The guest of the 17th episode of the Inovo Podcast is Maciej Ciołek, Co-Founder & CTO of Zowie ⬇️⬇️⬇️

ZOWIE is an AI-powered customer service automation tool for enterprise clients, incl. L'Oreal, InPost, Aviva, Avon, and Brainly. It helps fast-growing companies grow even faster by removing customer service bottlenecks. In 24 hours they automate 30% of customer service inquiries and up to 90% in a few weeks. The company was founded by Maja Schaefer and Matt Ciolek, and it is backed by Inovo Venture Partners since September 2020. In January 2022 they announced raising USD 5M (20 mln PLN) in a seed round led by Gradient Ventures (Google's AI-focused VC, based in Silicon Valley) and 10x Founders. And it’s just the beginning of the road! You can find Zowie here: https://zowie.ai/

Maciej Małysz, a Partner at Inovo, sat down with Maciej Ciołek to discuss:
✅ Is it true that a founder must sell?
✅ What’s the value behind recording all sales calls?
✅ More features doesn't mean better product - how does building a product really look like?
✅ What’s the difference between pitching the product from the features perspective and pitching the product from the solutions perspective?

INOVO VENTURE PARTNERS is a first-choice VC for ambitious founders from Poland and the CEE region. We back early-stage, post-traction startups with up to €3M of initial investment, and help them build global brands, while driving growth of the local startup ecosystem. We take great pride in being close to top founders who think big. We’re investors in: Booksy, Infermedica, Spacelift, Tidio, AI Clearing, Zowie, Jutro Medical, Intiaro, Packhelp, Preply, Eyerim, Allset, SunRoof, Archbee, AhoyConnect, and uPacjenta. Our recent fund Inovo II reached a total of €54M.

Find us on:
👉 Website: https://inovo.vc/
👉 LinkedIn: https://pl.linkedin.com/company/i18s
👉 Medium – Inside Inovo: https://medium.com/inside-inovo
👉 Newsletter: https://us20.campaign-archive.com/home/?u=6b094c7e10cfb1b3bfc6b30c1&id=fd7a9c3722

Our podcasts are available here:
✅ Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3Z37qvo07m5NyHnxjmUnmn
✅ Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/pl/podcast/inovo-podcast/id1522527904
✅ Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc3ByZWFrZXIuY29tL3Nob3cvNDQyOTUzNS9lcGlzb2Rlcy9mZWVk
✅ Spreaker: https://www.spreaker.com/show/inovo-venture-partners
✅ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAuZjRhxxF8MdqqGEMSUg5Q

#startup #venturecapital #founder #finance #business #VC #vcfunding #buildingstartup #businessangel #cofounder #creatingventures #entrepreneurship #financingstartup #fundraising #inovo #inovovc #inovoventurepartners #investinginstartups #unicorn #decacorn #CEE #Poland #zowie #automation #chatbot

The guest of the 16th episode of the Inovo Podcast is Tytus Gołas, Co-Founder & CEO of Tidio.

TIDIO is one of the fastest-growing IT companies in Europe, supported by Inovo Venture Partners since 2019. Their flagship product is a live-chat app powered by unique chatbot solutions that helps small businesses all over the world serve their clients efficiently. It’s one of the #TOP5 most popular live chat solutions in the world. In 2020 Tidio doubled in size. They now hire 120 people and plan to grow the team even more by the end of 2021. You can find Tidio here: https://www.tidio.com/

Michał Rokosz, a Partner at Inovo, sat down with Tytus Gołas to discuss:
✅ Tidio’s approach to People and Culture and the three key metrics they use in this area
✅ What does it mean to recruit correctly?
✅ How does Tidio work on building and implementing company's values?

The talk is in Polish, but there are English subtitles on YouTube.

INOVO VENTURE PARTNERS is a first-choice VC for ambitious founders from Poland and the CEE region. We back early-stage, post-traction startups with up to €3M of initial investment, and help them build global brands, while driving growth of the local startup ecosystem. We take great pride in being close to top founders who think big. We’re investors in: Booksy, Restaumatic, Sotrender, Infermedica, Spacelift, Tidio, AI Clearing, Zowie, Jutro Medical, Intiaro, Packhelp, Preply, Eyerim, Allset, SunRoof, Archbee and AhoyConnect. Our recent fund Inovo II reached a total of €54M.

Find us on:
👉 Website: https://inovo.vc/
👉 LinkedIn: https://pl.linkedin.com/company/i18s
👉 Medium – Inside Inovo: https://medium.com/inside-inovo
👉 Newsletter: https://inovovc.substack.com/

Our podcasts are available here:
✅ Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3Z37qvo07m5NyHnxjmUnmn
✅ Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/pl/podcast/inovo-podcast/id1522527904
✅ Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc3ByZWFrZXIuY29tL3Nob3cvNDQyOTUzNS9lcGlzb2Rlcy9mZWVk
✅ Spreaker: https://www.spreaker.com/show/inovo-venture-partners
✅ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAuZjRhxxF8MdqqGEMSUg5Q

#startup #vc #founder #finance #CEE #business #venturecapital #vcfunding #buildingstartup #businessangel #cofounder #creatingventures #entrepreneurship #financingstartup #fundraising #inovo #inovovc #inovoventurepartners #investinginstartups #unicorn #decacorn #tidio #tytusgolas #livechat

Michal Rokosz, Partner at INOVO Venture Partners, was invited to speak at the Internet Beta 2021 conference. He talked about company valuation methods used by venture capital funds and a few key ways that can increase your startup’s valuation by 5x. Here are the slides: https://www.slideshare.net/InovoVC/internet-beta-2021-micha-rokosz

✅ 4 key factors that impact startup valuation
✅ Why is spending money better that generating revenue?
✅ Why should you look for smiling cohorts?
✅ Is it better to take money from a Polish VC or a foreign VC?
✅ What’s the ‘signaling game’ and how can it impact the valuation of your company?

The talk is in Polish, but there are English subtitles available on YouTube.

INOVO VENTURE PARTNERS is a first-choice VC for ambitious founders from Poland and the CEE region. We back early-stage, post-traction startups with up to €3M of initial investment, and help them build global brands, while driving growth of the local startup ecosystem. We take great pride in being close to top founders who think big. We’re investors in: Booksy, Restaumatic, Sotrender, Infermedica, Spacelift, Tidio, AI Clearing, Zowie, Jutro Medical, Intiaro, Packhelp, Preply, Eyerim, Allset, SunRoof, Archbee, and AhoyConnect. Our recent fund Inovo II reached a total of €54M.

Find us on:
👉 Website: https://inovo.vc/
👉 LinkedIn: https://pl.linkedin.com/company/i18s
👉 Medium – Inside Inovo: https://medium.com/inside-inovo
👉 Newsletter: https://inovovc.substack.com/

Our podcasts are available here:
✅ Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3Z37qvo07m5NyHnxjmUnmn
✅ Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/pl/podcast/inovo-podcast/id1522527904
✅ Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc3ByZWFrZXIuY29tL3Nob3cvNDQyOTUzNS9lcGlzb2Rlcy9mZWVk
✅ Spreaker: https://www.spreaker.com/show/inovo-venture-partners
✅ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAuZjRhxxF8MdqqGEMSUg5Q

#startup #venturecapital #founder #vc #finance #CEE #business #vcfunding #buildingstartup #businessangel #cofounder #creatingventures #entrepreneurship #financingstartup #fundraising #inovo #inovovc #inovoventurepartners #investinginstartups #poland #unicorn #decacorn #valuation #startupvaluation #companyvaluation #conference #internetbeta #internetbeta2021 #booksy #wycena #funduszvc #wycenystartupów

The guest of the 15th episode of the Inovo Podcast is Rob Kniaz, Partner at Hoxton Ventures.

HOXTON VENTURES is an early stage venture capital firm investing in European technology startups that can scale into large, global winners. It focuses on startups that either disrupt existing industries or invent entirely new market categories. It already has four unicorns in its portfolio: Babylon, Darktrace, Deliveroo, Epic Games and it’s just getting started. To date Inovo Venture Partners made two co-investments with Hoxton Ventures – that was Spacelift and Preply. You can find more on Hoxton Ventures here: https://www.hoxtonventures.com.

Maciej Malysz, a Partner at Inovo, sat down with Rob Kniaz to discuss:
✅ What has Rob learned from investing in unicorns?
✅ What does he look for in early-stage startups?
✅ How does Rob's Google PM experience help in his investment activities?
✅ And what does he mean by: "You have to be crazy to be a founder"?

INOVO VENTURE PARTNERS is a first-choice VC for ambitious founders from Poland and the CEE region. We back early-stage, post-traction startups with up to €3M of initial investment, and help them build global brands, while driving growth of the local startup ecosystem. We take great pride in being close to top founders who think big. We’re investors in: Booksy, Restaumatic, Sotrender, Infermedica, Spacelift, Tidio, AI Clearing, Zowie, Jutro Medical, Intiaro, Packhelp, Preply, Eyerim, Allset, SunRoof and Archbee. Our recent fund Inovo II reached a total of €54M.

Find us on:
👉 Website: https://inovo.vc/
👉 LinkedIn: https://pl.linkedin.com/company/i18s
👉 Medium – Inside Inovo: https://medium.com/inside-inovo
👉 Newsletter: https://inovovc.substack.com/

Our podcasts are available here:
✅ Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3Z37qvo07m5NyHnxjmUnmn
✅ Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/pl/podcast/inovo-podcast/id1522527904
✅ Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc3ByZWFrZXIuY29tL3Nob3cvNDQyOTUzNS9lcGlzb2Rlcy9mZWVk
✅ Spreaker: https://www.spreaker.com/show/inovo-venture-partners
✅ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAuZjRhxxF8MdqqGEMSUg5Q

#startup #vc #founder #finance #CEE #business #venturecapital #vcfunding #buildingstartup #businessangel #cofounder #creatingventures #entrepreneurship #financingstartup #fundraising #inovo #inovovc #inovoventurepartners #investinginstartups #unicorn #decacorn #hoxton #hoxtonventures

The guest of the 14th episode of the Inovo Podcast is Stefan Batory, Co-Founder & CEO of Booksy.

BOOKSY is the leading beauty and wellness appointment booking app used by 13 million consumers in e.g. US, UK, Poland, Spain, Brazil, and South Africa. It was founded by two Polish serial entrepreneurs Stefan Batory (CEO) and Konrad Howard. They partnered with Inovo Venture Partners in 2015 and by 2021 they raised a total of $119 million in VC funding. After the merger with Versum, Booksy is now a team of approx. 600 fantastic people, who shoot for the moon. Their goal is to become a unicorn soon, then a decacorn and eventually the biggest company from Poland. You can find Booksy here: https://booksy.com/

Tomasz Swieboda, a Partner at Inovo, sat down with Stefan Batory to discuss:
✅ building a VC-backed global business and what would Stefan do differently if he could start all over again?
✅ how does the founder’s role change as the company grows?
✅ and what has Stefan Batory recently learned from Roger Federer?

The talk is in Polish, but there are English subtitles on YouTube.

INOVO VENTURE PARTNERS is a first-choice VC for ambitious founders from Poland and the CEE region. We back early-stage, post-traction startups with up to €3M of initial investment, and help them build global brands, while driving growth of the local startup ecosystem. We take great pride in being close to top founders who think big. We’re investors in: Booksy, Restaumatic, Sotrender, Infermedica, Spacelift, Tidio, AI Clearing, Zowie, Jutro Medical, Intiaro, Packhelp, Preply, Eyerim, Allset, SunRoof and Archbee. Our recent fund Inovo II reached a total of €54M.

Find us on:
👉 Website: https://inovo.vc/
👉 LinkedIn: https://pl.linkedin.com/company/i18s
👉 Medium – Inside Inovo: https://medium.com/inside-inovo
👉 Newsletter: https://inovovc.substack.com/

Our podcasts are available here:
✅ Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3Z37qvo07m5NyHnxjmUnmn
✅ Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/pl/podcast/inovo-podcast/id1522527904
✅ Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc3ByZWFrZXIuY29tL3Nob3cvNDQyOTUzNS9lcGlzb2Rlcy9mZWVk
✅ Spreaker: https://www.spreaker.com/show/inovo-venture-partners
✅ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAuZjRhxxF8MdqqGEMSUg5Q

#startup #vc #founder #finance #CEE #business #venturecapital #vcfunding #buildingstartup #businessangel #cofounder #creatingventures #entrepreneurship #financingstartup #fundraising #inovo #inovovc #inovoventurepartners #investinginstartups #unicorn #decacorn #booksy #stefan batory

The guest of the 13th episode of the Inovo Podcast is Maja Schaefer, Co-Founder & CEO of Zowie.

ZOWIE is an AI-powered customer service automation tool for enterprise clients, incl. L'Oreal, InPost, Aviva, Avon, and Brainly. It helps fast-growing companies grow even faster by removing customer service bottlenecks. In 24 hours they automate 30% of customer service inquiries and up to 90% in a few weeks. The company was founded by Maja Schaefer and Matt Ciolek. In September 2020 Zowie raised a $600k+ seed round backed by Inovo Venture Partners and business angels. And it’s just the beginning of the road! You can find Zowie here: https://zowie.ai/

Michal Rokosz, a Partner at Inovo, sat down with Maja to discuss:
✅ how to transition from a service company to building your own product?
✅ how does a VC fund impact the business?
✅ and what are the most difficult aspects of fundraising?

The talk is in Polish, but there are English subtitles on YouTube.

INOVO VENTURE PARTNERS is a first-choice VC for ambitious founders from Poland and the CEE region. We back early-stage, post-traction startups with up to €3M of initial investment, and help them build global brands, while driving growth of the local startup ecosystem. We take great pride in being close to top founders who think big. We’re investors in: Booksy, Restaumatic, Sotrender, Infermedica, Spacelift, Tidio, AI Clearing, Zowie, Jutro Medical, Intiaro, Packhelp, Preply, Eyerim, Allset, SunRoof. Our recent fund Inovo II reached a total of €54M.

Find us on:
👉 Website: https://inovo.vc/
👉 LinkedIn: https://pl.linkedin.com/company/i18s
👉 Medium – Inside Inovo: https://medium.com/inside-inovo
👉 Newsletter: https://inovovc.substack.com/

Our podcasts are available here:
✅ Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3Z37qvo07m5NyHnxjmUnmn
✅ Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/pl/podcast/inovo-podcast/id1522527904
✅ Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc3ByZWFrZXIuY29tL3Nob3cvNDQyOTUzNS9lcGlzb2Rlcy9mZWVk
✅ Spreaker: https://www.spreaker.com/show/inovo-venture-partners
✅ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAuZjRhxxF8MdqqGEMSUg5Q

The guest of the 12th episode of the Inovo Podcast is Marcin Żukowski, Co-Founder of Snowflake.
SNOWFLAKE is a cloud computing data warehousing company. It allows corporate users to store and analyze data using cloud-based hardware and software, generally termed as "data warehouse-as-a-service". The company was founded in 2012 by three data warehousing experts: Benoit Dageville, Thierry Cruanes and Marcin Żukowski. Almost from the beginning it is backed by Sutter Hill Ventures (other VCs joined along the way). In 2018 the company became a unicorn. And on September 16, 2020, Snowflake became a public company via an initial public offering raising $3.4 billion, making it the largest software IPO in history. You can find out more about Snowflake here: https://www.snowflake.com/

Tomasz Swieboda, a Partner at Inovo, sat down with Marcin to discuss: his experience in joining Snowflake as a Co-Founder, how it all happened, how they scaled from a small team to the largest software IPO in history, and how he perceives cooperation with VCs funds.

INOVO VENTURE PARTNERS is a first-choice VC for ambitious founders from Poland and the CEE region. We back early-stage, post-traction startups with up to €3M of initial investment, and help them build global brands, while driving growth of the local startup ecosystem. We take great pride in being close to top founders who think big. We’re investors in: Booksy, Restaumatic, Sotrender, Infermedica, Spacelift, Tidio, AI Clearing, Zowie, Jutro Medical, Intiaro, Packhelp, Preply, Eyerim, Allset, SunRoof. Our recent fund Inovo II reached a total of €54M.

Find us on:
👉 Website: https://inovo.vc/
👉 LinkedIn: https://pl.linkedin.com/company/i18s
👉 Medium – Inside Inovo: https://medium.com/inside-inovo
👉 Newsletter: https://inovovc.substack.com/

Our podcasts are available here:
✅ Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3Z37qvo07m5NyHnxjmUnmn
✅ Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/pl/podcast/inovo-podcast/id1522527904
✅ Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc3ByZWFrZXIuY29tL3Nob3cvNDQyOTUzNS9lcGlzb2Rlcy9mZWVk
✅ Spreaker: https://www.spreaker.com/show/inovo-venture-partners
✅ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAuZjRhxxF8MdqqGEMSUg5Q

The guest of the 11th episode of the Inovo Podcast is Stas Matviyenko, the Founder and CEO of allset.

allset is a food pre-ordering platform. It allows users to pick up meals directly from restaurants or to dine-in without waiting in lines. So far, allset raised $16.6 million backed by: Inovo Venture Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Greycroft, FJ Labs and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). Inovo partnered with allset in March 2020 and allset has been one of Inovo’s portfolio companies since then. You can find allset here: https://allsetnow.com/

Michał Rokosz, a Partner at Inovo, sat down with Stas to discuss: getting funding in the United States, launching the company over there, convincing Andreessen Horowitz, as well as other interesting facts about the company and managing the business.

INOVO VENTURE PARTNERS backs ambitious founders to build future unicorns together. We love what we do - supporting early-stage, post-traction startups, and helping them grow to $100M and beyond. We're committed to leading the growth of the Polish startup ecosystem and helping local founders build global products with our knowledge platform, international network and experience. We're close to our founders - just like them, we strive to build something amazing.
Inovo is a first choice VC for founders like Stefan Batory from Booksy, Marcin Wyszynski from Spacelift, or Maja Schaefer from Zowie. We invest between €0.5-2M in startups from Poland and the CEE region.

Find us on:
📌Website: https://inovo.vc/
📌LinkedIn: https://pl.linkedin.com/company/i18s
📌Medium – Inside Inovo: https://medium.com/inside-inovo
📌Newsletter: https://inovo.substack.com/subscribe

Our podcasts are also available here:
📌Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3Z37qvo07m5NyHnxjmUnmn
📌Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/pl/podcast/inovo-podcast/id1522527904
📌Google Podcats: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc3ByZWFrZXIuY29tL3Nob3cvNDQyOTUzNS9lcGlzb2Rlcy9mZWVk
📌Spreaker: https://www.spreaker.com/show/inovo-venture-partners
📌YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAuZjRhxxF8MdqqGEMSUg5Q

Marcin Wyszynski is a co-founder and CEO of Spacelift. The company raised its $6M Series A recently. Maciej Malysz, Inovo’s Partner sat down with Marcin to discuss building remote teams, becoming a founder with a technical background and the first 12 months of the company.

Inovo VC partners with ambitious founders to build future unicorns together. We love what we do–backing early-stage, post-traction startups, and helping them grow to $100M and beyond. We're committed to Polish startup ecosystem and help local founder build global products with our knowledge platform, network with leading, international VCs and enterprises and recruiting world-class talent. We're close to our founder – just like them, we strive to build something amazing.

Inovo is a first choice VC for founders like Stefan Batory from Booksy, Marcin Wyszynski from Spacelift, or Maja Schaefer from Zowie. We invest between €0.5-2M in startups from Poland and the region.

Zach Coelius is a 4x entrepreneur and angel investors based in Silicon Valley. In today’s podcast, we discuss why founders are like gladiators and how European founders can get funding from the US-based investors.

Inovo VC partners with ambitious founders to build future unicorns together. We love what we do–backing early-stage, post-traction startups, and helping them grow to $100M and beyond. We're committed to Polish startup ecosystem and help local founder build global products with our knowledge platform, network with leading, international VCs and enterprises and recruiting world-class talent. We're close to our founder – just like them, we strive to build something amazing.

Inovo is a first choice VC for founders like Stefan Batory from Booksy, Marcin Wyszynski from Spacelift, or Maja Schaefer from Zowie. We invest between €0.5-2M in startups from Poland and the region.

On December 14th, Booksy and Versum have merged. Two leading booking platforms for the beauty industry are now working together, reaching nearly 13 mln clients and servicing more than 100 mln bookings every year. In this podcast, Michal Rokosz discusses the merger with Sebastian Maska, Co-Founder of Versum and Stefan Batory, Co-founder at Booksy. What was the biggest challenge? What are the plans for the future? Listen in our newest podcast.

Inovo Venture Partners backs early-stage, post-traction startups that can grow 100x. We partner up with ambitious founders like Stefan from Booksy, Maja from Zowie, or Piotr from Infermedica. We invest between €0.5-2M in startups from Poland and the region.

Kai Hansen is the founder of Lieferando (merged with Takeaway) and a successful business angel with over 40 investments including Booksy, Spacelift, Sundose and many more. We’re discussing his way to build one of the leading food delivery platforms after 2008 financial crisis and what gets him excited in early stage startups.

Listen on Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/5NK7lGREqKRpAjCpFdWVwv?si=gY1m0EC0R7i9BkNZJkPTtQ

Or watch on YT:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKk_XVdn-Xo&list=PLoOSMuJR20q6csEhDKjWliT1oSBSy3wFQ&index=7

Inovo Venture Partners backs early-stage, post-traction startups that can grow 100x. We partner up with ambitious founders like Stefan from Booksy, Maja from Zowie, or Piotr from Infermedica. We invest between €0.5-2M in startups from Poland and the region.

Piotr Pisarz, founder of Uncapped, has very rich professional experience - in the past he was an Investment Banker, Googler, and Venture Capitalist. Today he will share with us his tips on fundraising and recruitment processes. You will also learn what's the role of the CEO, how he has built his network in London, and what's the story behind Uncapped.

The episode is in polish, but you can visit Inovo Venture Partners YouTube channel to watch it with English subtitles:
https://youtu.be/V5EuT_lUlns

Inovo Venture Partners backs early-stage, post-traction startups that can grow 100x. We partner up with ambitious founders like Stefan from Booksy, Maja from Zowie, or Marcin from Spacelift. We invest between €0.5–2m in startups from Poland and the region.

Ariel Finkelstein is an entrepreneur and business angel who founded one of the first SaaS companies in Israel back in 2007. He will share with us his thoughts on building tech companies and choosing between bootstrapping and venture path. You will also learn how to raise money from the US funds, and why founders should sell!

Inovo Venture Partners backs early-stage, post-traction startups that can grow 100x. We partner up with ambitious founders like Stefan from Booksy, Maja from Zowie, or Marcin from Spacelift. We invest between €0.5–2m in startups from Poland and the region.

Today we are hosting Dan Lupu, Partner at Earlybird VC. He will tell us about his sweet spot deals and why he prefers to invest in b2b rather than b2c companies. After watching this episode you will also know how big potential your business needs to have if you want to have Earlybird VC in your captable, and how Earlybird could support you after the investment.

Inovo Venture Partners backs early-stage, post-traction startups that can grow 100x. We partner up with ambitious founders like Stefan from Booksy, Maja from Zowie, or Marcin from Spacelift. We invest between €0.5–2m in startups from Poland and the region.

Jerry Colonna, Reboot founder coaching tech entrepreneurs, talks about building a culture of our company while working remotely and explains what does it mean to grow up as a leader

Inovo Venture Partners backs early-stage, post-traction startups that can grow 100x. We partner up with ambitious founders like Stefan from Booksy, Maja from Zowie, or Marcin from Spacelift. We invest between €0.5–2m in startups from Poland and the region.

Today we are talking with Jens Lapinski, Business Angel from Germany and ex-MD at Techstars who will tell us about patterns he is looking for, and give some hints to early-stage startups on milestone planning as well as doing first hires!

Inovo Venture Partners backs early-stage, post-traction startups that can grow 100x. We partner up with ambitious founders like Stefan from Booksy, Maja from Zowie, or Marcin from Spacelift. We invest between €0.5–2m in startups from Poland and the region.

In this episode we are asking Bogumil Balkanski, Partner @ Sequoia, what is he looking for in startups, and how he supports portfolio companies after investment

Inovo Venture Partners backs early-stage, post-traction startups that can grow 100x. We partner up with ambitious founders like Stefan from Booksy, Maja from Zowie, or Marcin from Spacelift. We invest between €0.5–2m in startups from Poland and the region.



TRANSCRIPT
Hi, This is Tomasz Swieboda. I'm a partner at Inovo a VC Fund focused in Poland and Central Europe. This is the very first episode of Inovo Podcast in which we are aiming the founders from the region to build a global tech company.

Today we are hosting Bogomil Balkansky - a partner at Sequoia, one of the best VC funds globally. If you're interested in what Sequoia needs to invest or how Bogumil will support your company after the investment, it's definitely a podcast for you. Let's start!


Hi Bogomil!

Hi Tomasz!

Pleasure to have you here! Bogumil if we could start with your story and you could share a couple of words about yourself.

Of course! As you mentioned I'm a partner at Sequoia Capital, we're one of the leading venture firms in Silicon Valley and the US. I think it's fair to say that we are the firm that invented Venture Capital as such. We have been in existence for 49 years, we will be celebrating our 50 year anniversary like next year. And all years we have partnered with many companies that all your listeners would have heard of. You know, Apple, Cisco, and more recently companies like Airbnb, Doordash and many others.

My personal story is I actually grew up in Bulgaria and came to the US 29 years ago, in 1991. I belong to that lucky generation of Eastern Europeans in the sense that I finished high school a year after the Berlin Wall fell and I jumped on the very first chance to come to the US and get an education.

So I came here for college and ended up sticking around and making life for myself in the US. I have lived in the Bay Area for the last 22 years. What brought me to the Bay Area originally was going to Stanford for my MBA and that was in 1998 through 2000 which if you remember was the very peak of the dot-com wave and so I found myself smacking the middle of all these exciting things happening around the Internet. And I ended up taking a job in the technology start-up when I finished my MBA and I have been working in technology ever since so 20-year career as an operational executive in software companies. Always in b2b enterprise and my entire career, I led product management and product marketing teams for various enterprise solutions kind of up and down the technology stack from deep data center infrastructure to SAS apps and anything in between.

I spent quite a few years at VMware focusing on data center infrastructure. Before VMware, I worked at Siebel Systems which was the leading CRM software at the time. After VMware, I went with a startup. I got acquired at Google so I spent a couple of years at Google. I ended up joining Sequoia earlier this year.

Okay, so it's your first time as an investor or did you invest before as well?

I'm a recent professional investor, but before that, I had been an angel investor for probably a decade.

Okay.

I also have been a board member at various technology companies for almost a decade.

That's an amazing story! Thank you for sharing this.

So what kind of companies do you focus on right now when you invest?

I personally focus on enterprise technology, very broadly defined and by the way, if you just look at our portfolio by the numbers, majority of the companies that we partnered with are enterprise companies.

I don't specialise anymore narrowly than that. Sequoia's approaches for all of us, to be generalists. The...