The Lifecycle of Tech Startup Investing with Christina Caljé

Hi everyone. My name is Patrick Akio and for today's episode we cover entrepreneurship, one of my favorite topics. And we cover it from an outside in perspective, looking at the investor's point of view and also from an inside out perspective sharing entrepreneurial experiences. Joining me today is Christina Collier. She's an investor, advisor, entrepreneur and I had a blast with this conversation. I love the dynamic, so enjoy beyond. Coding, yeah. That's funny.

Did you ever used to bike as much like in because you're from New York City? No. I'm from New York. Yeah, I, you know, when I was doing my Business School degree, so that was probably 15 years ago, I used to bike, bicycle, but that was before. They really have, like now New York has all these designated bike lanes and it used to be mainly like for messengers, you know, and so it was really dangerous to be cycling in the

city. And I would basically just go from east to West out of 15 minute cycle or something. But. But that was it. I didn't dare go anywhere further up north or South because that was too busy. Yeah. So this was really. Yeah. It was a total different lifestyle change coming to to the Netherlands. My husband's Dutch. So yeah, they were already. That was one of the things he sort of introduced me to right away. So, you know, just, yeah, at the back of the cycle, bike, rain,

hail, no matter what. So I knew that's good. I knew what to expect. Yeah. Yeah, but the, the part you said about kind of the infrastructure and the the roads here, that's like one of the things I never thought about until I saw abroad how it is and tried to bike there. Then I'm like all of a sudden you're on the streets and there's cars everywhere. And I'm like, I don't, I should not be.

Here, basically it's tough for Dutchies because I think most of most people who go to other countries, they think, oh, this will be a great way to see the city. And so I see a lot of in Paris, I see it a lot in London. And then, yeah, it's just a totally different, it's a very confronting confronting. Is a good word. Yeah. It's it's still is one of my favorite, like, ways to see the city. Yeah, even if you sometimes have to go rogue on a on a car Rd. basically. Uh huh.

But still, it's. I think it's worth it. Yeah, yeah. As long as you come back safely, yeah. In hindsight, yes. Yeah, previously you told me you had an appointment with the

people at the Foo. How did that go? Cuz I'm curious there. Let me think so. I'm on the board of the School of Business Economics of the view. Yeah, maybe it might have been. We had a 75th anniversary. Could that have been the event? I think talking about. Yeah it was great. I mean if that was the event. So I I try to go there pretty often just to like the academic world is so different than the start up world or at least that's my been my impression.

So I'm trying to, you know more and more get to know the professors, get to be on campus, understand a little bit of how they view entrepreneurship and and this they basically have their 75th anniversary of existing as a school, the the School of Business and economics underneath the university. And so they had this whole around. It's a very sustainable approach.

So they really think of ethics and sustainability inclusion as key pillars to how they run their programs and how they recruit and how they like to get their student body to sort of, you know, coexist with each other and get to know each other. So this was an event celebrating all of that Nice. And they had, they invited professors, students, administrative staff working, all associated with the VU to pitch their startup ideas that had this sustainability slant to it also celebration.

Yeah. So I was one of the jurors in my role. So it was actually the, the winner that we one of the winners that we chose. So we had one for education, one for innovation and one for, I think, collaboration. And the one around best

application within the education space was a professor who was using ChatGPT. Actually sort of, you know, very topical for us using ChatGPT. He basically runs a course around crisis management. OK, so he created this scenario where they sort of time boxed A2 to three hour scenario where there was an issue, a crisis happening and then his students were meant to react to that crisis in real time.

And so he created the crisis scenario using ChatGPT with a number of different prompts, and he also then, in real time, fed into the same algorithm, that same chat, what the student responses were, and then prompted ChatGPT to sort of evolve the situation in response to their responses. Yeah, progressively. Progressively, yeah.

And so for what I thought was really interesting was won this new application in the education environment that's actually helping the teachers to do their job in a more efficient way, he said. He saved basically like 100 hours of preparation work using this, a couple of hours of creating the prompts in chat CPT. Incredible. So I love that application.

There's there is, there has been at least in the beginning when it was introduced in education, the OR in the academia anyway, there was a lot of concern around how would students be using it, would they be abusing it in certain ways. And so I think that this is a wonderful way to sort of embrace from the professor's side, an application that can really, you know, make his job easier and also fun for the students to in real time experience a a crisis that they had to respond to.

Yeah, absolutely. I I love that. Instead of being fearful of the technology and making it a taboo and kind of putting the kibosh on it, they embrace it and they try and leverage it and see where it fits and where it's not a good fit And where it is a fit turns out to be a real, real time saver. Why not? Why, Yeah, that's how I saw it. Why not. And you know I was really excited to hear, you know, how he will continue to evolve that concept and find other ways to

apply it in his in his course. So that was one of the the, the winning the prizes for the pitch was some mentorship hours with me so that I really have to it's it's sort of sort of you know for me also really fulfilling to see and inspiring to see this new application. That's awesome.

Yeah, we still do a lot of mentorship. I am trying to find ways to scale it a little bit more. So you know, I've invested in about 16 start-ups over the last 18 months or so. And so with that, that also means you know at certain moments some of those companies will need a little bit of guidance or a little help or you know, network access. So I'm trying to prioritize those companies that I've invested in first because I have obviously an. Incentive in the game?

Yeah, that makes sense. But there's just what I try to do more of is the sort of, again, educational style events where there's a really specific topic and we have a very targeted audience that it's the theme is relevant to. And then through that sharing at least some of my learnings, some of my best practices and then offering to have coffee chats for folks that really want to do follow-ups afterwards.

But I'm also thinking, is there a way it sounds silly, but to use one in a fun way, a GPT builder, to try to sort of have a way to ask Christina? Yeah, that's a fun, yeah fun proof of concept you can do it should be easily accessible also. I hope so. I mean, I haven't done anything with it, but it's a sort of 2024 goal to play around with it a little bit and see, you know, if it could be helpful for other people.

And also help me to to just, you know, do some practical things with the technology and see whether it can be useful to me in well, in what form it could be most useful to me I guess. Yeah, I'll, I'll collect you to a colleague of mine because we're, I mean we're a consultancy company.

We're also kind of on top of the technology and I know a colleague that is kind of trailblazing within our unit, at least within our organization, the data side with companies and doing a lot of like design sprints or proof of concepts and stuff like that. That would be. Wonderful. He's very on top of what what would work and what will not work. So if you're kind of hesitant on that, I think he can give you some easy answers. Oh, great. Yeah, I love that. I'll make a mental note of that.

At least when I when I re listen to this, I'll I'll forward you the then. That's cool.

I was wondering because one of the things I saw is that your your advisor on a lot of like startups and companies there and I'm like one of the first questions was how do you become an advisor? What do you have to do to be an advisor? It's like if you give feedback, you're not necessarily an advisor. How do you get into those positions in the first place? I think it sort of depends on what the advisory role like what they're trying to achieve out of it.

So I'm an advisor to a venture fund Curiosity VC that's focusing on applied artificial intelligence applications. And you know for them it's a little bit about just being available if and when their portfolio companies need help on a specific area where I have a bit of expertise. And so in that case it's very much hands off and I'm sort of I'm here when you need me and the ways that they might tap me

are commerciality. So especially on the some of these more you know forward thinking innovations, it can be tough to get that first launching customer and being creative is something that I had to do a lot with my own company Otheos, which we sold in 2021. In that in that time frame there was just still a lot of uncertainty around different applications of artificial intelligence.

So it was really, I had certain techniques that I had to employ in order to find those stakeholders internally that would really champion our product.

Yeah. So that's one of the areas that I help on the portfolio company side, a little bit around organizational structure, so scaling a company and how you sort of prepare it, you know from a cultural perspective, but also functionally how are you structuring it, implementing new processes, shifting from that sort of everybody does everything to having this more siloed approach. So that's I also I used to be the Chief of Staff for all talent practices across Emia at Goldman Sachs.

So pulling from that a little bit in the operational side of things. And then, yeah, on the advisory side, there's, I also am an advisor to a couple of companies like I serve as a thought partner for Cxos. So CEOs, Coos of publicly listed companies that are looking to sort of upskill their organizations, upskill themselves and new technology trends. And a lot of that is around just sort of you know, people knowing about me in the ecosystem, tapping me where they think I

might be helpful. And then from there sometimes it becomes, you know, referrals if they've worked with you before introducing you to others that they think could also benefit. But I think if people are starting out with something you know, the key question to ask is what is your value add, where is your subject matter expertise, What do you want to get out of

it as an advisor or consultant? How much time do you have to dedicated to it and sort of answering those questions will guide you to the right advisory role? Exactly. I think it makes a lot of sense.

Did the ball also start rolling, let's say within your own network, before you got kind of network of network effect in that way? Yeah. I mean, I think first stepping out of that operational role as CEO, then I had a lot more time on my hands. So that it was easier also to 1 go out to all these different events and to sort of reconnect with folks and then I had more

time. So I I actually just spent probably the 1st 9 or 12 months just reaching out, finding ways to reach out to early stage, like very early stage entrepreneurs that were looking for help and then whether that's through different accelerator programs and being a mentor. So Rockstar, I was a mentor, Village Capital I was a mentor and then became a member of their Advisory Board for one of

their accelerators. But there's so many opportunities if you're looking to like you know give back a little bit, most of those are pro bono. So it's sort of nice to carve out a a portion of your time to

to focus on those. But especially if you're looking to make that transition from selling your company or leaving a role or making a shift in terms of your career focus, those are a really nice bridge to keep yourself busy, create new contacts, and sort of flex your skill in certain subject matter areas. Yeah, I love that as well.

When you're then choosing to set, let's say startups or collaborating or advising in that way, what are the things you look for within a startup 'cause I'm I'm sure not everything is gonna be a fit with your way of working and and your thought process. Also based on experience and with their kind of view on how the world works and the role of their startup in there. Yeah, you know, it's really interesting. Like it's sort of evolving.

I think in the beginning I had a real that this this feeling that was sort of coming out of my heart almost that I really wanted to. This was actually we sold our I sold my company coming out of the COVID period or basically in the middle. Of it. It was in the middle. Yeah, 2021 in the middle of it. So we were, it was a great time for us because everything was online and we were oriented towards e-commerce. So that was great from that perspective.

But it was also around Black Lives Matter movement. And I'm an American, born and raised in New York, my mother's Puerto Rican, my father's ceremony. I consider myself black Latinx. And, you know, I really wanted to contribute to that movement in a way that was more than just, you know, marching in the streets because we couldn't. I just didn't feel comfortable with the pandemic.

So I also thought, well, I really feel compelled to try to help other founders that sort of reflect my own demographic. So founders of color gender diverse founders to, you know, until then there really was, there were a lot there was a lot of talk around OK we need to bring more awareness on the lack of capital access for I was really only talking about women, not gender diverse, not ethnicity.

So there's a very blunt approach to, you know, how you defined A diversity here in Europe. Like a catch all and that's what, Yeah. And so not only that was it from in my, from my perspective, not all-encompassing or not comprehensive enough, but beyond that it was really just a lot of

words. And if you actually looked at the calculations of how capital is being allocated a couple of years into some of these larger named initiatives here in the Netherlands in particular, you just saw actually a contraction of capital going to those the target demographics of female founders. OK. So I just felt OK with more time with more capital and not having the focus on my company, not having to be operationally

involved. Let me try to use sort of, you know, redirect this energy and momentum towards helping this founder group. Yeah, by investing by mentorship. So in the beginning, you know, I really was focused more from a profile perspective focusing on those founders getting involved in some of those accelerators and programs that were really meant to amplify and connect these types of founders with each other and with capital.

Yeah. And so overtime, the last two years or so, I've become a little bit more refined and focused on the types of companies that I like to invest in. OK. I think in the beginning it's still now it still is on the earlier stages. So not necessarily the first check, sometimes it is, but first check Oregon, maybe second check typically before they've had institutional money come on, still orienting towards product market fit, very visionary, have

some customer traction. And then in terms of technology it's been you know those that were rooted either in machine learning or computer vision at the time because that's where I had the most experience pre ChatGPT, pre large language models being part of the sort of public sphere of conversation. So now I feel a little bit antiquated, talk to the best, it moves fast, yeah, it moves very fast.

So that was from a technology perspective where I started to evolve towards and and I think I'm just in this phase of I have

two children an 8 year old, a 10 year old. Thinking about legacy, thinking about how the world will what if the world would look like when they're in their 20s and and trying to contribute towards shifting society towards the the

world that I'd like to see. So now it's it's starting to to even more crystallize around either some platforms or companies that having a societal benefit whether that's social and trying to close financial wealth gaps or something more on the environmental side of things. So it's it, it is evolving. But those are the areas I think I'm just a little bit more focused on, like what's giving me fulfilment of course, and that's paying it forward to the

next generation of founders. That sort of I see myself in a bit technology where I have experience, which is AI and then something that's going to have a sort of societal impact for for

the better. Yeah, I love, I love the whole combination and also thank you for laying out kind of the progression there because I think it makes sense to find kind of like minded people, people like you kind of from a similar background because I think anyone, everyone is unique in that way and to help them out especially when you find out that those groups are usually under represented or you not get the. Under capitalized. Exactly the opportunities, yeah. It's getting better, but.

It's getting better, yeah, But still, it can. It can help to focus on that, I feel like because someone has to do it, otherwise no one apparently is. Yeah, sadly, yeah, yeah. So it still is slower than I would like, but there's a lot, there are a lot more programs that are, you know, trying to be these big, these major catalysts for connecting the capital with these, these founders. That's good to hear. Yeah. Yeah, A little bit more traction.

I think in the UK, we've got a little some initiatives here in the Netherlands as well. And the US it's sort of shifting. Yeah, it's a tough dialogue over here going on right now. Yeah, you can see that.

I I'm really curious also then when you find let's say the right demographic, the right profile, the right also purpose as a company societal impact impact that helps or betters humanity. What do you then look for when it comes to the actual entrepreneurs, when it comes to their mindset, what they've achieved so far in the history that they have. I feel like it's still a bit early when you say OK they're still trying to find product market fit and yeah or maybe they have found it.

What specifically distinguishes then the the entrepreneurial mindset there? Well, I think the first thing is the how. How does their idea resonate with me as an individual? Do I sort of feel like it's something that I care about, a 'cause that I care about? And how much do I feel that person that founder cares about

it themselves? Is it something that they have been, you know, stumbling into out of an opportunity, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, It's just sort of a piece of information that I consider in a sort of collective combination of factors. But you know, it's conviction, basically their own reasoning and purpose behind building the company. How much, how much resilience have they had until this point, whether it's in building this company or trying companies in the past, are they?

And so resilience, meaning, you know, they had maybe an idea of what the product would look like. They did some customer conversations and customer interviews and realized, OK, it's not really solving a problem that they feel like. I thought they felt, so I'm iterating. So how do they take in information and how does that affect their idea for the product and the evolution of the product? I find that super interesting. Yeah, real agility. Real agility. That's a great word for it,

yeah. Because as we were saying before, the world changes, the technology changes, society's opinions change. And a great founder will learn to adapt, or already know how to adapt to these sorts of situations and how, you know resourceful are they in building their own network? Because a lot of luck and opportunity comes through just getting out there, not necessarily only being behind, you know, the the, the laptop and coding all day long. That's not going to make a yeah.

Not enough? You need a lot of everything, I feel like. And it you know, it is and the and again to the resilience piece, the mental strength that you you're you'll you'll do better. It's it's easier for you to adapt to life of an entrepreneur if you have that sort of agility in your own emotional well-being. And you know how are you around building a support network around you.

So there's there, I think there's experiences that I've had over the last nine years as an entrepreneur that I sort of recognize what helps you get through those moments and how to keep a bit more of a steady emotion about things. And so seeing that in a founder and probate questions around that, that also helps me to to realize how equipped they are basically for for the process. And then of course, you know, expertise in the area of what they're building, that's also a

really big thing. Yeah, that makes sense.

I I really like the point of agility, and I also think looking at myself might be one of the hardest things, right? Because you you're invested in this. You believe with your whole heart that something might work. And if it then turns out that you're getting these signals that say it's not working or you're getting, let's say, a

loss instead of a win. And time and time again, at some point you have to realize that either you pivot or you acknowledge that you're wrong, you do something else, or you keep very stubbornly believing in this thing that might actually not work. And I feel like I'm, I'm stubborn as a person. I know myself. It would be hard. I know that. But, you know, there's AI think there's a delicate balance.

So there's there's something to be said, especially if you're building something that's never been done before or you're operating in a category that's just so newly evolving. There is something to be said with having a lot of conviction in that idea and staying true to your original vision while still knowing one of the right moments to tweak and to what end.

You know, I've seen other cases where founders can be, you know, very sensitive to changes and then they end up swinging the organization and the product from left to right. And that's also not the best for a company and for team motivation if they they. So we're doing this right now. Yeah, I have seen it so many times. Really. Yes, yes.

And the the entrepreneur in almost 100% of the time thinks well I'm just this is what an entrepreneur is user of your show and that's certain to a big extent that's true. And there is also though a need to sort of find how to how do you bring the rest of your organization with you so that they continue to believe and continue to have that conviction that you have a clear vision that you understand where the the market that you're operating in and they want to continue on

that journey with you. So it's a sort of fine line, and it's not always easy to find. Yeah, yeah, You can see that. That's, it's a difficult line I think. And I'm, I'm very curious in how you experienced or kind of the things you think about when you think about agility in your own experience at Altheos. But before I do, there's always

something. And I think I've told you before the show, I watched a lot of Shark Tank. Oh yeah. Into this, I know entrepreneurs think of, let's say what's beyond and what's their kind of strategy for the long term. And I I can see 3:00-ish one is being acquired. So they really build up something that is solid enough and their goal is then for like a bigger organization to outpace them and then to incorporate or to then sell off that one. It is kind of similar to what

people call an exit. I call it being quiet I guess or to then do this for the long term, right. And that's like the Super grand goal going from start up to scale up to and beyond with all the dynamics involved there. When it comes to this Wild West, that is a start up to then more rigidness that is kind of the scale up and beyond scale. Do you take that into consideration as well what people kind of have imagined for their start-ups?

Because I feel like sometimes when I'm watching Shark Tank people say, well we're working to this and this is in the exam blah blah blah blah. And I don't know if that's a right or wrong thing to think about. It feels kind of strange to me, but this is very from my superficial kind of outside perspective. I, you know, I I think that's a really thoughtful question and it's not an easy one to answer. I think yes, there is again

comes down to this agility. So you might think that there's one that you have the sort of perseverance and the energy and the drive to see it all the way through and you might and there might be that absolute opportunity to go from start up to scale up to exiting as an IPO though and then maybe five years in, 10 years in, you know, there's a lot of these companies that get to the multi 100 million scale of fundraising or to the point of exiting onto a public, a public exchange.

They actually have been around for 15 to 20 years, a lot of these companies. And So what people don't realize is that there has been this history and actually I think it was even Audien is one of those stories where they had been a certain type of company and then slowly plodding along and then there was this shift pivot that ended up unlocking their incredible growth. But if you look at the sort of the start of the company, it was a long time they've been around.

So with that journey, you also lose your own personal

circumstances change, the market might change, your own priorities might change. So for me, the Black Lives Matter movement, the Covic period, that actually shifted a lot in terms of my thinking. And I'm a sort of Type A personality. I worked at Goldman, went to the top university, So that's the end goal. That is the most difficult to achieve, the most highly attainable. That's what I want to go for. But at a certain point, I just felt like, wow, there's certain

dynamics. I think once you have venture external venture capital as well, that always changes a bit, you know, the autonomy that the founder has in certain respects. And so that changes sometimes how fun it is.

Yeah, of course. Yeah. So sometimes there might be something else that you feel more inspired by. So I think that there's a great argument to have this idea in mind on where your company will ultimately wind up. But again, this sort of agility and understanding when circumstances change, your goal might also change. And I think there's there's also

within the culture of entrepreneurship, the glamour of going from the start up to the scale up to the exit. And it's not, oh, you know, that that is still of a small percentage of companies that end up on that route with the original founder in particular. So there's also a lot of great success stories where there's something in the middle and there are actually some venture funds now that are orienting towards that middle where they realize there's a steady flow of

income. There's actually some really interesting like fund terms coming out of the states where they allow the companies to end up buying back their company. So they have the venture capital come in, money come in, they, they get to a certain commercial arrangement where they will have a revenue share in up to a certain point. Yeah. And then the company can decide if they want to repurchase the share so that they have, you know, ownership again. Oh, interesting.

Yeah. OK. Collab Capital is a company, a fund in the states that has that model. Yeah. So they accelerate and then they also say, OK, you can take it from here if you want to and that's the option. Yeah, that's the option and and more you know with the expectation that not every company is going to be you know making hundreds of millions in revenue, they might make a couple, you know 10s of millions in revenue and actually that's also that's. OK too.

There's a business model for funds to to make off of those types of companies. Very interesting. Yeah. So I I love that trend that's coming out where there's, you know, an option where the entrepreneur can sort of decide whether they want to continue on in that realm and having that external influence on their cap

table. Or if they want to decide, hey, let me buy back my shares and I'm going to, you know, either sell to a or maybe even decide to own everything again and then continue building it or eventually build it towards an exit where they they they have the vision, but maybe it wasn't shared in terms of the conviction on the fun side so they can sort of take back that control.

I love that. Another trend that I'm seeing that I find wonderful is that funds are carving out as a percentage of their own, you know upside in the performance of the fund and and dedicating it to the founders of the portfolio companies where if any of their the founders within their portfolio companies end up exiting that a percentage of the proceeds is sort of put in a pool for that that's profits basically that's accessible to all the portfolio founders. Oh, OK. Like shared wins.

Yeah, shared wins exactly. So the Curiosity VC, the VC that I'm an advisor for, they have that model. They also have that model for their advisors. So that's also wonderful that we have this sort of shared upside potential in their portfolio companies. Yeah, but you know the iterations on the original VC model where you're going for that, you know, winning at all costs, growing at all costs and selling at 100 X multiple, realizing that that's not always the case for the start-ups.

Yeah, yeah, I can see that. One of the things you mentioned

when it was starting from a start up, going to scale up and then making it big and beyond. Even after that, there's only a few cases or there's very few cases where the original founders are still on board. And I'm looking at that from my, let's say tech perspective because I'm, I'm mostly involved in software development and even there I can see that, OK.

If you take the let's say the highest one on the technology pillar, the CTO there, they can be very hands on when it comes to a startup like finding product market fit, building quick prototypes and learning from that, talking to customers

and implementing that. And then when you come to the scale up side and even talk about teams of teams, when it comes to the engineering side, how do you make that scale and how do you make your software resilient enough and how much autonomy do you give to teams when it comes to technology paths and the decisions there? That is a very different skill set. But I can very much understand that from a start up to what needs to happen when your company has grown to thousands of people.

There's different challenges there. And you might be good at the starting point or you might be good at the scale point, basically. Yeah. And you have to recognize that I feel like as well. It's really true and I know a couple of founders that have been through this really

recently. So they've in some cases noticed themselves that they, you know, either don't find it as fun or they find themselves a little bit out of depth in terms of the the knowledge, expertise, the knowledge and how to go to that next phase. So some of them are really self aware and able to to raise their hand and say hey maybe time to bring somebody else and sometimes you see that they stay on board but they're not in that sort of C level position.

There may be head of or strategic and then in other cases they're tapped by the investors. Something's wrong. Yeah, yeah Or not not that it's wrong. I think, I think more just because there is this really different skill set and some it is, there is something very emotional about stepping out of the the driver's seat of a company that you've built from scratch. Very human. Very human sometimes, you know the the there, it's a bit less

copacetic, a little bit less. You know, there's a little bit of friction around those changes. I have also seen cases where the founder leaves or sort of pushed out, but they're bought out for the majority of their share ownership and they are bought out at the height.

So they end up, you know, I know one case where they're basically been in Indonesia just hanging out on an island and then you know with the with the upside from the the valuation they've brought to the the growth they've brought to the company And then there's the other people sort of slaving away trying to get to that next phase.

So they actually, even though they were a bit frustrated with how it wound up in in terms of their control over over staying or or leaving, they actually got a. Pretty sweet deal. They can put that in their pocket. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And then they can focus on the next new thing from the start and building it up again. So and then I know others who have gone the opposite.

So come in as AC level once it's already scaled and done a really tremendous job with that and then sold off the business and then thought, hmm, actually I want to challenge myself to see if I can build it from the ground up. OK. Yeah. So you see it. There's so many different iterations and I love those stories. Yeah, me too. Yeah, I'll have to recommend some names after this. Policy Please do. That's something I always ask. So I.

Appreciate that. Yeah, I was thinking, as I'm saying, well, he has to talk to this person. That's good. I, I, I'm.

It's funny that you bring that up because I was really thinking, OK, from the people that make it to an exit where they've just given it their all and for some reason that's where they also part ways. Do they then do it again or what is something that you've seen when it comes to founders today and are there a lot of let's say, serial founders that do well? Because I can also feel like even one of the things you mentioned is the the timing

factor is just a thing. It's also luck that is a thing and you can't just hit home run after home run, I feel like. Yet if you do hit one, you might feel lucky and try again. I mean there are there are definitely you know cases where there have been folks who had the home run and continue to to hit the home runs. I think Paul Voja here in the Netherlands is an example of that.

He's now on his third company and the first two were sold to you know large one of them I think was sold to Apple. And so he's still building his next thing and it gets easier for those folks that have in terms of raising capital. I think that's where I noticed the difference is just those first steps of recruiting the right talent, recruiting the right investors on board is just much easier when you have a great track record by you, of course.

Yeah, your history says it. Your history says it and not this. You know, I'm come from a financial background, having worked at Goldman Sachs, so you know the historical returns are never a predictor of future returns. But people still it's. A solid indicator, Yeah. Yeah. Whether it's true or not, like we said, there's so much luck and opportunity that comes into the success of a company. But there is, you know, Elon Musk is another example of that.

You know, people just sort of throw money at the prospect of being able to associate with the company that they're building. Yeah. So there's those types who have had a couple of successes and continue to build are now in the process of building something new. I've also seen cases where they had a couple of well failures, failures in the sense that they ended up closing the company and then moving on and building something new and that didn't

work and they tried again. And then the third time was the charm and they got acquired, This person got their company got acquired by AUS competitor and it's living on in a great form. So that was a win. And now they and they did their sort of buyout, earnout period. And now they're thinking again, what's I'm I'm getting bored. I want to do operate again. Something, yeah.

So, so I've seen that where it was, you know the, the, the challenges and then they wind up with this great success story. And I've also seen it where just recently there's a mentoring

somebody in the UK that has built a company to exit at a couple 100 million valuation exited to a MasterCard or Visa one of these companies and is now building another company for the last three years. And I see the, you know, he's got a little bit, a bit of inertia, he's just not the same, you know fire in his belly and he's admitted that. Yeah, I'm sort of thinking about retiring and the company is in you know pre product market fit has about 15 people on board,

has great. Long way to go, that's. Right. A long way to go, but has capital on board because of the strength of his own reputation. That's good. Which is great, but then you know it is a lot. It's a journey. It's a long, it's a long marathon. So he had this fantastic success, started building again and then realized maybe my priorities have changed. I want to be more home with my family. I have young daughters, so I have seen almost every

different, almost every type. Yeah. And then I'm the type who's also, you know, I like actually doing the more sort of strategic high level stuff. So I want to stay involved. I want to have bigger impact, but I actually want to kind of work a little bit less. Yeah. So I end up working the same. But my work, that's how it goes. Yeah. But my work is different. So my work is having wonderful conversations like with you, Patrick. Thank you. Coffees and dinners and

investing and advising. So, but yeah, and I have not committed to building something yet. Let's see about the Chat GP, the GPT builder. Let's see where that goes. Of course, yeah. I'm glad to hear that there's so much variety and that there's really truly not A1 size fits all. I think it makes sense to looking at myself because it's very hard to generalize to think that I would do it again.

But as you say, maybe you're just, especially since time is like the differentiating factor and you cannot say in X amount of years, then that should be there. And I can do this now because you're committing to something, you're committing to the long haul. You're creating a vision and people are hopping on on board and believing in that vision, buying into that. And that's also a responsibility that you have to carry.

That's at least from from my perspective, how I would think about it. Yeah, totally. I mean it's that's a huge thing you have to think about the weight of the team members you've built, the clients that you've onboarded, the investors who have contributed capital. So that's that weighs a lot on folks mind whether they want to step into that or not. Yeah, something you mentioned

when it came to the person that said he had a few startups and let's say they failed, right? And all of a sudden he found the gold and he made it. When it comes to that track record and also keep in mind in my mind I'm thinking about learning from your mistakes. Is that history, that path, is it frowned upon from your experience when investors look at that or is that kind of gathered and and put in the side of resiliency and agility as well knowing when to quit and

then trying again. Yeah. Is is good or can be also thought of as good. I think it's good that's. How I think about it and you know I I think that the type of investor that I would like to work with will think that it's a good thing that you and actually you will see. If you look at data around performance of companies, you'll typically see those that are founded by older professionals perform better in the longer

run. In most cases because they have made the mistakes in their younger days and are now, you know sort of they have the best practices and they're taking all of that into every company that they start to build.

So I actually think of it as well this person has made all the mistakes before and you know, I I will probably probe what did you learn from that what did you learn from this Why is this the the right time why is now the moment to invest in you And based on their answers you know to make the decision. But but I see it as they've likely have learned a lot like the, the, the. We learn so much from from. The challenges, I'll say it like that. Yeah, yeah, You can see that. I'm glad.

I'm glad you see it the same way because I was like, I don't know. I don't know what investors think. I'm not an investor. I thought every investor's the same. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's also a good point. So then is it frowned upon or not? And I like that you said that if you, if you see what they've learned, that's the most important part, right? Because if there's no learnings, then yeah, history also says

something. Basically it's the same indication, success and failures, but if they have learned, then it makes a lot of sense that they take those learnings with them and they try and do different and they're still trying. That's the most important. Part. Yeah. Yeah. That's how I, I, I I see it. But, and I think you know, like I said, most of the investors that you would want that are empathetic to the founder, to the entrepreneurial experience will recognize that I.

Think Yeah, I think so too. One of the I made a mental note

when it came to kind of what we look for, What you look for in entrepreneurs and agility is something that stuck with me. I'm very curious to hear what you think of when you think of agility and your own experience with Altheos when you either had to pivot or really truly be agile based on the environment. Do you have an example of that? Well, you know, I think the the own product evolution is an example of agility.

So we started off as a content distribution platform, so video content being sort of one place stored and then pushed out to e-commerce platform. So a brand would upload their video content in our platform and then our code was embedded on bold.com Inter Toys Prenatal. So a bunch of these players in the Netherlands and Benelux. And as soon as somebody wanted to distribute it, they could choose what what e-commerce platform it would be shown on and then you know they could

sort of turn them on and off. And it was really about the sort of ease of use and the one to many connection. And then we realized actually there's a lot that can be done around personalization of content based on the consumer experience online, what they're looking at, what they're browsing, how they're interacting with the video.

So the, you know the agility of realizing actually we're selling right now to a certain client segment, but there seems to be more opportunity and a bit more innovation in this other area. How can we tweak the product and sort of prove or validate that there is this appetite to you know, move in the direction that we would like to bring the product.

So you know that that we had sprints that were built around experiments and you know, having a hypothesis basically that we wanted to either prove or disprove, we tried to be a bit iterative in how we would build our code and how we would build our platform platform. The upside of that is you learn quickly. The downside sometimes it's not always built, you know, as stably as you would like.

So, you know, if I were to do it all again there, there would be a more of a sort of learning environment aspect to the platform that could then be sort of built in a more sustainable way, a bit more resilient way from a coding perspective.

But yeah, a lot of it was just through my, I had a certain conviction also in what I wanted to see in the the media ecosystem, in the marketing ecosystem and realizing that technology could accomplish a lot of that to sort of personalize the story and the communication style from a brand to me, as they're starting to, as they're trying to tell me

sell me something. Yeah. And then realizing also that you could track conversion and impact of the change, the tweaks and the changes that you would make to this video content and seeing what the ultimate effect was on whether they bought the product or not, how long they were visiting the site, how much they revisited the site. So that was, you know, from an agility perspective in the product sense. And I think you know with the

other examples of agility is around the fundraising pitch process. You know, you start off with a version of your pitch that ends up iterating with every single conversation. You should try to learn something and see what resonates, what doesn't. I liked to again personalize things and sort of have different versions of my pitch deck depending on who I was talking to, like what I thought would resonate with them most.

So, yeah, I think the the agility in sort of reading the room a little bit whether that's your clients and taking that from a product perspective or stakeholders and whether that's your board or the the investors that you're trying to bring and of course you know team members. I noticed that at a certain point I started to recruit people that were very much like me, funnily enough. I did see that, yeah.

But you know, not not actually in in sort of how they looked or anything, but more in how they thought. Yeah, no, I'm, I'm the same. I wanna work. I, I, I, let's say in in high school or even in elementary school, I would be like, OK, I just need a team of Patrick's because then things would get done right? And then that's also when in interview processes I would be like, OK, are we kind of like minded? And a colleague actually pointed that out.

He was like, diversity is a thing, and when you hire for people that do things differently and might do things better than you on certain aspects, then you get a stronger team. Mm hmm. But that was very late, later in my career, I would say. I say it was also later in my career, too, that I know that I started to realize it and realize the downside of it because, and this again, is sort of like the diversity

conversation. Diversity is not always just about, you know, your, your skin color or your gender. It's about your thought process. It's about, you know how you look at, like your approach to life. And so that was something that I started to become a bit more agile once I made that realization and I brought on board somebody on the sales side of things who taught me so much. And in terms of commerciality and perseverance, resilience, I was never a person who enjoyed the sales process.

I still don't really but I'm much better at it now and negotiating and he he was or is you know more of a trader style communication. I've always really gotten along well with those folks who are you know candid tell it like it is will fast talkers commercially oriented and that served me and the company really well bringing on board somebody

like that. So eventually I've had that that agility in my hiring on the team, but it took, you know a couple of funny realizations to get to that point. Yeah, I love that. Thanks for sharing those

examples. It's really funny because I saw the name Otheos and then I was like this sounds familiar and I never figured out what it was. I saw Blocker on the website and I used to work at Blocker Very. Early. Oh my gosh. And then you said inter toys. And I'm like, that's where I saw it because we used that on the website when it came to video content. Oh my God, but. This was seven years ago. Yeah, yeah. Well. 6-7 years ago, yeah. We sold the company three years. Ago, Yeah, exactly.

So yeah, it was. Well, thank you for thank you for you. Funny. That is so funny. I love that it's a small world, especially in the startup ecosystem. Yeah, apparently it is. I I like that. It went full circle there. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing. Christine, what a pleasure this has been a. Lot of fun. Thank you, Patrick. Is this kind of what you imagined coming into this? Yeah, it was, you know, even more fun and conversational than I expected.

So it's good to hear. Yeah, I'm happy. You're a great interviewers like you host. You're a great podcaster. I think you should do one as well. When you're thinking about kind of skating your work, podcasting is a great way to do it. Yeah, yeah. Well, I like the. It's. Good, right? But I do have some names for you, so I'll e-mail you a couple of names that you might want to approach. I'm happy to facilitate an introduction. Awesome. Thank you so much.

I'm going to round it off. I'm going to put all Christina socials in the description below, check her out, let her know you came from our show. And with that being said, thank you for listening. We'll see you on the next one. Beyond coding.