Startup Notes

Martin Bell is a global startup advisor, angel investor, and Founder & CEO of Bell Ventures. He advises corporates, investors, governments, and start-ups. He is a thought leader and a keynote speaker on the topic of company building within organizations.

Martin was previously with Rocket Internet and helped to build ~50 companies. At Rocket Internet, he was the chief architect of a 100-day launch process through which he took 20 companies. Moreover, he led more than 100 due diligences for 25 growth-stage companies and was an interim executive in 5 companies, including great success cases like Zalando, Delivery Hero, and Foodora.

In this episode, we talk about Martin’s journey in the startup world and dive deep into his „100 Task Playbook“ for setting up, launching, and scaling a tech company.

Thomas Wilke and Alex Meyer are the founders and General Partners of VC firm 42CAP. Based in Munich, they are currently managing two funds with a focus on seed-stage investments. Their portfolio includes investments into startups like Kaia, CrossEngage, and MoBerries.

Thomas has a vast background as a technology & product leader for complex marketing and e-commerce applications. He was a founder of eCircle, which was sold to Teradata in 2012.

Alex has a longstanding experience in scaling SaaS companies and exec-level M&A transactions. He was the initial VC investor in eCircle and quickly after that joined the company as its CFO.

In this episode, Thomas and Alex tell us about their journey of building 42CAP from scratch over the last years. Among others, we discuss their VC approach and outlook on the current market for tech investments.

Since 2014, Sebastian Stricker has been a true trailblazer of social entrepreneurship. First, by founding award-winning app ShareTheMeal that collaborates with the UN World Food Programme and helps to feed children in poverty and crisis situations around the world through donations. And for the past two years, by building startup 'share' that is showing that an FMCG business can also create a direct positive social impact.

The concept behind share is simple, yet unique: If you buy one of its high-quality consumer products like snack bars or soap, another one of it gets donated to people in need. The startup’s '1+1' principle is the foundation for the 'social consumption' approach it is bringing to the FMCG industry.

In this episode, we speak with Sebastian about his learnings from building a social FMCG startup. Among others, we talk about mistakes he made, why scale matters, and how luck plays an important role in being successful.

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We already once spoke to Sebastian about social entrepreneurship back in 2017 when he was still CEO of ShareTheMeal. Listen to his thoughts back then on why the timing for social startups has never been better here: bit.ly/2uxpxqM

Being a serial founder and investor, Frank Thelen has an impressive track record over the last 25 years with having reached 100+ million consumers in 60 countries, receiving several awards, and becoming not just a renowned keynote speaker but also one of the leading voices of the German startup scene.

As CEO of Freigeist Capital, Frank invests in early-stage tech startups as well as promising companies in the food industry. Notable investments and ventures as a founder include among others ip.labs (sold to Fujifilm in 2008), Scanbot, MyTaxi, Wunderlist, Lilium, Pitch, and Little Lunch. In 2014, Frank joined the prime time TV show "Dragons’ Den", broadcasted in Germany as "Die Höhle der Löwen", making him known also to the wider public. His bestselling autobiography “Startup-DNA” was published in 2018.

In this episode, moderator Christian Miele (Partner at e.ventures) and Frank elaborate on different exit options, whether founders should have an exit strategy from the beginning or not, the process of selling your startup, and how to negotiate the right price for your company.

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“From Scratch” is an exclusive series of masterclasses produced by Startup Notes and McKinsey Digital in Berlin that brings together Europe’s top entrepreneurs, investors, and innovators to give exclusive lectures on digitalization.

Kaya Taner is Co-Founder & CEO of Honeypot. The startup offers an innovative online recruiting platform for the best tech talent out there. It makes it easier for specialists like software developers or product owners to find new jobs that actually match their expectations as companies have to present and pitch themselves to them instead of the traditional other way round.

Recently, Honeypot got acquired by Xing (the leading online business network in German-speaking markets) for a sum of reportedly up to 57m€ only 4 years after it was founded.

In this episode, Kaya shares what it takes to find, hire, and retain the best talents to build world-class tech teams from scratch.