03. Maex Ament - The Most Interesting Man In Accounts Payable

Cold open: who is Maex Ament? Six time founder, 150 times Angel, 20 times LP 10 times advisor, three times dad, uncle, hybrid, 2 times Unicorn exits, one times husband and infinite times. Thoroughly good dude. The only person I know to have built the most boring business on earth, exit it for an astronomical sum, then choose to do it again, just this time with agents. We built a fund together, it failed, and you were back to building with that endless, irrepressible joy you bring to everything you do within three months. My respect and admiration for you knows no bounds. The L Rhonda VRP, the Kronos of crypto, the kid from Kaiser Sloughton, the Gulliver of geoengineering, the wide eyed window salesman and the Peter Pan of payments. The immortal, inimitable, unshakable and unbelievably unreasonable Max Arment. It's a real joy to be here with you in sunny Madrid. Welcome to Unreasonable. Speaker 2 Thank you, Sir. Speaker 1 So you grew up in Kaiser Slaughton? That's right, a small town in southwest Germany in the 80s. Speaker 2 Grew up in the 80s and born in the 70s. Kaiserslautern, an Atari, and building video-games at 12 No playbook for tech, no access to Silicon Valley. When did you first get a sense that you wanted to do something bigger than maybe the life that had been laid out for you? Speaker 2 I mean, my father pretty early on and I got to lie exactly when maybe I was like 12 or 13, he gave me a computer, an Atari, an Atari St. And I cannot say that in that moment thought I'll do something bigger. But I started pretty fast building games on this baby like computer games, video games and so really good. I like building them, not just playing. I think that was when I got a sense of creating shit. Might be might be the thing I want to do in my life. Speaker 1 And how do you think, like, was the childhood, was there the way that you grew up? Did you think that gave you an entrepreneurial streak? Or do you think it was just you were given the tools and then you just snowballed with the tools into wanting to build stuff for yourself? Speaker 2 I mean, my father tried to be an entrepreneur and maybe I'm over sharing you a little bit. My my father worked for very boring the German IRS for the Germans. Speaker 1 Yeah, that's even more boring than The American. Speaker 2 IRS yeah, right. And so, but he left at one point because he felt he, he there's a calling for something bigger and he went into some real estate stuff. He ultimately failed, but I'm not sure there was an inspiration or warning or some, something that he tried and I'll, I'll have to try again. Can I tell you? But it's not like I grew up in an entrepreneurial family. That's not the case. Six companies and a through-line of invoices Sure. So you were you were kind of the first entrepreneur of the family. Speaker 2 I guess. Speaker 1 And so you built six companies and well, it's probably called it half a fund. You made the money, you proved yourself. Can you give me an overview just of, of what those companies have been? So what have the six companies? What's the arc been? And has there been a trend that you can see that like a trend line that you can draw through them? Speaker 2 Yeah, but like the important thing is like this the Steve Jobs thing, right? Like the the trend line starts from now looking back, makes complete sense. Looks great. Yeah. So look, I, I my first job, instead of being a video game developer, which I really would have loved to become, I went to SAP. And at SAP, they threw me into their accounts payable shit like accounts payable, invoices, payments. So that was random. That wasn't what I picked but came pretty good at it. And after a few months or like that 1 1/2 years, I left and the first company was obviously then in accounts payable automation, the only thing I knew. So I did invoice automation. So that's Ebidos, first company completely bootstrapped. Second company was a little bit of a detour, was already in San Francisco together with my Co founder Philip and we build a QR code company like scanning of QR codes and like then certain things should. Speaker 1 Happen 10 years too early. Speaker 2 Even more so like we needed a pandemic for this shit to work. It was a complete failure. Again, like 22,000 and seven, the iPhone just came out so you couldn't read QR codes with a camera and like it was like nonsense. And then back to what I know. Well, like again, invoices this time, maybe not automating them, but financing them or paying earlier. Then back in Europe, build a company. It was a company called Talia, still in the US venture backed, heavily venture backed, eventually exited to SAP and then Centrifuge back in Europe, now a global company. Tokenization and the first asset that we tokenized. What is tokenization? I mean, taking thing from the reward and putting on a fucking blockchain, that's tokenization. What was the first asset on invoice? Because that's all I know. So that, that that's in line with with with what I know. Then I tried a company in the intersection of ESG. There was still a word then like. Speaker 1 When we were allowed to say that. Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah. But like back back then it was like cool the intersection of ESG it was 20/20/21 and payment terms. So I want to incentivize suppliers to do the right thing and get better payments called Besser or Pegada, our complete failure, didn't find the right team, didn't have in me. Yeah. And after a little bit of investing to get it with you, now doing again something in this payments, invoicing, invoice discounting area, just a little bit cooler. How to stay excited about "boring" for 25 years And so like we've invested in together, but also I know that you have separately in the maddest stuff, right, everything from geoengineering to foundational models for Geo, for image generation to weather modeling. And yet you've spent probably 70%, maybe even more, maybe 8090% of your career working in like I would argue quite a specific slither of financial services and payments, which isn't the most interesting sector to the outside world. No. Tell me about how you get excited by problems, where you get excited, and how you've stayed excited about the same space for probably what the best part of the last 15 years, I suppose, minimum. Speaker 2 Even more I know it's more, I guess the secret is for me, if you get become good at something really good, like really know your shit, you you can get really excited and really passionate about it. And I think that's what happened. I mean, obviously at the very beginning, like, OK, accounts payable, paying an invoice, all right, I'm fine. But at one point you could really understand how it works, what problems they are. And then there is, yes, it's accounts payable, it's accounts receivable, It's about paying. But there is something bigger, something with impact. And I'm not talking about the tree hugging impact here. Like there's something if if you think about an invoice or a payment or business in general, B to B, what's B to B your business about? There's one thing that matters. Getting fucking paid. Building something that lasts Yeah. Speaker 2 Getting fucking paid. Nothing else matters. And so making that happen, making that happen for a small medium business somewhere in the world, that's probably cool. Speaker 1 And I want to come back to the the ideas bit. Yeah. I think before we go there these days when you think about a company, and I know this because we've spoken about it a lot like with cause of premium new business that the desired outcome is orders of magnitude bigger or every business you've seemed to build, you want to build it an order of magnitude bigger than the last one, right. Tell me about that thinking big bit like did 20 year old you think that big or has that thinking big laddered up over time? Like how do you think the ambition has changed? Speaker 2 Over time, that's a good question. So I remember one thing and I shared it a few times when I left SAP. So that was when I was like 2425. So I started 23 so I left at 2425. I don't remember left to build my own company. I didn't fucking know what to build. It just will probably be something with invoices as we just discussed. And my then Co founder Caston the conversation I remember he asked me so why? Obviously it was a German conversation. So why why why why why you doing this and what is important to you? That's an interesting question. For me as a kid looking thing, I just want to build something and I, I said, I want to build something that lasts like something that's permanent or translated like has impact for a longer time. And, and naively back then I thought, and it's kind of true. I want to build some software that sticks around that actually people 20-30 years later still use the thing. And that became fucking true. Even that stuff that we built 20 years ago, 25 years ago, sold to Intel, to Apple, this accounts payable automation, it still runs in Cupertino 25 years later. Yeah, the stuff that I built before the SAP when they threw me into the accounts payable module that still pays a gazillion suppliers every day, That piece of software. I think that motivates me, building something that actually sticks around because it makes sense. Speaker 1 So the scale is a function of the utility in that sense, not the other way. Speaker 2 Around, I think so, yeah. Speaker 1 How interesting, I never thought about it like that. And what what are they? The skills, and learning to sell in America Because you've done a bunch of different stuff in different companies, you've been CEO, you've been COOI think you've done product in in various ways as well. Speaker 2 It was my first thought up was CFO. How did? Speaker 1 That go. Speaker 2 Because the the oldest one was the CEO that was one of my Co founders, the one that coded the longest was the CTO and my father worked for the German IRS. Speaker 1 Like the CFO, obviously, sure. So yeah, you've, you've held the multitude of positions with varying success by the sounds of it. Tell me about the skills you've needed. So like the window selling in in your team is a is a great example. Have you identified skills that you needed and gone and developed those? Or has it happened more organically over time when you've just kind of built the skills and the built the confidence to do stuff through repetition? Speaker 2 Totally organically. So like again, looking back, it's like good job if you did all that. But like, no, I was like introvert, techie, nerdy coder engineer. That's that's how I started and then got thrown to the first customer. So I learned a little bit building software for customers, like for what deployed engineer would be today, the word right. So I was 125 years ago, threw them in, threw me in into into into Cupertino, spend a year there and build a software for Apple or customized software. So I learned then that that piece of how to react to the customer. And then I learned really selling. I became fucking good at it. I think I did. I think I had a little bit of yeah, with, with this Windows 95 thing. I had a little bit of training as a kid how to sell. But the real yeah experience in training came when I moved to the US and my company got acquired. I worked with the greatest states leader ever. It was my boss then for a few years. He was from New Orleans. Bob Frisnada is his name. And he taught me everything about selling. And if you do both, and everybody knows that, I think, but I repeat it anyway, if you're technical nerdy and you know how to sell. Speaker 1 You're unstoppable. I mean, that's the whole Palin tip of this model. Just. Speaker 2 Fucking. Speaker 1 How does how do you think about neuroplasticity within that like and? But what I mean by that is your ability to accumulate and learn new skills. Like do you? Because I, I feel like one of the things that I admire about you is you're, you're very unafraid to go at anything. Like you'll, you'll go at a problem and you'll be like, I'll work out how to work it out and then I'll work out the skills that I need to do that. Do you think that you've always had that I can just learn anything? Or do you think that by learning things you then become comfortable learning more things? Speaker 2 I think I had something of that. I had all all my life like taught myself coding like early on and there was nobody that taught me. It was the usual from, from some magazines and and I guess that's it, magazines. That's how I learned. Speaker 1 It it was the idea that people would learn computer programming out of a magazine. Now is I tell that to an 18 year old that play them all like. Speaker 2 I just thought about it like there was no Internet. There was no CDs shipped around. It was like, yeah, it was a fucking magazine and you typed in whatever they print to you, and that's how you learned it. And then you tweaked it. That's how I learned. So I think it was something of that all my life that I had it in me to to, to to teach myself. Something that makes sense that I'm interested in got thrown in. Speaker 1 So with this sales leader, I'd be really interested to know what do you think he taught you? What was the like? What were the? Was it just, was it repetition or was it actually a specific approach and a specific framework and set of techniques? Speaker 2 No, no, he's not. He's definitely not a structured guy. OK, framework and and this. Speaker 1 Sales classic Sales person No, No. Speaker 2 No, no, no, he's that guy like very relationship social selling that that's Bob's superpower and just a matter of repetitions going out in front of customers together and, and, and, and sales is not just an art, it's a science as well. So how you he in that case, he was very strategic like bringing the right people into a sales call, showing up in person, which things that we forgot today we think we can fucking sell everything over Zoom. Things are sold 5 minutes before the meeting and 5 minutes after, not in the Zoom meeting. So in the five before and after you don't have on Zoom. So you got to fly talking here about $1,000,000 deals, right? If you want to send enterprise software, you go there and the 5 minutes before that's when you close the deal and the five. Failure, and how he bounces back Minutes and that's what relationship building it's trust it's psychological sales I think and how does how does I'm jumping around a bit here but how does failure play into that for you? Because I mean I've seen it first hand when when we decided to stop doing earth the fund we were raising like it definitely hit me for six and I know it hit you pretty hard as well but you've you've done that multiple times you've been knocked down arguably more times than you've been up right because by by definition what amazed me was the speed at which you bounced back. What does that look like to you? Like what does how do you think about failure? What does it feel like when you're in those moments and and how do you get back up? Speaker 2 I did feel great, the most recent memories like 678 what is like 7? Speaker 1 878 months ago, yeah. Speaker 2 Yeah, when we when we decided to stop because nobody want to give us money. Not enough people. Let's just be fair to us. Not enough. Speaker 1 People want. Speaker 2 To give us money. So we decided to to stop. How did it feel? Like shitty, like hell, like failure was very sad. Your question is how did I turn it around? I don't know. There isn't I more thought about pausing instead of like going all into something else. So I want to slow down. That was my, I think that is it Whenever I have a failure or something feels like it's the end of it, I try to slow down. And in that case, I was in San Francisco and came back from San Francisco. It's like, all right, let's do the next few months. Just not a lot. Maybe just exploring a little bit. And when I get into that phase, typically after a few weeks, something magic happens and I find the next thing that I'm really excited about. So that getting getting getting punched in the face, followed by a little bit of slowing down, which sometimes a week, sometimes two weeks, sometimes a month. But but relatively quickly I get back up to to prove myself again, to get excited again, to show myself there is still something worth doing. Slowing down vs doubling down Yeah. Yeah, I guess that's what it is. Speaker 1 And in those pause moments, how do you look after yourself? Like, what is what does that slowing down actually look like practically? Because like, I suppose the challenge I had after that was I went straight into another job and I didn't have that ability to slow down. And like it definitely it grated. I could feel my nervous system, like my emotions being like, what are you doing? Why are you going at this again? And I suppose these days you have the luxury of the financial security of taking that time off. But what does that looking after yourself like, what did you do? I don't know when my business number two or three failed then you want you want the kind of the Max of today. The carpenter who became a crypto founder So I'm wondering when I tried to do something different. So I like the best stories like yet somewhat of a failure. I'll left San Francisco 2017. I left my company. Talia left the board wasn't necessarily failure, but I like I left the company before we exited because it was in good hands, but it failed a little bit like OK, now what's next? And then I purposely decided to take some time off when we when we came here to Spain. And my weird decision was to become a a Carpenter. Speaker 1 You heard that? Speaker 2 OK, sorry, it's true though. So I, I I looked like, OK, I want to do something like with my hands. I can't do check shit with my hands right. But I just decided that's that's the thing. So ordered on Amazon a bunch of wood and drove with Paula. Paula. Speaker 1 Oh yeah, yeah. Speaker 2 Yeah. And then I drove with Paula around here. Speaker 1 Everywhere. Speaker 2 Nobody especially would have like fucking driftwood. What do I know? And then we drove around here in the the Madrid to go to some, I don't know, those factories. I called it wood things and bought some as well and put it in the garage. Still, still to that fucking day it's in the garage because a week later I didn't even start the wood thingy. Carp living I decided oh OK, let's create a crypto company instead. So the the I think the slowing down and focusing on something else pulled me somehow begging what is cool. Speaker 1 Yeah, interesting. And So what defines? Because I know there's also there's DJ turntables in your office, which I'm pretty sure you've never touched in this one way. What? Speaker 2 Recently, actually, a few weeks ago. Speaker 1 What what defines the other and the main? Like how do you think about like, why aren't you a Carpenter today? What then gives you that? I'm going to go and build a crypto company. Speaker 2 Yeah. So I think that the Carpenter thing or in general things like a Carpenter, the doing a loan thing is not for me. I realized that is very, very important, like even even the investing. So when when we stopped doing earth and our ordinary, I thought I can become maybe continue Angel investing. But it's like a very solo thing. So I know I need, I need company, I need someone around me, tons of ideas. So I think that's why the cotton there, or let's take cotton out of the metaphor, the cotton, the like things. Speaker 1 Are not for me I. Speaker 2 Like to yeah, right. Oh yeah, he did shit. So no, I I I need a team, I need to bounce off ideas. I need my my Co founders that that that's what I need to back up. I need, I need all that. Why he can't build alone Yeah, this is actually something I really noticed is you've always Co founded I think with a certain archetype, which is a Philip or a Henrik of maybe to your bombastic gut driven, quite impulsive. They're generally quieter, more thoughtful, more considered. How do you find that yin to your Yang? Like do you go and seek that out deliberately? How do you see that signal in the wild? Speaker 2 Well, I don't have a great answer on that one. I wasn't always like that like that. That's the first thing. I was a very shy kid. As I said before, I'm sure in my first company I was the that's why they made me Cfoi was the coding, the coding tech fin guy. So I look like no, not, not very outgoing. I don't know how it happened. Maybe it was was because of that sales guy in the US that I that I, that they taught me everything that I then knew I need to seek the pieces that that complete a team. No, I don't have a great answer. I'm sorry. No, no. Speaker 1 That's right. It's I think it's just it's you're unusual in the sense that like if I think about having worked with you myself, but also speaking to Philip, speaking to Henrik, Josh, Joe, you always find these very deep, very close relationships with the people you work with. Like do you think that that's, is that something deliberate or does that just come naturally in that you just maybe just want to work with people who you think are friends? Like I think the for you the the the line is very blurred. Speaker 2 It's blurred and then like, I don't know what a chicken or what a fucking egg is here, but the the the the truth is that I'll take you made that sticker. Why all his friends come through work I love work. Speaker 1 It's on the bottom of my laptop. Speaker 2 Exactly so and I do, not alone and not with assholes but like working with friends or good people. Building something great is amazing and out of that come true friendships. It is reality that almost exclusively all of my friends of the last 25 years came through my work. So it's not like fucking going to a bar when only the only person that I really met outside of work in a bar is part of my wife. Which? Speaker 1 One shot, one shot, 1 kill. Speaker 2 Exactly, exactly. But other than that, like my best friends somehow work related. And so there's something it means like, OK, let's build more companies that maybe more friends come. Finding an idea: the Madrid penthouse method We glossed over Carpenter to crypto company, but I think that's a non trivial to use a very kind of tech word step change, especially because centrifuge wasn't actually that close to what you built previously with Talia. What is that process of discovering an idea and going to because like I saw you do it with geoengineering where you kind of you become like single minded in an idea and you become very obsessive with it. And it's almost like you go into your cave and then you pop out with like something and you want to talk to people about the thing. But like, what does that process of discovering a new idea look like? And when's it ready? When do you think that you're like, OK, I'm going to build this X company, not Y company? Speaker 2 Yeah, well, it's probably never ready. It's always iterating. Specific centrifuge is the thing that changed like 11 times. Speaker 1 I still don't really understand what it does, but yeah. Speaker 2 I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll simplify in a minute. Never did the initial look. There was some some excitement about crypto that that happened in 1516, like even even only pre Etherium Bitcoin E Philip and I got excited about crypto in general. Being in San Francisco gave you extra push came back to Europe even more excited. Etherium launched and so we looked for something in, in, in the crypto space to do. And then naturally we tried to combine what we did in the past with Centrifuge and sorry with Thalia and then find a crypto angle and we did we I feel to that day like a tokenization of an invoice would make sense to bring it on a blockchain easier to finance. And then we put on some visionary stuff as well. Let's pack that for a moment. But the the process was literally 2017. In summer, Philip and myself rented a a penthouse in a penthouse in lasagna here. Speaker 1 In Madrid, it was a penthouse. Speaker 2 Like fuck, it was somewhere in Malazagna on the top floor, you know what I mean, and spent there three days of brainstorming. Probably the notes are still somewhere just chatting, chatting, brainstorming, weaving. Martin Quenzel, my third Co founder in remotely at times and came up with a first. OK, that's what we tried that that will be centrifuge interesting little bit similar Cosa Prima now with Henrik, mostly with Henrik because Philip, it wasn't what Philip Stelig Stanislaus was a different Philip was it was in Munich mostly. Falling down the geo-engineering rabbit hole But when, When Henrik and and myself started, we whiteboarded here in Madrid for for weeks in November, mostly December. Speaker 1 And Philip said that Philip Stellick said that you also, he's like Max always has a a list of ideas. There's always kind of a in his notes like how do you do you just spot an idea in the wild and then kind of let it percolate and if it but like geoengineering is a really good one, right? It's like an incredibly niche space that you've gone deeper on than any other amateur that I know. What did that journey of looking like? What was the gateway drug and what was the journey into becoming like a complete geoengineering nut? Speaker 2 Interesting. So first of all, I just spoke yesterday with one of a yeah, like in the company that I'm helping out with convective, and they told me like yesterday, in two months they will create a storm. I mean, how fucking great is that? Speaker 1 Can you explain what geoengineering is? Very yes, absolutely. Speaker 2 I mean, look, I don't know if there's a definition of geoengineering, but geoengineering is using tech to modify the world around us, the physical world around us. The prime example is cloud seeding, which most people probably know. Where there is an existing cloud, you spray some magic powder into it and the cloud starts raining. Most famously the the Emirates did that three years ago and the sank Dubai, I was there. Shit was flying around everywhere. It was beautiful. So there was cloud seeding, maybe gone a little bit wrong. I mean, rumour has it it was cloud seeding. Nobody ever admitted. But obviously there's really good things, I believe that can come out of cloud seeding or generating clouds or preventing storms or my absolute favorite, cooling down our planet by putting a little bit of sunscreen around the planet and reflecting sunlight. Stardust, solar radiation management. That is, that is what we're talking about here. So, yeah, how do I get obsessed with that one? I think it started. So I don't know the the real point. I just know one thing. About 10 years ago, I wrote there was when we moved from San Francisco to back to Europe. I took a summer off and I wrote down the things that I want to do with my life in the climate space. So I like whatever want to do. Isn't that want to maybe have a fund in the climate space? 2016, I decided I want to have a climate fund. I should have fucking raised the 2016, but I should have raised then probably someone would have given us money. And one of the bullets was I'd like to find the technology that darkens the sunlight. But then I put as well, I don't know shit about tech. So I probably got to find some something to invest or support. So there was, it wasn't smart or whatever somewhere. Read it in a book or so on in a fucking movie. That's, that's probably what happened back then. But then I became a little bit obsessed with that. The Stardust story And then I read the obvious stuff, the, the Neil Stephenson's, the, the, the ministry of the future, all that good stuff. And at one point I just stumbled across an article about Stardust two years ago, I guess more than two years ago. And we dug our we, we just got into that and really obsessed about because this, this dream and then this book really became a reality. It was like amazing for. Speaker 1 Me, I think the way that it's actually worth taking a little tangent there because the way that you got to know Stardust I think is so interesting like you had absolutely 0 expertise in the fields you had no geographic relation to this Israeli company. You had kind of very little to add on paper to this to these guys. It was a very clandestine, kind of quite hyped, but in a very secretive way company when you started getting your way in. And yet you managed to get that, you managed to get that access, right? Like yeah, tell me about the the actually befriending Yenai, like getting into Stardust. Speaker 2 So so I mean I read about Stardust in some article by some and not in a good way. It was a negative article about the secretive company that wants to whatever and use diamond dust. I think it was diamond dust that they supposedly. Speaker 1 Bond villain. Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, just like everything was like. And so when I read that and everybody reads it as negatives are like fucking 8. That's great. Let's find this company. And at our Earth gathering here in that place two years ago, there was one of the participants, Francesca is her name. And somehow I mentioned that company Stardust and she came back a week later like random and said Yep actually an advisor to my company is advising Stardust. Speaker 1 You want an introduction, I remember. Speaker 2 He's like what? And she made it happen. So around Christmas of two years ago, I guess I got connected with Yanai and Amiado, Stardust 2 founders and it was magical. I, I literally cried after the meeting. I like like like they, they described what they do and it's like fucking a solving all our problems. I cried and then we discussed and I thought they found values well and not not in my scientific knowledge because there is none but me as a founder. Maybe I could help them navigate the founder journey. The day we met, and being unmistakably yourself And I think also just the authenticity with which you went at being like, like, I've always found this, if you want to work with the founder, if you just, if you literally love what they're doing, people can feel it Like that vibe radiates off you when you're like, I'm so excited by what you're doing. And I think that actually relates really nicely to when we first met, which you might not remember. It was in, it was the most like Spanish tech thing ever. It was in like a tower block in Salamanca. It was some VC event. Everyone was called Borja. Everyone was well, in brown, brown loafers and suits. Yes. And you are there and I walk into this room and you are there and like, I think someone had told me about you already, but we'd never met. And you're there. Tattoos, Rolling Stones T-shirt, big beard. I think you've got like beer froth in your beard. And you're basically like bouncing up and down talking to these people. And it's like there's like you're in a different colour to the rest of the room. And I just remember like, I want to be friends with that guy. That's my guy. I mean, it was also, it was like the cheerleader effect. It was so clear amongst the sea of dark blue suits that this guy was the different one. But I think what that really tells me is like you are so authentically yourself. You have an ability to be deeply Max and I, and I really respect that. Do you think you've always been able to bring that 100% you self to your professional life or do you think you've had to? You've learnt that, you've built it like. What's that look like? Speaker 2 No, no, I became more confident over time. 100%. Look, I remember like I tried to fit in, there's everybody else and until I was probably 253035 where I just still have my ugly suits and my, how do you call it, khaki pants, loafers and all that shit. Speaker 1 I do if you would love. Speaker 2 I send you pictures, man. Yeah. And. And let's be honest, even when we did Earth, I, I at at sometimes I, I wasn't myself. Yeah, I tried to fit in for some of the LP's at times. I just bought a jacket that I maybe wouldn't wear normally. Yeah, I don't wear a jacket anymore right now. Fuck it back then I just, so I adjusted and I'm not doing it anymore. So even like a few years ago it it's I still I still tweaked next time. Speaker 1 It's it's and, and Henrik said you're very good at it. Where like if you need to speak to a certain type of customer, for example, if you speak to Americans, you go more German or if you speak to Germans, you go more American. Like you, you modulate their, their the way that you present yourself. If you were looking at someone my age, like early 30s or even younger, how would what would the be the advice you would give? Would you learn more into the authenticity? Yeah, yeah, 100%. Really. Just be 100. Speaker 2 Percent the only game you can win. It's the game that your own game is the only one. I was actually. I tell that that's the the the parenting advice I give my daughter's all the day. Just be yourself. Just be your fucking self. Speaker 1 And what about when it? Speaker 2 When it's hard, yeah. Speaker 1 Because especially when you don't know who you are, what about when it doesn't resonate? Like, I think Earth was a great example. And I think there were so many things in that project where we were trying to crush ourselves into a box that didn't quite fit. And you could feel it. I could feel it 100%. We were best when we were like, yeah, in San Francisco just being kind of unequivocally bizarre and we were worst when we were like that super return trying to fit into what we thought a European VC mold looked like. But how do you feel about it? Because you must still have it where you go and speak to an investor, you go and speak to a customer and they just don't get the product, They don't get the Max product. Does that affect you in any way or does it just water off a ducks back at this point? Why you want 50% of people to hate whatever you do Well, yeah, I, I try to learn from every conversation, that's all like, OK, I'm not communicating right. Something is, is, is there something wrong on my end? But the reality is very often, no, actually I'm explaining it the same way I always explain it, but just get, don't get the other side excited. That brings me to a, is it a theme that I'm actually carrying around for, for for many years is like, and it fits for pretty much everything. And, and I start with marketing. If you market something, if you message something, if you sell something, if you have A tag line or whatever it is, I don't care that 100% of the world loves it or thinks it's OK because I think it's shitty marketing actually, because then it makes it's pretty average. If everybody thinks it's OK, I'd rather have 50% fucking hate it and 50% fucking love it. And so a little bit when I talk to someone and it doesn't click, I put them in the well, OK. If it's 50% of the people that don't work because the world is big enough, I'm selling to 400 million businesses. The most interesting man in accounts payable Yeah, I need 200. That's fine. Speaker 1 Tell me we 10% of 200 is fine, right? I wouldn't have to tell me the story about the. I mean, there's some amazing Talia marketing campaigns like firstly what Talia did because I think with the contrast of what Talia did and then like the piano marketing campaign, for example, like give me that contrast. I think that's a perfect encapsulation of the utterly bizarre authenticity with which you went at selling accounts payable software. Speaker 2 And you might see something very similar in a few days. Speaker 1 I I have seen a I've seen a sneak preview. Speaker 2 OK, the theory here is that like, yes, we build something in a very seemingly boring area. Accounts payable invoices, right? Office of the CFOI mean there is not many more boring words I can throw out, but like contrasting that with this can be fun and just giving the people that work in that space like is this is fun. Actually, they're they're this that's why we did those campaigns. So what Talia does is very simple actually. So we go to the big guys, biggest companies on this planet. Let's pick Airbus. We went to Airbus and said, Hey, Airbus, you have 30,000 suppliers, small, medium businesses sending you invoices and waiting 60 days for their money. That's pretty fucked up. Let's do something about it. Let's help those 60, those 30,000 suppliers who get their money. We can either use your money, dear Airbus, to pay them early, you make a little discount, or we bring in 3rd party cash. That's in essence what Talia does. And to be fair, that's a little bit what Cosa Prima does as well. Just put some agents on it to optimize it and make it faster. So yeah, very boring topic, but something like getting 30,000 businesses paid earlier. Fucking yeah, it's great. Speaker 1 You're greasing the wheels of capitalism. Yeah. And then and then the. So that's what it does. Tell me about marketing it. Speaker 2 Yeah, so I, I mean, I kudos to really great marketers I worked with and I want to name them like Joe Highland and Baji Baji Illuminati. Joe Highland runs on our company called Direct Commerce. Baji runs Centrifuge, my crypto company. And both of them had been my, my CMO at Tawa and came up with those great ideas of, yeah, making accounts payable, invoice financing, fun making it different making. There is one campaign where the treasurer at accounts payable product to procurement head, they made heroes, literal heroes. Like we saw the boring job. And then we put hero costumes on them and like superhero costumes and, and, and, and celebrated them. There's a campaign where we spoofed on the Microsoft Apple thing. I think General Catalyst just did. Speaker 1 That they did, yeah. We did that piece on Andreessen. Yeah, yeah. Speaker 2 We did it in a nice way, smart way, where there was the the the old school accounts payable clerk and new school like stuff like that. And then there was the which probably is the most famous one in the Super niche of niches, the the one where we copied what Dos Eqis, which is a beer brand. I'll I'll, I'll explain. Speaker 1 Yeah, Mexican beer brand. Speaker 2 The Mexican beer brand Dos Eqis, and they had a very famous like 20 years ago, a very famous campaign of the most interesting man in the world with a slight Spanish accent. Even the guy like the most interesting man in the world. And it was about this guy that travels the world and meets the indigenous people and then jumps out of planes and at the end he drinks a beer, right? Because he's the most interesting man. Speaker 1 In the world. Speaker 2 And happens that this guy is handsome, has Gray hair and a beard in that commercial. So someone thought, all right, let's just copy that same shit and do it for accounts payable and make me Max the most interesting man in the world. And we recorded some of those actually really on budget, but fun. You can find them on YouTube and send them in to every customer, like to every customer or every prospect in our list, everyone Heineken. And that's a good example where some of the customers that I visited in, in the months and years after there's like you're the guy from and others where I remember vividly going to London visit Vodafone, the treasure of Vodafone literally said you did asshole from that. Speaker 1 Commercial, but it worked. Speaker 2 Right. Exact hate. I love it. So 5050. So one of the fun facts is though, we send it to, as I said, to every corporate on this planet, including Heineken. And guess what? Heineken came back and did not like it because turns out Heineken owns those Eggies, which we didn't know and they didn't think that's a great idea that we steal their IP. So we had to change into the most remarkable man in accounts payable instead of the most. And then a year later it's. Speaker 1 Also so ironic that like a kind of quite fun consumer brand with a really interesting campaign gets upset about an accounts payable company I. Speaker 2 Take that as a batch of honor. Every cease and desist letter and I have still one from JP Morgan. Every cease and desist letter is for me, like we poking the bear. Speaker 1 I can't remember, I can't remember who said it, but there was a, there was a great market there at some point. So it was like, if you're not getting sued, you're not doing it right. Like, if you're not upsetting someone, you're not doing it right. Speaker 2 Yeah, I don't want to go to jail or like really hurting someone. It's not what I want to do, obviously, but getting a little cease and desist from the big guys means we're on the right track. Speaker 1 Yeah, changing tack a little bit and tell me about building teams. Building a team and hiring for excellence So I think you, you, you've, whether deliberately or subconsciously managed to find a way to attract the right kind of archetype of people to work with you. And I think a large part of it is probably because you present yourself so authentically to the world you like. You get, you get a Me or you get a Josh or you get a Henrik or you get a Philip or you get a Joe or you get any of these wonderful people. Tell me about then when it's actually about building a team below or around the founding team, Like how do you think about a bar for excellence? How do you think about hurrying for quality? And I think it's particularly interesting at the moment because you're building a very ambitious business in, and I mean this with the utmost respect to the Spanish tech ecosystem, but like not the most ambitious ecosystem. So you're playing slightly with one hand tied behind your back already, like versus San Francisco probably 2 hands because London is still one hand tied behind your back. So tell me about building for I. Speaker 2 Think, I think you have that one wrong, OK, because on the surface you obviously right Spain, a little bit of a smaller ecosystem. A lot of people went somewhere else, but I believe we're like somewhat of the cool kids right now in Madrid. So I think definitely, yeah, yeah, even if the the, the the pool is a little bit smaller, we get everybody we want right now, everybody. And there is great talent like is there 1000 great engineers? No, there's 10 and that's all I need and I get those and so that that works really well for us. We're in San Francisco. I would have paid have to pay like 800 grand for the same the. Speaker 1 Same caliber so. Speaker 2 Here I pay great salaries with a great vision. People really are attracted. There's not a single actually. Henrik shared it yesterday. I don't think there was a single person that we want to get on the team that we didn't get in the last three months. How company-building has changed for the fourth time And how does that scale? Because I can see that at 15 people, 150 people like I. Speaker 2 Fucking hope that we don't need like yes, probably we get to 150 people, but this is not, I don't think companies would be built like 1000 people anymore. So I still, I think it still scales to 150. I interview every single, every founder right now, interviews every single one, obviously, and for everybody that joins us and that what we want to keep there as a trial day. So everybody comes into the office for one day or almost one day gets 2 tasks thrown at. And we test that person, how they solve that issue. And if they start coding with their hands, then they're probably out. If they fire up the order code, we'll make an exception. Yeah. Speaker 1 Yeah, it's interesting and a very good founder friend at the moment does the same thing where he and it's not token maxing to the extent he doesn't want them to burn them. He just goes, here's like £500 worth of tokens or £1000 worth of tokens. If you wanna join, build me something, yeah. Speaker 2 I. Speaker 1 Love that. Obviously we wanna have a conversation, but build me something maybe again, slight tangent. How do you think building a business will look differently now to Oh, there's a lot. I mean, I suppose you've got kind of gradations, right, because you're doing ebidas. It was probably like almost pre cloud or cloud was cloud was. Speaker 2 Wasn't pre cloud. Speaker 1 And then Talia was like cloud was new, yes, Centrifuge was OK. We're going to reinvent the way businesses do like Web 3 and blockchain because everything will be on chain. And now, so you've actually done kind of three macro cycles of of tech in in those four businesses. What's different now? Speaker 2 So first of all, actually, it's interesting. I never thought about it that way that you just, but it's good news that I had to shift three times already again already because now I do a fourth time. But this is fucking very different. Like one of the things, and I shared it with everybody is in my previous businesses except for the first one, obviously. But in the second, third and 4th, I could tap into my existing network a lot like people that worked with me before. We're still. Agile enough, motivated enough and and and eager enough to learn a new technology. That's a little bit harder. Now I'm realizing that yes, there is great people I tap from my network, but not as many as there had been before. I mean, I'm fucking old. So obviously everybody else in my network that I work was like a little bit older. It's harder, yeah, comfortable and not work like adapting the new technology, a new paradigm, AIAI pilled agent 1st and all that shit. It's not for everybody. So it's easier for someone fresh from college or with one or two years of experience to, to, to get into that, that that paradigm and that shift on of how to how things are done. Speaker 1 So you can hire younger. It's more about hunger and speed of execution than it is about years on your CVA 100%. Speaker 2 Like, like it pains me as well to say that, but experience and subject matter expertise, the stuff that I bring almost becomes a commodity because you can learn that shit. There's something of a repetitions and all that and relationships. Speaker 1 I think you're underestimating hiring the right people, building a culture, selling to investors. Like you wouldn't have raised the money you've raised in what, 48 hours? Basically I will from like from probably the best fund in the best European fund in Europe. Speaker 2 Dead 1 yes. Speaker 1 Because you've of everything you've done without that, like I'm sure Hamrick would have raised a great round, but it might have been, it might have been 10 years less experience just in terms of because he is or 20 years less experience. So I wouldn't, I wouldn't undersell yourself in that sense. When experience becomes a commodity Fair enough, fair enough. Back to the one more. Sorry. Yeah, on the company building because A, different talent and B as well different roles. So the first 3 hires more or less that we did was actually three founder associates or operations engineers or like Swiss Army knives. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Extremely AI pilled young, do everything in the company that is needed, which is very unusual. Normally you bring engineering, you build product, and then maybe you get a chief of staff at one point like we did the other way around. And I'm so fucking happy. Really, it's the greatest. Speaker 1 And are these kids technical? Technical enough? Technical. Speaker 2 Enough I think is the answer. They obviously AI first so they sit there and not a PowerPoint is created it's cloud creating design, it's cloud filling out forms for the Spanish government. It's like this type of stuff and they create as well. One example is so we have for those trial days, people come in and well, work with us for a day. Sometimes they fly in from all over the world for those trial days. Obviously we need to reimburse them. So instead of finding a tool or whatever, no, we just one of our founder associates just vibe coded and in a few hours a reimbursement tool for specific that task, like send it in to the to the applicants and they fill it in. So that's, that's how technical they are. They can vibe code anything we need. How do? Speaker 1 You how do you think about like meaning and kind of the meaning of output and AI D slop in that? Because I think we were talking about this before we started recording, but like token maxing is coming to be seen as maybe the wrong metric in the sense that giving judging people on the amount of tokens they've burned through is potentially the wrong way to think about it. But also there's a lot of data coming out about how engineers find engineering less fulfilling when they're essentially just coordinating systems of agents. So they press go and then they're just waiting for it to go. Would you like to allow this like always allow or like having to input things like how do you, how do you find that with a, with a new team building a new product? Speaker 2 I mean a few answers to that, I think. So first of all, we had a workshop on Monday, Tuesday in Munich with a good friend of mine that helps us with our SAP integration 1 trick pony. Obviously, I'm integrating again with SAP. And this gentleman shared exactly the same concern that he has. Like I actually enjoy coding, putting code in, like doing it manually. I don't want to use AI to the extent I don't want to just be the director here. I want to be the the musician. So I think there's still something of that in certain areas and certain people just prefer coding. And for this gentleman, we make an exemption exemption. He can can do whatever the fuck he wants. And the second part of the question was, oh, token maxing. Yeah, look, if I'm Vodafone, token maxing is probably the stupidest thing you can do, right? Because like giving the employees like leadership board and like go, go, go. Speaker 1 Especially with budgets the size of Vodafone. Speaker 2 Yeah, exactly. It's like nonsense like that doesn't work. A small start up like ours that needs to really be super fast and iterate super fast, learn super fast. I do believe that unlimited token usage is still a thing. I reserve the right to change my mind in a few years, a few months or whatever the time frame is when you are a more mature company. But as a startup and probably as well as a larger scale up. I think the input, obviously the output is an important part to measure, but the input is a is A11 increase in as well the token maxing how much you put in I, I, yeah. A global business that happens to be in Spain So you talked about cost of engineering talent and access to great engineering talent being potentially arbitrage opportunities of working in a smaller economy. You are unusual in that you're a German who's kind of become an American who now lives in Spain. What have you thinking about cause of Prima specifically? But I suppose you had similar stuff with centrifuges that you built in Berlin. Like what do you think about taking different bits from different sides of the Atlantic and even different regions in our building this business? Speaker 2 Great question. I think because we liberally set up Casa Prima to be able to have Americans work for us wherever they want, no actually in Munich or in Madrid right now. So that's important. But we, we set up subsidiaries to make it relatively easy. We have a, a incentive mechanisms like a ESOP plan where we can incentivize all of them. So and we attract out of our office here. We are not 11 or 12 people, I guess in, in, in Madrid. I think nine of them are actually not from Madrid yet. Interesting. 3/3 are from Madrid coming, coming one is there already. But we attract actually quite a few people from Copenhagen, from Paris, from all around Europe and American is with us as well. So from the beginning, it was clear for us to, yes, local talent to be attracted, Munich, talent in Munich, Madrid talent in Madrid, but as well getting a lot of internationals because there's just some things, maybe not engineering, but some things that just Americans do better. Like an American marketing person? Yeah. Speaker 1 Stuff like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's it's global business that happens to be in Spain more than ever. Speaker 2 Yeah, from the day one, I mean that's a question we get as well when we a, when we fundraised for the last round and when I speak to some investors already for some future next rounds. The first question many ask is when, when, when you ask. Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. No, no, no, I'm sure I'm sure for to raise big money next round, you'll absolutely have to answer have a good answer to that question prepared right I. Faster at 51 than ever Think we have? Speaker 1 So 6 companies and half a fund what's different 6 times into to first time in and third time in and 4th time it? Like how do you do you go faster now? Do you go slower now? Do you way faster? Really, it's faster. Speaker 2 Yeah, it's way faster. I mean, because I'm older, so one would think takes it with more patience and I don't because the just the environment is too fast. It's the competition is faster, the the peers are faster. AI makes everything faster. So no, this is. This is a different speed than than ever. Speaker 1 Same level of fun, more fun, less fun. On age, and the fear of settling This is great. Really. Oh, this is fantastic. I have to funnel my lifetime right now. Speaker 1 So I'm going to get a bit personal here all. Speaker 2 Right. Speaker 1 Let's talk about age. So Hemrick said that for you, age isn't actually about years. It's potentially about the idea of stopping. It's about not not continuing to do the stuff that you've loved to. Speaker 2 Settle. Speaker 1 Settling exactly. So building in that logic means not settling. Is that how it feels? Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, I'm building right now. I'm definitely not settling. I'm building a team, I'm building a product. I'm I'm, I'm selling to customers. I'm talking like this is the opposite of setting and it feels very very good. Speaker 1 And so I think this is such an interesting 1. And I, I remember saying it when After Earth where I was like, my advice to you as a friend was like, go and go into it all all in. But like have a way that you can maybe somewhere down the line, like enjoy the fruits of your laborers because there's there's nothing left to prove, right? You're not proving no. Speaker 2 I'm not doing it for proof. Speaker 1 As I say, you raised great money really, really quickly. So what is what is in it this time? What's like? What's that desired output of corso prima that? Speaker 2 It's it's it's when we're in the very beginning of this conversation, it's I still want to build something that lasts and makes a difference. What he's still chasing Yeah. Again, the having impact, not in a climate sense necessarily, but like doing something that moves the needle. Just a fucking. Speaker 1 Little bit, yeah. And do you think that abstracts up to like the way the way you think about meaning in your life? Is it that, is it creating lasting impact? Is it having things that sustain in the world? Speaker 2 Yeah, I'm not that smart, but I, I, I guess that's for me. That's that's what I want to do in life. Yeah. I want to leave this world with something that made a difference again, just a just a tiny, tiny bit of difference. That's good enough. Speaker 1 And I've noticed that or it seems that in the different businesses you've built and in the fund as well, you, you're able to find motivation almost from having a chip on your shoulder about different things. But that chip can change, right? That like now it feels that there is an element of proving to yourself that you don't want to settle yet. The chip on the shoulder, company by company But I think with with that there was maybe a bit of like, oh, can this start up that build a fund? I guess earlier on there was like, can this outsider from San Francisco build something here? Like do you agree with that? Do you find those kind of motivations to be different with each business? Do you create like an internal or an external foe that you battle against? Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, I I very precisely remember Italia, which was technically my third company, but the second one was this new awkward thing, that complete shit show. And after six months was over. So it I remember Italia, I absolutely want to prove that I'm not a one trick pony. Italia was like my my main thing was like OK, that that shit that we did in the past. I can do that. I don't need my other Co founders. I can do it alone actually with with a different group of Co founders and I want to prove I'm not a round trick point. So there was a there was this chip on the shoulder to do that. I didn't have that at at centrifuge, which was the next one at centrifuge. I guess it was I want to show that this I can do something in this crazy new technology like I still understand here crypto and I can get into that and build something there and now maybe it's again no, maybe I took a long break. I just want to show I still have it in me and and like there is really this, this, this coming together of all the shit that I did the last 25 years with now we sprinkle on this agentic AI, we can fucking really solve this for good. This is amazing to start. Speaker 1 Do you think those motivations come from the idea or the idea comes from those motivations? So A. Speaker 2 Little bit of both is the normal answer, so I don't have a great one here. Yeah, no, like, well, Henrig and I, we, we whiteboarded, we tried different things, right? Like what is in November, December rented that little space and we tried hard like got to be something in energy. Like we want to build the daylight of use of of continental Europe tried. And then we we tried as well like OK geoengineering which we discussed is. Speaker 1 Henrik W Geoengineering Company. It's hilarious. It's. Speaker 2 Like, yeah, but like we look for a software layer engineering, right? Actually pretty funny. Great ideas, I think, but at one point we looked at each other like startups are fucking hard by themselves. Let's do something where we have an unfair advantage. Yeah, yeah. So far so that that that we went and back and and found those things that are still unsolved. And with Agenda Guy we can solve. Work, family, and the sacrifice myth Sure. So it was, it was actually the IT was the right to play in the idea. And then that motivation probably came from, Oh, and actually, I've still got something to prove, Yes. Speaker 2 Yeah, I think it's a combo for all of that. Speaker 1 So my last question, you've built a bunch of amazing companies, half an amazing fund. You also have managed to, as far as I can see from the outside, sustain a really wonderful family. And like, for me, this is the antithesis to that kind of bullshit stabbings, sacrifice, like everything must be painful, which I think is one of the most toxic narratives in tech and entrepreneurship, that to build great things, you need to basically, like, destroy your own life. How do you think you've made that work? Has it always been like that? Have there been periods when it's been harder? Like what? What does being a dad, a husband and A and a founder look like at the same? Speaker 2 Time I don't want defend stabbings too much there's some truth and look obviously he went totally overboard with us what is it hard things that you have a heart attack or. Speaker 1 Palpitations, yeah. Speaker 2 Yeah, exactly. There was a word like, no, but that said there is sacrifice. I'm not talking about myself, but of course, you, you, you this work life balance thing is a little bit of a myth as a founder. Yeah. Just you got to love your work like crazy because otherwise you're just not able to sustain that one. And I do love my work. And I have a beautiful wife and family that understand that this that that work is totally weaved into my life. And I don't have a better answer for you, but it worked for me because Paula knows me from the beginning as an entrepreneur, someone that likes to do a lot of hot things and there's a couple of mini tricks. Get a coach as early as possible. Yeah, like a therapist coach. So I, I have coaches for the last 15 years of my life where once a week or every two weeks you talk about the business. It's beautiful. If you find the right coach, that helps. And again, find a topic that you really passionate about, like killing yourself for. Fucking pick something boring I. Speaker 1 Can't pay, I can't pay. Speaker 2 Pick something exciting. Did you passionate about whatever it is that that is a must? If it's not, then you die. Then you kill yourself and you get the fucking heart attacks. Yeah, I don't have a better answer for you, but there's a little bit of truth in stabbing, but obviously you went overboard. Speaker 1 Yeah. And I feel like also having had that big success late on, relatively late on in your late 40s, but when your kids were still in their early teens, you had you then had that ability to have more flexibility in really formative years that you might have been a. Speaker 2 Bit less. Speaker 1 Available for in there before the entertainment. Speaker 2 I had that opportunity. I'm not sure I really used it wisely as much, but. Quickfire Having seen your relationship with your kids, I would disagree, but OK, quick fire questions to finish, how many marathons you run? Five. Favorite one? Speaker 2 Boston. Speaker 1 Business you're most proud of. Speaker 2 Cut up everywhere. Speaker 1 Company that you wish you'd built. Speaker 2 Stardust of. Speaker 1 Course best investor you've worked with? Speaker 2 Mr. Bray. Speaker 1 God, best book you've read recently? Speaker 2 I didn't read a lot. Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. Speaker 1 Interesting, Most overrated idea in tech right now I. Speaker 2 Don't know. Speaker 1 Fair enough, most underrated idea in tech right now. Speaker 2 I still think people don't understand the impact of AI and Agenda Ki. Speaker 1 Really, we think we're still, we're still, we're still in the front. Speaker 2 House niche. It's still fucking niche. What? Speaker 1 Would your life have been if you weren't in tech? Speaker 2 Carpenter, obviously, you'd have been. Speaker 1 Terrible dude. Thank you so much, it's been a pleasure.