20VC: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank | Why My Biggest Mistakes Came From Listening to VCs | Why 100 VCs Turned Us Down | Why European Founders Are Tougher Than US Founders with Johannes Reck, GetYourGuide
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 23 June 2025
⏱️ 77 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Johannes Reck is the Founder and CEO of GetYourGuide, the $2BN company that started with a holiday to China and nothing to do. For the first two years, GetYourGuide received only 5 bookings. Today the platform is worth $2BN. They have raised from some of the best, including an amazing story with Masa Son and Softbank.
In Today’s Episode We Discuss:
01:45 – “I Regret Our Series A — Too Much Dilution”
03:50 – US vs Europe: Why European Founders Are Tougher
06:10 – “Germany Spends €100B on Pensions, €7B on VC – It’s Insane”
08:40 – Why Europe Fails to Build $10B Startups
10:25 – 90% of Our Team in Berlin Aren’t German. Here’s Why.
12:20 – Recruiting Netflix’s Head of Growth Nearly Killed Me
16:20 – “We Had 5 Bookings in 2 Years. 3 Were My Mum.”
18:00 – “I Asked My Parents to Remortgage Their House for a Pivot”
21:15 – The Vatican Tour That Changed Everything
23:30 – Why VCs Rejected GetYourGuide 100+ Times
28:30 – The $14M Series A That Nearly Killed the Company
31:00 – “I Hired All the Wrong People – Then Laid Off 30%”
36:30 – The $450M SoftBank Deal... Then COVID Hit
40:00 – “We Went to $0 in Revenue in 3 Weeks”
42:10 – The Sequoia Tree Mindset: Grow Through Fire
49:30 – What SoftBank’s Masa Son Was Really Like in Person
52:00 – How He Thinks About Secondary, Wealth, and Not Losing His Soul
55:30 – “My Worst Hires Came from Listening to VCs Too Much”
58:30 – Angel Investing in Trade Republic and TravelPerk: My Lessons
01:01:00 – Do You Have to Work 7 Days a Week to Win?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I would have not raised as big of a series A. |
| 0:02.5 | Looking back, I think it was too much dilution. |
| 0:05.1 | What did change was that suddenly I felt like a celebrity. |
| 0:09.5 | That was the moment when I made the biggest mistakes. |
| 0:11.9 | If you have a Sequoia Capital or an Index or a Spark Capital on your cap table, the reality |
| 0:18.0 | is that your next round will be so much easier. |
| 0:20.7 | This is 20 VC with me, Harry Stubbings. |
| 0:22.8 | Now, today we feature one of the most incredible startup stories from Europe. |
| 0:25.8 | In the first two years of Get Your Guide existing, they did just five bookings. |
| 0:31.9 | Today, the platform does 35,000 per day. |
| 0:35.9 | They're worth $2 billion. |
| 0:40.9 | The show today has so many great stories, |
| 0:46.7 | including how Johanna's rec, the co-founder and CEO joining us, got a $400 million check from SoftBank and Massa Sun and the Napoleon portrait behind Massa that was |
| 0:52.3 | present throughout the whole meeting. This is an incredible journey and I hope you like the show today. |
| 0:58.0 | But before we dive into the show today, I love seeing the team come together to make this show happen. |
| 1:03.0 | What I don't love is trying to keep track of all the information, the data and the projects that we're working on across dozens of platforms, products and tools. That's why we use Coda, the all-in-one collaborative workspace that's helped 50,000 teams all over the world get on the same page. |
| 1:18.6 | Offering the flexibility of docs with the structure of spreadsheets, Coda facilitates deeper teamwork and quicker creativity, |
| 1:25.6 | and their turnkey AI solution, the intelligence of Coda |
| 1:29.1 | brain, is a game changer. Powered by Grammally, Coda is entering a new phase of innovation |
| 1:34.2 | and expansion aiming to redefine productivity for the AI era. Whether you're a startup looking to |
| 1:39.6 | organize the chaos while staying nimble or an enterprise organization looking for better alignment, |
| 1:45.1 | Coder matches your working style. Its seamless workspace connects to hundreds of your favorite |
... |
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