20VC: From Selling 75% of Trade Republic for €600K to Raising $1.3BN at a $5.3BN Valuation, The Biggest Fundraising Lessons Having Raised $1.3BN From the Best in the World; Trade Republic CEO, Christian Hecker and Creandum General Partner Johan Brenner

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

The Twenty Minute VC

Finance, Venturecapital, Tech News, News, Siliconvalley, Technology, Investing, Startups, Business

4.4 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 16 February 2024

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Christian Hecker is the Founder and CEO of Trade Republic, the company making it easy and inexpensive for everyone with a smartphone to invest. To date, Christian has raised over $1.3BN for the company from the likes of Sequoia, Founders Fund, Accel and Creandum to name a few. Previously, Christian worked in Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s Investment Banking department.

Johan Brenner is a General Partner at Creandum. Johan has led Creandum’s investments in iZettle (acquired by PayPal for $2.2bn in 2018), Trade Republic, Klarna, Pleo, Neo4J, Vivino and more. Johan was previously a repeat entrepreneur, founding one of the first online brokers in Europe in 1997 (sold to E*TRADE in the US), then JobLine (sold to Monster), Bookatable (Michelin) and Tradera (Ebay).

In Today's Episode with Christian Hecker and Johan Brenner We Discuss:

1. Selling 75% of Trade Republic for €600,000:

How did Christian come to sell 75% of Trade Republic for €600K?
How did Johan and Creandum solve this challenge when they invested?
What are some of Christian's biggest pieces of advice on cap table construction?

2. Raising $1.3BN From the Best Investors in the World:

What are Christian's biggest fundraising lessons from raising $1.3BN from the best in the world?
How did Doug Leone and Sequoia come to lead Trade Republic's round? What was the meeting with Doug like? What questions did he ask? How did it go?
How important of a skill does Johan believe being a great fundraiser is for founders?

3. Scaling into Europe's Next Decacorn:

What are the single biggest issues that arise when scaling so fast? What breaks first?
Does CAC increase with time or decrease?
Why did Christian decide to stop paid marketing on Google and Facebook and stop spending $100M+ there overnight?
Why is Christian so bullish on influencer marketing? What works? What does not work?

4. Europe: A Hub for Innovation or a Retirement Home:

Does Christian believe that young people in Europe work hard enough?
What are the biggest challenges to scaling teams in Europe?
Why does Johan believe the biggest challenge in Europe is the lack of exit markets?
What can Europe do to improve and increase our chances of being successful?

Transcript

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0:00.0	Between, I think, 2015 and 19, I met over 200 VCs. I was rarely invited, and every time we were
0:07.4	invited, we almost never saw the partner. Nobody really gets anywhere close to writing a term sheet.
0:13.2	And then somebody said, well, you should meet this company in Dissldorf and Germany. And we met them,
0:18.0	and they were very eager to invest. But they said, well, I think we have leverage. And so it's either this or nothing. And so we said, well, it's better to have a tiny shareholding of something big than a big shareholding of nothing. And so we did it. And then we raised 600,000 euros back then and sold 75% of the company. This is 20 VC with me, Harry Stebbings, and Trade Republic is one of the most incredible
0:37.6	stories in startups, one of the fastest growing companies in Europe, now having raised over
0:42.3	$1.3 billion from some of the best, including Sequoia, Excel, Founders Fund and Creandum,
0:48.2	with their last round valuing them at $5.3 billion. And today we sit down with their co-founder
0:53.2	and CEO, Christian Hecker, and their
0:55.3	early lead investor, and one of the best fintech investors in Europe, Johann Brenner, general
0:59.8	partner at Creandum.
1:01.1	But before we dive into this incredible discussion, there's no shortage of helpful AI
1:05.4	tools out there, but using them means switching back and forth between yet another digital
1:10.0	tool. What was supposed to simplify your workflow just made it way more complicated.
1:14.6	Unless, of course, you're in Notion.
1:16.6	In Notion, you can automate the tedious tasks, like summarizing meeting notes or finding next steps,
1:22.6	really freeing you up to do the deep work that we all want to do.
1:26.6	And that's why Notion is used by
1:27.8	over 50%, 50% of Fortune 500 companies and teams that use Notion, send less emails,
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1:40.6	notion.com slash 20VC. And speaking of amazing products like Notion there, I'd like to talk to you about a company called Digits.
1:48.5	They're a full-service AI accounting company, and if you're in need of an accountant or looking to switch,
1:53.8	there's no better solution than Digits.
	...

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