The Founder Journey To CEO After Series A

 

Venture capitalists make Series A investments in companies with product market fit (PMF), expecting an exponential growth trajectory towards future a unicorn outcome.

A. Unicorn. Outcome.

These expectations put enormous pressure on the founding team just when they have achieved a major milestone. 

A founder team lead is expected to grow into CEO who forms, norms and manages a high performing team. It is the first of many major turning points in the personal and business development journey of a founder.

Steve Jobs wouldn't have been able to grow Apple into a company without changing his leadership behavior. And every founder is faced with similar challenges.

The Series A funding event is a first step change in a startup's life and comes with significantly higher expectations. 

I have the privilege to work with many pre-seed founders and companies that go on to raise subsequent rounds of funding. 

Here is a short guide on what to do at the beginning of the journey from founder to CEO👇

The Founder Journey To CEO Arter Series A.

A version of this article was first published on LinkedIn on March 21, 2024

Industrial Tech SW: Category Renewal And Creation

Every industrial revolution has created a new set of categories and a new set of players. But the industrial tech software space has lacked IPOs and has been dominated by consolidation among existing players in the decade after the term 'Industry 4.0' was coined.

Multiple new technologies have emerged, and according to Schumpeter's concept of creative destruction many new categories should have been created. And yet, Samsara and C3.ai are the only companies which have gone public so far.

There is good news: The pipeline of emerging industrial tech startups is stacked with many promising unicorns and IPO candidates. Manufacturing startups constitute the largest share in the SF Bay Area, and software startups dominate this segment in Germany.

More here 👇

This article was first published on LinkedIn on June 11, 2024

The Software Revolution in Industrial Production: A Journey Towards the Software-Defined Factory

 

In the fast-paced world of technology, software can be updated in minutes, bringing new features, improvements, and security patches with just a few clicks. In stark contrast, the hardware in industrial settings tells a different story. Machines used in production lines are typically replaced only every 25 years, while electronic components might be upgraded every decade.

This disparity between the rapid evolution of software and the slower replacement cycles of industrial machinery has historically caused industrial production to lag in adopting the latest digital innovations, particularly in the transition to the Industrial Internet.

There are five megatrends underway which are fundamentally changing the industrial automation space and accelerating the move towards the Software Defined Factory

- The emergence of hyperscalers
- SaaS applications
- New sensors
- IT/OT convergence
- Data for machine learning

It seems that it is just now that all the technologies are available not only for software based planning and top-down execution, but also to close the feedback loop from actuals to re-planning and continuing improvement and change management.

These trends are converging and driving a significant shift towards the concept of the Software-Defined Factory where software plays a central role in defining and controlling every aspect of production.

👇

https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/industrial-tech-software-and-technology-trends/271539909

This article was first published on LinkedIn on September 5, 2024

The 2024 angel investing verdict: Encouraging growth but unfinished business

 

It is time to review the performance of my angel investment portfolio 2024.

The year started with a total of 30 investments, mostly in B2B software startups and in the U.S. and in Europe.
🇺🇸 🇪🇺

Valuations changed for 13 of these 30 investments. There were positive signs of portfolio momentum from seven uprounds throughout the year, three of which were very substantial.
🚀 🚀🚀

Three companies survived via downrounds in the form of bridge financing. Not ideal, but better than failure.
🌉 🌉 🌉

One company exited via M&A, and two companies were liquidated. Interestingly, one of the liquidated companies was older than 15 years and generated significant revenue, but the cap table just wasn't right. A fellow investor captured it perfectly when he said they were “too big to fail, too small to exit”.
⚰️ ⚰️

The valuation for the remaining 17 companies remained the same. Two have already started raising and will conclude in the first quarter of 2025, and another three companies will start raising shortly and aim to close in the second quarter. Some of the remaining 12 aim to raise in the second half of 2025; the others are not forced to raise because they are well funded into 2026. Their ability to raise later in the year will of course depend on performance and 2025 market conditions.
> =

I made three new investments - one seed and two opportunistic series A - and the year therefore ended with the same number of investments as it started.
🆕🆕🆕

In summary: It was an active year and there was solid progress; at the same time very early stage investing proves to be a loooooooong game. While the uprounds and the M&A exit were positive, there was no >10X liquidity event, and the portfolio performance continues to depend on future rounds and eventual exits to deliver strong returns.
⏳

This post was first published on LinkedIn in February 2025

Der Unterschied zwischen Forschung und Entwicklung

 

Meine deutsche LinkedIn Timeline ist wieder einmal voller Selbstlob darüber, wie großartig Europa bei neuen Technologien sei.

Doch vielen selbsternannten Experten scheint der Unterschied zwischen Forschung und Entwicklung nicht klar zu sein. Also hier in fünf simplen Punkten:

1. Universitäre Forschung in Europa ist oft Weltklasse.

2. Außeruniversitäre Forschung (z. B. Max-Planck-Gesellschaft) genießt hohes Ansehen, schafft aber selten den Sprung in die Entwicklung und bleibt in den eigenen Instituten gefangen.

3. Industrieforschung: USA 7 („Magnificent Seven“), Europa 0 – von China ganz zu schweigen. Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Research, Microsoft und Meta Research dominieren die KI-Forschung. Die ersten drei sind nicht zufällig auch die grössten hashtag#Hyperscaler.
Siehe auch hashtag#Draghi Report.

4. Entwicklung bedeutet, Forschung in marktreife Produkte zu überführen – eine Aufgabe, die primär von Startups erfüllt werden sollte. Großkonzerne mit ihren festgefahrenen Anreizsystemen sind dazu nicht in der Lage; Ausnahmen bestätigen die Regel.

5. Außeruniversitäre Entwicklung à la Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft? Bleibt meist ein Serviceangebot ohne Skalierung. Thomas Sattelberger hat dazu treffend und provokant geschrieben.

Ohne Umsetzung in die Entwicklung bleibt selbst die beste Forschung verlorenes Geld und Liebesmüh.

Dieser Artikel wurde zuerst im Februar 2025 auf LinkedIn gepostet.

Message to board members: If you think you can replace the CEO before PMF you are fools. Instead, do the hard work and help the founders grow.

 

There are some investors who are truly great board members.

And then there are the others who shouldn't be on the board.

I came across two instances this week where the board was trying to strong arm the founder CEO.

Case #1 is where the company is pre product-market fit. One of the existing investors is trying to use the new funding round to change the majority required to remove the CEO as part of the shareholder agreement.

Case #2 is where the board members have asked the CEO to resign and believe that bringing in an outside CEO will make the company scale faster. The founder CEO has grown the company to high single digit million ARR with one product; to get to unicorn status the company will likely have to go multi-product. 

Firing the founder CEO before product-market fit is a mistake: Pre-PMF, the company is still searching for what works—this is a phase of discovery, not execution. No outsider will have the same level of conviction, adaptability, and founder-led credibility with early customers.

Investors who think a "professional CEO" will magically find PMF are fooling themselves—without a clear market pull, even the best operator is flying blind. Replacing the founder kills momentum, fractures the team, and often leads to a slow, painful death.

Most of the CEOs are coachable, so here is my advice to board members:

Don't be lazy and think that swapping out the CEO will solve a problem. In fact, you have just massively increased the company's risk profile

Instead, do the hard work and help the founders grow. 

Or else, just resign from your board duties.

A version of this post was published on LinkedIn in February 2025

Robotics is a data problem, not an engineering challenge

 

When we think about robotics, we often picture humanoid machines. But robotics isn’t really about robots—it’s about value capture. At its core, much of robotics will become a data problem rather than just an engineering challenge.

The biggest mistake in robotics is starting with the hardware. Instead, the focus should be on solving the problem first. By separating the intelligence (software, AI, data processing) from the form factor (the physical robot), companies can build more adaptable and scalable solutions.

A recent discussion at the Stanford Robotics Center highlighted three key trends shaping the future of robotics:

1. The Continuing Promise of Transformers – Large AI models are revolutionizing how robots process and generate information, making them more adaptable to real-world tasks.

2. Computer Vision Applied to Robotics – Advances in AI-powered vision systems allow robots to see, understand, and interact with their environments with greater accuracy than ever before and replace all other sensors.

3. Security for Edge Applications – As robots operate closer to the edge (in warehouses, factories, and even homes), securing real-time data processing and connectivity becomes critical.

Successful robotics companies of the future won’t just be building robots—they’ll be solving high-value problems with intelligent, data-driven systems.

This post was first published on LinkedIn in March 2025