Folge 004 • Finanzierung & Digitalisierung von KMU – Mit Matthias Knaur und Stefan Kempf

Welcome dear guests, dear listeners, I am very happy to welcome you to our new podcast on finance and digitalization of KMUs. I am happy to be able to welcome our guests, Leonie, our charming moderator from DREED, Matthias from Pepper Oaks Capital and Stefan from Alfinio. [Music] I am Leonie, Co-Founder and CEO by trade. We take care of digital data and deal with this with an AI software for companies, industries and sizes. Our main focus is on the importers and exporters and we work less with logistics and competitors in this place. I am very happy to talk to you and want to continue. Matthias? Yes, I am Matthias. I am here for the REALLY Investments. This is a specialist for search funds that allows companies, young companies, to make a success and then to digitalize them. Yes, thanks. Stefan Kempf, my name. First of all, welcome everyone to Alfinios. I am very happy to be able to record this podcast here in the headquarters, in the heart of Berlin at Alfinio. I am a founder, an employee of Alfinio and the mission of Alfinio is to enable companies to be more successful by supporting their finances and finances. The chance to go to market and buy a new product market fit is bigger than ever before. Many entrepreneurs choose the wrong financing instrument because it is more convenient or because it is the easiest way. Suddenly a new turning point arises and there is growth and opportunities arise. I am allowed to talk briefly with both of you. Who do you want to start with? Maybe with you, Stefan. What exactly do you do at Alfinio? What is your core product or how do you support your company in financing and also in change management? I have learned that entrepreneurs do their own business because they have a vision of their product, of their employees or of their customers. No one does their own business to deal with financing or finances. That is why we try to offer very lean and easy cloud-based accounting to our customers. That means they can do very easy, prepared bookkeeping tasks about us. At the same time, because it is also a very big topic, we support companies with financing, for example, in which we finance entry or exit plans and so more financial freedom can be provided by our entrepreneurs so that they can take orders and are more successful and can plan better with their liquidity. That means they support, in principle, the operating system, the operating finance bookkeeping system, and in foreign capital financing, right? The cloud-based accounting is a self-service. That means entrepreneurs can, for example, produce long-term accounts for us or export their accounts from shop systems to our system. There we create the accounts and continue to the data. And with financing, it is actually the case that customers ask us if we can support them with the purchase of a container from China, for example. Or they send a lot of accounts monthly to the LRH and want to take care of the collections and the out-standings. And then they take over, if we know. That means you take over the accounts and the whole thing is financed, in principle, so that the liquidity is protected in the company at the moment? Exactly. We have the chance to set a direction and to get money from us immediately. That is the only advantage, that means we reduce the cash-life cycle massively. Or we pay the Asian lever today and the entrepreneurs pay us back over the next six months so that we can actually set a goal for them. We have been doing that for many years. We are one of the few suppliers that offer these different products from one hand in combination with the bundle. We finance over 400 million euros per year for our customers and therefore in the meantime also belong to the relevant players in this segment. Awesome. That could possibly be exciting for you, Matthias, for some of your companies. Can you briefly tell us how you, with Relay Investments, support companies? We had briefly talked about it before. You have a fairly exciting concept, Entrepreneur Through Acquisition. That means you go, in principle, in the second level, in the second phase of life of the company, into the middle ground again. Maybe there is even synergy under the circumstances, but maybe you can tell us what you are doing. Let's assume that I am not the magician who has the code in his head and just knows that this is what I want to do, but I want to be an entrepreneur. And there are actually not so many possibilities outside. And that is a concept that comes from the USA. That was invented about 25 years ago, 30 years ago, when you want. That you work together professionally with partners who pay for a search to find a successor. And you basically get, for example, 10 partners. They pay you every 20,000 to 30,000 euros. So you have 24 months of money for your salary, for the due diligence, for actually building up a complete pipeline. And your partner then has the opportunity, but not the duty, to finance you at the acquisition. And this concept, which was invented in the late 80s in the USA, has become very, very popular in the USA in the 90s and 2000s. I was actually the first in the region to do that. I lived in the USA for 10 years myself. I came back in the early 2000s. Then I made a so-called search fund here. I actually bought a software company that we then took over. We took over a huge stock, which is a very old technology. And then in 2013 I sold it. Then in 2015 I did the same thing again. I also bought a successor. We have now also expanded it to just over 18,000 customers. And the company Relay Investment, which is being founded in the circle, has been accompanying companies for over 20 years. We have already accompanied over 700 companies here. Almost 300 also participate in the search and over almost 200 companies. And I have been working with them for two years in Europe together to explain the model, but also to recruit entrepreneurs who say, "I actually want to go to the company, look for a company, buy my basic stock and digitalize it and bring it into the next world." This means that we are a bit more in our own capital, in our foreign capital. Maybe we'll start with you, Stefan. You start with companies that have their own ideas. Not what to buy somewhere, but have their own ideas. How should entrepreneurs go about it? To think about what a financing platform is for me in question. We look now, we have more opportunities, we still have venture capital. There are surely banks. What are the biggest mistakes you see? But what would you do as a entrepreneur when it comes to starting? That's a very broad question. I think you should consider different things as a entrepreneur. My first recommendation would be to look at what your friends and colleagues do in the same industry for the first time. This is often a good indicator. If you are in a certain industry, look at who is strong there. Which financial players are strong there? Which players know this industry? Who is active there? This is my recommendation. This is often a good start to a good financing partner. My learning is that many entrepreneurs choose the wrong financing form because they don't consider many basics. For example, if you need long-term capital with short-term financing or if you need a credit line that is short-term, you need the money long-term or if you spend too much time on it too early. You could pull this out further through a larger R.F.C. leverage. Many entrepreneurs actually choose the wrong financing instrument because it is more likely cheaper or because it is the easiest way. Therefore, my recommendation is to talk to your colleagues or friends in similar situations. Talk to mentors who have experience in the field of financing. Maybe also talk to an experienced advisor. They can often give you tips on what a good financing form is. I would have a few simple tips. Look at what you want to finance in terms of running time congruence. Always look at whether you can continue with FK before you give up your shares. Try to build up two, three, four financing sources. It is very important if you only have one financing partner and you need money quickly, you can only ask one. Therefore, rather build up two, three partners, also from different areas. A bank, a leasing company, a factory company, maybe even a private investor. Then you are also secured in different economic cycles or situations. Last but not least, a very important tip. Many entrepreneurs are not ready for the financing request. This means that I also experience it often. There is a short-term financing requirement. Well, and then in October the end of the year is not finished. The manager has not done the bookkeeping for three months and how do I want to present myself to anyone? Therefore, my recommendation is to always have your package in the drawer so that you can present yourself to an investor at any time. Only then you are sure that you will also get a decisive moment of money. Is it something that you also consider after you have bought yourself into the companies, Matthias, that you add foreign capital again? So you invest yourself with your own capital, then you have the shares, so that one stakeholder will then take another foreign capital or is it actually the only further financing path for the companies that you buy, then to continue to be financed with your own capital? I will ask you the first two questions, what you say is of course completely right for the growth capital for software companies that have a product market fit and then finance their go-to market. In my case or in our case it is so that we recruit or simply report to a good entrepreneur who says, "I want to buy a successor." Then they usually buy or they search for, say, 24 months, 36 months, maybe look at a thousand companies. So that's really hard work. And the ideal candidate for such companies are typically companies that make between one million and, say, four million EBITDA. Typically, a service provider somewhere in the B2B area, that are companies that are profitable, who have actually earned good money over many years, who are in some niche, who have very stable turnover, who have very stable customer relationships and where probably the founder is very clever because he has built up something that works, he is maybe 62, he stands in the kitchen himself. The word "digitalization" is a bit of a foreign word, especially in Germany or in Austria. But actually he built a great company. Now, how the process actually goes, he really looks for this son or this daughter that he never had. And he really has a great company here, which is not ready either, to your point. He doesn't have these all facilities to somehow work with professional investors. That's not possible with institutional investors through their investment committee process. And when you look at the balance of these companies, you just see people. And then you just need someone to say, "You, I am the leader of the Obstkiste on day one." And he says, "I somehow used my house, I used my room, I'm here, I'm doing this." And then we come with a capital, in the rule there is also foreign capital on day one. So often there is about 40% and 50% foreign capital. That doesn't discipline you. That's actually a rather good starting point to get to know the industry. Because for the first three years, we've just paid off debt and asked customers why he has been earning well for the past 10, 15 years. And that's actually, in my experience, you learn the user journey that you can digitize. And then, of course, there is fresh capital and new growth in capital. But then you are in a industry that you have learned with your entrepreneur that I have proven to you, with your customer base that you have taken over. And it's actually a great starting point to start a business. I have a question in between, and it might be interesting to go back to the difference between an owner and a foreign capital. As a young entrepreneur, I didn't understand what the difference is, so to speak. And I think it would be very good to argue again. Well, I'd like to get in. The difference is that foreign capital usually has a defined trading point. The foreign capital provider usually doesn't have any shareholding rights. He sometimes has security and usually receives a defined sentence or return for the transfer of the money. That means he usually goes with cash-in and cash-out. The foreign capital provider, of course, has a lot more risks, because he doesn't have a trading point in the case of two-to-two. He also doesn't have defined renditors. That means he is completely dependent on the success of the company. He has a lot more risks, but also the one who takes most of the time. That means the foreign capital has the good character that I can better scale my business. I can scale up stronger, as I can only leverage over foreign capital. That's a huge advantage. Of course, I'm also a friend of the foreign capital. It's always about the right time and the right dose. The disadvantage of foreign capital is that I give voice rights, I give control rights, and of course I give part of my time. And now it's exactly the art to recognize in which situations the opportunities for growth are better through own capital than the loss of control and the potential for transfer I give up. That's a gradual change. It's not always easy to find. I do 40% leverage, 60% leverage. We already talk a lot about details. There are no good mathematical formulas. That's not physics. That's more art than physics. That's why my recommendation would be to talk to someone who has experience. For example, Matthias has made a lot of transactions in the field and has a good feeling of what a good leverage is in which situations are. Such people can give you much better answers. Which mix from ECHA and FK should you take like a BWL book or an internet forum? It's something you do. Matthias, if you are a entrepreneur or a entrepreneur, do you also advise in such topics? Or is it something where you let the people have free hands? Or is it part of your product, your concept, which is also advisable to be on the side? Our concept is already that you have a minority cap table. We are nothing now. We have a regular 20%. And then there are about 10 other co-investors. And the entrepreneur, we are really partners. That's a huge difference. It's not a form where someone is an established manager, but we are partners at eye level with the entrepreneur. We help him to find the right companies, to filter them out. Of course, we share our experiences best practice. But basically the difference is that most companies or all companies are just sustainable profitable companies. There is a reason that they were so profitable. And what I have learned is that actually a good, moderate, foreign capital is a really good discipline that you concentrate on the business. And to the difference to startups, you get foreign capital if you are an established company with, I don't know, 25 years. I'll give you an example. Two concrete examples. Let's take it. I'm a distributor for 3M in Bavaria. And you sell cleaning with chemicals. It's a nice company, 30 employees, has 25 years, makes 2.5 million EBITDA, the owner is 63. Unusual. Who buys it for, I don't know, 10, 15, 12 million euros? Except if you put yourself in there and say, "I have partners here, I have 1 million capital, I have 4, 5 million foreign capital." Then you think, what am I doing with a 3M chemical trade? You own a captive marketplace. And suddenly you understand how 3M or how all these big companies work. You get into the processes that you never knew before. And suddenly you speak somewhere in the USA, the guys in Bavaria, they do a great job, you can't work well with them. Then we add Austria. And suddenly you grow, and I've seen that a lot. You buy your company with established processes, 2 years later you grow with 50%. And of course it's great. So I still have a very important argument that speaks for your own capital. For your own capital there are investors who are good. And there are investors that are part of your team. Because they share your interests, because they bring in competencies that are unpaid for advice, absolutely intrinsic motivation to bring you forward. And the best case is, you have a differentiated setup of skills in your investor group and they support all your business. And that's the best thing that can happen to you. Then you not only get money, but you have an unpaid respect to the network and advice. I would even go so far if someone presents their capital at the beginning. It's like a hidden language. It's a signal to me. I look at it closely. Does he have a dentist in there? Or does he have a role for digitalisation? And then there is a team to your point. And everyone wants to win. It's a partnership at eye level. We are lucky that we have a role for you. We were lucky. We had good advice. Hopefully. Is it like you, when you come to your company to get advice, it's not you, right? Is it something that you sometimes take over and say, maybe you better leave it with the foreign capital at this point? We don't do commercial advice in our own sense. We have a sort of ear codex. We also have a telephone support in the onboarding. Why do we have different financing products? Because entrepreneurs don't look for a product, not a financing product, but liquidity or capital. And they say, I need 50,000 euros. They say, I need such a contract or financing, they say, I need 50,000 euros. And what is very important to us is what we have been doing for the first hour. We have jumped in on contracts and products. And the clear advantage is we recommend the product where we are convinced that it's the best for the customer. We never recommend the product where we usually profit from, but what is best for the customer, what pays off. That means we don't do any actual advice. But if the customer wants an recommendation, why don't you come with me, Matthias, if you are looking for a successor or with you, if growth is financed in both cases, don't ask, where is it difficult? I like to start. One of the reasons why I made myself, I learned that if you need 100 million euros in Germany, that's not a problem. You have a perfect financing structure for the top price in four weeks. And the money is on the account. You are my job. But I also learned that if you get 10,000 euros in four weeks, you don't get the end of your savings. And that's why the art is not to raise 100 million euros. The art is to get 10 or 50,000 to the capital. Not after six or nine months, but then you don't really need it. And that's our challenge. How can we create small companies quickly and uncomplicated money to be available? The banks - I think they make a valuable contribution - but usually with companies from one or two or five million euros. That's under 10 percent of all companies in Germany. 90 percent of the companies make under a million dollars. And the reality is that many banks have a savings of up to 5,000. This company without digital processes. And that is, of course, a cost-saving strategy and not a sales strategy. And that's why the banks are very good at financing and taking over. I'll tell you, if you need more than a million or five million euros, the banks are a good partner. If you need less, it's very time-intensive and it's not necessarily successful. I can only support it. And I think that, as I saw it, the companies who have successful success then work together with you to optimize their liquidity needs. I can confirm that many companies who have no foreign capital yet, come to us and therefore become bankers. Because they get used to reporting, to financing and to return payments. And it's like when banks see that Alfinio is already financing for half a year or two, then the bank financing will be more likely. Banks are a bit like lemmings. If they see someone else doing something, they also wake up, but they don't come in often either. Well, and most of us are the house banks that finance it. They know the company for 10, 12 years. Often it's like that, when the landlord is still in the kitchen. That was the case with me. Now we go to the bank together. And that's the beginning. Stefan, you said that often the companies are not so well organized in the numbers to keep money from the bank. If you look at the company in the second phase of life, over 30, 20 to 30 years, Matthias, what are the numbers that you look at, how does it usually work, what you want to find, what KPI is, what kind of numbers it is, to be able to say, does the company work or doesn't the company work? Maybe you'll go in first and look at it. What I didn't mention before, why does a company do such a search phone? What's in it for him? 20% sweet equity to get a company without paying anything. That's great. There are clear terms, clear rules, which are standardized. In the rule, it's a third with the acquisition, a third over time and a third over so-called hurdle rates. That means there is, on day one, that there is total alignment. We are partners, we are looking for a company together and we want to be happy together. The next possibility is to be big and successful. That was in the rule. First of all, companies that are in a really big industry. You actually buy an entrance ticket in a industry. Therefore, when the first four or five years are stable, you get to know the business, you get to know the customers and you can actually build your investment thesis and then you can put a start-up on top and grow. Second success, which I think is extremely important, is ethics. How is the seller? Does he really want it? Does he really want to give it to new hands? And we are totally close to that. Because you can't repair that if it's somehow wrong on day one. And then, of course, there is also the stability of the initial business, what makes a difference. Do you have the first five or four years during revenues? Those are actually the success stories that I know. I bought a company at the time. There were about ten people, about two million EBITDA. And we actually grew over seven years into over 100 million investment. And that was possible from many buildings, but one thing was the seller wanted it. He really wanted it. He just wanted to give it to new hands. I think the partnership is great. I can hook up with him, because I think this point of culture is extremely critical. People come in here, they want to digitize, you can say something about what the success factors were, except that the seller wanted it. What does the seller have to do with it or who is coming in now? Does he have to have special skills to master it or what do you expect? I think that's a great question, that's a great question. Many of these KMUs are already digitized and most of them have to do something. And what I learned is that when you are new year and ask questions, you just study the user journey. You come into a business, that works. There are good people often. And they don't have the eyes for what their user journey is. If you are there, who is between 30 and 40, if you bring them in, the Americans will say "Fire in the belly". It's like a founder. When a founder comes, why can he tear out trees? Because there is the word "possible", but it doesn't exist. And it's a bit like here. These are old, existing branches and the slower they are, the happier I am. Because that means there is still so much air up there. And that is a total possible chance as a company to be successful, without being the magician. You don't have to be the super magician, you can do it with very simple means. And what we often do, we look at the best practices of digitalization companies. Like you said before, look at the competition. Which types of branches where a lot of money is sold, where everything is already digitized. And take it as a step by step. At what moment do you think it's exciting for a listener how you earn money at the end of the day and how you earn foreign capital and your own capital, different in the amount of money you earn. Stefan, how do you earn money with foreign capital? Then I would hand over to you, Matthias, how you earn money with foreign capital is the most important advantage to earn money first, so that you get your money back. Best case. The disadvantage of foreign capital is that you can lose everything but have relatively little money from the top. A company that is active in the national business always needs a outstanding risk management. That is the basis for everything. It is a sustainable player of companies that are strong in the national business for six or twelve months until it comes to the payment time. Then the Spray fades. It's very easy to say, I would call it a kind of paper use model. For us, it's like someone would like to pay the money immediately and someone else takes care of the collection. And then he pays 0.5, 1, 2, 3, depending on what it is. Instead of 2.0, 1.95, he gets it immediately. For example, we live from this small spread. Our business is that we make this spread not just 100 times, but 10.000 times with different customers. That's our business model. We have a lot of transactions a month and with each we make a small margin. We also do cloud-based accounting. That's a classic SaaS model. That means customers typically pay us 20, 50, 200 euros a month for a membership and can use our tools. So that we now have a balance between a paper use and a membership recurring revenue model. And of course that's pretty strong. We now have almost 10.000 customers on which the contract is distributed and that's of course a very diversified contract portfolio. What factor do you have to identify how high the risk profile is of the company to avoid the total choice? It's actually like that. I think that's totally underestimated. We have had massive changes in business behavior for three years now. And in the last 12 months it was suddenly important to look at how many of the associated connections the company had. It didn't matter before. But even 12 months ago it was important how high the energy consumption of the company is. And once again, it was decided how the exposure to Corona actually works. And there are contact restrictions. So I think we have a very, very big challenge because the idea that you establish risk models that work for 20 years, like Basel 2 and such things, that's outdated from my point of view. Today you need risk models where you can intervene relatively quickly. That's why I'm a big friend of AI and that's why it's called Affinio. That's why I think it's very important. But many AI models or machine learning models only involve the past. And we as humans already have an idea what's going to happen in the future. That means we always have to intervene handily in the models. And that's why we look at many factors. For us it's important, for example, I'm a friend of the company number of conversion growth plus EBT march. Because either someone is strong in growth or strong in profitability then we look at ourselves. We also look at startups. What is the cash burn and what is the funding of the investors? And so we have a very different look at different companies what we look at. All the things that unite us is that we always look at very short-term things. We often lend money between 30 and 180 days. That means we are short-term countries and that's why we always look at the last 30 and 180 days not just the end of the year and 2022. That means the bank I think we talked about it before that goes a bit differently. Can you tell us a little bit about how the classical bank does that? They do it in a very interesting way. But my personal opinion is that the risk models of banks are not even designed for small companies. A risk model of a bank depends on the fact that a company has been doing its business for 30 years in a industry that has been around for 50 years in the form of Basel 2. And the company has a minimal impact because the company actually runs it by itself. Like BMW. They have been doing it for a hundred years. Automobile, whoever has the idea, it doesn't matter. Then it's all about financing. That's a problem in my opinion. Banks understand many small branches quite badly. They understand the new branches quite badly. So if I tell people two or three years ago that we finance e-commerce companies or software companies they looked at me and asked me what we have for export. But people, that's the future. That's the business of the future and they didn't want to go in. That's kind of crazy. I think for the first time it's much too far into the past. The references are always industry concerns. That's also an important topic. With banks, many services companies have a standing problem. And I think that banks don't take this variability into the personal life of companies. It doesn't help me when I look at the year of the year when the company has a burnout when the company has no interest in the business anymore. When I switch to business management that's the most important factor for such small companies. And they are often covered in rating models. That's why we, for example, look at account data analysis. I don't think anyone looks at as many account data points as we do. Banks usually look at three or four of them in our stock market. That's why we try to find this short-term characteristic whether it's a good investment for us or not. How do you deal with your own capital? When is your moment? I mean, with you it's relatively steady. Do you come in with money, Stefan? Maybe a little more about what you said. In my experience, banks are financed by EBITAS. If you hate EBITAS then it's financed. And if not, then your models don't work. For us, you can imagine that. You've worked hard for 20 years, 15 years. You've set up a good, solid company usually unprofitable because it's just in this vacuum between too expensive for the private and too unbankable, too small for the institutional. How do you get a young entrepreneur to get the incentives alone? How do we earn money by getting incentives alone? He has the possibility to get up to 25% of the company. That's crazy. And usually the company buys for a moderate purchase price because the seller wants to and B, there will be a very small market for it. And then the tools that the company has to professionalize are actually these value-hunting tools at which we finally earn a lot of money together and also the investors who do that with us. And what are the tools for? On the one hand, that's certainly the professionalization of internal processes. That can be from the calculation that can be from the brokers. It can also be that the company grows slowly and then a CFO comes and builds a little bit of control. Then maybe a head of sales comes. It's a step by step professional. The next construction star is digitalization. As soon as you have a investment thesis really defined. Then very often it is so that as soon as you are in a industry, you suddenly see other companies that do something like that. It's really fascinating. Then maybe you buy one or the other. You understand customer care or customer problems and suddenly you start to build your service palette further. The companies that have 30 employees today with 2 million EBITDA are in 5 years a company with 80 employees and 4 million EBITDA. And that's of course a completely different assessment level. That's just a bankable asset. And there you get a higher purchase price when you sell it. The company had the same incentives as you and that's how you finally earn money. For example, from the first FOMO 2018, that was nearly 80 million euros that were raised by the US Dollar. There really nearly 80 employees accompanied by almost 15 countries. They have found almost 62 companies and there are still 49 of them today. And they are now in less than 7 years. So that's totally doable. That means, in principle, the companies have to be sold so that money flows back back to Relay Investment. Exactly, they are sold or something happens that you just change the cap table. Because for every phase of life of the company, that's probably the best for Roland, there are the right investors. And sometimes it makes more sense to have less investors, sometimes and then there are, for example, parts of the investors and everything. Exactly, they sell, for example, and say, now I've been inside for five years, now the company is a completely different company and now I also know the company, you have to imagine that. Someone claims to say, I want to make a success. Then you actually manage to convince 15 people to pay them for the journey. Then you look at them for two years and you learn a lot about them. Then you also see, okay, he's actually super clever, super ambitious and he also finds the right companies. He really manages to find a good company. Then he buys it. Then maybe you watch him again for five years. You are already seven years in a partnership with him. Of course, you can sell it or you can invest more, because you are really a team. I think the aspect of trust is very important so to speak. It has to grow over time or it doesn't work. It doesn't happen overnight. It's probably the same with you in all companies. I think that's a very strong aspect. I don't think you can underestimate that in any business. The people with whom you enter an entrepreneurial partnership may be your most important partnership choice in life. You can't take that seriously. The success of the company often depends on how well the skills of the founder or the investors combine with the founder. How good, not only the skills but also the character and how reliable this relationship is and how well they harmonize. And no matter how good or bad the business model is, if this factor doesn't work then everything else doesn't matter. What I also have to say is that our model is really the way we want that all of us are successful. It's not a venture phone that says 9 out of 10 people can smoke and one of us has to be successful. It's our high ambition that all of us are successful. That's why we're so close to finding the right things and starting the right journey. One last question for both of you. What challenges do you see in the middle of the next years for the companies that support you? With what you said, Stefan, that there is a lot of change that changes the market conditions very quickly. We've had a lot of events that are definitely focused on companies or on purchasing power as always. What do you think, what are the next challenges in the future? I can't start, I can only see the chances. I'm a chronic optimist. I think success is simply a huge issue and I think there were never so many possibilities to look for these consequences and then to change the companies. I think that's super exciting. The chance is that many of the existing owners don't want it. Of course, you can see it as a risk but I'm an entrepreneur and that's why I see it as a chance. I'm actually very optimistic. Stefan, you have to throw a few challenges into the space. I think we're entrepreneurs because we're so optimistic. That's a basic idea. How do I see the situation? I think we're in the intermediate phase. That means the old financing model, I know the Sparkassenberater from the Feuerwehr and that's why I get a loan. That's been very strong in recent years. That means this model has been solved. Classical relationship-oriented financing of a local institution, that's what I call it. This system is just starting. At the same time, a totally exciting new model is coming. I'm talking about digital channels, a real-time access to a theoretically endless number of investors worldwide. That means that one model is just being solved by a much more exciting one. In the end, if it works well, you can register at Alfinio and you can get money after one, two or three days. That was impossible 20 years ago. Today it's possible. That's even better. That's the advantage of AI, of digitalization. We get much faster, much more fairer and, in my opinion, much more fairer, much more democratic, faster and more uncomplicated companies can get money. I see this as a huge opportunity in the market. We're not there yet, and that's my challenge with Alfinio to hit this bridge. What I can see is that there are many service providers, such as insurance or whatever, who sell and sell account books. There is no better way than to take account books and to supplement them in the market. There was no such opportunity. I can now buy a bank account and say, "By the way, have you already thought about financing?" There was no such opportunity. In the past, you had to go to a savings bank and play the game with it. That's not the case today. That's why the chance to go to market and buy a new product market fit is bigger than ever before. My challenge is that there is more speed and more digitalization and more solutions for our challenges. I'm convinced that digitalization is a mega topic in the finance sector that revolutionizes the way we think about money and how we prepare liquidity and what opportunities there are for companies. I'm sure there will be positive changes for companies. They overestimate problems. In the past, all of them had problems as big as we are today. At the moment, I believe that the current issues are always concerning us. That's true, but they are not as big as they used to be. What I find very important are the existing B2B customers. They have grown over years and they share a lot. If you can take over them and give them a new wind, that's a real chance. That's why I find this platform so exciting. That you don't have to be the magician who has the Java code in your head. You just go into the existing companies and when you are digital-affined, when you are open to looking for best practices, for example, what you do, you can take over in many branches. Suddenly a new turning point arises and growth and possibilities arise. I'm very, very positive. Then I think we can end the conversation with the positive ending. Thank you very much for being here. I'm very happy. Thank you, Roland. Thank you for the modeling. Thank you. It was a very exciting conversation. Thank you.