Solving One Problem: Taulia Co-Founder Maex Ament on Building an Industry-Leading Company with Over 1.8M Clients

Rui: If you’re looking for stories, strategies, and actionable advice on how entrepreneurial careers start, you’re in the right place. I’m your host, Rui, and this is the Startup Journey Podcast, the show where every week I sit down with different entrepreneurs, experts, and thought leaders to dig deep into what it takes to get a startup off the ground.

Today, I’m joined by serial entrepreneur Marcus Emmons, also known as Max. Throughout his career, Max was responsible for creating numerous successful startups and advising many more. Max, thank you for taking the time to sit down with me. How are you today? I’m good. Thanks for having me, Rui. Perfect. So successful, successful founder, successful businessman.

I’m sure it doesn’t tell the whole story. Care to tell a bit about yourself to our audience?

Maex: Yeah, sure. Happy to do so. Yeah. Max, my name, or as you say, my name is Markus Amund, but Max, everybody calls me Max. I am, uh, as you hear with my beautiful accent, I’m German, currently based in Madrid, where I live with my wife and my two daughters and spent the last 12 years before Madrid in San Francisco.

Professionally, my background is in, uh, payments, supply chain finance. So, uh, started my career back in the late nineties at SAP as an engineer, um, in the payments department, went on to found a couple of startups first in Germany, then to San Francisco. As I said, there I raised capital for my first company.

We’ll talk about that. I’m sure back to Europe now for the last four years and build a company on blockchain, on Ethereum in Berlin. And yeah, for the last year, I’m exploring a little bit. What’s next. That’s, that’s me.

Rui: Cool. And I have to tell you, because you mentioned being German, they, uh, when I was preparing this conversation, I actually hit your LinkedIn profile and the first picture I saw was you, um, uh, side by side with Ms.

Angela Merkel. So, uh, hard not, not to notice. I, I know this happened a while back. Care to tell us a bit about what that was about? Just out of curiosity,

Maex: of course. No, no, sure, sure. I mean, it’s obviously a little bit of a show off, I admit. But I’m kind of proud as well to, to, to, to having been able to, to, to do that.

And that is, I got invited, I think it was 2016 or 17. I got invited to a panel where some entrepreneurs from Germany, but they invited as well me as a hybrid between Germany and the US. Angela Merkel, um, on a panel, uh, discussing entrepreneurship, uh, and, uh, uh, technology in Germany. So yeah, I had the opportunity to talk, I think it was almost an hour with the, with, with Merkel and, um, and the other panelists and even had a wine afterwards.

Was pretty cool. Actually it was,

Rui: it sounds, it sounds super cool. Of course. As I mentioned, when we were preparing this conversation, our purpose today is to bring your insights and lessons to our community of entrepreneurs so that they can. can apply these insights in their own journeys, right? Today, I would like to focus on one particular story and that would be Talia.

So this is a company you founded back in 2009 and is now a leading provider of working capital solutions with over 1. 8 million companies using it across the globe, right? Including Airbus, Nissan, and the UK government. Could you give our listeners a quick overview of Talia in your own words and the value you wanted to create when you first set out to build it?

Yeah, absolutely.

Maex: As you already said, so 2009, myself and my co founders were already in San Francisco. So my co founders, I mentioned it because they’re the same co founders I mentioned, I founded a company before. And in 2009, we decided to create Taulia. And Taulia, in a nutshell, is providing liquidity cash to businesses that need that cash.

So as you know, in average, everybody on this planet, every company on this planet waits about 60 days for their money, send an invoice. Then your customer pays you within 60 days. That’s the average. Sometimes it’s 30 days. Sometimes it’s 90 days. We know the drill. And what do we do at Talia is we went out and want to solve that problem.

And it’s the solution to that problem. It’s not a super new one, but the twist that we applied to it is kind of, kind of neat. We actually started with the idea of going to the biggest companies on this planet. the Home Depots of the world, the Pfizer’s, and then use the, their cash to pay their suppliers early for a discount on a sliding scale.

It’s called dynamic discounting. So we did that at the beginning and moved in later on in a couple of other flavors of those early payments. We brought in third party capital where not the cash of Home Depot or Pfizer is used anymore, but a bank or financial provider. is chiming in and pays those suppliers.

Those 1. 8 million suppliers that you already mentioned pays them early. That’s in a nutshell what Taulia does. Go to the big guys and distribute their cash or their risk, if you want, down into the supply chain.

Rui: Makes perfect sense, by the way. And I have already a couple of followups derailing me from the script, which is inevitable.

So you mentioned your co founders and having met them before in other projects. So this is something that, as you can imagine, comes up a lot, how to find co founders, how to know who you can trust and all of that. So how did you meet them for the first time and what led you to believe that they would be the right fit for this project as well?

Maex: First co founder Martin, Martin Krenzel, I literally met him on my first day of my regular traditional work when I entered SAP, I was sharing an office with Martin, both engineers in the same department. That’s when we met. My second co founder I met in my first company actually. And the fourth co founder is a good friend of mine for, well, giving away my age here, but for almost 40 years now.

So we met in, uh, when we both went to middle school in Germany. So yeah, those are my co founders and we, we. We created a company before in Germany called Abydos, completely bootstrap, sold that company to a Swedish company in 2006, stayed for a few years at the acquiring company and then 2009, or some of us stayed at the acquiring company, I have to say.

And then in 2009, we, uh, we decided to, uh, create Taulia, same founding team then.

Rui: Perfect. And did you guys decide to go in this next, in this new project together because you felt you were complimentary? Was it because of philosophical alignment, knowing that you could work together already? What were the main reasons?

Maex: Yeah, I mean, like a few reasons. Obviously, we were friends, so that helped. We realized already that, uh, we, um, could work together well, that the chemistry works out, so that was important for us. And the, the, like it’s, the idea that we had was aligning as well. We knew from the previous company that the problem that we want to solve in Taulia, 2009 is something that is, that is real and that needs a solution and that companies are looking for a solution.

So, uh, that’s why we decided to do it. And that’s why this was the perfect thing to tackle the problem.

Rui: That’s that actually, um, is a good transition for my next question, which is where the idea for Varo, uh, come from. Uh, and so I can see there’s a cool idea here. There’s an innovative idea there, uh, in doing things a bit differently.

Where did it, did it start? Because I know you mentioned a previous company that was almost like a trial run for, uh, Tovia. Care to share a bit about that?

Maex: Yeah. Maybe I spent 20 seconds on the first company that we built. So the first company called EBIDOS, uh, helped large corporations to get their incoming invoices called accounts payable, their incoming invoices in order.

So if I’m an Apple and Intel and they all run that software, if I’m an Apple or Intel, I use this software from the first company to be able to pay my suppliers earlier. So like to process my invoices faster to not having them fly around my company for weeks and paying my suppliers late. No, I, we optimized the paper, made it electronic, did workflow.

So as an Apple and Intel and the Siemens, I was able to pay my suppliers earlier. But in reality, nobody paid suppliers earlier because, well, on the invoice, it’s written net 60, meaning pay me in 60 days. So even if you’re ready in 10 days and Apple says, yeah, nice, but I’m holding onto that invoice because I don’t have to pay that supplier because my working capital would be impacted if I pay early.

So we knew that our first company was a little bit of the foundation that we built for the second company. And we got requests from our suppliers and buyer clients that, Hey, can we do something about early payments? So we knew from the first company. That there is something the second reason was actually in our first company one of the reasons why we sold the company relatively early after six years was that We had a super high growth in this company that I just mentioned, but we couldn’t actually collect our cash fast enough from our customers.

We couldn’t. And with that, we couldn’t keep up with hiring. So we were a little bit in a, in a crunch. And that’s when the offer came to sell. We thought, well, I mean, if we continue to grow like that, actually, we cannot service our clients. Let’s join forces with a bigger company. So we had that personal reason as well, if you want to do it.

And the third reason I want to mention, it was 2008, nine, when the idea popped up. That was like the time to do something like that because the financial crisis just kicked off and companies left and right went out of business. Large corporations were holding on to their cash, didn’t pay, paid later and later.

Famously, again, it was 2008, I think, Anheuser Busch, the big beverage company, they pushed out payment terms, I think, to 360 days. So as a, as a small medium business, I had to wait one year to get my money from, which obviously doesn’t work for me as a small medium business. So all those things together, we decided it’s time to build this company that we had in our head.

Rui: A lot of interesting things there. I mean, timing matters a lot, right? The, the, the moment and being able to ride the waves is, is crucial here. So thank you for that. So the way I see it, this was evidence to some extent was almost a POC or, or, or an MVP of what Tolia would be, but how did you go about validating Tolia itself?

Did you build an MVP? Did you went straight for, for. a full app with multiple services. What was the roadmap there?

Maex: Yeah. I mean, we all read Eric Ries, uh, I’m sure. So there’s, there’s a place for, for lean. There’s a place for MVPs, but I do think there’s a place as well for conviction and a place for just doing what you think works.

And we had the luxury of having the first company, which you called an MVP. And maybe we had that MVP in the previous company for six years. And knew what is needed next. So what I’m trying to say is we actually built for at least six or nine months a product that we, we just, just, we thought we’ll solve the problem without really seeking any outside input.

We had outside input from the previous company. So let’s count that one. And we just build it. Yeah. And I think in enterprise, specifically when I say enterprise, I mean, large corp enterprise B2B, and that’s where I played for my whole career. That’s where. It’s a little bit tougher to do MVPs. You don’t have that luxury to go to a large corporation and then play around with them.

And then an additional, I mean, back in 2000, when was it, 7, 8, 9, when we started transitioning to Taulia. I mean, SAP is still on prem. Doing MVPs on prem is another little, uh, uh, interesting twist there, right? You cannot play around and test things as easily as, as we do it, uh, in, in, in SaaS based solution.

Anyway, so hopefully that answers the question.

Rui: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And there, I mean, an MVP, the viable is there for a reason. So it actually needs to address the pain points or whatever is necessary for anyone to, to adopt it, use it, and then give you the feedback that you will use to iterate on it. So, and I, I, I get it that some audiences are simply tougher than others.

And the way I see it, you simply had enough information there for an educated guest, right? To make sure that you would build something that would be meaningful. And you knew the market already, so you had enough information. Cool. But let’s, uh, dig a bit deeper into this, uh, go to market strategy. What was your strategy to secure early adopters?

Because you had a network already. I’m assuming you had some, some way to bring in interesting people, uh, into the funnel, but can you talk a bit about it? Yeah, absolutely. I mean,

Maex: the, when, when we started in 2009, the previous company that we built, 2006 to 2000, uh, 2000 to 2006, had about 300 corporate clients.

And again, it was the apples, the Intel’s of the world, like the biggest of the biggest. So our natural sailor sales approach in 2009, when we had the first version that we could show a sellable version, minimum sellable product was to go to exactly those clients. And interestingly enough, those were not the first ones that were biting.

So there was not the first one. So we banked heavily on that. Even when we raised money, we can, we talk about that later. I’m sure. I mean, one of our key ingredients that we brought into the VC process was We had a company before with about 300 customers and we will monetize those clients for reasons I’m still not a hundred percent sure and clear about.

Those were not our first customers. We tried, we emailed, we called, we talked, but there was some, some hesitance in what I think is, is interesting as well with my next company centrifuge in the blockchain world, although enterprise and not not enterprise blockchains, but more at the beginning, more corporate focused.

We try, we had the same concept. So we go to our existing clients and again, our existing clients weren’t our first customers for centrifuge either. So I just want to mention that, that the natural. The natural inclination to go to my kind of previous installed base did not work out. So, and, and again, I’m not sure about the reasons.

What did work out and works out, uh, for every, every startup I work with or build is to, uh, to piggyback some partners in enterprise. That is a beautiful thing in enterprise. If you find the right partner that is already in an account, has a close relationship in an account, and you provide them with a complimentary product or even a feature that worked for us, well, that worked for us well in 2009, 10 with a company called O 10 that did electronic invoicing and they brought us into an account, uh, that was then, uh, yeah, pretty chain, uh, pretty defining for Lia, which was Pfizer.

It was our first customer Pfizer.

Rui: I see that that answers everything. Really. There are a couple of interesting things in there to deconstruct as well. One is the way you’ve shown traction to your investors with these 300 customers and having a game plan set, but we’ll get into that as you were saying.

Now here regarding the network of that, not network, but a pool of clients that you had already not acting on the new product, I was going to actually ask them who were these early adopters. But you replied to it already. And in the end, it’s always about connections, right? It’s always about speaking to people.

It’s always about engaging and opening doors that way. Were you doing it yourself with your co founders or was anyone else in this process to secure these early adopters?

Maex: No, there was, there was the four of us, absolutely. Mainly, well, it was, was Martin in Germany because he stayed back in Germany and my, my co founder Bertram and myself.

less so, but the, the, uh, from a, from a sales perspective. So, yeah, we, uh, we were the three out of the four that we’re selling heavily.

Rui: Which makes sense, right? At the start founders do everything and selling, it must be there all the time. So before we go into the details of each of the, the, the problems or, or the things that you faced building this company in this road to product market fit.

Are there any key moments from the journey between launching this first version and the moment you raised your first meaningful round that you’d like to share?

Maex: So we tried to secure capital. Again, in the first company, we completely bootstrapped in Germany as a matter of fact, I didn’t know about venture capital, uh, back in 2000 or 2005, even 2004, I guess.

In 2009, then, or we prepared for the company a bit earlier, we decided this is a big topic. It needs outside capital. So we started pretty early to raise outside capital and found some early angels that committed to invest in the round, but made a condition, made it a precondition that we find additional institutional capital.

So a VC fund. And, um. And yeah, I can go into details there. Let me know if it’s interesting, but, uh, yeah. Okay. I’ll go a little bit deeper. So what made it actually super interesting that, uh, we somehow got connected to AngelList in San Francisco, AngelList, a company that, well, we all aware of AngelList, but in 2009, or was it early 2010, I guess, uh, mid 2010, AngelList was super new, super new.

And so we got lucky. We were the first startup that was featured on AngelList. For institutional money. So Talia got mentioned there and then within minutes or hours, emails poured in of investors, because we could actually say we had already a meaningful amount committed from angels and then, uh, really great, uh, VCs came in.

And, um, we raised then our, um, our final round at the final round. Then the series a, we skipped pretty much a seat around, which was weird, but we did the, the serious Aiden. Actually happened in parallel with securing our first customer was a little bit of a chicken egg problem on both sides. Our first customer Pfizer, although we came in through a partner, well, they want to have some security to go with the startup.

So they waited for backing on the same on the same time. Our VCs waited for our first customer to write a check. The check was a 3 million check. At the end, we could convince both parties to give us a few days off. Believe that we secured both in the same week.

Rui: Perfect. So a bunch of follow ups also here.

So let’s go a bit technical there. I see the problem, right? Because you need to raise money, but for that, you need the client, but the client is waiting for you to raise money. So yeah, it’s, it’s a bit of a conundrum there. So how long did it take for you to solve these problems? Were you back and forth for a couple of weeks, for a couple of months?

How was it? Yeah, let me think. So I

Maex: think our fundraise, our fundraise was probably a six month process, if you want. Keep in mind, we, although we were not first time founders, that was a plus. We were second time founders. Yeah, we were not second time VC money raising founders. So it was the first time that we raised money.

We were in a city, although it’s the capital of venture capital, San Francisco, we were Most of us were there for just a few months, maybe myself the most for two years, but we didn’t have any connections into the VC world. We didn’t go to Stanford or whatever. So we were the weird Germans that needed to build a network.

So it took us six months. We did with the help of some angels that we, that we convinced with the help of advisors. That is, that’s maybe one thing why I do advise these days to give a little bit back because it helped us tremendously to have some people in the Valley. That could point us into the right direction and help us with the fundraise.

I remember once meeting just a guy randomly that looked at our deck and completely ripped it apart and told us like the biggest nonsense ever, guys, you’re too German. And it, it was true. It was true. So we, we changed the deck and not that we closed the term sheet the next day, but our, our feedback, our traction was completely different.

So getting that feedback, getting those advisors, formal or non formal advisors helped a lot to get it. Yeah. At the end, it was a few weeks where the, the, the DC. And the customer, uh, we played the chicken egg game, but the whole process was much longer.

Rui: Okay, so I want to Go to something you said there, which is having that feedback from a potential investor ripping The picture part, by the way, to Germany was actually priceless.

I’m sure you spoke with a lot of people, right? And you’ve heard a lot of advice and you had to make sure you didn’t act on all the advice. Otherwise you won’t do anything other than changing the product, right? So what led you to believe that this was the right advice and that you should Implement these changes in order to have a better product.

Was it the knowledge of the investor? Was it the trust that he gave you during the conversation? What was it?

Maex: Actually on the product side, Rui, we never changed anything from, uh, neither from investor feedback or because we were, it was just a pitch that was very German. The, the feedback. Was actually from some VCs and from outside advisors to, as I said, to German, meaning not sales enough, not aggressive enough to, to realistic, I guess it’s the name.

Yeah. Okay. Like, Oh, you make in five years X million revenue, triple that number, please, because you can, you should aim higher. Almost impossible, but we changed those numbers and changed our mindset as well. It actually goes back to one thing that is maybe interesting to share. The biggest gift I got coming to the US being acquired by the Swedish company, but I worked in with a, with a, their US counterpart was to learn about sales and like sales in Germany is a dirty thing.

It still is to that day. It’s like going from door to door and selling windows, which I kind of did in 95 funny enough. But it’s a, it’s, it’s, it’s something that is not perceived like in the US as an art. Or in the science almost, right? Had I had in between before we found a talent 2009, I had the pleasure to work with probably one of the best salespeople I know, one of the best leaders and.

Yeah, some of those things, uh, um, I then applied as well in the sales process. Advisor feedback was I didn’t apply or we didn’t apply it enough. It came together after we, uh, tried it a few times. So yeah, being a more aggressive, optimistic, more Passionate sales leader or salesperson is some, it was, was a key element in our pitch that then came.

Rui: Perfect. So you actually use the interaction with these in these first conversations with investors to fine tune the pitch and actually fine tune your own approach there. Yeah. Always learning, right? That’s the, the, the roadmap of the entrepreneur. Perfect. AngelList. How did you get that break?

Maex: I don’t know.

It was, it was through one of our advisors to the network. We got an introduction to, uh, my co founder and then CEO Bertram got an introduction to Naval. Then Naval, uh, allowed us to be featured on AngelList. It was a different concept back then, AngelList. It was very simplistic, I think if my memory serves me right.

But, uh, yeah, through this. Hard networking in a city that we didn’t know eventually were successful. And kudos and credit to Bertram, again, my co founder to make that, make this connection happen. And, uh, got us then, uh, mentioned on AngelList, which completely changed the game for us.

Rui: That’s it. And that’s what I want to highlight because, uh, usually we look at the, the, the successful companies, successful founders, and we think that they started from zero and it was a straight up line to success, right?

But there are so many breaks in there and some things that go terribly wrong, some things that go terribly well, or not terribly, but go super well. And it’s important to highlight that. Luck also plays a big part. Being in the right place at the right time is part of the game as well. That is true for you, for Tolly, for me, for anyone.

Maex: And if I may say, I mean, you can steer a little bit your luck, right? I mean, being in the right place, yeah. Things are different now, specifically for the last two years, with place is not as important. I would still argue it is to some extent, but I can assure you in 2008, 9, being in San Francisco was part of being at the right place to secure venture capital.

It was a completely different game. So that, that helped our decision to be in San Francisco helped to shape our luck a little bit, I guess.

Rui: Absolutely. And luck takes a lot of work. I, I, I say that a lot as well, but I mean, sometimes a phone call, right. Changes the game just because it happens. So it’s also important to have that in mind and to never stop looking for that life.

Cool. So. Again, circling back to investors, any other important lessons you learn on how to deal with them, how to approach them, because having that, you had your approach, you will learn from them, improve your pitch, improve your approach, and eventually secure the money. Any tactical thing there for an entrepreneur starting now and wanting to, you Start doing it.

Maex: Maybe I start with, I’m not sure it’s really actionable feedback for the fundraise, but I share it anyway. So not everything that an investor says is actually true. That’s the first thing there. Let’s just keep, keep in mind specifically larger. No, actually for everybody, that’s true. They don’t know the space you are in, or we are in as well as we do.

So any advice they give is more generic or is not product related. So I got product advice. Let me give an example to stay away from SAP clients. Like those stay away. Don’t go after SAP clients. That was our secret sauce to go after the SAP because we knew exactly what to do there. It’s an SAP has the still does the enterprise market covered with however, you count 40, 50 percent market share in the, in the, in the global 2000.

So we thought that’s a pretty interesting niche we go after, but we got to advise a few times. That’s, that’s a dying market. Go not don’t go there. So yeah, I’m pretty glad that, uh, that we ignored that one. And then you often hear excuses from investors like, Oh, this is just a feature that hurts when you hear that.

My advice is just don’t take everything as granted what those guys say. They are just humans. And sometimes they don’t have the balls to tell you the true feedback that they don’t understand your product, that they don’t understand the space and they. They feel obligated to make up some smart sounding shit.

So it’s not always a helpful advice. So that’s, that’s the first one. Yeah. Back to, back to, back to maybe some, some more tangible tips. One, one thing, and it took me a while, actually it took me many, many years to understand. You’ve got to convince only one investor that it’s not like in a sales process where you sell to a hundred companies and you want to ideally sell all of them.

Yeah, obviously if you have a hundred investors and a hundred interested investors, FOMO drives up your term sheet and your evaluation, but it shouldn’t be in my book as a first time entrepreneur. It definitely, you know, your priority, your priority should be to get one term sheet, just one. So if you have those 50, a hundred investors, you go after figure out early on, who’s the one that you can double, triple quadruple down, provide feedback, provide him with references or her, you, you have to convince only one.

Yes. Once you convince them the first one. You use that term sheet potentially to get others as co investors as better term sheets. We can talk about that, but the mindset is different than the traditional sales get one. I think that is, that is, that is one learning I had. So I’m wondering, yeah, what else we talked about being a, I would not optimize on valuation again.

That’s just, just, I mean, you want a term sheet. Yes. You shouldn’t short sell your company. Public knowledge. I guess we, we, we made a mistake in our first, in our series a to give a, give a little bit of much away, I think, uh, too much optimizing on term, uh, on terms, whether you give away 11 percent or 11 and a half percent of the company, geez, it’s not that critical.

If you have a great idea at the end, it’s, it’s all right. One thing I say though, is it is quite important to run a little bit of a process. It is. Like the sales process, you should run a process with a funnel and timelines and everything. The same for running a fundraise. It starts with as basic things as keeping track of everything.

Create a small CRM, a freaking Excel sheet or whatever it is. Keep track of things. Have dates as well. Okay. This is the week I want to pitch the first batch. This is the week I want to pitch the second batch. Start with a few investors that you’re not as keen on. I mean, that’s, that’s common knowledge. I’m not sharing anything new here, but I think that importance for me was to, to make it a little bit more formal, ideally have some milestones as well, where I expect term sheets on that date to keep, keep, keep it a little bit.

And ideally create a little bit of fear of missing out for more in that process as well, right before I started fundraising process, I’m holding back on use. So it depends if you’re really fresh and we’ll precede, you don’t have any news to share. In our case, we did actually have some news to share, like partnerships that we started, some product news.

So we were holding back on those news for the weeks and months before the fundraise and then strategically planted them within the fundraise. So when we had the first pitches, we let one or two news out on LinkedIn and we couldn’t do big PR. We had no money, but I think that is, that is, that is something plan, some news that you have, some key hire, some advisors you bring on board, whatever the news are in the early stages of the startup.

Have them sprinkled in, in the few weeks of your fundraise, if you can really box it in into a few weeks.

Rui: Perfect. So thank you for that. Actually, I wanted to, I have a follow up there. Although here at Altar we’re a product house, we are all, all managers and founders are either early employees or they had their own startups.

So we really have this entrepreneurial DNA. And because of that, we usually act much more like an extended team of co founders than just a supplier. And we end up advising on a lot of things, not only on the technical part. And obviously we always, money is always a concern, right? And one advice we give is to be careful when you, look for money to worldly, right?

Because you are not in a position where you’re not in a strong position from a negotiation standpoint. You will most likely forfeit a lot of equity if you have, if you just have an idea on a napkin. I see what you, what you mean there. Then there’s the question of smart money, because we’re talking about Speaking with investors that don’t know shit about the product and they are just giving you generic advice, which we also see a lot in board meetings, for instance.

But what’s your take on going for smart money versus just money? Was this part of the strategy back then? I

Maex: mean, absolutely. And I’m, I’m super happy with the investors that we, we found early in the, uh, in the, in the journey of Talia, Talia, but as well later on, I mean, uh, I don’t, we raised in total 250 million with Talia.

So, uh, over, over many, many rounds of funding. And, um, I think we were very strategic and that said, there are situations I do work with some startups where we try to be strategic, but because the product is early because the timing is off because whatever it is. Yes, you like to have XYZ as an investor, you like that FinTech expert, maybe you’re not there yet because uh, the, the numbers, the traction, the whatever it is, doesn’t work.

So, what I’m trying to say, if you can be picky, be picky, we had the luxury to be, we had, we could pick our investors back then, even more so at Centrifuge, which is the company I mentioned we founded in, In 2017 in Berlin, there we, we, we had the luxury to be even more selective and get the right investors on board for this company.

It was a combo of the greatest European tech investors, fintech investors, and some crypto investors. But yeah, if you can be strategic and try to, uh, to get the experts in your field, Let’s be fair as well, not everybody has that luxury at the beginning, specifically as a first time founder.

Rui: Specifically as a first time founder, that’s what I was going to say.

Perfect. Max, let’s change gears here. Who did you have with you in the early days? What was the team composition?

Maex: My co founder. So I had a beautiful luxury to To now build four companies, three companies in total, I guess it depends how we count even for, uh, to build with the same team, my, my, my, my, my co founders that I know in and out.

And we compliment each other extremely well from, uh, some of us are salesy. Some of us are more product oriented and, uh, many of us are very technical. So we, we could build first versions of our product or in the case of Taulea, as I mentioned before. We could build a whole product, really complex enterprise product in the first version completely on our own.

So those were, that’s an advantage of, of going with, uh, with, with co founders that you know. Downside is that you split the equity. So let’s be honest. I mean, you go alone, you have a hundred percent, you go with four, you have 25%. That’s by the way, one thing that. I think it’s always fair. There’s always this discussion.

Is it the CEO? Should they get more? And for us, it was always clear. It’s equal shares for everybody. Yeah. And then the first hires, still friends of mine to that day. Some of them, because we didn’t have pre raising money, we had no money. We brought them as interns in San Francisco. They’re still, some are still with the company.

Others went ahead and did other great things. And once we raised money, things were much easier. We, we then tapped into, uh, people from the industry, either from competitors or from adjacent companies that had already some experience, but they were still people that we hired that. Punched a little bit above their weight class.

Like, uh, hiring someone as a marketing director that aspires to be the VP of marketing. And there’s a, there’s a great example. Uh, my best friend, Joe Highland is exactly that, that person that we brought in as, as, as a marketing director. He knew, and I knew, and we all knew he’ll become a marketing leader, a CMO eventually, which he became.

And um, he was instrumental to bring on 24 public about a year ago as a cmo. So, um, yeah, that we’re fortunate to find those people. And there are many, many examples, uh, that we brought in after we raised some money of people that were not quite at the, the, the super level, the, the CMO level maybe, but we knew they can get there and they got there,

Rui: which is cool.

Perfect. So you bet a lot on potential as well. I guess that’s it. People that could grow with the company, let’s say. And that makes sense. And

Maex: there’s, and there, if I may say, and there’s a, there had been, at least for, for Talia, there’s a point in time where this changes a little bit, where you build that team, you maybe you’re 100 or 200 people, and then you might want to bring in some, in some areas, the, the CFO that did it already three times.

Although that’s a pretty fucking hard thing to get the right CFO. We messed that up so many times, but in general, in theory, CFO is a good, a good example where you want to bring someone in that. maybe can bring the company public at one point, right? You bring, bring out. So, uh, and there’s a few other positions where you don’t want to hire, like for potential and you want to hire for experience.

I don’t know where exactly that point is after serious BC, a hundred, 200 people different for, for every company. But at one point you got to think slightly different.

Rui: Of course. And if there were, if there was a, a playbook, everyone would have unicorns, right? So obviously it’s part of the game is making the most educated guesses you can with the scarce information that you have ahead.

Perfect. Tell me something. You’re the co founding, uh, the, the team. There were four of you, right? What were the main strengths of each of you?

Maex: Yeah, as I hinted before, so I start with our CEO Bertram, and it’s always mean when I say that, but he was the one that couldn’t code. So he became CEO.

It’s completely unfair and a hundred percent not true, but it’s, it’s a decent joke. No, he, he’s the one that, that, that had the, a background in, uh, you come from Boston consulting. So he was the most experienced when it comes to managing potentially and even, even sales and strategy. So that’s why it made him the perfect candidate for CEO myself.

But the other three were, were. Where former engineers, I was more on the product side, more product thinking, more idea ideas. So that, that made me probably a logical candidate for head of product. Philip, Philip Stelig, a genius developer, genius engineer, but as well with a strategic angle, made perfect CTO and Martin, because he stayed back in Europe, in Germany, and the three of us were in San Francisco, Martin was assuming the role of a little bit of a COO hybrid as well as managing Europe.

Which obviously in the beginning was small, but became then a super important avenue. But the reality of doing was that Bertram raised money for the first six, nine months with our help, obviously, and the three of us were building the product. So that was the reality, whether I had a CPO title or COO title or whatever we were hacking.

Rui: Yeah. And yes, it goes back to the importance of a strong co founding team. That’s right. It is what it is. Perfect. And I want

Maex: to say, I give up, give up is the wrong word. I’d rather share with my co founders, the equity and share the load, share the responsibility, share the pressure. That is money well spent for everybody, I think.

Rui: That’s it. That’s it. I mean, you get a share, but a share of a much bigger thing, right? Because the compound effect of you guys working together is actually noticeable by the success you’ve achieved. Okay, so now, how was the day? in the life back then. So how many hours a day were you working? How many days a week?

How was the focus split? You mentioned that you were pretty much focused on product, but I’m assuming you were doing some sales as well. Can you share some details behind the curtain?

Maex: So you’re right. I mean, the first one is specifically me. I was selling all day hacking and the other 100 percent hacking and the other 100 percent and that’s unfortunately the time I invested and the other 100 percent I was selling.

Selling either to together with my co founder to VCs Selling to first customers, selling employees to join, selling partners. So that’s how my day looked like coding and selling. And I’m not that I’m proud of it, but in 2009, 10, 11, in the first few years of Talia, it was exactly that, that horrible 70, 80, whatever our week that, uh, again, not proud of, but that’s how it was.

Can I do it better now? Probably I can. Was I able to do it better back then, 12, 15 years ago? I didn’t know any better and it was hard work and we needed to do it. I wish every founder can get a better work life balance going. I couldn’t back then. That was a reality.

Rui: Okay. Yeah. You did what needed to be done back then.

It is what it is. How did you balance this with your personal life?

Maex: I have a wife that I met already when I was in my first startup, founded my first startup, so she knew the drill. She knew the deal she was buying in. So she was very calm and very, very, very, very supportive. So it didn’t balance well. I’m doing it now much better.

Uh, now that I’m wiser and have that gray hair that’s probably visible on the video. So, uh, now I know that my priorities back then I didn’t, so I didn’t balance it. Well, I had great support from my wife that made it possible for me. It didn’t feel except for the family angle, but like I didn’t miss out on social or friendship that, that I didn’t because Work was my circle of friends, my co founders, and as well, the first employees that we brought in.

I mean, I was the happiest person on this planet to work 10, 12, 15 hours and then go out for drinks afterwards with those same people. It was amazing. Again, it took, it took a toll on the family. It wasn’t easy, but from a friend, social perspective, I was, I was in the perfect place.

Rui: Absolutely. Actually, I’m blessed as well in that regard because people working around me are actually friends, right?

And we go on trips together. We hang out together. So that’s great. There’s also something my father once told me that it got stuck with me until now, which is find something you really like doing and you won’t work one day in your life. Right? So if you extract pleasure from that, it’s a vastly different story.

Yet we need obviously to consider that there’s a balance there. I don’t think there’s really a formula to, to, or, or an advice you could give people for them to, to, to do it better. Just do the best you can with the information that you have, right? Agreed. 100 percent agreed. Perfect. So Max, this wraps up the story part.

Now, if you agree, I would transition to a rapid fire session with some finishing questions. Is that okay? Sure. Cool. So what would be your main advice for an entrepreneur starting now?

Maex: First of all, there’s no general advice as we discussed before about the, if you are in doubt, do it as a team, do it as a founding team, find a co founder.

If you’re technical, get someone business savvy. If you’re business savvy, get someone technical. Cool. On that one on deck, entrepreneur first, those incubators, not incubators, but those, those fellowships, those are great ways to find those co founders. And the last one maybe is don’t do it on the side. I mean, if you can convince that, that this is the thing to do, I didn’t see a single startup that succeeded.

Remember, that’s not true. There are, but those are the exceptions. Yeah. That you do it on the side. You’ve got to commit. You’ve got to get in. Try it for six months. Try it for a year. I know it’s hard. I know not everybody can afford it, but push, push for that.

Rui: Again, if you can do it, right. In optimal, just, just like we were discussing smart money earlier, if you have the opportunity to do it, do it.

Yeah. Cool. So one more. Yeah. I think one

Maex: more I’d like to say on that one. There’s this famous, famous, famous thing called the imposter syndrome, and it’s so real. I just want to point it out. Everybody has it. So if you feel as a founder, you go into a space, you don’t know shit. I had it in crypto at the beginning.

I felt so unsecure as a matter of fact, that’s why I left the centrifuge in the first place. Just, just realized that it’s actually true for everybody in the space. Everybody’s just winging it. That’s my learning of, yeah, it took me way too long, but it’s my learning of the last 20 years.

Rui: It’s actually an amazing point because as you, as you mentioned, everyone deals with it at some point, actually, it was a friend for me early in my career because it made me work so much harder because I was feeling that, that I were, I was in positions where.

I couldn’t, I wasn’t really, what am I doing here? I don’t know what I’m doing. Right. And that made me work harder and harder to, to, to achieve the point where I am today. So it can also be a friend if your mindset is, is the right one. Perfect. So Max, can you share one key lesson you learned on product?

Maex: There’s many, but maybe it is actually pretty great. If you go into a space a little bit naive. As a product manager, as a product leader in general, meaning you don’t have any, everything researched and analyzed and market positioning. I mean, some, some high level is fine, but if you dig too deep, if you do too long, your due diligence on a space, you actually get scared.

You get scared because you then find that every 500 pound gorilla is in already with some, some, in some form or fashion. So I think there’s a, at the beginning, some, Naivety, if that word exists, uh, going into space is helpful. You don’t need a super experts from, from the space to break in. It changes later on the company becomes more mature.

Obviously you want to think a little bit more mature and a little bit more strategic, but that, that would be my one advice. It’s totally okay to go into a space and don’t have, and having not everything figured out.

Rui: Perfect. So one key lesson you learn on marketing.

Maex: Marketing is, is, is the most beautiful and greatest thing.

It’s like, it’s the cousin of sales, right? And those are things that we, we both Europeans. I don’t think everybody in Europe understands that, you know, appreciates that as much how much of an impact a great marketing team, a great marketing leader has in Europe. Marketing is often, again, I’m generalizing here and I don’t mean to, but very often it’s still doing a little bit of PR and getting your demand gen right.

That’s marketing. Now it’s so much more if you have that leader that thinks about the brand holistically. To makes them. And, and I had that pleasure to work with that person again, Joe Highland, that, uh, got Talia, which is, face it, working, capital payments, accounts payable. Couldn’t be anything much more boring than that.

Yeah. He made it exciting. If you Google Talia and you look for the videos he created, I mean, we were Yeah. In that niche, in that space, something special. And so I think my, my, my advice on marketing is think about it holistically. I think a little bit American here about the, the, the, the thinking bigger, a little bit of bullshitting.

I think that’s great in that particular case.

Rui: Absolutely. And thank you for that. And as you know, marketing, my background is in marketing. So preaching to the choir there, I usually there’s, I think it’s Dave Gerhart. I don’t want to, to, to get that wrong. If so, I’ll throw something in the show notes. Life is too short to work for a CEO that doesn’t get marketing, right?

And because marketing is so important that you really need to be, to have the enablement to go there and make an impact and make a difference. And I agree with you 100 percent on the European scene, we are much more conservative there. Not that we should have all the bells and whistles that we see in some infomercials, but actually the having an open mind regarding what marketing is and how it should be dealt with.

So thank you for that. Now, can you share one key lesson you learned on people or hiring?

Maex: As I said before, I had the pleasure to start with friends that makes it made it easier. We, a few of the very early hires we skipped. Then again, I mentioned it before we hired early on a lot from the other players in the space competitors.

Again, we had the pleasure to work with them in the years before that made it easier. So no news here. I shared that before. And then another one again for European, your Europeans harder to adopt, but get rid of the bad apples fast. I mean, the American mindset of higher, fast, higher, fast. You can love it or hate it.

Uh, but if you realize someone is not working out, yes. Give them a chance, train them. I get all that, but you’ve got to be honest to yourself as well. Specifically if it’s a culturally not a fit. So even if, uh, if it’s questionable, okay. On the, on the functional side. If it’s culturally not a fit, get rid of them as fast as possible.

I had once this example, and you probably can Google it, of this, this glass of pure water and you get that drop of dirty ink in. And if you’re not fast enough of fishing it out, your whole water gets dirty, your whole beautiful glass. So try to catch that ink early or get it out as early as possible, which is harder in Europe.

I know specifically if you’re more than X people, but it’s still worth it.

Rui: Yeah, absolutely. I couldn’t agree more. So that actually got me thinking about something. Were you present in the, because you mentioned bringing people to tackle marketing and to tackle some, some of the other departments of the company.

Were you there for the interviews? Was this someone that was specifically focusing on hiring? What was the overall process to bring in the first few team members?

Maex: All of us. So all of us founders were involved in interviewing. So I’m pretty sure that, I don’t know the number, but probably until 50, 40, 50 people.

Definitely three out of the four. I’m saying three out of the four, because Martin times on wise was somewhere different, but often all four of us were involved in the hiring, not in every stage, but definitely in the last interviews. And I would even say until three, 400 people, one of us definitely had at least one interview with most people.

Rui: Yeah, there was

Maex: definitely a founder job at the beginning. Definitely.

Rui: Perfect. No, no, actually there’s, there’s an interview from Reid Hoffman in masters of scale where he mentions he’s interviewing someone and they talk about the first 150 employees being your cultural co founders, right? And how important it is to bring people that have that philosophical alignment, because that shapes what the company is going to be for the future.

Max, one resource that was invaluable to your success. And this can be a book, a podcast, a mentor, advisor, whatever.

Maex: Cannot go with one. I need a few more. Which is fine. Everything that Naval writes about, I know it’s a little bit cheesy and overused, but it is true. It helped me follow his Twitter feed, listen to the podcast, the Tim Ferriss one or the Joe Rogan ones.

It just, it’s just fucking smart. So it helped me a lot from the beginning. The Horowitz books, both of them, I think they’re brilliant. Cannot forget my coaches. So I had the luxury then after we raised money to have coaches from a whole career and all of them were super helpful. And for the last three, four years, I worked with, uh, with a specific coach and, uh, he, he changes my trajectory.

So in my, my, how I deal with things. So if you have the possibility to work with coaches or be in some mentor circles or whatever it is. This is, this, this is fantastic.

Rui: Cool. Last question. Who should we interview next? I’m putting you on the spot here. An entrepreneur you really respect. I’d

Maex: go into

Rui: many,

Maex: but here I go with one.

It’s a gentleman called Josh Vernon, founder of earned in Australia on demand pay startup. He’s probably, no, it’s definitely one of the best entrepreneurs I ever met in my life. So yeah, he, he’ll, you’ll hear a lot from him in the years to come. Josh Vernon.

Rui: Perfect. So I’m definitely gonna reach out to, to Josh and, and, and let’s see, maybe we can have another conversation there.

Where can people know more about you?

Maex: I think the easiest, uh, is, uh, to, to, to, to follow me and text me on Twitter, uh, direct message me on Twitter. It’s Max242, M A E X 242, or just connect with me on LinkedIn. Perfect. I’m old school.

Rui: Now we can go there. Thank you, Max, for taking the time out of your schedule to sit down with me.

Any closing thoughts? I think, uh,

Maex: yeah, I hope it helps a little bit the European entrepreneur ecosystem to advance and, uh, I could push it a little bit. Uh, super pleased. So.

Rui: Perfect. So I hope you found the conversation useful. I know I certainly picked up some valuable lessons from Max’s advice. Thank you for listening.

I’ll see you again in the next edition of the Startup Journey podcast.