Most startups don’t fail because of bad ideas. They fail because of poor execution, weak hiring, or founders solving problems they don’t truly care about.
Christian Schroeder has seen all three—at scale.
Before founding 10x Value Partners, he was dropped into frontier markets with Rocket Internet in his early 20s, tasked with building e-commerce businesses from scratch. Not optimizing. Not iterating. Building from zero in places where customers didn’t even know online shopping existed.
That experience shaped how he thinks about startups today: speed matters, but clarity matters more.
Here’s what stands out from his approach.
Talent beats experience—if you know what to look for
Christian doesn’t optimize for resumes. He looks for people who think clearly and move fast.
In interviews, he watches for two things:
Can you explain something complex in a few sentences?
Can you back up your claims with numbers?
Most candidates fail here. They talk too much, stay vague, and avoid specifics.
Strong operators do the opposite. They give precise answers and quantify impact. Instead of saying “I grew revenue,” they say “I increased revenue by 35% through X and added another 20% through Y.”
That level of clarity signals real ownership.
Another simple filter: if the conversation runs out of substance in 15 minutes, it’s probably not the right hire.
Founder-market fit matters more than the idea
Early in his career, Christian followed the classic venture studio model: find a working idea, replicate it, scale it.
It worked—but not always.
The failure pattern was clear. Founders weren’t deeply connected to the problem. They executed, but without conviction.
Now, he flips the process.
He keeps a shortlist of markets and ideas he believes in—longevity, AI automation, education—and waits for the right founder to match.
That shift sounds small, but it changes everything. Execution improves. Persistence improves. Outcomes improve.
Most venture studios do too much
A common mistake: trying to build too many companies at once.
Christian takes the opposite approach.
1 to 2 companies per year
Deep involvement
Clear thesis and advantage before starting
This comes from studying what actually works. The best venture builders don’t behave like accelerators. They act like focused operators placing concentrated bets.
If you’re building, the takeaway is simple: more shots don’t always increase your odds. Better shots do.
“Unsexy” markets create outsized returns
When most investors pile into the same trend, returns compress.
Christian looks elsewhere.
Historically, many of the best companies started in markets that were ignored:
Government and defense (Palantir)
Space hardware (SpaceX)
Financial infrastructure before fintech became mainstream
These weren’t popular when they started. That’s exactly why they worked.
Less competition. Better talent concentration. More room to build something dominant.
If you’re a founder, this is worth thinking about. The obvious idea is rarely the best opportunity.
Longevity is real—but the business model is unclear
Christian has a personal reason for focusing on longevity.
At one point, he discovered his biological markers suggested he was aging far faster than expected. That forced him to study the space deeply and experiment aggressively.
He reversed it.
Now he’s looking at longevity as an investor—but with a critical lens.
The problem isn’t demand. People care about health and lifespan.
The problem is feedback loops.
If your product takes 10 years to prove results, adoption becomes difficult. That’s why he’s more interested in products that deliver:
Short-term, measurable benefits (energy, sleep, performance)
Long-term health improvements
There’s also a surprising angle: pet longevity.
Shorter lifespans mean faster validation cycles. Owners are willing to spend. Regulation is lighter in many regions.
That combination could create faster-moving businesses than human healthcare.
AI is accelerating everything—but margins may not last
There’s no question AI is changing how companies scale.
Startups are hitting $100M ARR faster than ever. Products distribute themselves. Teams are smaller.
But there’s a catch.
When production becomes easier, expectations increase.
If AI lets you create one logo in five minutes, customers will expect 50 options instead of one. Over time, that can compress margins back down.
So where does value accrue?
Christian sees two paths:
Software layer: building tools that scale fast
Operator layer: using AI to improve margins in existing businesses (roll-ups, services, operations)
He’s particularly interested in the second. If AI can significantly increase margins in traditional industries, owning the underlying business may be more valuable than selling the tool.
Small improvements compound into massive outcomes
One principle he repeats often: improve by 1% every day.
It sounds simple, but it works.
Compounding small gains over time creates outcomes that look like step changes from the outside.
Most founders look for breakthroughs. The better approach is consistency.
Founders misunderstand VC feedback
One of the more blunt insights: most feedback from investors isn’t the real reason they passed.
Sometimes the fund has no capital left. Sometimes the partner isn’t convinced but doesn’t want to say it directly. Sometimes it’s just not a fit.
If you adjust your entire strategy based on that feedback, you risk moving in the wrong direction.
Better approach: listen, but don’t overcorrect. Stay grounded in your own understanding of the business.
Don’t run out of money
It sounds obvious, but it’s still one of the most common mistakes.
Christian aims for at least two years of runway. That gives you:
Time to iterate
Leverage in fundraising
Space to make better decisions
If you’re raising with only a few months left, you’ve already lost negotiating power.
Final thought
Christian’s career runs through very different environments—frontier markets, venture capital, company building—but the pattern is consistent.
Focus on people.
Stay precise.
Avoid crowded thinking.
Build with intention.
The founders who win aren’t chasing trends. They’re building with clarity in markets others overlook—and executing better than everyone else.
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Chapters:
00:01 Introduction & Guest Overview
00:24 Christian Schroeder Origin Story
02:27 Rocket Internet & Frontier Market Experience
03:33 Key Lessons from Rocket Internet
05:32 Hiring Top Talent & Interview Signals
08:34 Applying Hiring Principles Today
09:48 10x Value Partners & Investment Approach
11:58 Longevity Thesis & Personal Health Journey
16:01 Telomeres, Biohacking & Reversal Strategy
20:50 Longevity Market Opportunities
23:32 Future of Longevity & Regenerative Science
27:49 Venture-Scale Business Models in Health
28:59 Evolution of 10x Value Partners
30:57 Venture Studio Strategy & Market Timing
32:28 Founder-Led Investing Philosophy
35:24 Venture Studio vs Accelerator Model
38:32 Macro Trends & AI Landscape
41:26 AI, Margins & Future Business Models
Transcript
Brian Bell (00:01:00): Hey, everyone, welcome back to the Ignite podcast. Today, we’re thrilled to have Christian Schroeder on the mic. He is a German serial entrepreneur, angel investor, company builder, founder and CEO of 10X Value Partners and Utopia Capital, and hands-on partner to founders building impactful early stage companies. Thanks for coming on, Christian. Yeah, thanks, Brian, for having me. But let’s just start with your origin story. What’s your background?
Christian Schroeder (00:01:20): Coming from a background of kind of an entrepreneurial family. So when I was growing up, we would always talk about like business and like the challenges of running entrepreneurial organization at the kitchen table, at the dinner table. Yeah, I mean, like that kind of gave me the mindset of like fingers. It’s kind of like looking at opportunities everywhere where you could find them. I studied business. I started my career as many people in like banking and private equities of the borrowing industries, but pretty quickly kind of like went back to like my roots of entrepreneurship. and had the opportunity to join an organization called Rocket Internet, which in the 2010s kind of like really drove venture building at an industrial scale globally. So we launched businesses like Rideshare, sharing e-commerce and food delivery in 50, 100 countries, predominantly Latin America, Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East and Africa. I had the opportunity to be the pioneer for e-commerce the very fringe markets like the frontier markets that that usually you don’t associate with like a holiday destination so my colleagues were lucky to get kind of like Indonesia and the Philippines I build e-commerce in Bangladesh and Pakistan and well we also had Sri Lanka Sri Lanka was nice kind of but like what was interesting about this is that like we could really be the pioneers for The e-commerce in this region was like barely anything. It was like a green field and we basically had to even teach people like What kind of like it means to order something online that that’s even possible. So I did that for a couple of years. I was a bit tired, to be honest, Brian, to travel every week with a small carry on from country to country to make sure that operations were running. And I wanted to do something different. So I moved into the headquarter of Rocket Internet and joined the Venture Capital Fund. Global Founders Capital, and then spend another two years or so looking at thousands of business opportunities, point of view of investing, but also from a point of view of like, is this an interesting model that we could bring to a new market with our venture studio? And yeah, I did that for a little bit longer, but like the last eight years, I’ve been more focused on investing. So I’ve invested in around 40 companies in the private capacity as a private investor and also through my my venture studio, 10x value power. partners, created around 10 companies from scratch. And yeah, I mean, I’m very excited about solving problems that have a meaningful impact for society and the world. And that keeps me going, I guess.
Brian Bell (00:04:02): Yeah, it’s a fascinating background. I mean, Rocket Internet’s infamous, right? You know, the thesis there was, hey, let’s take Uber, which is taking off in San Francisco and kind of go build it. in europe or africa or asia what was your what was your favorite experience at rocket that you really learned the most from that you kind of still apply today i
Christian Schroeder (00:04:20): think like i think something that i still apply today is kind of like this bias towards hiring very talented people and over indexing on talent and less focusing on experience because the thesis It’s there that like young, hungry, driven people are like smart and capable enough to figure it out versus relying on the experience and then basically doing things that the way they were conventionally done. That is something that I’m still applying. today in many of my businesses. And I encourage founders specifically to bring on people like an entrepreneur in residence or founders associate to give them this like driven talent in their organization. I think like something that I’m really looking back to kind of is like the The experience of being parachuted into a company, it was like 10 people in Lahore in Pakistan. And like there were like some operations going on, but the processes that were really not scalable and to very rapidly assess the situation. and then come up with a plan of how to make something scalable where there’s a market demand, but you need to also execute efficiently. So that’s kind of like something as an experience. I’m very grateful for that because back then I was 22 years old, just out of undergrad, and getting this opportunity to basically take on huge responsibilities. It’s a great school.
Brian Bell (00:05:44): Yeah, I hear this a lot. And it’s almost like cliche, like hire A-level talent that will attract other A-level talent. What kind of tips and tricks have you learned along the way to spot? Because typically, you have the resume, you have the LinkedIn profile, you’re like, okay, the person person’s probably pretty smart. And then you meet them, right? And you’re kind of asking them questions and having a conversation in an interview kind of format. Where are you kind of like leaning in in those conversations versus leaning out? And you’ve done this a lot at Rocket Internet. You’ve done it as a VC. And now you’re doing it at 10X, both as an investor and like a venture studio. And so you’re Your whole job, like all your jobs have kind of really are predicated on that ability to spot, find and nurture talent. Where are you kind of like leaning in with all those hats and where do you kind of lean out?
Christian Schroeder (00:06:32): Yeah, I think like there’s a couple of things to look I think great people, they’re always very good at being extremely precise in their answering. So like people who don’t really know what they’re talking about, they give you a long answer. But I think this saying, there’s a saying that giving a short answer, it takes more effort. I think Einstein said this or like some like very famous
Brian Bell (00:06:54): Mark Twain said, I would have written you a short letter, but I didn’t have the time, you know, kind of thing.
Christian Schroeder (00:06:59): Exactly. That’s what I mean. Thank you, Brian. And I think this is something really when in the interview where you can pay attention to or when you meet someone, are they able to give concise answers? Secondly, are they able to back up or they are saying with numbers so like there are people who say like I grew revenue and then there are people saying I grew revenue by pulling level A and B and this contributed 35% in terms of like revenue expansion and then we added a new region which added another over 20%. So like people who are like very data driven and numbers oriented, usually they excel in kind of like scaling business. It’s not like the zero to one type of person, but kind of like when hiring at Rocket, we look more at like scaling something which is already proven that had product market fit because we took a business model that was already working. So we really like over index sort of on being on the data drivenness of people. And I think like Another factor where I said like I like people who give concise answers, I would say like if you don’t end, if there is no end to what you can talk about with people because they have so many interesting stories to tell, so many different experiences that are relevant to the role you’re hiring for, I would say that’s also a green flag. Usually if an interview is over after 10-15 minutes because you don’t have anything to talk about anymore, you just keep going another five, 10 minutes out of politeness, it’s like not a good sign.
Brian Bell (00:08:31): Yeah, these are all things that like, you know, I’ve hired probably 100 people in my career, 100 plus, I’m not even sure how many at this point. And I’m actually going through the interview process right now, hiring a portfolio manager for Team Ignite. All these lessons, I know all these things that you’re saying intuitively, but it’s great to hear them like explicitly in a way. And sit here and talk about it because these are all the same things I’m kind of like doing right now as I interview for a portfolio manager. Because we have 300 portfolio companies, just like so much to manage. And I got as far as I could go with like AI and automation and a contractor, but now I need to actually hire like a person. And so I’m going through the interview process right now. So it’s really, I’m almost like selfishly asking you how to hire the best people. But yeah, these are things intuitively that are great to hear, right? That you kind of get a sense of. You kind of get a sense for somebody.
Christian Schroeder (00:09:18): Yeah, makes total sense. Look, Brian, that’s why I like to read books, because it helps you realize lessons that you’ve already subconsciously learned, but that you can kind of like reiterate on through the reading of the book, right? It’s a great lesson.
Brian Bell (00:09:36): Yeah, I love that. So... You’ve been an operator, you’ve been a VC, and now you’re running a venture studio. Tell us about your thesis. What are you up to these days? You’re building out 10x value partners. Is it just a venture studio? Are you also investing? Are you doing both? Tell us about what you’re up to now.
Christian Schroeder (00:09:52): Yeah. So I mean, like it is not like really like clear cut. So I mean, like you can say like I’m doing my investing privately or I do through 10X value partners. But in essence, it’s just like my own capital. I had a few exits. I was fortunate enough and I’m running the venture studios like that. So we do both investments and also venture building. On the venture building, we’re taking very concentrated bets. So we’re doing a one or at most two companies a year. And what we’re looking for here is like large markets, like it’s also very founder driven. So we had around like 10,000 applications for founders over the years. And something that we learned from Rocket is that we really want to be very like focused on the founder product market fit and not just as a product market fit because we had like some issues in the past with Rocket where basically the founders were not really passionate about what they were doing. We have like this kind of like repository of ideas with like 10, 10, 15, 20 things that we really like and where we’re just waiting for the right person to come to us to work on something. So right now, very passionate about longevity, alternative health. I think that is like an industry waiting to be disrupted.
Brian Bell (00:11:10): Well, I mean, if you want to, let’s talk on longevity for a sec, which is a topic near and dear to my heart as well. I think I read some articles that you wrote about longevity. Was it you that did the telomeres lengthening?
Christian Schroeder (00:11:22): Yes, that’s right, Brian. So that was actually kind of my full-time job in 2013, 14, almost.
Brian Bell (00:11:29): Yeah.
Christian Schroeder (00:11:30): No, I mean, I got into this biohacking kind of step-by-step. So in 2016, 17, I worked super hard, 100-hour work, eating pizza every day. I gained a lot of weight, no surprise there. And I started like saying, okay, I really need to like kind of like look at my health. And first I just started going to the gym. But then if you have this entrepreneurial mind, you start thinking about how can I do this more effectively? How can I make progress faster? You start looking at your hormone levels and like optimizing your sleep and so on and so on and so on. yeah i mean like over the over the years it got more and more sophisticated than in 2022 23 i i did like a test to to see like the length of my telomere so for the viewer telomeres is kind of like a part of the dna the genome string which basically um keeps the helps the cell to keep its integrity and perform its functions as cells divide so with every cell division the telomere would would shorten. And after several shortenings, it’s called the Hale-Flect limit. Basically, the cell would lose its ability to continue replicating.
Brian Bell (00:12:43): Yeah, you start getting mutations in the DNA replication as the cells divide. It’s kind of like aging, basically, right?
Christian Schroeder (00:12:50): It is like one of the causes of aging. And people thought like 10, 15 years ago, that’s the main cause of aging. It’s not really what the science tells us today, but it’s still like a driver of aging. So telomere length is like something you would want to be concerned about. Fortunately, like Brian, I found out that my telomeres were extremely short. So I was in the one percentile for my age groups. It means like out of 100 people, 99 have longer telomeres. And if you would I would have had the telomere length on average of a 70-year-old at like 30 years of age. So I was like really concerned. And I started consuming all sorts of like literature on telomeres, what causes telomeres. I mean, probably like 50% of your listeners, Brian, have short telomeres because stress causes telomere shortening. All startups, CEOs are likely affected.
Brian Bell (00:13:47): Well, yeah, I mean, if you’re working 100-hour weeks, you’re eating junk food. you’re overweight and you’re stressed out, all of these are probably contributing to shortening them, right? Yes.
Christian Schroeder (00:13:57): And I mean, like, usually, I mean, what I was surprised about is like the severity of things. I think it can also be related to long COVID. So there is like some studies that suggest that COVID can shorten your telomeres. But like, I think like there is also like, yeah, I mean, like other aspects here that maybe I’m not aware of. So, but because like if you look at, for example, studies that show that severe alcoholics, they lose like three, four years of telomere aging. So to lose like 30 plus years, it’s really surprising. But anyways, so I ducked really into the literature. I learned also how we can increase the telomere length for like, for example, the enzyme activation of telomerase through... other things like the clearance of senescent cells.
Brian Bell (00:14:44): So basically like autophagy, like fasting, intermittent fasting, things like that.
Christian Schroeder (00:14:49): Yeah. And then taking cellulitics like phycetin, spermidin, resveratrol and high dosages that have to clear out the senescent cells, but then also to stimulate the Yeah, I mean like telomeric lengthening with like some supplements that you can take as well as also the red light laser therapy. I think that helped. I didn’t do any hyperbaric oxygen chamber, which treatments that can also facilitate telomere lengthening. But this is kind of like the cocktail of things you can throw at it. I’m quite lucky now that my telomeres are super healthy. I’m now in the 99th percentile for my age group. So it is really like a 60% length increase in the telomeres. It’s very significant.
Brian Bell (00:15:35): It’s really interesting because I always assumed, or maybe I thought an error, that the telomeres were just irreversible. Like once you lost them, they were lost forever. But it sounds like you can actually
Christian Schroeder (00:15:45): to do certain things to lengthen them yeah there are also some peptides such as i think epiphalilone i don’t know how to pronounce about 157 peptide have you heard of this one bp157 it’s more like for like accelerated healing and joint health so if you have like an injury from sports and you want to look into like there’s no medical advice here but it could yeah no medical advice here we’re just we’re just chatting do your own research Yes, it could potentially be used for like accelerated wound healing. But then there are also like so-called bioregulators where we have some studies to learn from telomeres. So there’s like a lot of things you can throw at the problem really. I’m in the position now where I don’t need to do that anymore. But yeah, I think it was an exciting journey. And I would like to really partner with entrepreneurs, even from an investing point of view, but also from a venture building point of view, who are doing something in the longevity, health, biohacking space. I think like if you look at US GDP and GDP, what it is spent for. It’s like healthcare is way too much and there’s very little if no efficiency gains and it’s just a system that is out of control. I’ve been thinking about this a lot.
Brian Bell (00:17:00): GDP is a really poor measure of economic viability because it’s like you cure cancer and it would lower GDP. Right. Or, you know, like if you if you solve aging, it would lower GDP in the short term anyway. I think in the long term, it would probably raise it.
Christian Schroeder (00:17:14): Yeah. If you have more people because you solve aging, so your population would like grow exponentially kind of.
Brian Bell (00:17:20): Yeah. And so like you think about like longevity escape velocity, Ray Kurzweil has been pretty consistent that we’ll we’ll reach that around 2032 is the early 2030s call it. And if you think about that, like if we solve aging, In the short run, it’s going to lower healthcare costs, right? So GDP will actually shrink. But in the long term, it should increase GDP because people will... create more value over a longer period of time. That’s kind of an interesting measure.
Christian Schroeder (00:17:47): Look, I think like if you would, I mean, I think GDP is like not a great measure for like economic prosperity. So like, I mean, like the most extreme version of this, if you would nuke all the major cities in the US, it would grow GDP kind of because you would need to rebuild everything. But I mean, of course, you evaporate the capital stock quite literally. So Like basically you should more think about like in terms of like capital stock, what’s the wealth that the nation has accumulated and kind of like what is the prosperity that they can derive from that capital stock versus like looking at expenditure and If you look at kind of what’s happening in the world, a lot of the GDP growth, especially in Europe and Germany and other countries, it comes from public sector spending. And that is just like money that’s just taken out of the pocket of the taxpayers. And we know, or at least it’s my thesis is that the private sector is just a more efficient allocator of capital, putting it towards usages which drive more economic growth. So I think this is kind of like really like a flawed way of looking at economic prosperity just in terms of GDP.
Brian Bell (00:18:55): Yeah. So you’re investing and growing companies in this space now, in the longevity space?
Christian Schroeder (00:19:00): Yeah, I haven’t really found the right investment yet. I’m quite excited about doing something potentially with regards to more like from a... The problem I have with longevity is really like, I think longevity for pets is a larger market than longevity for humans because like the feedback loop is just much shorter. I think a lot of people...
Brian Bell (00:19:22): Your dog only lives 10 or 15, maybe 20 years. And so you can... And you’re probably more willing... I don’t know what the laws are here in the States on this, but you could probably be a little bit more bleeding edge on longevity meds for your dogs than you can for humans. Are there FDA trials for pets? I’m not even sure.
Christian Schroeder (00:19:39): I think like it varies country by country, but like at least in the uk it’s also the case that you can prescribe like approved drugs off label so i took like a topical rapamycin off label to cure potentially cure my boldness didn’t work but like i’m i’m now like after that doing the telomeres i’m throwing stuff at my boldness and yeah i think like For the pets, definitely should be able to prescribe anything off-label as long as you give appropriate warnings that it might harm the dog or the cat. So you can do much more with that also.
Brian Bell (00:20:15): I think there’s like, I don’t know how many dogs there are in the States, like how many dog pets there are, but It’s tens of millions at least, right? And you think about like, you know, we have a couple dogs, right? Little Maltese, Shih Tzus, Malshies. And I think about how much my wife would probably pay to keep them alive. Like if they’re at the end of life, you know, and how much people do pay. I’ve heard stories of people spending 10 grand, 15 grand on a surgery to extend their dog’s life by even a year, which is crazy because you can just go get another dog, but people get really attached to their pets. So I think your thesis is absolutely spot on, which is people are going to spend thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars to keep their pets young. Have you looked into Yamanaka factors and kind of what they’re doing out of some of the labs in San Diego and definitely the one out of Harvard with Dr. David Sinclair?
Christian Schroeder (00:21:04): Yeah, I mean, I’m in general familiar with the Yamanaka factors. And I also heard about, I met an entrepreneur a couple of years ago, was looking to kind of like reprogram cells within the body individually. So like in vivo, I mean, theoretically in vivo, using the Yamanaka factors to drive younging. I believe that also there are some herbal supplements that like kind of can influence. the same pathways the Yamanaka factors use. I think one of those was Kusumin, but please don’t quote me on this. It’s just like based off memory. So I think like that is definitely interesting. I think like the risk of the Yamanaka factors or the main problem they had like the basically you need to I mean like you need to kind of like do a partial reversion of the age to not go back to like the photos embryo status because then yeah and you basically like lose everything so I think that’s the challenge they wanted to solve is to use like the mechanism of the Yamanaka factors to do like a partial age reversal do you know like what what is the San Diego lab doing Brian
Brian Bell (00:22:17): I forget his name, but he’s the... Well, Yamanaka Factors is named after the doctor in Japan that discovered them. And he discovered them 20 years ago, I think. I think the paper is like 2007 or 2008, something like that. And then there’s another lab in San Diego, at UC San Diego, that’s basically taken the Yamanaka Factors and applied them to various age-related maladies. to reverse aging and lots of different organs and tissues. I know Dr. David Sinclair is running a phase three trial right now to regenerate eyesight. So literally the kind of the neurons in your eyes, which is really cool. And so he’s kind of starting with this one organ, right? With, hey, the eyesight, which everybody can relate to. Hey, if you’re blind or if you’ve always been blind or became blind, let’s try to regenerate your eyes, your ability to see. And that’s a really great use case of you know, like regenerating cells using some of these methods. Pretty exciting. Pretty exciting stuff. We’re living through a period of time in human history in the next 5, 10, 15 years where we literally can regenerate organs, tissues, teeth even, right? Regrow teeth. And yeah, what a great time to be alive. So
Christian Schroeder (00:23:28): I heard recently actually about like a company working on doing growing humans or growing clones without a brain. So basically you can do a copy of yourself without consciousness. So you can basically really get a parts repository for like all the organs and systems in the body that could break without any ethical yeah let’s say like boundary breaking I would say because it’s really like you’re not doing anything like creating a conscious human being and then harvesting it for organs but it’s kind of like more like a meat slab like something that we would grow in lab really so I found that quite interesting I think that’s something that could come into the market in like 10-15 years to and I think there’s so many people waiting for kidneys liver transplants could really, like, make a difference for them.
Brian Bell (00:24:19): Yeah, that’d be wild if I had, like, you know, basically a meet Brian Bell sitting in a morgue somewhere, you know, refrigerated, waiting for organs, or just sitting in a lab on life support, like... with the liver and kidneys and things I might need in the future. Then there’s all kinds of ethical things there, right? Like, is that a human being or not? Does it have a consciousness? Or did we suppress the consciousness? It brings up all kinds of like philosophical, ethical of things. But I think, you know, where there’s a demand, you know, people will find a way eventually to do stuff like that.
Christian Schroeder (00:24:48): But I mean, like the point that I wanted to make earlier about pets really goes back to like, you need to see that there is like a viable business that can drive like venture scale outcomes. So I see like longevity clinics popping up right and left. And I think it’s going to be like a a market that is viable as a small business or like maybe even as a multi-hundred million business, but can you build the next Palantir or Uber with a longevity clinic? I don’t think so. So what I’m very excited about and I’m working on a thesis right now is to build a business that gives people performance benefits in terms of like cognitive power sleep recovery workout performance within like two to four weeks of taking the product but then also drives longevity benefits over the long term because i think people really need to see like the the instant feedback loop
Brian Bell (00:25:39): to to adopt something yeah awesome so tell us about 10x value partners like what are you guys what’s the original thesis and how has it evolved since you launched
Christian Schroeder (00:25:48): Yeah, I think like the original thesis and it was like 2018 was to look a lot into like D2C, which was then really like a very hot industry in the Arrays and Bobby Parker’s and the other like big D2C companies, they exploded. So we did something like hair care and also like supplements back then. Then I think I jumped into different topics. I think in the 2000s, when capital was quite available, especially on the debt side of things, we did things in buy now, pay later for renewable energies finance. We also did two roll-ups in video gaming. and it services and and then like in like two three years ago we focused a lot on like sustainability and impact technologies companies that can have like a very positive impact on the world with the green wave and yeah i mean as i mentioned now we are more looking into like longevity also we’re looking into into ai so kind of like basically we are applying this rocket internet toolkit i call it like a swiss army knife of like company building, how to hire the right people, how to build, like, a marketing system, how to build, like, operations, how to build, like, AI reporting. So, like, everything you need, how to build a company, we apply it to, like, something where you just have, like, basically a downhill battle because it meets the zeitgeist. Ideally, we want to be, like, one year ahead of the zeitgeist. So, Brian, maybe, what do you think is going to be the next big thing?
Brian Bell (00:27:28): Yeah, I’m not a thesis driven investor. I have a Zen mind, beginner’s mind to every founder I talk to, right? Because usually they’re the experts, right? I’m not the expert. I’m there to learn and understand what their unique vision and take is on the world. I have opinions, right? But if I knew what the next big thing would be, I would probably invest differently. But so far, so good. I mean, my funds have done... very well and I’ve invested in lots of great things. It’s part of what’s intoxicating about being a VC is just meeting really incredible people, building cutting-edge things. If I knew what the next big thing would be, maybe I’d return all the capital to my LPs and go build it myself. That’s a good answer. OpenClaw is a good example of that. He just vibe-cos it in a weekend. And a few months later, it gets acquired for whatever it is, billions of dollars. And that’s just a guy who’s a builder who decided like, hey, this needs to exist in the world and I need to see it built. I’ve learned that I’m not that kind of person. I’m much more curious. I’m much more a mile wide about things than I’m a mile deep. So I tend to skirt the edge of chaos of what’s possible. There’s 30,000 companies that get pre-Series A funding every year. It’s impossible to be an expert in all those things.
Christian Schroeder (00:28:42): No, absolutely. And I mean, like when I do investments, I mean, it’s very much more like founder-driven, of course. And like, because basically what I’ve learned from my investing is like, you need to back founders that like really hungry and who want to build something big and who are like very passionate about the problem they are solving. I mean, like I personally, I would say I put like a lot more emphasis versus other investors on the unit economics and profitability. Out of my 40 or so investments, I think like Over 50% are still alive. I think 20%, 30% are profitable. So I think that kind of like has helped a lot with investing in something sustainable and growing the capital quite well. But I think in general, as a venture investor, you need to be agnostic. And I mean, a lot of the big returns, they come from the markets that are that are not hot, right? I mean, when Palantir was founded, like B2G, it was basically like persona non grata, nobody touched B2G and defense. And if you look at many of the great countries, companies like SpaceX, like from a hardware perspective, it’s like, you don’t want to be like a pioneer, so to say, but kind of like, you also don’t want to be, I mean, there’s many examples of last move was like Facebook was like the last social network but I think if you’re in an industry where you are the the only company you are able to absorb all the best talent in this industry or the best like rocket scientists want to work for you so it has a lot of advantages to do something that is unsexy and that’s I think where you can generate a lot of alpha as investor versus like funding AI startups at 50 100 million caps at receipt
Brian Bell (00:30:33): Yeah. I think that’s really good insight. Founders are the most important. I’ve had multiple VCs on the podcast now and They’ll say, hey, it’s founders, founders, founders, or people, people, people. Then good idea, good timing, good market, big market, things like that. But yeah, I think it starts and ends with the founders. That’s what makes the job really fun is you just meet really amazing founders. And you meet a bunch that you don’t want to back as well. But once a week, every few days, you just meet one that’s like, wow, this is an incredible person. And I definitely want to invest with them. Yeah, let’s talk about your investment approach and perspective. So like if you’re running a venture studio, you probably have lots of like ideas that you’re kind of incubating. Tell us about that process.
Christian Schroeder (00:31:13): I mean, like honestly, like on the incubation side, we’re like really focused. I think like a big mistake that a lot of the venture studios make is that they become more like an accelerator. So I think there is, I mean, Y Combinator, they are amazing and they back $500. companies or even more a year. And that works really well. But like, I think the most successful venture studio in the world, it’s like, I think Sutter Hill Ventures, I would say they’re the most successful. They are behind Snowflake and some other very successful companies. And I think like they do one concentrated better every one or two years. So kind of like, this is kind of what inspired me as well to do like one or two companies. We have done around like eight businesses in eight years. 50 percent raised more than 10 million in follow-on funding two others are still in the races so that’s kind of like how i want to do it and now i’m very excited about longevity and like also like b2b process automation with ai so like going into a vertical such as like we’re looking right now at insurance claims i think that is something where you can do a lot of ai automation so we’re thinking if that could be something and so we’re very very concentrated and thesis driven we also try to kind of like build an unfair advantage if we want to launch something so because we want to win and then just like building a business and then starting the sales it’s really not that that appealing you want to build in an industry where you can immediately day one unlock two free customers that give you a million in error or you want to have like a distribution secured for for like the supplement business that we are looking at. So this is like really how we go about it. Like we want to have a good industry, unfair advantage and a strong founder.
Brian Bell (00:33:01): All right. So I wanted to talk about kind of your broader views about macro trends, particularly around AI. You know, you’ve kind of seen a couple cycles now as an operator and an investor. What are you seeing right now on the ground and kind of what are you looking forward to in the next few years?
Christian Schroeder (00:33:18): So I think there’s a couple of things that I’m seeing. First, I’m seeing kind of like a lot of AI companies growing faster than ever. So like, I mean, everyone was like very... Well, I mean, like excited about Slack going to like a hundred million in ARR within like three or four years. I don’t know what it was. I mean, today everybody lasts about like three, four years. I mean, there’s companies going to a hundred million ARR in a year. AI accelerates everything and distribution. I mean, the product becomes your distribution almost. So that’s something that I’m seeing. I think then there is a divided field on where people believe the AI value capture is going to be. I mean, taking the language models aside, talking about the application layer here, it’s like there’s people who think you’re going to make the money with selling the software. And then there is like Our folks like the General Catalyst and Costler Ventures and APC, they launched funds that are focused on being the operators or the operating layer that implements the software into the businesses and owns the business and fully The acquisition of the business through a roll-up strategy kind of like captures the value of the AI by the margin expansion. So like personally, I think like both are fine. I’m a little bit more excited about the roll-up angle just because we have like got a lot of experience with rollups out of our five biggest successes in the venture portfolio two of those are rollups that have done tremendously well reaching like like eight figures in EBITDA each so so I’m very like familiar with this category and I think like the the thesis that AI would expand margins it makes a lot of sense but if you look at companies like Fikes and some others, Lovable, of course, and the other Vibe coders. I mean, they are like a B2B distribution software play and they have been growing like wheat. So I think both is quite viable. And yeah, I mean, like that’s how my kind of like macro view is on the AI kind of like landscape.
Brian Bell (00:35:30): Yeah, it’s making and what I would add to that is it’s making previously unviable businesses viable, right? It’s turning kind of like agency professional services kind of businesses into kind of more like SaaS outcome based businesses, where you can use AI to deliver labor. as a service right and so capital is kind of eating labor and replacing labor at least accelerating labor and making labor more profitable than it was in the past right because you used to run like an agency or professional service company a doctor’s office even dermatology office is like one of our ai companies and now with ai you can deliver that service with much higher margins much more consistently much faster so it’s really exciting
Christian Schroeder (00:36:13): A little bit like Ryan, the contrarian point to this, and I spoke to this with one of the managing partners of the most successful private equity funds in the world. And basically, he is in the 60s, so he’s seen all the cycles. The counter thesis to this is like, will customers’ expectations go up, right? If like now, like the pioneers in the AI industry, they automate the creative process for logo design and they do the logo in five minutes versus three hours. Will the customers in the future expect that you give them 50 logo options because it just takes five minutes to do so? So is the margin gain a temporary or is it permanent? I think that’s a very valid counterpoint that customers are just expecting larger, better quality, more output. And as a result of that, I mean, the output reverts back to the compensation for the output reverts back to the mean of what the productivity is of the economy on average.
Brian Bell (00:37:15): Yeah, yeah, totally. Well, I’d like to wrap up with some kind of rapid fire short questions, if you don’t mind. So through all this, what’s a principle you’ve learned that through building and investing that you think every founder should internalize?
Christian Schroeder (00:37:30): I mean like I would say like the principle of like compounding and continuous progress. So like my whole mantra is getting 1% better every day on some metric and that leads to 10x improvement over the whole year by compounding. 1.01 to the power of 230. And I think this is really what has propelled my success and what I’ve seen in other companies that you never give up. You always start a new initiative. And that way, I mean, the compounding takes care of everything over the long run.
Brian Bell (00:38:03): Yeah. Yeah. Consistent improvement. I love that. If you could go back to your first fundraising round or maybe one of your first operating experiences, what would you tell your younger self?
Christian Schroeder (00:38:12): Look, I think when I was working in the first ventures, I think it is like preserve runway. You always have a lot of runway. I’ve tried to maintain two years of runway because it gives you just much more optionality and also the ability to be more bold in your fundraising.
Brian Bell (00:38:32): Yeah, I think it’s like rule number one for startups is don’t run out of money, right? I see so many founders just burning it all the way down to zero and trying to raise. It’s just that... then you start having to contort and take bad terms and things like that. And you’re not really controlling your own destiny. I tell my founders, if you raise a couple mil, at the end of the 2 million burn, you’re going to turn a burn for 18 to 24 months. You should actually be basically cash flow even at the end of that two years and be raising from a position of strength. Couldn’t agree more with that. What’s a myth about venture capital or angel investing you wish more founders would stop believing?
Christian Schroeder (00:39:06): Myth. I think a myth like a lot of founders believe is that the feedback you get from the VCs is like the real reason why you have been passed on. I mean, usually you don’t hear the real reason. There’s something that might be outside of your control. The fund doesn’t have money to invest and they just like string you along or like that they didn’t like your team as hard as it sounds, but nobody gives you this feedback. So don’t take the feedback from the VCs and adjust your business, how you’re running it, because it might not even be true.
Brian Bell (00:39:38): That’s really good advice. I mean, because every VC is different, right? You’ve met one VC, you’ve met one VC. We all have different preferences and different needs in our portfolios and there’s different ideas about what will be successful. And basically a yellow flag if the founder’s asking me what to do, it’s kind of like, well, you should be telling me what you want to do and not the other way around. I don’t live and breathe their business 80 hours a week, you know? Absolutely. How do you manage the personal attention between being a founder, investor, and a mentor all at the same time?
Christian Schroeder (00:40:08): Look, I think like you, the tool that really helped me is time boxing. So kind of like setting aside different days and time periods or different things in life. I try to do all my meetings on Tuesdays and Thursdays so that I get Mondays and Wednesdays for like deep focused work. On Fridays, it’s like a kind of buffer day for whatever needs to be done with regards to like being a mentor. So I like to be available like on WhatsApp and like But I’m not super hands-on, you know, and I mean, I try to touch base with every founder like once, twice a year. Because like usually when you invest, you want to back people who are like very likely to succeed anyways on their own. And then they just need like this introduction here and there or like this kind of like little piece of advice. So you try to move the needle like 5%. But if you need to move the needle 50%, you invest in the wrong company.
Brian Bell (00:41:04): Speaking of, what’s a capability or habit you think investors need to develop more for this upcoming market cycle?
Christian Schroeder (00:41:10): Look, I think actually I believe a lot of VCs, they are structurally not trained and capable to access risk. A lot of VC investors, they just think about upside, how big can this become, but not very. this by probability. And I think like, yeah, I mean, I think like this is going to be more required in the future with like valuations getting really out of control because then kind of like you need to assess more the probability of the outcome. And also in these PE models, which are like more like roll ups, it’s really like more like a sensitivity versus a size of outcome game.
Brian Bell (00:41:49): yeah what’s a startup or founder you’re most impressed you were most impressed by recently and why
Christian Schroeder (00:41:53): i mean like my my all-time favorite founders i think nick from revolut i think like just the the aggressiveness the the scale of his thinking the way he’s running the company like a machine i think he might have been inspired by ray dalio actually probably shows a book about the machine and how you run the company. I think this is probably the best founder in the world to make this very strong statement.
Brian Bell (00:42:21): And if you had to summarize your investing philosophy in one sentence for founders to remember, what would it be?
Christian Schroeder (00:42:26): So I would say like, I think if you want to have like an investor that, if you want to have an investor that has been a founder before that has scaled companies to eight figures in ARR and who can give you actual advice, then you want to partner with us.
Brian Bell (00:42:41): Yeah, love that. Well, where can folks find you online, Christian?
Christian Schroeder (00:42:44): Well, I mean, we have our websites, 10xvaluepartners.com, utopiacapital.com, my LinkedIn, and also my sub stack, my blog. I try to put out a blog every two months on how to build companies like mental models for success, philosophy, economics. It’s quite broad.
Brian Bell (00:43:03): Yeah, love it. Well, thanks for coming on. Really enjoyed the conversation.
Christian Schroeder (00:43:07): No, thank you, Brian, for having me. It was very nice talking to you today.
