Lino Remmen

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

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473 days ago, she had 400 LinkedIn followers & was trying to get her startup off the ground. Since then, she's: - Crossed 12k+ followers - Co-Founded a VC Fund, w3.fund - Is one of the most popular German web3 personalities But this wasn't sheer luck or coincidence. Here’s how we helped Vicktoria Klich blow up her personal brand: 2 years ago, Vicky was building an NFT project with 2 uni friends. They quickly realized that their target audience spent time on LinkedIn, But they lacked a proper strategy to generate content ideas consistently. That’s when Vicky & Henrik Bredenbals (her biz partner) reached out to me. I took her through our signature @notus personal branding process: #1: Foundations We: - Conducted a Deep Dive interview (to understand her story + vision) - Turned her LinkedIn profile into a landing page - Built the Content Archetype (the framework that tells us what to post) We then transitioned to: #2: The Content Engine We hosted biweekly Content Calls to: - Break down web3 trends  - Share timely founder updates - Talk about her story thus far We turned the call into post-drafts and published them 3x/week. Her first 3 posts crossed 100k+ impressions and went viral. #3: Launching the Podcast + Newsletter LinkedIn posts only scratched the surface of Vicky's expertise. The trust you build with a listener over a 60-min podcast (vs. 60-sec post) is exponentially higher… So Vicky and I: - Turned our Content Call into a recurring podcast, w3talk - Repurposed it into LinkedIn posts We also launched a web3 newsletter - "w3 catch of the week" - to help her 'own' her audience. It’s been going out once per week with 6k+ subscribers who tune in. #4: The Outcome After 1 year of working together, Vicky: - Became LinkedIn Top Voice - Hosted her first conference called w3vision - Launched a physical space, w3hub The Key Takeaway? Her founder brand = her most important distribution channel. The focus was to grow her business, not to turn her into the next big influencer. I want to say a big ‘Danke’ to Vicky for our super collaboration. Excited to see where she goes next :) PS: Book a demo with my team to do the same as Vicktoria: https://bit.ly/4e1GGMO #content #startups #personalbranding #demandgeneration #casestudy

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This is insane! In Germany 🇩🇪, if your startup has closed a VC funding round a notary will read every single word of the docs out loud in front of founders 😳 I couldn't believe it, so I had to verify it. It's 100% true: "In Germany, a notary is required to read out the entire document aloud to all parties present during the notarization process, ensuring everyone fully understands the legal terms and implications before signing". It seems Germany isn't serious about startups... h/t Nathan Benaich for calling this out P.S. check out 🔔linas.substack.com🔔, it's the only newsletter you need for all things when Finance meets Technology. For founders, builders, and leaders.

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AppAdvice Campaign Recap: 🚀 📥 9.2k+ downloads in less than 48 hours. ⭐ Hundreds of ratings and reviews. 📧 Dozens of feedback emails. Next Steps: Time to generate some revenue 💸. The AppAdvice free lifetime offer is over—new BF paywall activated. 🎉 Black Friday Deal enabled: Lifetime access is 75% off for a limited time! 📈 Expanding visibility: listing the app in multiple directories to drive traffic. 💰 Already earning some bucks from the new offer. #ios #buildinpublic

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The SaaS industry is still growing. But much more slowly. Last month I shared an Aleph statistic. Over the last 3 years we have invested in 17 companies. Only 1 out 17 was a classic horizontal SaaS company. SaaS was the single best business model of the last cycle (2008-2021), but the category has since entered a maturity stage (see graph below). This new report from the wonderful software team at Avenir clearly illustrates it. Growth rates for the combined SaaS industry are quickly declining as we are entering the later stages of maturity. In other words, there’s already an established software company in most sectors - and there’s very little room for entirely new software categories. At Aleph we still believe there’s an opportunity to build successful SaaS companies, but new entrants would have to carve out market share in existing industries and displace existing vendors. Vertical software is one area where lesser competition makes it more attractive, but entrepreneurs in crowded horizontal markets would have to work harder than ever before. Another key takeaway from the report - there are only 72 publicly traded companies (with market cap > $5Bn) with a combined market cap of $5.8Tr. However, 56% of this value is attributed to Microsoft alone, followed by a very long tail of lesser performing companies. Moreover, only 2 of the largest 11 companies were funded after the year 2000 (ServiceNow, CrowdStrike). If you are building or investing in SaaS, you should definitely read the full report by Jared Sleeper, Hannah Bao and David Prilutsky (link in the first comment).

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Me in 2019: “Hiring top product talent is hard” Me in 2024: “Keeping top talent is even harder” After five years of leading PMs, I can say that mastering managing high-performers yields the highest ROI. Nevertheless, taking high performers for granted will shutter your ‘house of cards’ in no time. In this post, I will dive into the ‘Promotion’ topic; the ‘Sacred cow’ leaders consciously try to keep vague. 1️⃣ 𝐓𝐨𝐩 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐠𝐞𝐭 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐝. - Promotion is the ultimate recognition (financial, social, and brand). - Misalignment around promotion can kill performance. - Dangling the promotion carrot quarter after quarter will break trust. 2️⃣ 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫’𝐬 𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐢𝐬 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐬𝐮𝐜𝐜𝐞𝐬𝐬. - You hire top talent ( = High Performance) to do job X - Ensure the talent does job X for a long time ( = Duration) - Formula: (High Performance) X (Duration) = (Company Success). - Promotion means they no longer do job X. 3️⃣ 𝐑𝐞𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐝 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐡𝐢𝐠𝐡 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐨𝐭𝐞 𝐥𝐨𝐧𝐠-𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐦 𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐬. - Reward performance peaks (take care of your team). - Promote a long-term performance upward trend. - Invest in building your team members’ long-term defensible careers. 4️⃣ 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐲 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐫𝐢𝐝𝐠𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐠𝐚𝐩. - Communicate promotion criteria early, starting with interviews. - Hire only those happy to do job X for at least three years. - Never use empty promotion promises as a hiring tactic. 🟢 Wrapping up with a few 𝐛𝐨𝐧𝐮𝐬 𝐭𝐢𝐩𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐏𝐌𝐬: 1. Ensuring that your work materializes in building a successful company has a higher long-term impact than a premature promotion. 2. The statement ‘Join at level Y and you will get promoted in no time’ indicates a questionable/toxic culture. Don’t take the job. 3. And a counter-argument: As a PM, avoid taking a role you are uncomfortable doing for at least three years. *** What do you love/hate about my ‘promotion’ philosophy? Share in the comments. 👉 P.S. The link to the full write-up is in the comments. #productmanagement #productleadership #productmanagers #product #promotion #leadingdown

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No big launch, no massive ad spend—just millions of users. How? By surprise. Command AI (fka CommandBar) is one of my favorite startup stories. They went from 0 to 25 million end users - within months 🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 🚀 ... all without a traditional go-to-market strategy. My 5 key learnings👇 1. Focus on solving one real problem - Their product started by solving one clear pain point for a single customer. - That focus led to a solution that resonated with millions. - It’s easy to get distracted, but simplicity wins. 2. Build for your customers, not just the market - CommandAI didn’t have a master plan to reach millions. - Instead, they got close to our users, listened, and adapted quickly. - When you build alongside your customers, growth follows. 3. Let word-of-mouth do the heavy lifting - CommandAI didn’t invest in big marketing campaigns. - But their users became advocates, spreading the word organically. - If your product truly solves a problem, people will share it. 4. Sometimes, speed beats perfection - CommandAI didn’t wait for the product to be perfect before launching. - By moving fast, they learned and iterated faster than competitors. - Progress over perfection is key, especially in the early stages. 5. Embrace the unexpected - The explosive growth was never part of the plan. - By staying agile, they rode the wave instead of fighting it. - You can’t predict everything—be ready to pivot. Want to know more about how they stumbled into success? Check it out on YouTube: 👉 www. youtube. com @enzoavigo (remove spaces) Special thanks to Command AI & James Evans for sharing his journey!

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📣 Free founders-only event below! I often see founders get a lot of early traction in signing customers and then hit a wall when trying to scale that repeatedly. Why?? Maybe it's because: 1️⃣ that 1st group of customers came through warm intros from your accelerator batch 2️⃣ you've already combed through industry connections from your previous career 3️⃣ you're just good at brute-force selling but you're only one person 4️⃣ you are still narrowing in on product market fit Next week I'm hosting a free, founders-only candid discussion with two people who have had to break through this wall out of necessity and now coach countless founders on this. More on our speakers: 📈 Ian Illig took his 1st job out of college at a friend's startup (employee #1). He quickly found himself trying to sell a product that was still finding its market fit. Fast forward years later and Ian had completely built out the sales team and revenue, allowing the company to get acquired. And then he turned around and did the same thing again with the same founding team. 👀 Sonia Baschez was one of the 1st employees at Atmos, a consumer & builder-facing product for homebuilding. She developed early marketing channels & helped the company grow from Pre-seed to Series A. Sonia optimized product launches to reach the right customers, a challenging feat given their core customers are actively NOT in the tech bubble (aka Techcrunch and a thread on X are not going to do the trick). Whether they know it or not, both Ian and Sonia have been secret superpowers for me as I've grown The Council Fund and supported portfolio companies. I'm excited to share their playbooks & expertise with founders for FREE next Wednesday. Join us 12-1pm Pacific! Link to RSVP in comments below ;)

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

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List of Startups Receiving Funding in #Germany. Check out the list of #Germany-funded startups available for your reference at any time. View the list now https://lnkd.in/dc9emGbb #startup #startups #vc #venturecapital #investmentbanking #privateequity #managementconsulting #b2b #founders #entrepreneurs

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This is the OnLoop activities-per-week chart for every week of 2023 and 2024. 2024 will forever be the year we finally built a product that delivered real value—after four years of relentless effort. In VC lingo, this timeline might be considered "too slow". And many people write you off. But over time, you realize none of that truly matters. What matters is building something that moves the world forward, even a little bit. I wouldn’t call it PMF (Product-Market Fit) just yet, as we’re still figuring out a high-ROI GTM motion. But consistent activity growth over long periods of time isn’t a fluke. It’s the result of grit, persistence, and a lot of lessons learned. Huge credit to Johannes Erlach and Cara Chiang for leading this charge and Jin Hong Chin for ably shepherding the build team. Some of the world’s best companies—like Figma and Notion—found PMF in years 4 and 5. The key now for us is nurturing this spark with the right investors, partners, and customers. Stay tuned—there’s exciting news ahead in the coming weeks! As we approach the end of 2024, I can say this has been one of the toughest years of my career. It’s aged me, and for the first time, I’ve felt the weight of true burnout. But I believe I’ve emerged stronger for it. 2025 has a good ring to it—and with hopefully some stamina refilling in the tank, I’ll be ready for what's next. Vamos.

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I hear the same tune across boardrooms in established companies everywhere: "AI is our growth opportunity!" But let’s be honest – that’s not going to happen. Well, except for the consultants. Here’s the bigger picture: Two major macroeconomic forces have shaped the business environment over recent years: 1️⃣ The ongoing industrial revolution, once called "digital transformation" and now rebranded as "Artificial Intelligence" (The hype around generative AI is just the latest incarnation of this transformation). 2️⃣ Black swan events like Covid-19, or the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, are becoming the norm, not the exception. Global crises are emerging at an increasingly rapid pace. Large, established businesses inevitably struggle to thrive in this environment, and here’s why: 𝒀𝒐𝒖 𝒄𝒂𝒏𝒏𝒐𝒕 𝒕𝒓𝒂𝒏𝒔𝒇𝒐𝒓𝒎 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒄𝒐𝒓𝒆 𝒐𝒇 𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒃𝒖𝒔𝒊𝒏𝒆𝒔𝒔 𝒎𝒐𝒅𝒆𝒍! No amount of agility (or AI) will allow a large, established organization to fully change its business model. And when it comes to growth, not efficiency gains, 99% of the AI hype is simply that: empty promises. But in an era of high uncertainty, one strategy stands the test of time: diversification. Rather than viewing AI as a growth panacea, it’s time to reframe the AI discussion as a diversification opportunity, not just a technological one. Without that shift, I'm afraid growth won’t happen. #diversification #businessstrategy #growth

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In Startup Growth The Biggest Barriers Are Often Unseen 🚧 Startups thrive on innovation, speed, and adaptability. 🌟 But what happens when outdated or excessive regulations slow them down? Recently, I learned about a law in Germany 🇩🇪 requiring notaries to read out every single word of VC funding documents aloud during notarization. Imagine sitting through hours of legal text being read aloud before you can close your funding round. 😳 While this might ensure transparency, it clearly doesn’t align with the pace and agility startups need. This got me thinking: what are other regulations worldwide that inadvertently stifle startups? Here’s my top 10 list of questionable laws and policies that preclude startups from achieving their full potential: 1️⃣ Germany 🇩🇪: Notaries must read all funding docs aloud—slowing down critical deals. 2️⃣ India 🇮🇳: Angel tax laws that discourage early-stage investments by taxing funds as income. 3️⃣ France 🇫🇷: Burdensome labor laws making it hard to hire or fire employees, especially for scaling startups. 4️⃣ China 🇨🇳: Strict data localization rules requiring businesses to store data within the country. 5️⃣ United States 🇺🇸: H-1B visa caps limiting startups’ ability to hire global talent. 6️⃣ Japan 🇯🇵: High minimum capital requirements for starting a business. 7️⃣ South Korea 🇰🇷: Extensive licensing requirements for fintech startups, delaying market entry. 8️⃣ Italy 🇮🇹: Bureaucratic delays for registering new businesses—often taking weeks to months. 9️⃣ Australia 🇦🇺: Complex R&D tax incentive processes that make claiming innovation grants difficult. 🔟 Brazil 🇧🇷: Heavy import taxes on tech and hardware, driving up startup costs. These regulations highlight the gap between governance and innovation. While some rules are designed to protect stakeholders, others desperately need modernization to foster entrepreneurial growth. What crazy or unnecessary startup-related laws have you encountered? Let’s discuss below 👇

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Are these the most frequently asked questions by developers when using a headless CMS like Storyblok? Based on our experience with clients, they are. 👉 What are the steps to set up development, staging and production environments? 👉 What is the best way to handle global data? 👉 How can you create reusable components? 👉 What methods are used to render global components in a visual editor? 👉 How do you render multiple pages as a reference on a single page, such as in automated related blog posts? 👉 What are the guidelines for setting up a sitemap? 👉 What is the best way to handle multiple languages, at either the folder or field level? 👉 How should you handle alternative text tags for images in different languages? Which should be the first one I talk about?  And do you have questions I should add?

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Founders should be able to sell secondary whenever they’d like to do so. If you make something - and that thing is valuable - you should be able to sell it. Actually selling that secondary can be tricky. Let's go through the actual steps (or read the whole essay https://lnkd.in/eajr238N): 1. Get the term sheet. 2. Negotiate “normal” major terms: dollars in, price, board, etc. 3. Don’t forget about re-vesting. Founders often do. 4. Sign the term sheet. Go out and start figuring out allocations for the remaining dollars. 5. If you’re lucky enough to have more demand than you do space, you have the opportunity to sell some secondary. Figure out how much excess demand you have. 6. Talk to your lawyer and your accountant about what you want to do. Ask them to explain the pros and cons of selling secondary as common shares vs. preferred shares (which is a bit out of scope for this essay). 7. Decide how much secondary you want - ideally this is “reasonable,” which is a moving target. One good way to frame “reasonable” is to give a clear reason as to why you want to sell. This is particularly important in early rounds. Good reasons include: “Need to pay off student debt” and “Just had our first kid after years at below market salary.” Less good reasons include “Need a new Porsche” and “LinkedIn ghostwriter prices went up.” 8. Go to your new lead investor and say “Hey! Great news! We have 2x demand for available shares. It would mean quite a lot to me and my cofounder if we could take (insert reasonable amount here) off the table because (insert reasonable reason) here. Obviously as our lead, you get first access. Sound good?” 9. Work with the buyer to figure out if you are selling common shares or preferred shares. (a) If you are selling common shares, and the buyer is willing to buy these at the same price as preferred, great! Just make sure that you aren’t creating any challenges around voting by giving those shares to an outside party. Also, talk to your lawyer and accountant. (b) If you are selling preferred shares, go back to your lawyer and accountant to make sure you’re not creating any issues for yourself. You’ll also need to confirm with your existing investors that they are ok with you doing this because it will change the preference stack - which impacts them. 10. Triple check your numbers. 11. Complete your transaction and close the round.

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Something we’ve been asked a lot during the past months: How do we synchronize our Linkedin and our CRM? First part of the problem is a lot of jobs and especially VCs don’t use email or phone to reach out. Truth is, a lot of VCs (almost all that we've met) use Linkedin because it’s easier to find and qualify a deal, then send a message. For most of them it's the primary channel to source new deals - thoughts and prayers to all the analysts fighting for their lives with the Sales Navigator lists with tons of filter « Stealth » « School is: Harvard, HEC, LSE » « New company: <1 year ». While their might be a bunch of solution that allow you to add leads to CRM, rarely they allow you to keep track of updates. Did the person answer your first message? If she did, can you track easily what you discussed about? => This is often a black hole, no information comes out of it. And while I could say we have found many custom work arounds, sometimes it’s best to say: « There’s a product for that ». This product is Surfe. And it allow us to: ➡️ Sync contact with our CRM ➡️ Fill automatically the contact properties (job title, email, etc). It also does the same for custom properties (ex: in our case if it’s an analyst or not) ➡️ Enrich missing informations like phone number, scholar background, time in the firm, you name it. ➡️ Sync messages with your CRM => To me the greatest feature of all time, it allow us to track what we’ve said to who and not leaving us a blind spot. Now we can also make list to prospect directly on our CRM which is much more convenient So of course you can build a solution from scratch using Zapier (I’d personally advise to use Make) to do the same. But it’s going to take you a lot more time than just buying a product (ask Tristan Camilli and Dimitri Beubry about it). More than often when you have a lean approach and a small team, in the « make VS buy » debate when it comes to tools, the buy makes more sense. It saves you some time and some money. And if you ever want to try out: https://lnkd.in/eHv5aaZK PS: contrary to what you may think, this post is absolutely not sponsored. PPS: But the link above is a referral link.

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Nice, steady organic growth… Looks good, right? But without context... it doesn’t mean anything. Some might say: "This chart is bad. our VC-backed company hit hypergrowth." Others might think: "Impressive... I wish I could get there as a solo SaaS bootstrapper." Context is everything. For context, I’m a solo SaaS founder. I built thruuu, an SEO content solution, from the ground up. - Developed the website - Wrote the content, all on my own. I get support from a developer, and a freelance writer contributes 2-3 articles a month. Here’s where we are today: - 15,000 visitors/month - 1,000+ signups/month Managing effort vs. impact is key. You need to know what’s possible with your resources and find strategies that maximize your output. I’ve followed a few essential strategies to grow my traffic. And yes, it’s possible, even solo. I’ll share how to grow a SaaS website (even with a small team) this Saturday at the MB Summit in Milan. Want to join? PS: Contact Marco Maltraversi if you want to join.

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