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Is the European climate for early-stage start-ups improving again?

After the European fundraising ecosystem was somewhat more cautious in the years following the corona boom, the question is: how is it currently developing? 

Fabian meets George Robson, Partner at Sequoia Capital, probably the best-known venture capital fund in the world. 

Together they talk about financing start-ups with high capital requirements, the fine line between optimistic vision and realism when pitching and the right approach to investors like Sequoia Capital.

What you learn:

Which investor should you seek for your startup if you're building more of a cash-heavy business?

Market assessment:...

Monta has raised more than 120 million euros for its software platform for electric vehicles to improve the accessibility of charging infrastructure.

Within 3 years, Monta has scaled to around 300 employees, is currently hiring 10-20 employees per month and is multiplying revenue annually.

Previously, Monta founder Casper Rasmussen built 500+ mobile apps with his agency and bootstrapped the agency to 20 million in revenue.

We talk about the differences between bootstrapping as an agency and the blitzscaling approach that Monta is currently taking. 

Casper has also made a role change from CTO to CEO - what has been particularly...

Scott Chachon is one of the co-founders of GitHub, a developer platform that was sold to Microsoft for around 7.5 billion dollars.

We talk about the moment he found out about the sale to Microsoft, how much money he made from the sale and whether it made him happy.

He is now founding his third startup, Gitbutler, after investing 12 million of his own money in Chatterbug and has now decided to grow the company profitably without investment.

We talk about founding in Germany and Europe as opposed to the US and Scott explains why he is now founding in...

David Heinemeier Hansson is the inventor of Ruby on Rails and founder of 37signals, a company that has developed products such as Basecamp, Hey.com and more over the last 20 years.

However, apart from Jeff Bezos, David and his co-founder Jason Friedman didn't take any money and bootstrapped the company.

We talk about the biggest cost drivers for companies, how 37signals managed to develop multiple products in parallel and how David thinks about the differences between Europe and the US when it comes to starting a company.

What you learn:

When might it make sense to move away from the...

What role does creativity play for entrepreneurs?

And how is the understanding of creativity changing as a result of artificial intelligence?

Scott Belsky founded Behance, sold the start-up to Adobe and is now Chief Product and Chief Strategy Officer there.

Adobe is one of the 50 most valuable companies in the world.

At Adobe, Scott oversees all new products and is deeply involved in what the future looks like for creatives.

In this podcast episode of Unicorn Bakery, Scott Belsky and Fabian Tausch talk about the impact of artificial intelligence on entrepreneurship, creativity and product development in companies.

What you'll...

Rahul Vohra sold his first company Rapportive to LinkedIn and then founded Superhuman.
Superhuman is a premium email provider that is significantly faster to use than Gmail and other alternatives.
Today, Superhuman has raised more than 100 million dollars and has tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of users.
But how do you develop a premium product in an area where there is a lot of competition and, above all, free alternatives?

In addition to Superhuman, Rahul has co-invested with Todd Goldberg in more than 100 startups and we talk about Rahul's framework for investing and building an...

Alex Finkelstein is a general partner at Spark Capital and has names like Twitter (X), Discord, Snap and Slack in his funds portfolio. But how does a fund like Spark Capital, and Alex in particular, invest?

ALL ABOUT UNICORN BAKERY:

https://zez.am/unicornbakery

What you'll learn:

Why is it sometimes useful as a founder:in to not just look at everything rationally?

How far does Alex go to win deals and invest with founders?

How does Alex shape his way of working and living to achieve as much success as possible in all areas?

How do you build a successful venture company when...

In the last 4 years Job van der Voort has founded remote.com, raised about $500 million from investors like Sequoia, Accel, Index and General Catalyst, reached a valuation of $3 billion and turned the company profitable last year. Fabian talks to Job about structures that make hyper-growth possible, how remote.com managed to scale without a fixed HQ & what it took to do so, and personal growth as a founder.

ALL ABOUT UNICORN BAKERY:

https://zez.am/unicornbakery

What you'll learn:

What frameworks are needed to enable hyper growth?

What characteristics do employees need to enable rapid growth?

How does remote.com ensure new...

Why VCs shouldn't try to tick boxes & focus too much on pattern recognition | How to choose your Fund-Strategy | Importance of the German Market | Seedcamp's Investment Process after receiving a Pitchdeck - Reshma Sohoni & Kate McGinn, Seedcamp

Seedcamp has been investing in startups for more than 15 years. A few of the investments include companies like Wise, UiPath, Revolut, Ramp and many more.

Recently, Seedcamp announced their 6th fund and will increase their presence in Germany with this fund. Together with Founding Partner Reshma Sohoni and Associate Kate McGinn, Fabian talks about Seedcamp’s Investment strategy, opening...

Founder Collective is a New York based fund that has invested in Uber, Trade Desk, Stack Overflow and many more top startups.
Fabian talks to Managing Partner Micah Rosenbloom about the risk of using money to magnify problems rather than solve them. "Too much capital at early stages quickly leads to bad habits and inefficiencies," says Micah - but why is that? Plus, find out why high valuations often hurt rather than help founders:in and what the thesis is all about.

ALL ABOUT UNICORN BAKERY:
https://zez.am/unicornbakery

What you'll learn:

Why is a lot of capital sometimes just the wrong approach...