Veronika Riederle de Demodesk
Café du fondateur épisode 041
Je suis Jeroen de Salesflare et voici Founder Coffee.
Toutes les deux semaines, je prends un café avec un fondateur différent. Nous discutons de notre vie, de nos passions, de ce que nous avons appris, ... dans le cadre d'un entretien intime, pour apprendre à connaître la personne qui se cache derrière l'entreprise.
Pour ce quarante et unième épisode, je me suis entretenu avec Veronika Riederle, cofondatrice et PDG de Demodesk, l'une des principales solutions vidéo pour les démonstrations de vente.
Veronika a étudié tout ce qu'il faut savoir pour devenir entrepreneur à l'université. Après avoir passé environ 7 ans dans des fonctions stratégiques chez Bain, Audi et Telefonica, elle a décidé de sauter le pas.
She and her co-founder found a way to make the sales demo process more efficient, and they managed to enter Y Combinator with their startup. With a team of 20, they’re now working hard to build the product and the business.
We talk about why to focus very hard on the product first before starting to sell, how to properly organize a remote team, and how to know whether you’ve reached Product Market Fit.
Bienvenue à Founder Coffee.
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Jeroen :
Hi Veronika. It’s great to have you on Founder Coffee.
Veronika :
Bonjour Jeroen, merci de m'accueillir. C'est un plaisir de parler avec vous.
Jeroen :
You’re the co-founder of Demodesk. For those who don’t know what Demodesk does yet, what do you guys do?
Veronika :
Nous sommes le premier outil intelligent de réunion en ligne pour les conversations avec les clients. La principale différence avec des outils comme Zoom ou GoToMeeting réside dans notre approche du partage d'écran. Alors que les outils existants se contentent d'enregistrer une vidéo de votre bureau local et de la transmettre à l'autre partie, nous ne faisons rien de tout cela. Nous mettons en place un affichage virtuel auquel tout le monde peut accéder en cliquant sur un lien. Il y a encore d'autres avantages, mais dans l'ensemble, nous vous aidons à automatiser les flux de travail, à réduire toutes les frictions que vous avez lorsque vous parlez à votre client, et à fournir aux représentants des ventes et de l'assistance tout ce dont ils ont besoin en temps réel pour avoir une conversation parfaite avec le client qui convertit et génère un client heureux au bout du compte.
Jeroen :
So if I understand it well, you make sure they don’t have to install anything on their computer. It just works in your browser like a sort of WebRTC technology – just in the browser, the modern things, and you also reduce friction around the booking process, et cetera. Is that correct?
Veronika :
Exactement. En ce qui concerne les téléchargements, il n'y a pas de téléchargements pour personne. L'hôte et le participant n'ont donc pas à télécharger quoi que ce soit. Il suffit d'un clic dans le navigateur pour que la réunion s'ouvre. Nous automatisons également l'ensemble du processus de planification. Nous offrons des fonctionnalités similaires à celles de Calendly ou de Chili Piper pour vous aider à automatiser l'ensemble du processus de planification pour vous-même et au sein de l'équipe. Ensuite, nous synchronisons toutes les données avec Salesforce et HubSpot, ce qui permet d'automatiser la documentation finale.
Jeroen :
Saisissez-vous également des données au cours de l'appel, et à quoi ressemblent ces données ? Peut-on prendre des notes dans votre interface ?
Veronika :
Yeah, you can. Exactly. Because you’re not sharing your local desktop, but you are displaying the content on a separate virtual display, we can basically show anything that we want on the sales rep’s side without the customer seeing it. So when you’re having a demo or a meeting with someone, everything that you want to present is being loaded on a virtual display. But in addition, only your side or the sales rep side should have all the content available that you want pre-loaded in your playbook that you need during the call. You have a window where you can make meeting notes, also write in the same meeting window without the customer seeing it. And then when you make those meeting notes, you also have the possibility to sync that back to your CRM in a structured way and directly push that to specific teams that you want.
Jeroen :
Je l'ai, je l'ai.
Veronika :
It would also work with Salesflare. We have an open API. I’m just building up the product and connecting it to more and more CRMs.
Jeroen :
Cool. Yeah, I’m looking forward to that. What were you doing at the moment when you started Demodesk? Where did the exact spark come from?
Veronika :
En fait, mon cofondateur a commencé à mettre au point une nouvelle technologie de partage d'écran. Il y a presque trois ans, il a eu l'idée initiale qu'il devait y avoir un meilleur moyen de partager du contenu à distance. Nous pensions que le processus de partage d'écran, la technologie de partage d'écran telle qu'elle existe encore aujourd'hui, était tout simplement dépassée. Imaginez, tout passe par le nuage et se déplace à travers le nuage de toute façon, donc si vous présentez un logiciel comme Salesflare, fondamentalement la plupart des produits SaaS, tout va probablement directement dans le nuage.
Veronika :
There are some extensions that are locally available, but mostly it’s hosted in the cloud. And if you want to share and send something, the only way of doing it is really just opening your local browser on your local desktop, pulling that website or that web application into your local browser, then again turning on the screen share, making a video of your local desktop, again uploading that video to the cloud and sending it to the customer, which is a very inefficient detour. So he thought why not leave in the content that’s already in the cloud where it is, and then share it from there. And that’s where the original idea came from.
Jeroen :
Qu'est-ce que vous faisiez quand vous avez eu cette idée ?
Veronika :
C'est mon cofondateur qui en a eu l'idée. Il a travaillé avec quelques autres sociétés de vente, également en tant que développeur, et a travaillé avec des départements de vente et a vu à quel point le processus de démonstration en particulier est inefficace.
Jeroen :
Yeah, okay. So it’s sort of a tech-driven initial start? There is tech, we should use it, and it makes sense to use it in sales.
Veronika :
He just saw the process of the screen sharing, saw how inefficient that is, and what disadvantages it has. It’s slow. It’s laggy. You have to download an application. You cannot collaboratively work on it. There are just also a lot of other disadvantages that come with it. So he, as I said, started to think about a better way of sharing content remotely.
Veronika :
He basically also saw the biggest potential in sales customer-facing conversation. We were also looking at a couple of use cases when we started working together. My background is in consulting, so I had been working for a couple of startups before, but then I spent several years in management consultancy, Bain & Company. And then I also had a lot of clients that I was advising on their sales strategy. But also myself having to make a lot of pitches, like having customer conversations. In the end, every conversation is the possibility to sell something to the customer or sell yourself to the customer, so you’re basically always selling something, or having a specific goal.
Veronika :
If you could use technology to better achieve that goal, and we in our case, first that was sales. But if you can do that, I think that’s a very exciting use case. We are using technology to basically enable everyone to have a better customer conversation by providing you with everything that you need in real-time to have that conversation. Or to have a better conversation.
Jeroen :
Yeah. I’m looking at your LinkedIn profile here. You spent five years at Bain. You must have advanced there quite a lot in that time, I suppose.
Veronika :
Oui, je suis parti en tant que chef de projet. Je voyageais beaucoup. La plupart du temps, j'ai travaillé en Allemagne et aux États-Unis, mais aussi en Europe. J'ai travaillé en Suisse et au Royaume-Uni. C'était donc un travail très international, qui nécessitait beaucoup de déplacements.
Jeroen :
Yeah, and before that, it seems you mostly worked in corporate jobs, Telefonica and Audi and Outfittery. That’s the one who sends you clothes, right?
Veronika :
Yeah, exactly. It’s the European version I’d say now. Back then, I also worked for Skylight. They were also a startup and there were only a few people. Now they are over 100, I think maybe over 200 now. I think they shrank again, but yeah.
Jeroen :
Il semble que vous ayez commencé votre carrière en entreprise, que vous vous soyez essayé à l'atmosphère des start-ups, que vous soyez devenu consultant, puis que vous ayez commencé à faire vos propres affaires.
Veronika :
Yes, exactly. For me, it was always clear that I want to build something, that I want to work in a startup, either have my own or work in a very small one, and then help build a product that really helps humans become better in what they do. I think software is the only thing that can do that, so for me it was always clear. Then I was also actively looking for opportunities and then talking with a lot of friends. That’s when Alex and I also started working together.
Jeroen :
Oui. Vous disiez que c'était toujours clair pour vous, à partir de quel âge dois-je imaginer ?
Veronika :
Say that again. I’m sorry. I didn’t get that.
Jeroen :
Vous disiez qu'il a toujours été clair pour vous que vous vouliez créer une entreprise. À partir de quel âge pensez-vous que cela a été le cas ?
Veronika :
For me, it started a bit later. Not when I was very little, but more in university. I studied in Munich, and there’s an additional program at the university. It’s optional. You can take that, but you also have to apply. It’s called CDTM. It’s very founder-focused. They basically educate you to become a future founder. And a lot of great companies also did emerge out of the CDTM. That is actually where I realized that this is actually the thing that I wanted to do longer term.
Jeroen :
Comment avez-vous eu l'idée de commencer votre premier emploi chez Telefonica ? Était-ce un moyen d'en apprendre davantage sur le monde des affaires avant de voler de vos propres ailes ?
Veronika :
Well, it was actually before that, it was during university. It was an internship. So it was not a full-time job, but also there’re a lot of things that I learned there. I worked in the strategy department and was looking at new technologies in the competitive space, and together with the strategy team trying to think about a way of benefiting from future trends. And one of the things that we looked at, back at that time, was messaging as a trend. Right now it seems kind of funny, but back then it was a huge thing. Telefonica was thinking about also launching their own messenger to capitalize upon that trend. Looking backwards of course it doesn’t make any sense, when you have WhatsApp and Facebook and all the others. But it was that time. And it was also quite exciting. I also saw a lot there.
Jeroen :
Oui. Votre ambition de devenir entrepreneur vient-elle de vos parents ? Ou y a-t-il quelqu'un d'autre qui vous a principalement influencé ?
Veronika :
No, not necessarily my parents. It was more friends and just that I do find a lot of joy in building things. It just gives me a lot of energy building any kind of stuff, for instance furniture, being in the house with my dad when I was a kid. Just building something and creating something gives me a lot of energy. And I think that’s why a startup, and especially tech is the right thing, because with software you can make a lot of things in a very short timeframe, and also create a huge benefit for users. And save time and make their processes more efficient by actually creating that software. It’s just very motivating.
Jeroen :
Yeah, understood. I hear this from a lot of startup founders that the main reason they became a startup founder is because they like building things and they get energy from it. Makes a lot of sense. Are there any startup founders that you look up to, or startups that you think are doing things right, and that’s where I want to go and I want Demodesk to go?
Veronika :
Well, I think YC definitely has a lot of amazing companies, and while we went through YC last year, we also had the chance to listen to a couple of other very successful founders that came by for founders’ dinners. And yeah, a couple of companies, right? For example, Stripe or Mathilde from Front is very inspiring. Then Peter Reinhardt from Segment, also a very inspiring person. And what I also find particularly interesting is the topic around Product Market Fit and the two biggest pieces in that space I think is the one from Peter Reinhardt from Segment describing Product Market Fit as kind of an explosion, and Rahul from Superhuman as a structured way of constantly asking customers what they want and what they miss about your product, until you reach a certain point.
Veronika :
Je pense que ces fondateurs ont réussi à adapter leur produit au marché. Le fait que nous comprenions comment ils ont réussi à adapter leur produit au marché est particulièrement inspirant. Superhuman et Segment sont deux excellents exemples à cet égard et montrent qu'il n'y a pas qu'une seule voie, mais qu'il y a différentes façons d'y parvenir.
Jeroen :
En tout cas, c'est certain. Il est toujours bon de voir les deux perspectives. D'ailleurs, pour les auditeurs, Rahul de Superhuman a participé à l'un des épisodes précédents où il parle également de l'adéquation produit-marché et de la manière dont il travaille pour atteindre ses objectifs annuels, ainsi que du type de processus qu'il a mis en place pour y parvenir. Je vous recommande vivement de l'écouter. Peut-être un peu plus sur ce que vous faites concrètement pour que les auditeurs comprennent. Combien êtes-vous aujourd'hui chez Demodesk ?
Veronika :
We’re now 20 people.
Jeroen :
You’re 20 people, so in what sort of phase would you say you are as a company? And do you think you’ve hit Product Market Fit? Are you working towards it, or?
Veronika :
Yeah, that’s a good question. I think it depends on what’s your definition for Product Market Fit. That comes back to the question or back to the topic right? For Superhuman, you also wrote a blog post about it. It’s having 40% of the customers that at least would be somehow sad if they wouldn’t have your product anymore. He used a very strict definition. For Segment, it’s more hitting that landmine that basically causes an explosion. Having a Product Market Fit feels like an explosion.
Veronika :
I think it’s not as easy as that, because depending on who you’re selling to and the type of the product you’re selling, there are different ways. And I think we can also have Product Market Fit at one point in time and then lose it again. I also heard that, and then, if you do have a Product Market Fit, you also need to have a Product Channel Fit in order to basically sell your product properly.
Veronika :
But for me personally, the best definition for Product Market Fit in B2B SaaS is reaching 1 million ARR. And we’re not quite there yet, but we’re on a very good way.
Jeroen :
Cool. Pour comprendre, qu'est-ce qui vous empêche de dormir ces derniers temps ?
Veronika :
Well, I think definitely the current crisis. Demodesk in particular is for sure less affected than other companies, because we also in some kind of way do profit for the over-trend to meetings being more remote, and also companies having to sell remotely. However, we also have a lot of customers that do themselves sell to retail and hospitality businesses, who are struggling, and also just the general economic conditions. And increasing depth and increasing unemployment rates, especially in the U.S. I think we’re now at almost 23%. I think that’s definitely something that does keep me up at night, if there is anything. I typically sleep quite well. But yeah, I don’t know how you see it, but definitely the current situation is somewhat something that I think a lot about.
Jeroen :
Yeah, it helps in some ways and it doesn’t in others, I suppose. What figures does it mostly affect for you? Is it mostly new revenue, or is it mostly churn?
Veronika :
Well, for now I think for us it was more or less fine. We did see little churn, so definitely there were a couple of companies that are not doing any sales at all at the moment, because basically the industry’s dead. Like hospitality and off-line retail. Off-line events, also the same thing. Yeah, it’s definitely a little bit tough at the moment. But no, I mean, in terms of new MRR, we definitely see new MRR coming from new types of customers and new types of industries. For example, we now have a new customer selling solar panels. And we didn’t actively target these types of products before. We were more focused on B2B SaaS companies that are using Demodesk for their product demos.
Veronika :
But now there are new types of customers also. Another example is a furniture store that also has a website, a web shop, and is now using their empty brick and mortar furniture stores. And the people in there, the sellers, meet the customers remotely, and showcase their product and their web shop using Demodesk. Just it has shifted a bit for us I’d say.
Jeroen :
Yeah, more businesses that didn’t used to do things online are doing things online now.
Veronika :
Exactement.
Jeroen :
Cela a-t-il eu un effet positif dans l'ensemble ? D'une manière générale, vos nouvelles recettes ont-elles augmenté ou ont-elles diminué quelque peu avec la crise ?
Veronika :
Well, our new revenue actually went up. We’re also growing a lot with our existing customers and the past B2B SaaS companies. But right now, everyone’s very careful and putting a pause especially on recruiting, and in particular on the go to market side. With existing businesses, we haven’t quite seen that these companies that previously had either two or three sales calls every week, have further scaled their team. They’re now just putting everything on hold. That’s definitely what the existing scenario looks like.
Jeroen :
Oui. À quoi consacrez-vous personnellement la majeure partie de votre temps de travail aujourd'hui ?
Veronika :
We do still spend a lot of time on the product side, and also I do spend a lot of time on the products. We are two founders. It’s Alex and me. And Alex mostly focuses on the tech part. Our product is technically quite demanding, I’d say. So if you develop an online meeting tool that includes scheduling components and also CRM components, you’re constantly syncing data out and data back in and it becomes quite complex. Both from a tech perspective and from the UX perspective. And Alex is mostly covering the tech perspective, and I am still doing a lot of the UX side and the product side and developing features, developing mock-ups, and trying to think about user flows and prototype features on the roadmap. And I’m working very closely with the customer. That’s basically what I’m doing most of the time at the moment.
Jeroen :
Vous deux, les cofondateurs, passez beaucoup de temps sur le produit, dites-vous ?
Veronika :
Oui.
Jeroen :
But you’re a company of 20 people. What do they spend their time on then?
Veronika :
Environ la moitié fait partie de l'équipe d'ingénieurs. Ensuite, il y a trois personnes dans le marketing, quatre dans les ventes.
Jeroen :
D'accord. Je comprends. En quelque sorte, moitié-moitié entre l'ingénierie et le marketing-ventes, mais avec un léger basculement, si l'on compte aussi les produits.
Veronika :
It’s more in product engineering, yes, definitely.
Jeroen :
Yeah, okay. It seems like with this amount of employees, you’re probably venture-backed?
Veronika :
Oui. C'est tout à fait le cas. Nous avons fait notre tour de table l'année dernière. Nous sommes allés chez Y Combinator au début de l'année dernière. Ensuite, avec le tour de table de démarrage avant, pendant et peu après Demodesk, nous avons levé des fonds auprès d'investisseurs de la Silicon Valley principalement.
Jeroen :
Je suppose qu'à l'époque, vous leviez des fonds pour 18 mois ou deux ans. Dans la situation actuelle, quelles sont vos attentes en ce qui concerne le prochain tour de table ?
Veronika :
Avant que tout cela ne commence, l'objectif était de lever des fonds et d'obtenir une série A au début de l'année 2021. Les conditions de financement ont quelque peu changé. Nous envisageons actuellement de lever un peu plus d'argent sous la forme d'un tour d'amorçage étendu afin de disposer d'une plus grande marge de manœuvre jusqu'à la série A, simplement parce que les conditions sont un peu incertaines à l'heure actuelle.
Jeroen :
Mais cela se ferait avec les investisseurs actuels, ou cela impliquerait-il d'autres investisseurs providentiels ?
Veronika :
Il s'agirait d'une combinaison.
Jeroen :
Une combinaison de ces éléments ?
Veronika :
Oui, c'est vrai.
Jeroen :
Cela a beaucoup de sens. Revenons un peu à ce que vous faites sur le plan opérationnel. Vous dites que vous consacrez beaucoup de temps au produit. Est-ce 100% de votre temps ou 40%-50% de votre temps ?
Veronika :
I’d say 40%, which is still the biggest chunk, the biggest part of my day. All the other stuff is really spread out, business topics, management topics, finance, HR recruiting, bookkeeping, all the stuff that no one wants to do, lies with me.
Jeroen :
Okay. Partly marketing as well? Or that’s completely within someone else’s responsibility?
Veronika :
We do have a marketing team. It’s one full-time person and two interns. And they are mostly covering marketing, and they’re doing a great job.
Jeroen :
Yeah. Cool. What do you think of all the things you’re working on is for you the next thing you’re planning to delegate?
Veronika :
Well, we’re definitely planning to hire a UX designer. I’m also still doing a lot of design work, which I shouldn’t do anymore. We currently are searching for a designer, but also on the operations side. Chief of staff is probably a bit too early for us, but someone who would grow into that role and take away some more things on the operational side from my plate.
Jeroen :
Yeah. Where do you see yourself mostly working in the long run? What exactly are the skills you think you bring as a founder to the business? Where do you want to put the focus, let’s say, for yourself?
Veronika :
I want to give my team everything that they need to do the best job that they can do, and to provide them with all the resources they need to constantly grow and become better at what they do every day. That’s my priority number one. And second priority is just to make sure that we as a company go in the right direction and also have the resources, mostly in the form of money available that we need in order to realize our vision. And that’s the happiest, right? For me, it’s very important that the team is happy and that everyone also can do what they want, can achieve what they want here at Demodesk and like their job, like to come to work every day, and also can build their kind of own world together with the entire team.
Jeroen :
Yeah. What I’m hearing is that you do team strategy and fundraising.
Veronika :
Longer term, probably. Definitely, yeah. Right now, it’s still like a wide set of also very operationally heavy tasks that no one else wants to do, and also a lot of product work. But over time, I hope that goes away.
Jeroen :
D'accord. Avez-vous également beaucoup de conversations avec les clients ? Ou cela est-il principalement délégué à votre équipe de vente ?
Veronika :
No. I also do work with customers when it’s needed. We do have, of course, a sales team. We also have someone in support, but whenever it’s needed and whenever it’s something where I can help, then I definitely also will jump into that.
Jeroen :
Cool. Vous travaillez à distance chez Demodesk ?
Veronika :
Oui, nous travaillons désormais à distance. Nous sommes répartis entre l'Europe et les États-Unis, ce qui nous permet de travailler dans différents fuseaux horaires et différents pays.
Jeroen :
Oui, mais avant cela, vous aviez aussi un bureau quelque part en Allemagne ?
Veronika :
We do have an office in Munich, yes. We also plan to open an office in San Francisco, or at least have more people there. But I think also now the environment has definitely changed a lot. We’ll see whether we get back to the original plan, and after the new normal has arrived. Currently we do have an office in Munich but are working remotely.
Jeroen :
Cool. What changed mostly for you guys with everyone going remote and being at home instead of in the office? Did it have a big effect? And if it had only a small one, I’m also interested in knowing where it mostly had an effect for you.
Veronika :
Nous travaillions également à distance auparavant, pas en tant qu'équipe complète, mais partiellement. Alex et moi avons déménagé à Mountain View pendant YC. L'année dernière, nous avons donc passé quatre mois dans la vallée. De toute façon, je faisais aussi des allers-retours la plupart du temps. Je faisais donc des allers-retours entre Mountain View et San Francisco. Je travaillais en partie à distance, et Alex avait également déménagé à San Francisco au début de l'année. Il est maintenant retourné à Munich, compte tenu de la situation actuelle. D'une certaine manière, nous étions également habitués à travailler à distance. Cependant, en travaillant entièrement à distance, l'ensemble de l'équipe a dû faire face à certains défis. Pour nous, il était très important de mettre en place des lignes hiérarchiques et des structures d'équipe.
Veronika :
We actually built teams that align every day, every single day, every morning. And also every evening, we would align with the news teams, with the team leaders, to make sure everyone’s in sync. But what’s definitely a challenge for us is working with working students or young members of the team. I had the feeling that especially for them, it was sometimes a bigger challenge to keep themselves motivated than for full-time employees and employees that are a little bit older.
Jeroen :
Que faites-vous exactement pour ces stagiaires ? Y a-t-il une réunion de synthèse quotidienne le matin, si j'ai bien compris ?
Veronika :
Oui, des réunions quotidiennes le matin, des structures de pairs, des canaux Slack, des directives claires sur la façon de rapporter quoi et quand, et aussi la mise en place d'un wiki interne et de processus d'entreprise et d'un groupe de diapositives Notion qui documentent tous les processus pour s'assurer que tout le monde est sur la même longueur d'onde.
Jeroen :
Avez-vous modifié les procédures de réunion ?
Veronika :
Oui, nous l'avons fait. Nous avons quatre équipes. Elles sont chargées de la technologie, du produit, du chiffre d'affaires et de la croissance. Ces quatre équipes ont des réunions quotidiennes. Les chefs d'équipe, Alex et moi-même nous réunissons tous les jours en fin de journée pour nous assurer que nous restons synchronisés.
Jeroen :
You know where everybody’s going in a meeting.
Veronika :
Yes. We discuss them every day. I also took that away with me from Bain. When I was doing a lot of due diligences and working in private equity, what you do there is consult a private equity company on a decision whether to buy a certain asset, a certain company or not. And you need to make a decision, or you need to give them that recommendation within a very short timeframe, four weeks or so. It’s a very intense project and very important that you spend every single day in the most efficient way.
Veronika :
We also had every morning and every evening a battle call, we would name that. And in the battle call, we would discuss what our priorities for the day in the morning and in the evening looked like, also discuss what your achievements of the day were and what’s still outstanding. And then would together prioritize the things that are important and de-prioritize the things that are not. And I also took it away with me from Bain into the startup world. I think this definitely helps to keep everyone in sync.
Jeroen :
Faites-vous les deux réunions ou seulement la réunion de fin de journée ?
Veronika :
Deux réunions. La réunion du matin se déroule au sein de l'équipe, par exemple l'équipe de croissance ou l'équipe de revenus. La réunion du soir se tient avec les chefs d'équipe.
Jeroen :
Yeah, understood. That’s quite an interesting system. We are only doing the morning thing, and mostly over Slack. And we do the planning biweekly or weekly, depending on the team. But this is an approach I hadn’t heard yet. For me, it seems like a lot of meetings, but I can see the point of it.
Veronika :
If you don’t see each other and you’re working full remote, I mean, it’s just very important to have a lot of touch points to really make sure everyone’s working on the right things, no? Or don’t you think it’s very difficult to just have the full picture of who’s working on what, if you’re not seeing each other in the office?
Jeroen :
Yeah, true. No, you definitely need to communicate more. We started noting things like after each meeting, something we didn’t do before. We started a bit but not really much yet. But to really summarize what has been said in a meeting, so that we can keep the whole team up to date on everything that gets decided in a more summarized way. It sort of takes away the need to always meet with team leads. I sometimes meet with my cofounder, so that we’re aligned on things, but not on a daily basis.
Veronika :
Yeah, I mean, it’s always a trade-off, right? Of course, if you have a lot of meetings, you also spend a lot of time in these meetings. But also one other trick that we used to make it shorter is for standups in the morning and the evening. Everyone before the standup needs to summarize what he wants to share in a few bullet points. And just by doing that, you really focus and force yourself to just mention the three most important things, rather than everyone as a download of what’s going on in your head.
Jeroen :
Yeah. Just in case you heard a lot of snoring in the background just now, that wasn’t me. That was my dog. Just that he found that it was a good idea to snore very loudly.
Veronika :
Mignon. De quel chien s'agit-il ?
Jeroen :
It’s a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel.
Veronika :
Bon.
Jeroen :
Vous savez de quoi ça a l'air ?
Veronika :
No. I love dogs, but I don’t know how it looks.
Jeroen :
Fluffy.
Veronika :
D'accord, c'est génial.
Jeroen :
Towards learnings a bit perhaps. I’m interested to know, as a final question before we go into learnings: how is your experience going from Munich to Mountain View? What were the differences you saw in how startups operate between Germany and Silicon Valley let’s say? That’s my question.
Veronika :
Well. While you were asking, I was just thinking whether I should answer the question from a perspective of how it was at YC, because that was our experience, or whether I should try to answer the question without taking the YC network and the YC experience into account? But probably the latter one, I probably can’t do, because it’s just easy for me to speak about how it was in the YC network. And I think Silicon Valley in general is connected in a better way than the European partners are. Once you’re in Silicon Valley, you have all these successful companies around you.
Veronika :
But when you’re in YC, that’s even more intense, because there are a lot of great companies that did go through YC, and you’re immediately connected to an incredibly valuable network of successful founders and investors and ventures. And so for us, it was definitely a bit biased. Even more biased than for someone who would go to the Silicon Valley without YC.
Veronika :
I can only speak from that perspective, if that makes sense. And taking that perspective into account, I think that there are three main differences. The first one is just a mindset. In Europe and in particular in Germany, people always like to think about the problems rather than how big something could be, which people are more thinking about in the U.S., especially in Silicon Valley. They just, I don’t know, are thinking about the question, how big can this get, a lot? Whereas in Germany, if you talk to investors, in particular also you tend to get a lot of questions of what obstacles you’re facing, what could be in the way, and analyzing numbers and detail. So you can say you get the big vision that everything is possible. And that’s the first major thing.
Veronika :
The second thing as briefly touched before, is the network. It’s just a very tight network. You can basically speak with almost everyone if you just want to and ask. Because almost everyone is just around, just lives in San Francisco. Most of the successful B2B SaaS companies do come from San Francisco and are there. And that’s definitely way more spread out in Europe and therefore, it’s just less dense. That’s the second thing.
Veronika :
And something that’s also probably connected to the first and second part is, fundraising. That is for sure a bit easier, because most of the investors and most of the money, especially in the startup in the SaaS space is available in Silicon Valley. Most of the successful investors do have an office in Palo Alto or San Francisco. It’s just way easier to reach out to them, speak with them, and meet them.
Jeroen :
Oui, c'est vrai. Mais vous avez grandi dans les deux endroits, avez-vous dit. Dans la Silicon Valley et en Allemagne.
Veronika :
Well, we did raise in Silicon Valley, honestly, because demo day back then was still on site. Now it’s virtual, but demo day is in San Francisco. And all investors are just there or most of them. And then, afterwards you would also meet most of them in person. We also did take the German investors on board, which we obviously also saw when we were back in Germany. But the fundraising process for us took place in Silicon Valley.
Jeroen :
Oui, les autres n'ont fait que suivre ?
Veronika :
Les trois autres investisseurs étaient des investisseurs avec lesquels nous étions déjà en contact avant de nous rendre à YC.
Jeroen :
Oui, mais l'investisseur principal était celui de San Francisco, ou l'investisseur principal était-il en Allemagne ?
Veronika :
We didn’t have a lead investor in particular, but the two biggest investors were Founders Club and GFC. And Founders Club is in San Francisco, and GFC is in Germany.
Jeroen :
Okay. Cool. Slowly wrapping up with learnings, what’s the latest good book you’ve read, and why did you choose to read it?
Veronika :
The latest book and also one of the greatest I’ve ever read is The Great CEO Within. And it’s an incredibly helpful book, especially for founders. And Matt Mochary I think is the author, but he also had some other founders contributing to it. One of our investors actually gave it to me, the Cubit founder. And I think it’s great. It gives you a lot of tactical advice on how to build a company, how to prioritize your work, how to hire, how to fundraise, in a very dense and compensated way. And I’d say really some kind of way, a founders’ bible. I like the book a lot, and I can recommend it.
Jeroen :
Yeah. Just put it on my Goodreads to read list. Have you read books like, I have to think a moment, the one from, oh God, give me one second, “Lost and Founder” by Rand Fishkin?
Veronika :
Non.
Jeroen :
Or “The Hard Thing About Hard Things” by Ben Horowitz?
Veronika :
Oui, je l'ai lu.
Jeroen :
Comment se compare-t-elle à celle de Ben Horowitz ?
Veronika :
Well, The Hard Thing About Hard Things, he’s more telling stories from his life as a founder or an entrepreneur, just telling stories from his own company. And The Great CEO Within is really just a tactical guide describing concrete steps that you can take to structure your work, to fundraise, to hire people. It’s more of, I’d say, a guideline of how to found a company, whereas in The Hard Things, he’s telling his own story.
Jeroen :
Des histoires et des idées, oui.
Veronika :
D'une manière très attrayante.
Jeroen :
C'est vrai, c'est vrai. Cool, maintenant j'ai hâte de le lire. Dernière question. Si vous deviez recommencer avec Demodesk, qu'auriez-vous fait différemment ?
Veronika :
Good question. I really think that some things you have to go through on your own in order to really learn them. I think sometimes it’s just impossible to make a shortcut, and I think being a founder and finding a company might be one of these. Probably, so far I can say all of the things that we did right, in a sense that of course, they were not always right at that point. But we learned from these, and then the learnings that we got from going through these processes helped us to become better afterwards. I think really embracing the process, and also taking everything in the process as a necessary step to get there where you are at this particular point in time is super important.
Veronika :
It’s always how I like to see it also when I’m working with my team and especially with younger team members. Sometimes I can tell them how I think things should be done, but sometimes it’s just not possible. Sometimes I just know that they have to go through it on their own in order to really learn it, because some things you can’t just read or teach someone by just telling them. You know what I mean? Does it make sense?
Jeroen :
Yeah, it makes sense, but I have a follow-up question. You’re saying basically that if you were to start over with Demodesk, you go back in time, you don’t regret all the steps you made because they were needed to get to your results?
Veronika :
Oui.
Jeroen :
Dans votre état actuel. Mais que se passerait-il si, aujourd'hui, vous recommenciez à travailler pour Demodesk avec tout ce que vous avez déjà appris ? Que feriez-vous différemment ?
Veronika :
Well, I would probably raise money earlier. I would recruit a great team earlier with that money, and then first fully focus on the product. And then after I have at least a decent version of the product, only then I would actively approach customers and sell. Because back then, when we started with Demodesk two and a half years ago, I remember being at the first SaaStock in Dublin. And back then we had nothing, but honestly I tried to approach almost everyone and pitch our product and try to sell something that we didn’t have, which didn’t make sense. But still, we learned from that process, right? That’s definitely something that I probably wouldn’t do again.
Jeroen :
Yeah. You’re against customer interviews, or is it on another nuanced level?
Veronika :
No, definitely customer interviews are important, but also we had some kind of expectation that, if we pitched a product, they would just immediately say, yeah, it sounds great. I’m going to buy. Like it was not realistic, the expectations that we had back then. And sometimes I think you also have to be a bit naïve, otherwise, you probably wouldn’t start with building a company. That’s extremely hard. And it’s a lot of challenges that you have to solve on your way, so maybe you sometimes need that naivete, I think. But definitely if I would do it again, I would be less naïve and more realistic.
Jeroen :
Oui, c'est vrai. C'est super. Merci encore d'avoir participé à l'émission Founder Coffee, Veronika. C'était vraiment un plaisir de vous recevoir.
Veronika :
Je vous remercie. C'était un plaisir de parler avec vous, et j'espère que nous nous parlerons bientôt.
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