Stefan Olafsson

Founders, only you, your team and your investors should own shares in your startup❗ I see so many early teams giving away equity to service providers, tech agencies, coaches, lawyers, fundraising consultants, media, or even “work for equity” deals with people who are not real employees. I get why it happens. In the early days, paying with equity feels easy. Cash is tight. You want to move fast and get help. But here’s is the hard truth: 👉 Equity is the most expensive currency you have. 👉 Every extra name on your cap table makes your life harder later. 👉 Future investors will care. A LOT. When you give away slices to anyone outside founders, team, or investors, you lose control & (a lot of) money. Here’s a simple structure: ✅ Founders: reserve equity for yourself (with founder vesting!) ✅ Team: use an option pool to incentive core team members ✅ Investors: money for equity & use pooling structures for angels Everything else - services, advice, legal, agency work - you pay for. If you can’t afford it, find a way to earn your first money. Get creative. But keep your cap table CLEAN. P.S. At a later stage, it could be an option to consider giving important advisors a small amount of shares. #startups #investments #venturecapital

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2009: The financial crisis had crushed fundraising. Barely any new capital went into venture funds. Yet the vintages from those years went on to deliver some of the strongest returns in history. Fast forward to today (2024/2025): Venture capital fundraising is at its lowest point in more than a decade. What does that mean? - ⁠Less money will be available to startups over the next years - The bar for raising capital goes up again: quality matters - ⁠Entry valuations will reset to saner levels --> Funds raised now are likely to outperform, just as history shows The paradox of venture: the best time to commit capital is exactly when most people hesitate. Investors (Limited Partners) should lean in now, not when the next boom makes it easy.

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We had Tom Charman (Co-founder at Blok) on Ventures, Fresh out of stealth having raised $7.5m He explains why their star-studded team is building Blok "A lot of companies aren't particularly good at predicting how their customers are going to behave, but more importantly, they're not necessarily targeting the right customer." "Most companies will optimise for short-term benefit as opposed to long-term gain - what's actually happening is in the long term they're shooting themselves in the foot." "Nine in ten experiments are failing, it's taking too long to run experiments, teams don't know which experiments to run." "If we're going to move towards a world where it's multimodal interfaces with lots of different UI, knowing what to generate for who and when is going to become significantly more difficult." You can watch the full conversation by searching "Tom Charman, Co-founder @ blok: How We're Predicting User Behaviour Before Writing Code"

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Firstly, this isn't a post about Europe vs US. They're different beasts at different stages of development… However, as a European VC, it's critical to be connected to the US VC market. If you are, on average, you'll get bigger markups for your portfolio by taking advantage of the UK/US arbitrage among other things. Two examples of this are Lawhive and StackOne from our portfolio. Both have founders who've moved to the US and both have raised from GV (Google Ventures) with deep US ties of course. Same with companies like Mimica (Khosla Ventures), Carwow (Bessemer Venture Partners, Accel) and many more. You need to be able to pick the phone up to tier 1 US VCs and get them to meet your portfolio. So when Adam Shuaib, PhD, Millan Suri and I went to SF a few weeks back, we tried to cover as much ground as we could, meeting about 40 of the tier 1 US funds like Founders Fund, Greenoaks, Sequoia Capital, Thrive Capital, Andreessen Horowitz…. It takes time to build this network but the rewards are great. As you can see, we also went surfing.

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Only 30% of founders feel comfortable asking their investors for help. And honestly, that number makes sense. When the dynamic is built around performance and pressure, asking for support feels like weakness. Especially when founders are already carrying so much. Building a company is lonely, and it often requires operating at the edge of burnout. In a Y Combinator interview, Vinod Khosla, the legendary early-stage investor, said: “90% of investors add no value. In my assessment, 70% add negative value.” Ouch 😶 . But true. So before being able to help founders, the first thing investors need to do is: → Stop getting in the way. → Then, offer support only when it’s useful. Having been on both sides of the table, here’s what I’ve learned over the past year and a half from listening more closely: Founders don’t really expect investors to have the answers. What they need is need someone who can get them to the answer faster. That starts with real relationships. But not every VC is built the same. Some are hands-on. Others are not (quite shockingly in many cases). So founders need to ask: Who am I really getting into business with? Are they just writing checks, or are they helping me grow? The mega funds like Sequoia or a16z have full support teams. But smaller funds can also have an impact, if they’re clear about the kind of support they actually offer. With more clarity, founders feel safer asking. And the conversation becomes better aligned. So here are some of the questions I’ve seen unlock the most value: → Can you connect us with a startup that’s successfully scaled in our vertical? → Can you introduce us to strategic buyers or enterprise partners? → If a fit, can you support our beta testing? → Are there any non-dilutive funding sources you can guide us toward? (depending on the location) → Can you support us in investor prep or capital allocation planning? Last month, I was able to help a founder whose trust I had gained. He was looking to expand into the UK in AI healthcare. I didn’t have the answer. But I made a few warm intros that moved things forward. Small potatoes. But ultimately, these can compound. Especially when the stakes are so high: - 90% of startups fail - 29% run out of funding - 23% fail because of team dynamics If we’re not helping reduce those risks, what are VCs really doing? Founders: What’s one thing you wish investors helped with? 💎 If you’re navigating this now and unsure how to ask, DM me. Always happy to be helpful. 💎 Follow Suad Fakih

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