Five questions that every investor asks
Answered by Max, CEO of Kando Technologies
This series is an opportunity for startup founders to share their vision and inspirations by answering 5 questions that early stage investors (angels, incubators, VCs) often ask. We want to hear how founders think, feel and what is important for them.
We have to practice what we preach, so Episode 1 features our own Max Atanassov, CEO of Kando:
What Inspires You?
I believe that every human has hidden potential waiting to be discovered. I believe that each of us is the best person in the world for something special and unique. It is a question of finding out what it is and helping that individual succeed. The platform that we are building, VCfund.me, enables those who have founded a business to raise funding and get the resources to achieve their dreams. Making their visions of the future come true. Helping people realise their true potential is what I am passionate about.
What was your greatest achievement?
As a boy, when I read adventure novels, I dreamt about travelling around the world. In my professional life, I was fortunate to have lived and worked in different countries in Europe, Asia and the Americas, and as an adventure traveller stay at the homes of Masai tribesmen in Africa and Amantani people from Lake Titikaka in Peru. This gave me the opportunity to interact and connect with people from multiple cultures and walks of life and opened a window on different manifestations of human nature. Gave me a better understanding of what it means to be a human. I believe that my greatest achievement is to have had a genuine connection with so many interesting people.
What is the biggest obstacle you have overcome?
In 2008 I left my 15-year employment in a bank to start a venture fund. I had just assembled a team when the financial crisis struck. Raising money became impossible. We had to regroup and reinvent ourselves in order to survive. I restarted the business as advisory and within a few months did a deal that made the front page of the Financial Times. A few months later I became the CEO of one of the startups we advised — in the completely new field of nanotech, where I had no previous experience. Within one year of setting up the business in the US I was invited to the White House as our company was recognised as one of the industry leaders in the field. Now the company is a unicorn.
What is your biggest weakness?
I always prefer to trust people, sometimes against my better judgement.
What important truth do very few people agree with you on?
If we assume that AI will take over many business decisions, and most of the B2B discovery in the future (i.e. private fundraising, B2B sales intelligence, supply chain and talent discovery) is going to be automated, then one of the factors of success for future business will be the “SEO” for this, which is reputation that ranks you higher in the discovery process. So the big moonshot would be to build a universal automated business discovery platform, where each business maintains an identity around which they build such a reputation, but ultimately use for all transacting with other businesses.
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About the startup:
Kando is an intelligent platform that predicts corporate decisions in order to discover the right investors, business customers and talent for you. You create a company profile, and based on this data you are presented with a pre-populated kanban board with those who are most likely to invest in your startup. The platform learns from your experience (and that of others) and provides better and better recommendations. A similar process works for B2B sales discovery.
Here is a link to our fundraising platform for startups: https://data.vcfund.me/
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Please let us know in the comments or at team@kando.tech if you would like us to feature your company’s answers to these 5 questions. Our platform is visited by thousands of startups and members of the investor community.
