committed to doing that is
31:44it something that's absolutely on your roadmap and it's not and when we see that kind of passion
31:50yeah and it's this another saying i like to use uh is mission possible like i believe i can do it
31:57yeah and when we see that we see the passion for doing it and we see that they that the startup has
32:03really you know believes that they're able to do it those are the kinds of companies that we really
32:08uh want to support and um i think that that's worked quite well when you actually look at the
32:14results of the the german accelerator program yeah i have to totally agree i think i'll dig deep in
32:22youtube and maybe link the interviews that i did in uh almost almost seven years ago in may 2018 in new
32:31york okay um for the last piece let's talk a little about a bit uh view venture partners the portfolio
32:40and investment strategy are there any sectors and technologies you are particularly excited about right
32:48now so we are a generalist fund we invest out of six different verticals fintech prop tech health tech
32:56consumer um uh enterprise and what we call pioneer which would be deep tech and space um i would say
33:05we're probably like anyone today not even just funds very excited about ai you know but ai goes across
33:16everything is really not in any way a vertical in in our opinion and i would have to say that the two
33:22sectors that we're probably most active in right now and most excited about are health and space so
33:30i think that the breakthroughs especially in health which are coming uh specifically through ai are just
33:38remarkable and if we could uh if we could get regulation to keep up with uh with the breakthroughs of
33:45technology i think the we would be saving a lot more lives today and then i think that what's
33:52happening in space is just um yeah it goes without saying the cost of putting you know putting
34:00something up into space is just coming down dramatically and as that happens the possibilities
34:08increase dramatically as well you know we're looking into everything from you know setting up more
34:15real estate in uh in space to how you do charging in space and uh so those are two areas that we're
34:24definitely excited about i vividly remember even a few years back you already had companies that were
34:32doing um a lot of interesting analytic stuff with data they gotten from pictures of the earth surface was it
34:41building radar that did uh like tracking of large building projects to i remember um a company that was
34:50tracking that were forecasting a black friday sales based on the occupation of the parking lots and stuff
34:56like that so um that is already pretty interesting i'm getting a little bit back to view how does your
35:05program's deal flow differ from a traditional vc yeah i think that is a really a very big differentiating
35:14factor so and it continues to grow right every every quarter we're graduating 40 to 60 additional
35:22investors all of those people are incentivized for their entire career to bring deals in we share any deal
35:30that you bring in as a venture fellow alumni uh you're going to get a very significant profit sharing on
35:38that deal so we have uh you know remarkable access to deals that other people are already doing where
35:45we get allocations in deals where you would wonder you know how would a how would a a fund that's you know
35:53making ticket sizes between 200k to 1 million and can go up to maybe three or four and follow on
36:00getting into deals which have you know are raising 400 million right and it's coming in from
36:06from our alumni uh so i think that that's one of the very key factors that i just don't see any other
36:13fund having i think that's maybe a little bit understatement that you've worked with thousands of
36:18founders maybe hundred hundreds um yeah what do you think are the three traits that separate
36:29the top one percent uh you talked about passion already you talked about sales already would you
36:37include them no doubt i would include them for sure i wouldn't have said it before i didn't think that
36:43that was important but i do think that the if i had to really say what are the three key traits one is that
36:52the startup has a massive
36:56differently better solution for handling the problem than the status quo does massively better
37:06so it's a it's a magnitude of improvement that is just completely has the potential for transformation
37:14so that that that massiveness of the the difference to the status quo is one very big thing the second
37:22very thing is is clearly the market size you know are they are they targeting something that if it were to
37:30actually if they were to be successful would it be transformative right so i think that's a that's a
37:36very very important thing and the other thing is something that people often miss which is
37:42is that there's a certain genius in simplicity of the way they market right and so let me give you
37:51like a real life example one of our general partners uh andrew sallison and sky fernandez are the two
37:57general partners inside of bu definitely look them up um andrew was the first uh wrote the first check
38:04to venmo now the payment company which everybody in america you know people don't say transfer me the
38:10money they say venmo me right it's a verb yeah when that investment was made i'm going to guess there
38:17were probably a hundred companies out there doing payment transfers so the i the the the size of the
38:24market was obvious right so what was the marketing hack and the thing that the marketing hack
38:31was that venmo was really the first company that said all you need to transfer money is a mobile phone
38:38number yeah that blew the market open with an incredibly interesting and simple interface
38:47so i think those sort of three things together are really what separate the one percent andy we are
38:54now recording i do believe for almost
39:00yeah for for quite a bit and i do believe
39:04uh it was very interesting and insightful for our audience thank you for sharing these insights
39:10and for giving us a window into how you're transforming both startups and the people who
39:14invest in them to our listeners if you enjoyed today's episode of course give us a five-star review
39:20and follow us wherever you're listening and check out our exclusive subscriber segment for more
39:26and remember this isn't just a podcast it's a global startup intelligence network andy thank you very much
39:32it was a pleasure having you as a guest turin thank you so much
39:40that's all folks find more news streams events and interviews at www.startuprad.io remember sharing is caring
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