#9 Hello 2022, start us up!
January 2022 | Practical content about venture capital investment and the startup ecosystem curated by and for entrepreneurs
It’s human nature to try to untangle the future. 2022 has begun, and the startup ecosystem is eager to discover the trends, technologies, and new paradigms that will boost this year. Web3, flying cars, Mars,… a lot of predictions, but we don’t really know. However, one thing is sure: nobody expects 2022 to be uneventful.
This ninth issue of our newsletter spotlights Scott Sage and Krishna Visvanathan, founders and partners of Crane, a VC firm investing in early-stage intelligent enterprise and deep tech companies in Europe, as well as Juan Urdiales, cofounder and co-CEO of Jobandtalent, our portfolio company, and one of the newest unicorns in Spain, which has recently raised a $500m series E round.
WORDS OF VC-ISDOM
Scott Sage and Krishna Visvanathan, founders and Partners @ Crane
In our “Words of VC-isdom” section, good friends at other top international VCs tell us about what they do, what they look for, what they think about Spain as an investment destination, and share valuable do’s and don’ts with the entrepreneurial community.
ABOUT CRANE
Founded in 2015 by Scott Sage and Krishna Visvanathan, Crane is a London-based VC firm focused on early-stage investments in European startups solving real problems for the enterprise and enterprise workers powered by A.I., automation, data analytics, cybersecurity, and cloud computing. The go-to-market strategy is their forte, as the team loves rolling up their sleeves and working personally with founders to put in place the foundations for an enduring company.
Introduce Crane — who you are, your investment thesis, including what sectors, models, and stages you invest in, what makes you different, etc.
Scott and Krishna met at their former firm back in 2010 and have been co-investing ever since. Scott began his investing career after spending several years as a researcher before becoming the Head of Marketing at a startup. Krishna started his career in VC in ’99 at 3i after a stint as a founder.
Crane invests in seed-stage and deep tech businesses equally across the UK and Europe and supports them with their go-to-market.
The European tech ecosystem has grown significantly in recent years. How do you see Europe as an investment destination? Are there any particular European geographies you focus on? How much do you invest internationally vs. in your home country?
We were some of the first investors in places like Berlin, Paris, and Helsinki before the bigger platform funds showed up. Through our travels, we recognized how underserved enterprise founders still were at seed. Our HQ is in London, but we operate a pan-European strategy as the best founders can come from anywhere; they no longer have to be based in London, Stockholm, or Berlin.
Is Spain a geography you are interested in and actively looking into? Why is that? What are your views on the Spanish entrepreneurial ecosystem as a whole and its state of development? How does it compare to those in other European countries?
We can’t get enough of Spain (the food, the wine, or finding new startups!). We made two investments in Spain out of our first fund, including Tinybird in Madrid. We are actively closing our next investment in Spain as we speak and are actively looking for more.
Spain is now onto the next generation of serial founders and leadership teams who have been through the various scale-up cycles, so the ambitions have grown even more, and there are numerous key hubs.
Regarding your overall investment track record and experience, what is your opinion about the Spanish entrepreneurs vis-à-vis those in other countries?
We don’t notice any difference; the most ambitious founders can come from any corner of the globe these days. What is brilliant is they no longer need to be based in San Francisco to go big.
What is a must-have in the projects in which you invest?
Absolute clarity on the value being delivered to the end-user/customer + an absolute focus on a clear mission that the entire company can rally around.
What are the most common mistakes you typically see among founders looking into raising capital from VCs?
Going too wide and spending too much time on the process. Prepare-prepare-prepare and then go out with a clear story on why you need the capital, what you’re going to achieve with it and why that matters.
If you were to give just one piece of advice to any entrepreneur, what would that be?
Follow your instincts. You’re the entrepreneur, so nobody can tell you what you should build (other than your customers).
What is the best way for entrepreneurs to contact the Crane team?
Through a warm introduction from one of our founders.
LEARNING WITH…
Juan Urdiales, Co-founder & coCEO @ Jobandtalent
In our “Learning with…” section, entrepreneurs we have backed put some of their hits, mistakes, and learnings when building and scaling their companies at the disposal of the ¡Alirón! community.
ABOUT JOBANDTALENT
Jobandtalent is the largest job platform operating in Europe and one of the latest names added to the Spanish unicorn list. Founded in 2009 in Madrid by Juan Urdiales and Felipe Navio, the company is present in Spain, Germany, France, Sweden, the UK, and Portugal, as well as in Mexico, Colombia, and the US.
At the heart of their platform lies a job matching technology, which matches businesses and jobseekers in record time. Together with in-app messaging, scheduling, contract-signing, and payroll, Jobandtalent radically reduces the time to hire while protecting all parties from legal risk.
Tell us about why and how you decided to launch Jobandtalent and where you guys are today
Jobandtalent was born in 2009, in Madrid, as a response to youth unemployment, which exceeded 50%. At first, we focused only on youngsters, and we were just a job website. Step by step, we started to adapt our services and our technology to reality until we finally focused on where we thought there was the paramount need in the labor market: the temporary jobs.
We have come a long way since we became what we are now: a tech employment platform valued at more than 2 billion euros, where more than 1,300 companies can find the right profile for their needs.
We accompany users throughout the process -the APP is used to conduct a video interview, upload the necessary documents and sign the employment contract-. Once hired, they can manage their shifts and schedule, receive their paycheck, or report any work-related incident.
What is an average day like for you as co-CEO? How do you manage to lead Jobandtalent and still find a work-life balance?
As my parents once told me: whatever you do, you should always find a balance between your personal and professional life. The balance has been key to moving forward and having the strength and energy to keep pushing Jobandtalent for many more years. If you don’t have a personal life and all you do is work, you can’t stay with a project for more than a few years… This learning is something that I have also tried to inspire in Jobandtalent, and in fact, balance is one of the values of our culture. We don’t want workaholics in our team without a life outside of work.
How would you define your leadership style? What are you good at? What do you need to improve? What has been your primary learning in this area?
One of the significant learnings when it comes to defining your leadership style is first to determine the culture of the company you want to lead and work on it obsessively. Because these operating principles of culture are the basis for scalability and, if the culture is internalized, the company operates in an integrated way. To do this, you must understand what culture is, and the most crucial part is to define how you execute and how you do things.
What has been your roadmap to define Jobandtalent’s strategic priorities over time when you have so much on the table?
At first, our company captured millions of users and thousands of companies and put them in an app that matched the CV and the job offer. The model worked, but it didn’t offer a differential value over competitors. We started to obsess about how we could improve that, and we thought about making it ‘transactional’: the worker had to be hired through the platform to get all the information that would allow us to know the ideal candidate for each company.
In 2016, we decided to move from being that job website that did matching to be a platform that not only recommends offers but also accompanies the worker throughout the process, including the employment contract, payroll collection, etc. It was a challenging moment because, as founders, we had to realize that we had to radically change what we had created if we wanted it to work.
We had to invest in the development of the platform and reorganize our resources to become the company we are today, with a very clear social purpose: to make it easier for people to find work safely and offer added value to workers and companies. Since we made this decision, we have not only strengthened the service and the added value we offer to companies and employees, but we have also grown as a company. Today we have more than 900 employees worldwide and 250 in Spain.
When did you decide to scale internationally? How did you define that process?
Our first international ‘adventure’ was opening an office in London. It was a process that made us learn a lot. In the first place, we realized that we couldn’t just hire someone and train that person in a few days before letting him run the office. So, regarding the following arrivals to other markets, we started to send executives that had been trained and had developed experience here.
After learning that, we realized that there were business opportunities in other countries that we couldn’t leverage if we didn’t have the proper person to go and handle it from the country. Fortunately, the growth we experienced in Spain, especially after changing our business model in 2016, let us keep attracting investors in the following investment rounds.
That let us focus on constantly investing the capital both in strengthening our consolidated markets and in finding new opportunities in other countries. We achieved a consolidated team and focused on an international expansion with the leadership in Europe and the consolidation in LatAm as our first main priorities.
Nowadays we operate in nine countries and, right now, we are the largest and fastest-growing company in our sector globally. We have plans to launch in more European countries, where Italy and the Netherlands represent a great opportunity because of the size of the market.
Building a great team is critical for any startup’s success. What has been your magic recipe to do that? What is the most outstanding challenge Jobandtalent faces in this area?
When it comes to team management, we always ask ourselves how we like to do things and how the people we like to work with do things. From there, we established five operating principles that should be key in the selection of our team, but above all, should define how to act in different situations.
The first is to roll up your sleeves and get down in the mud. If you see a bad metric, don’t settle: call the customer, go to the warehouse or contact the worker in the marketplace. Then, have an entrepreneurial mindset; be a bootstrapper (achieve great things with few resources); be very analytical and be communicative.
When we hire people, we put a lot of effort into understanding these principles because they have to fit. We test this with questions and case studies to see if the candidate is aligned with these five operating principles.
What main piece of advice would you give to other entrepreneurs raising capital based on your own learnings?
There are no magic tricks when it comes to attracting new investors, but there are several aspects that, in my opinion, should always be considered. In our case, I believe the social impact generated by Jobandtalent has been a key factor in their decision to invest in our company.
I also think that one of the main things that keep making us attractive to investors is that we have become a global company with a highly-qualified team with 25 executives with international experience. Funds invest in markets and companies, but above all in the team.
Secondly, one of the keys to obtaining international financing is to seek a long-term relationship with funds. We had talked to all the funds at least 12 months before the investment, they had been following us, and we knew each other.
Finally, I think the key is to spend time on the materials offered to the funds: the business plan, business indicators, presentation of the company…
Any other recommendations you have for current or aspiring entrepreneurs?
First of all, I advise them to be perseverant and patient, as they will have to work very hard in the coming years if they want to move forward with their project. They have to realize that it will be a long road, full of challenges, failures, and successes.
Secondly, I would advise them to surround themselves with the most talented employees on that long road. To surround themselves with people who are better than them. That has been one of the keys to Jobandtalent’s success, as we were able to attract and retain the best experts in their field to bring out the best product.
And finally, I would advise you not to be afraid to adapt, to try new solutions, and to be proactive. Entrepreneurs must be willing to adopt new ideas, to overcome change successfully.
Latest AIV portfolio rounds
Just a quick note on some of the most recent transactions relating to our portfolio companies
- Paack — business courier and parcel delivery service for e-commerce
Spain | Series D — $225Mn round led by Softbank, with the participation of Infravia Capital Partners, First Bridge Ventures, and Endeavor Catalyst, among others.
- Last.app — software ecosystem for restaurant management
Spain | Seed round — €2.5Mn round led by All Iron Ventures, with support from Bynd and well-known Spanish business angels.
- Rebag — e-commerce platform to buy, sell, and trade second-hand luxury bags, watches, jewelry, and accessories
USA | Series E — $33Mn round led by Novator, with participation from existing investors, including General Catalyst
- Cream Real Betis — e-sports team
Spain | Acquisition — Team Heretics, the most followed Hispanic professional e-sports team, has acquired our portfolio company Cream Real Betis
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