Sherin Maruhn’s Post

I do tech due diligence for a family office. You are not being "diluted." You are being saved. Yesterday, a founder turned down our term sheet because "I don't want to give up 25% of my company." Here's the truth: Going from 100% of $0 to 17% of $2.6B isn't "losing 83%." It's creating $442 MILLION out of thin air. The founders who win aren't protecting their equity percentage. They're protecting their MISSION. I have watched: ▪️ Founders with 60% equity run $5M companies (rich on paper, broke in reality) ▪️ Founders with 8% equity at $10B valuations who changed industries ▪️ Solo founders bootstrap for 7 years and burn out before PMF. The math is simple. The psychology is hard. Dilution is equal to Loss. Dilution is equal to Fuel. Every round should buy you talent, distribution, credibility, and time you can't get back. If it doesn't? Don't take the money. The controversial truth after supporting 50+ tech deals last year: Most startups die because founders raised too LITTLE, too LATE. Not too much, too early. That option pool? It's how you hire the COO who actually knows operations. That VC taking 20%? If they're the right VC, they're worth 40%. Your equity percentage is vanity. Your absolute stake value is reality. The best founders are ruthlessly generous with equity to the right people at the right time. The worst are penny wise and company foolish. What's your take? Too harsh, or a reality check the founders need? #startups #venturecapital #entrepreneurship #investing

Everyone wants to invest in the hot round. But if everyone agrees, the upside is already gone. There is no alpha in consensus❗ If one investor with a great reputation joins a round, others start lining up. If a startup gets one term sheet, it usually gets a few more right after. But isn’t this behavior against the winning dynamics of our industry? 💡 Peter Thiel once said it best: “There is no alpha in consensus.” If everyone already agrees something is great, it’s not a good deal anymore — the price goes up, and you’re not seeing anything others don’t. The real job of a VC is to spot excellence early, build conviction, and back founders before the consensus forms. That’s where real returns come from. 📈 At pre-seed and seed stage, you can’t know for sure anyway. You rely on early signals, track records, patterns — but it’s impossible to be certain which teams will break out. There are no absolutes, only probabilities. In addition we deal with long feedback cycles and constantly changing industry dynamics. And yet, herd behavior hurts everyone: 👉 We have seen many times that founders who struggled to attract funding have built great companies, and vice versa. 👉 Groupthink slows decisions, drives up valuations for “agreed great” teams, and makes fundraising painfully inefficient for everyone else. 👉 It's often even worse for founders who don't even get a 'no', but are left on hold in case the dynamics of the round change and investors can still adapt their decision. I understand that it can be satisfying to receive confirmation from peers about a decision, and it can seem like a way of reducing risk for the LPs. However, it actually has the opposite effect. That’s why I love angel CLA rounds. No lead investor. No waiting. Less consensus. Founders stay in charge, and investors can join one by one. The downside is that there is less opportunity for valuation negotiation, which would usually require a lead investor — but it brings more flexibility and speed. Let’s stop chasing consensus❗ Let’s make our own decisions & build a faster, fairer, more diverse investment environment in Europe. 🇪🇺 #venturecapital #startups #investments

Germany doesn’t have a risk problem. It has a conviction problem. Last week I read a typical German StartUp Pitch Deck and got tired quite fast. No FOMO, no story line, it was rather a bed time paper for accountants than a demand creating story of the next unicorn. Then I realised why, it was structed like an anual report. For years, the stereotype has been the same: German investors are too conservative, too afraid of risk. But if you look closer, I think it’s not fear of risk that drives behavior. It’s the urge to control every variable. That’s why German founders are driven into pitch decks that read like annual reports. That’s why rounds get sliced into endless tranches, with reporting cycles that would fit a DAX-listed company (and not create any value) That’s why conversations about growth often sound more like audits than bets on the future. The irony? Everyone in venture capital talks about the power law. But very few are willing to live with the volatility that actually creates it. This is not just psychology, from my point of view it’s structural: - Limited exit opportunities compared to the US. - Fewer acquirers for late-stage companies. - IPO windows that close for years at a time. When liquidity feels rare, downside protection becomes the obsession. And control becomes the substitute for conviction. But venture isn’t about taming variance. It’s about leaning into it. Big winners don’t come from tighter covenants. They come from recognizing outliers early, backing them with real ownership, and holding through uncertainty. If Germany wants to build global champions, the answer is not “more data.” It’s cleaner processes, faster decisions, and capital that shows trust, not control. Because in the end, startups don’t scale through oversight. They scale through conviction. As someone who works with founders and investors daily, I see both sides of this. Founders crave speed and clarity. As Investor at Nordberg Ventures we crave trust in execution. The bridge isn’t more reporting. It’s alignment on what venture really is: high conviction in the few bets that will change the game. Curious to hear: Do you think German VC culture is shifting toward conviction or still trapped in control mode? What are your thoughts Stephan Beier Tony E. Kula Sandro Stark Swen Roschlau #VentureCapital #Startups #Investing #Leadership

Ben Horowitz said something every founder should tattoo on their brain: “If you’re not scared of what you’re building, you’re not building big enough.” Ben co-founded a16z, took a company public, and wrote one of the most honest books for CEOs - The Hard Thing About Hard Things. He’s not romantic about startups. He’s real. Here are a few things he said that stuck with me: • If everyone around you only listens to you, fire them. You need people who tell you what to do. • Building just for money never works. You need a mission strong enough to carry you through hell. • A real leader isn’t someone who can fire people. It’s someone who knows what to build, how to ship it, and why people will love it. • Judge people by their best wins, not their worst mistakes. That’s why they invested in Adam Neumann again - because he once built one of the greatest companies. • Most investors give terrible advice because they’ve never been CEOs. • Plane crashes don’t happen from one mistake - they’re a chain of bad calls. Same with startups. • The #1 killer of founders? Self-doubt. When you stop deciding, your team stops believing. Everything slows down. You start dying. Sometimes both options look terrible. Choose anyway. Ben once took his company public at 18 months old - hated it, but it saved them from bankruptcy. Being a CEO is hard. But you made a bet on yourself. Now your job is to make that bet pay off. You’ll doubt yourself. Everyone does. Keep moving. Stay focused. Feel the fear — and keep building. Because if you’re not scared, you’re not doing enough. At Radiotext, we’re scared too. We stopped chasing new Gs in telecom. We’re building something simpler, cheaper, and human-first. Check my profile what we’re building — it’s starting to feel real, and that’s when it gets scary.

Why do VCs act pricey? Because founders treat them like demi-gods. The real challenge is the demand–supply gap. Too many startups chasing too few VCs resulting in VC inflation. You’ve seen it — an investor walks into a conference and suddenly there’s a swarm of founders desperately pitching in the middle of the networking floor. Let’s be honest: No one has ever closed a round while fighting for airtime with 20 other founders in a lobby. VCs don’t attend mass events to cut cheques. They attend for branding. Their real pipeline? Built in quiet rooms, curated referrals, and deliberate relationships. So why the desperation? Because we forget one important fact: VCs need quality startups as much as startups need VCs. Yes, capital has weight. But this is a game of equals. No quality startups = No VC returns. The power equation isn’t one-sided. It never was. Don't waste time at conferences trying to pitch to VCs in lobbies and corridors. Put your head down and think through what can get you inbound interest.

I spent 20 years building and exiting two companies for 8 figures. And the past 15 years making 50+ early-stage investments in startups. Here are 4 patterns operator-investors see that pure financiers miss. Pattern #1: Timeline misalignment is a killer It’s tempting to optimize for valuation and brand. But does this investor's fund lifecycle match your business reality? Brand-name VCs give you logo validation, but their LPs demand 3-5x in 5-7 years. The wrong partner pushes: • Rushed exits • Pivots serving the cap table, not customers • And dilution that leaves you bitter at the finish line Capital on the wrong timeline turns partnership into pressure, and pressure into bad decisions. Pattern #2: Operator-investors read founder resilience differently. Pure financiers look at metrics, market size, competitive moat. Operator-investors look at: • How you respond when the plan breaks • Whether you've built through chaos before • If you can make hard calls with incomplete data We've lived the moments where spreadsheets don't help. The strongest predictor of success is how you show up when everything's on fire. Pattern #3: The missed quarter Pure financiers ask: "Can you hit these numbers?" Operator-investors ask: "What happens when you don't?" Every company misses quarters. Markets shift. Key hires fall through. Product launches slip. The question is how your investor responds when reality diverges from the deck. Ask their portfolio founders: "Tell me about a quarter when things went sideways. How did this investor show up?" Pattern #4: Operator-investors spot landmines better Including which “best practices” could sink your company. Pure financiers give you playbooks from successful companies. Operator-investors know those playbooks don't apply to your stage, your market, or your constraints. The most dangerous advice often sounds smart, comes from successful people, and is completely wrong for you right now. Before taking money, ask: Have you personally built through the stage I'm entering? What broke that you didn't see coming? If they're guessing from the sidelines, their advice will probably cost you time you don't have. Bottom line: Operator-investors see what pure financiers miss because we've lived the problems you're about to face. That's the difference between capital and comprehensive partnership. P.S: I built Cape Fear Ventures around a simple thesis: founders need investors who've lived the problems they're about to face, not just modeled them. If you're raising and want a different kind of conversation( one that starts with your business model, not our fund timeline) send me a DM.

💭 “Raising $1M has become harder than $100M.” That line from a recent Fortune piece caught our attention. No wonder why. It reflects a clear shift that has happened over the past few years and is now hard to ignore. We’ve seen it ourselves. There was a time when the bold or new idea was everything. Now? ▫️ Proof beats pitch. Founders don’t need to wait 12 months to validate an idea. With the tools available today, you can launch, test, and learn from real users in weeks. And increasingly, that’s what early-stage investors expect. Us included. ▫️ Traction matters, even at pre-seed. Not in the “show us your hockey stick” sense, but show us that someone cares. A waiting list. A pilot. A paying user. Something that proves this isn’t just interesting, it’s needed. ▫️ Ideas are everywhere. But ideas without execution, feedback loops, or clear focus are just noise. What separates the startups that get funded from the ones that don’t isn’t originality. It’s velocity, clarity, and a path to proving value fast. We still believe in backing early. But the meaning of early has changed.

The rules of raising early have changed. What used to be a bet on potential is now a test of proof. We see founders getting to traction earlier and learning in real time. The ones who win are those who move from “idea” to “validation” before they even start fundraising.

🇺🇸 During my trip to the U.S., one of the biggest lessons was seeing how Americans sell and pitch at the pre-seed stage. I spoke with VC funds, watched founders - and one thing really struck me: you can raise money even without a pitch deck. Here are 5 steps to secure an investor: 1️⃣ Relationships first. Relationships matter. Give people a chance to get to know you. An investor needs to trust you before they trust your idea. 2️⃣ Keep it simple. When the moment comes, explain what you’re building and with whom. If you can’t clearly explain what you do, you won’t win clients later either. 3️⃣ Show the opportunity and your “secret sauce.” Why is what you’re doing special? What do you have that others don’t? That’s where FOMO kicks in - the investor must feel that if they don’t get in now, they’ll miss something big. 4️⃣ Credibility is everything. Say clearly how it makes money - but it’s not just about numbers. Everything you say, every detail, builds (or destroys) your credibility. 5️⃣ For European investors... American VCs move faster, trust more, and invest in people and potential. In Europe, they still want numbers, metrics, traction, and proof that it already works. In Silicon Valley, people don’t sell projects. They sell a vision someone else wants to believe in with them. #startup #venturecapital #founders #pitching #fundraising #innovation #business #CEE

When we launched Meridian, we didn't mention our raise or investors once. Because those numbers tell you nothing about whether the business actually works.   Here's what they actually tell you:   → Fundraising = how much of your company you've sold before proving it works. Early dilution isn't a flex. → Headcount = how inefficiently you're operating. The best startups stay lean. Hiring too fast too early kills momentum and burns capital.   But the current VC and startup climate makes founders feel pressured to raise big rounds and over-hire just to impress their network and brag about their numbers at the bar.   Instead, we should be asking founders about revenue, customer count, and whether their product solves a real problem.   They're not as flashy and don't make for the best bar talk, but those are the metrics that matter.   Yes, announcing fundraising is important. I just don't think it should be the first thing to talk about or focus on.   We're staying focused on problems and solutions for our customers. We're focused on building something people need.   The rest is noise.