20VC: Wunderlist & Pitch Founder, Christian Reber on His Personal Relationship with Risk, Money, Whether the Sale to Microsoft was a Mistake, What Great Product Designs Means Today & Why Founders Investing External Capital is a Distraction

Christian Reber is the Founder & CEO of Pitch, the collaborative presentation software for modern teams. To date, Christian has raised over $52M for Pitch from some of the best in the business including Index, Thrive, Blueyard and then some amazing individuals including Instagram's Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, Zoom's Eric Yuan, Datadog's Olivier Pomerol and Tiny's Andrew Wilkinson. Prior to Pitch, Christian was the Founder @ Wunderlist, raising $35M from the likes of Sequoia and Atomico before being acquired by Microsoft. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Christian Reber made his way into the world of startups? How that led to his founding te global phenomenon, Wunderlist? How his experience with Wunderlist led him to start Pitch most recently? 2.) Does Christian regret selling Wunderlist to Microsoft? What was the reasoning and logic behind it? What does Christian believe Microsoft did wrong that resulted in Wunderlist no longer being in existence today? How did Christian deal with the personal depression post the sale of Wunderlist? 3.) How does Christian assess and evaluate his personal relationship to risk? What does he do when making risky and large decisions to ensure he is comfortable? How does Christian feel about his relationship to money? How has it changed over time? How does Christian approach personal finance today between startup investing, fund investing, cash and savings? 4.) How does Christian think about what great product design means today? How does he balance gut and instinct with granular data when making product decisions today? How has this changed over time? How has Christian structured his team to make the fastest and most efficient product decisions? 5.) How would Christian reflect on his own style of board management? How has it changed over time? What element does he still to this day find most challenging? What board moment would he say is his most memorable? Who has been his favourite board member to work alongside? Item’s Mentioned In Today’s Episode Christian’s Favourite Book: The Unbanking Of America: How the New Middle Class Survives As always you can follow Harry and The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Harry Stebbings?

  Welcome back. This is 20VC with me, Harry Stebbings. Now, I'm not sure about you, but I was probably the biggest fan of Wunderlist for many years, and I've now become the biggest user of Pitch. And so I couldn't be more excited today to welcome Christian Reber to the hot seat. Christian is the founder and CEO at Pitch, the collaborative presentation software for modern teams. To date, Christian has raised over $52 million for Pitch from some of the very best in the business, including Index with Sarah Cannon, who made the intro today, Thrive, BlueYard, and then some amazing individuals, including Instagram's Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, Zoom's Eric Yuan, DataDog's Olivier Pomerol, and Tiny's Andrew Wilkinson. Prior to Pitch, Christian was the founder at Wunderlist, raising $35 million from the likes of Sakura and Atomico, before being acquired by Microsoft. I'd also want to say a huge thank you to Adam Reinklind and Frank Thelen for some amazing

• 0:44Harry Stebbings?

  question suggestions today. They really did make such a difference. But before we dive into the show today, I have to say I just love using AngelList's Fund Admin Platform to manage my investments. The team and the platform at AngelList takes care of all my back office needs, so that I can focus on working with great founders. Leading fund managers have made over 10,000 investments into 6,000 startups via AngelList, all online and all in one place. And with recently announced Rolling Funds, you can easily find and invest in these top fund managers on angellist.com/rolling. And speaking of incredible products there, like AngelList's Fund Admin Platform, you have to check out Letter, the beautifully designed banking experience made for high net worth individuals. They always go the extra mile,

• 1:26Harry Stebbings?

  providing you with more than you expect. Multiple physical cards, multiple checking accounts, seamless wires, virtual cards, and so much more. Plus, with none of the BSVs that we all hate so much but have become so used to. If all that wasn't enough, though, every time you use your Letter card, they automatically give a tax deductible donation to the charity of your choice. So to experience the future of banking, head over to letter.co to find out more and join their waitlist. And finally, did you know there will be 1.4 million job openings for developers in 2020? Well, that's where my friends at Terminal come in. Terminal helps fast-growing companies build remote, high-performing tech teams by connecting you with elite global talent and owning end-to-end processes from hiring to onboarding to remote teams integration.

• 2:10Harry Stebbings?

  Terminal delivers the product building powerhouse your business needs to grow. From workspaces to community to on the ground support. They take the guesswork out of remote management so that you can really thrive. But don't take my word for it. Just ask high growth businesses like Gusto, Chime, Earnin and Hims. All trusting Terminal with their remote teams. And you can find out more today at www dot terminal dot I O. But enough of me today. I'm very, very excited to hand over to Christian Reber, founder and CEO at Pitch.

• 2:42Speaker 01

  You have now arrived at your destination.

• 2:45Harry Stebbings?

  Christian, it is such a joy to have you on the show today. I've heard so many good things from our wonderful dear friend Sarah Cannon and then Neil Reber at Index. So thank you so much for joining me today, Christian.

• 2:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, thank you for having me.

• 2:56Harry Stebbings?

  Not at all. Listen, I feel a bit of a fanboy moment here, having been such a wanderlust user for many years. But I do want to start today with a little bit on you. So tell me, how did you make your way into the world of startups? And how did you most recently come to found the game changer? That makes even like terrible PowerPoint users like me, great at PowerPoints with Pitch.

• 3:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I accidentally started a company when I moved to Berlin at the age of 18. I'm a programmer myself and YouTube at that time had no playlists. So I had the idea like, why don't I build online music player that uses YouTube API as a backend to curate music and charts? So I built a simple website called it Mouchelli, put it online on mouchelli.com. People could listen to like Korean charts, Japanese charts, German charts. I launched it and got super viral, free music on the internet, right? People, I think I had like 200,000 users within a month. And then I was like so scared of getting sued because for me that was just a tech experiment, like a programmer experiment.

• 3:55Speaker 02

  And I asked my mother to borrow me money to start a legal entity or form a legal entity around it, just to avoid having to file personal bankruptcy in case of lawyers suing me. Started a company. One or two months later, an investor approached me, said like, hey, do you want to take money for this thing? And I was just really honest. Honestly, like, I don't even know if this is a company. I just built a playlist feature for YouTube. I don't think this is a thing. But why don't you wanna buy it? So I sold the company, I think, four or five months later. And it was right enough money to like buy my first car and start my next company, which was an agency business. So I built websites and products for all kinds of like small and large companies in Berlin for three years,

• 4:38Speaker 02

  where I met most of my co-founders these days during like those agency days. We had a blast and then after three years of agency life, we almost went bankrupt because all our clients went bankrupt at the same time, couldn't pay the bills. And I was like, damn, running an agency is so hard and so exhausting and risky. Why don't I go back to where I came from, just writing software? I was fascinated with software as a service, so building cool products that you can launch for free with a freemium model and then people can come in, use them, try them and subscribe to them, to use them. And my idea was, why don't I build the next generation project management tool? And I started Wunderlist.

• 5:20Speaker 02

  And my first angel investor said, like, before you start with this project management thing, why don't you build an appetizer product? Like, it's a really simple tool that gives you like credibility in front of investors to raise funding. I said, yeah, what should I build? Well, maybe I build a to-do app. So I wrote Wunderlist myself with two of my first engineers. Within six weeks or so, launched it for Mac and Windows and it was an insane hit. It just went through the roof and I didn't know what was happening. And then the App Store launch, we put it on the App Store. It was like super popular there, most downloaded app worldwide for quite some time. Fascinating experience. Then I launched mobile apps, built a team around it, turned it into a typical venture startup, venture-backed startup.

• 6:04Speaker 02

  And then I sold it five years later to Microsoft. And at that time, my wife and I were expecting our first kid. So I was really ready to end this kind of startup roller coaster or at least give it a break. So I spent two years at Microsoft. I don't know, I just never felt like I'm finished with what I really wanted to accomplish, which is building an independent and global software company that really cares about well-crafted and well-designed products. So I was looking into all sorts of different product categories and noticed that presentations are really ready for a overhaul. I felt like, hey, creating decks in PowerPoint is so tedious, so time consuming, so complicated. Never built a deck myself without the help of a designer.

• 6:47Speaker 02

  And then distributing is painful, converting it to like PDF format, caring about funds, publishing it on Slide Show. I felt like this is all so weird and I came up with the idea of Pitch, like the all in one presentation platform. And now we're here. That's my story.

• 7:04Harry Stebbings?

  As I said, I am the worst PowerPoint builder and now I'm actually very, very proficient in terms of Pitch. I do have to unpack some elements there and I'm actually going to take it chronologically, otherwise my aging brain will forget. You said about kind of the first project being like a feature and like, is it a company? And as you said, it was a playlist for YouTube. Often investors tell founders, oh, I think it's a feature and not a product. How do you feel when you hear that? And how do you think about that feature versus product and what determines the key?

• 7:31Speaker 02

  Oh, that is such a tricky question. I think my programmer background really helps me there because I learned the hard way that every line of code I write will be overwritten by another engineer at some point. Like even the products that I create might not exist at some point in time. So like Wonders is a very good example, right? After selling it, three years later, it doesn't exist anymore. Nothing is forever and I think that's how I approach product design and product development in general. I try to really like mentor my team in that way, like we need to think fast, react fast and like always be open for new ideas. In terms of figuring out whether something is a feature or a full blown product, that is a really tough thing.

• 8:16Speaker 02

  And what I have developed, I think, is just a way to trust my instinct. I'm not a very analytical person, like I didn't do a lot of research before I started Pitch. I just felt I think this product needs to exist and I don't understand why it doesn't. I'm just going to do this. I think it's a massive market. It has growth built in because every presentation is meant to be shared with someone else. So if I'm able to build this tool and A platform around it, I think this can be a multi-billion dollar business. So I got started. When I'm looking at investments as like angel investments, I ask myself that every single time I look at something, I only trust my instinct. Do I get along with the founder? Do I believe the founder understands the market?

• 8:56Speaker 02

  I don't necessarily have to understand the product. For me, just I need to feel it, I think, in order to make an investment.

• 9:02Harry Stebbings?

  I'm totally with you in terms of needing to feel it. The only trouble is I actually have to write investment memos and saying I feel it isn't quite as compelling for our investment committee. Okay, next chronological thing is, you mentioned that selling to Microsoft. Do you regret selling?

• 9:17Speaker 02

  No, I don't. I know I've created quite some buzz around wanting to buy it back. What really happened there, and I think I've never really told the true story in public, is I got really sick when I sold Wunderlist. Like, I was physically ill and I didn't know what was happening. I really was shocked by it myself. But I basically got rich by selling Wunderlist, got my first child, and then I got a really bad diagnosis of just being ill. And I'm good today. During the time I've sold Wunderlist, I felt deep regret. I didn't want to sell it to Microsoft because I really, truly believed I could turn this into a massive company. Now, years later, I can reflect on it and I can honestly say it was the right moment in time.

• 9:57Speaker 02

  I think Evernote hasn't worked out. Evernote was kind of the poster child at the time for like productivity apps. Again, I have also trusted my instinct in like the selling process. I felt like this is a good opportunity. I should probably do this. I had a few years to recover and like regain energy. So I am actually incredibly thankful to Microsoft for giving me this opportunity. Am I satisfied about the outcome? Clearly not. I think Microsoft has screwed up multiple acquisitions like Yammer or Skype. And they promised me when we sold it that they will try their very best not to screw up Wunderlist. And I think they did. I think we could have turned it into something much bigger and better. That's why I started Superlist last year, together with the ex-Wunderlist crew.

• 10:39Speaker 02

  I mean, I'm not building the company actively myself. I'm just on the board and an investor, basically. But I think Wunderlist had a very unique character and could have grown to hundreds of millions of users and could have had a successful business product. So I believe the acquisition didn't work out, but that's totally fine. I'm not mad about it.

• 10:58Harry Stebbings?

  Listen, I totally get you. And I saw about Superlist and I thought, you know, Europe now has an Elon Musk, which is quite cool.

• 11:05Speaker 02

  Yes, someone called me the Jack Dorsey of productivity lately and I thought like that maybe makes sense.

• 11:09Harry Stebbings?

  I would totally take that. That's a great compliment. Okay, next one is like, you know, with the sale, you suddenly are able to angel invest and you suddenly have more personal wealth than you have before. One that I love to ask on the show and I think about a lot personally is like, how do you think about your relationship to money? And how has it changed over time from when you were borrowing money from your mother to set up the legal entity to angel investing today?

• 11:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, it has changed quite a lot. I think I went through some kind of depression after selling my business to Microsoft because I didn't want that really. And I've never celebrated the exit. I've never hosted a party with the Wanderlust Crew. It just was a really weird time. I wasn't happy about it. What money gave me was freedom. I could do whatever the hell I wanted. Through time and overcoming like that kind of like frustration, I've realized freedom is amazing. Money doesn't buy you happiness. Money buys you freedom. I'm the luckiest guy on the planet, I feel like. We still live in the same house as we have before the exit. I don't own like ten supercars or something like that. So I don't think my life could be any better

• 12:14Speaker 02

  because I have like a wonderful family. I'm living the dream. I can work on whatever I want and I think that is awesome. If I would gain more wealth, I would just reinvest it faster. I have actually, I think I've taken fifty percent of my personal wealth and reinvested it into venture capital by investing into funds and startups. I love our ecosystem, right? That's kind of why it grows so fast and that's my relationship with money.

• 12:38Harry Stebbings?

  I'm totally with you in terms of loving the ecosystem, kind of unpacking two elements there is like often people say it's incredible for founders to angel invest, they gain different perspective lessons. Others say it's a distraction. How do you think about the benefits or drawbacks of like being a founder of two companies at the same time and angel investing? What are the pros and cons in your mind?

• 12:57Speaker 02

  So angel investing absolutely is a distraction. I think if you as a founder like run your own like seed fund and raise capital on the side while you're building your own product and business, I think it's a massive distraction. I wouldn't recommend that. What I am doing is I invest four to five. Five times a year, mostly in people I kind of already know. The superlist thing was really just pure passion. I started that company because I really believe this product should exist and the team was already in place. So I think if you balance it out, it's okay. I spend an hour a week, I would say, on angel investments, maybe one to two hours a week on superlist. And the rest of my time is pitch nonstop.

• 13:39Speaker 02

  Before I started superlist, talked to my board, tried to make sure like I'm not gonna build this product myself. I will give feedback on like product design and who we should hire, what we should build, but that's about it. The team has the responsibility to create that company. I am just like the chairman or whatever. So I think there are a lot of founders who do this for like fame or personal wealth. I think if you commit yourself to something, starting a company, you should commit your entire life to it. It's okay if you do a few things on the side, that's how the ecosystem works. But there needs to be a clear limit on how much time you spend on angel investments.

• 14:12Harry Stebbings?

  I totally agree, especially also when you bring in outside capital. So totally with you there. You mentioned the word ecosystem a couple of times there. You know, you've seen both European and US investors, you've seen two different ecosystems. How do you think about the two differing ecosystems? And what do you think are the biggest differences, so to speak?

• 14:29Speaker 02

  I had a meeting with like a really influential billionaire investor in two thousand and thirteen. And I've asked him, why don't you really invest more in Europe? And why don't you have a team in Europe? He took a napkin and he wrote down US, China, Europe. For US, he draws a circle. For China, he drew an even bigger circle to like illustrate the market cap of tech combined of all companies. And for Europe, he drew a dot. And he said like, this is Europe, that's why we don't have a team there, just to explain you the situation. Now, seven, eight years later, I think that has totally changed. So we have multiple Decacorns, I think four in Berlin right now. We have tons of unicorns. I think the startup industry is growing like wildfire right now.

• 15:13Speaker 02

  Everyone wants to start businesses. I think that is absolutely incredible. We're still behind in terms of the size of the ecosystem. So the amount of companies, the amount of talent, like the amount. A lot of people that work in startups, et cetera, but it's clearly on the rise. I think it's our duty now. Our generation has to create that industry. Otherwise, the generations after us would really struggle, like especially in Germany with the car industry. If that might be gone at some point, I think the tech industry will take over and it will be the backing bone of Germany in the future.

• 15:44Harry Stebbings?

  Listen, I agree in terms of being our responsibility and I hope for Germany's case, the car industry isn't over.

• 15:51Harry Stebbings?

  But I do have to ask you, speaking of fundraising and investors there, and you said about your angel investing, on the other side of the table, I think a really interesting element bluntly is like, you raised quite a lot of cash pre-launch with Pitch. What was the strategy on the pre-launch fundraise and why did you think that was optimal?

• 16:06Speaker 02

  The true story there is we've never wanted to raise any funding. I've made like really bizarre experience with investors in the past. And I was really anti VC when I started my own company. I kind of said, I'm gonna fund this myself. I'm gonna build this my way, no board meetings, nothing. And we started Pitch that way. The first fund that made us an offer, made us an offer that I just couldn't believe. I think the seed valuation was twenty million with nothing, no co-founders, no deck, just the idea. And I was like, holy shit, this is insane. Okay, I'm gonna take this offer. I think this makes sense. So that's how the fundraising has started. And then three months later, Index Ventures wanted to chat with me, Sarah Kanna, in fact, and Neil.

• 16:49Speaker 02

  I just told them what I'm working on. I just said like, hey, I'm gonna build this like pitch platform and we'll have real time data integrations and its own distribution platform built in. I really think this can be big. And they loved the idea and asked me, would you raise funding? I said, not really, because I just closed the seed round. I don't really have the need. And then again, they made me an offer. I couldn't resist. And then I took it again and I've noticed, okay, I can really accelerate the development. So I've scaled the team, hired a lot of engineers to build V1. And the next funding round, by the way, happened exactly the same way. We weren't fundraising. An investor of Wunderlist was just reaching out, wanted to hear about Pitch. I pitched the idea, got a really good offer. We raised fifty million in total, exactly that way, by not.

• 17:34Speaker 02

  fundraising. But the money we kind of need, if you think about it, we have to build the next generation of PowerPoint, which is hard on its own, but then we kind of integrate something like Docent and SlideShare right into the product. So we built multiple products all at the same time. We built a developer platform into the product as well. So you can build plugins for Pitch. Doing all these things is a big engineering effort. So we are currently a hundred people and I want to scale the company to a hundred sixty, a hundred seventy people by the end of this year. And that just requires cash.

• 18:06Harry Stebbings?

  It totally does require cash. I guess one thing that I have to ask is, you said there about a hundred to a hundred and sixty, a hundred and seventy five. Often in startup land like that hustle culture and the, you know, work twenty hours a day is kind of idolized. I've heard from some of your investors, you have a different take. So I'd love to hear, how do you think about kind of scaling culture within Pitch? And what you kind of want to imbue within the team?

• 18:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that all goes back to my wanderlust days. I had the exact same belief that you need to kill yourself to build a business successfully, especially a startup with like, that's permanently under-resourced. Getting sick from it, like truly burning out from it, made me realize that obviously this is not sustainable. And I think I've learned to emotionally disconnect from what I'm creating. So I'm like trying to view building a business more as a project. So I don't get too attached. I work ten hours a day or something like that roughly. So it's a lot, but it's not too crazy. I eat breakfast with my kids, I eat dinner with my kids, I do that every single day. I play games like Minecraft with my kids.

• 19:11Speaker 02

  I just want to have a good life and I'm not really sure if I have a detailed philosophy there. But I just want to find a way to sustainably build a business. And I also want to be a role model for our employees. So I think where I'm trying to build a culture where we are a bunch of like very ambitious individuals. But we also have a good time. It's the journey really that is the most fun and not like the potential X that you might have at some point.

• 19:38Harry Stebbings?

  So I love the values you said there about, you know, breakfast and dinner with your kids, playing Minecraft. How do you imbue that with? Your team though, because you know, you may do that and you may say that, but how do you create that culture with the team where they know that that's acceptable and great and welcomed as part of being a team member at Pitch?

• 19:55Speaker 02

  I think if you're the CEO, everyone kind of looks up to you. Your team members can smell and see if you're killing yourself. And if you are just working in an unsustainable fashion. Most founders I know and like most first time founders are like really emotional weirders, I would say, including myself. And I think you just have to find a balance and be a role model. I don't really communicate anything special. I just try to say that I wanna provide an environment where people have autonomy, can do their best work, can also take care of their families. I think we have done a pretty good job during Covid, like helping our team in the right way.

• 20:35Speaker 02

  We've given parents the option to just work less during lockdowns to be able to somehow manage their lives with children. There's nothing special I'm doing. I'm just trying to be a normal human being.

• 20:48Harry Stebbings?

  Can I, you mentioned the kind of identity earlier and I think identity and tying your identity to your company is such a dangerous but common thing. Like, you know, I I hate going on holiday, I hate going on holiday, because when you go on holiday, you don't have your company, obviously. And then you don't really know who you are, because you are your company. How do you deal with tying your own identity to your company? And I guess now you said you like to have that kind of slight chasm between the two. How do you create that?

• 21:15Speaker 02

  I don't, is the honest answer. So at Pitch, we're eight founders in total. I think every new hire asks me the same question, like, how do you create culture? The answer is, we just don't. It just happens. We hire good folks that we feel like fit our company DNA. Like, understand the product we wanna build and have a similar way of working.

• 21:34Harry Stebbings?

  It's more a case of like with Wunderlist, when you sold it, obviously, and the depression, it's like selling a part of you. And then with Pitch, you said that it's actually more like a project, where you're just, you have that disintermediation.

• 21:47Speaker 02

  It's just, I'm just trying to emotionally protect myself. So I, like I said, when I sold Wunderlist, it felt like I'm. Selling my child to the enemy. I didn't wanna get bought by Microsoft. I viewed Microsoft as the enemy and it was just stupid. It made no sense. In order to avoid that from happening again, I just tried to emotionally distance myself from what I'm doing, to not burn myself out. That doesn't mean that I don't love what I'm doing. I clearly have a strong passion about pitch and what we create and create well-designed tools. I just want to avoid this from happening again. Like, it's a way to protect myself.

• 22:26Harry Stebbings?

  Listen, I totally agree. I think I need to learn from you in that respect. You said kind of there about doing things you love and you know, as I said, I spoke to many of your investors before. And all of them said about kind of bluntly your product genius, which um don't blush, but like your insight, especially around kind of product design and creation. It made me think like, when you think about the craft of product design in particular and product creation. How do you think about that gut feeling, that instinct-driven nature that you have? Combined with the new world of granular, metricized, scientific approach to every product iteration. How do you balance the two?

• 23:00Speaker 02

  What I mean by instinct, I don't think you get born and just have a good instinct. I think if you are building software like I am, you have to spend an enormous amount of time with software and hardware of all kinds. Like, I'm a nerd, right? I play most computer games. I know most tools. I use Windows, Mac, Chrome, OS, Android, iOS. I know everything in tech. I have the latest gadgets all the time. I'm a super nerd. So I think I developed over time a pretty good sense for how software is evolving, how hardware is evolving. And then I think as a founder, I'm just trying to identify an upcoming trend, like the rewrite of the Office Suite, for example.

• 23:43Speaker 02

  And therefore the opportunity to reinvent PowerPoint and to really build the next generation of it. In terms of building a product, I don't think I'm a genius at all. All I provide is the idea. I approached my co-founders by just saying like, hey, I have this idea of building a team-first presentation tool. And I pitched them the product. They fell in love. With it, but then we worked with our designers to build a great interface and we just worked on it really, really hard. I constantly have moments where I feel like we're just not good enough. We're not good enough in, I don't know, certain features we're building or branding or copywriting or whatever. And I think I'm giving my team a very hard time.

• 24:26Speaker 02

  I want to publicly apologize for that to everyone who's listening from pitch and super list. I think I'm giving everyone a really hard time because I guess I am a perfectionist. I assume that's what my investors think of me as well as I'm just not giving up. I'm always trying to build the best possible product I can and that leads to what it leads to.

• 24:44Harry Stebbings?

  Can I, you said there about kind of investors and final one for the quick fire, but it's like board management and you said there about like, no one's like born as a product genius. But like board management is the same, fucking hard. No one knows how to do it when they start. When you look at how you manage your board today, how do you manage your board and is it different from the first time with Wunderlist?

• 25:03Speaker 02

  It is definitely different because as a first time founder, you have no idea what you're doing. You're really learning with every board meeting, every product launch, every iteration. So I do board meetings every three months and I'm just trying to have a good time and explain everyone exactly what I'm planning to do on the product side, tech side, business side, marketing side, and that works really well. I had a really interesting board meeting at Wunderlist, actually. So I had a pretty spectacular board. Partnered with firms like Atomico and Sequoia and Earlybird, a local fund in Germany. And we were working on a, the, the next iteration with real time synchronization. So like seeing your lists and tasks in real time while someone else is typing.

• 25:46Speaker 02

  I really believed that real time synchronization in software is the future of productivity apps. And I pitched my board the latest version and one of my board members pretended to fall asleep. So laid down in the board meeting and I was like, hey, are you sick man? Are you not doing well? He stood up and said to me like, yeah, I'm not doing well because of you, man. Like what you are selling here is nonsense. It makes absolutely no sense. Promoting real time synchronization to your customers is like. Promoting breathing air to humans. It just makes no sense. And I was mentally destroyed. My confidence was at an all time low. And we had a pretty bizarre board meeting. And it turned out that it was the best release we've ever had.

• 26:31Speaker 02

  And actually, in the end, it was the reason Microsoft bought us because of the real time synchronization we've had. It was an absolutely fascinating thing. Like, if you think about team first productivity software, everyone is having real time synchronization these days. It's an absolute standard. I think at that time, I kind of learned that, again, like, I wanna have a good time with my board. So I'm trying to partner with people that appreciate product thinking. And you can make mistakes as founders like all the time. But just because you get feedback from a successful investor doesn't mean that the investor is necessarily right. I think you can still learn from your investors. I think the unique advantage is investors just see a ton of different companies. They recognize patterns which you don't as a founder.

• 27:16Speaker 02

  And I think if you build a good relationship with your board and you kind of try to learn from them, you're set for success.

• 27:23Harry Stebbings?

  I think it's also the way you probably relay the information, lying on the floor and pretending to be asleep. I do wanna move into my favorite, though, Christian, which is a quick fire round. So I say a short statement and then you hit me with your immediate thoughts. Are you ready to rock and roll?

• 27:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, let's do it.

• 27:39Harry Stebbings?

  Okay, so what's the favorite book and why? What must we be reading?

• 27:42Speaker 02

  As a kid, I picked up this cheesy business book. It's called Rich Dad, Poor Dad. I'm born in East Germany with like normal background, like working class family, right? And in my youth, my parents were working for a really rich family from Ireland. I met that family constantly. I've spent time with them. Like, cuz I was a nerd, I basically fixed their computers when I was young. I found that book in their home, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and I read it. For me, it was like my biography when I was like fourteen or so. It was about a kid with poor parents who got told, like, you have to study hard to get a great job. Which had a friend with rich parents who constantly told.

• 28:24Speaker 02

  Old his kids, you have to be smarter than everyone to like, you have to make people work for you. And I was like, huh, interesting. And it had a God of good wisdom in it, like work to learn, not to earn. Was a really good quote from the book. It kind of teach me that at the beginning of my career, I shouldn't care about money at all. I should just try to absorb as much as I can as fast as I can. And I've just lived by it. Later on, I've realized that it's kind of like a cheesy marketing book or whatever.

• 28:54Speaker 02

  Influenced my childhood so hard, it was phenomenal.

• 28:57Harry Stebbings?

  It's amazing to hear. And at least when you write your book, you can now have some cheesy inspiration. Tell me, what's the hardest element of your role with Pitch today?

• 29:04Speaker 02

  I think the hardest aspect of being a CEO is often feeling lonely with the toughest decisions you have to make. I think I have phenomenal co-founders who really have my back at any time and I have theirs. But yeah, some of the hardest and toughest and most critical decisions you have to do as the CEO. Cause it's your responsibility. And I think that is the most challenging aspect of that.

• 29:28Harry Stebbings?

  How do you deal with the loneliness? It's something that I've struggled with.

• 29:31Speaker 02

  Building relationships with other CEOs, very, very helpful, because every founder feels the same. I think the best founders are really good at making unpopular decisions, right? When no one believes in you, you make a decision that you trust is the right one. And that is, I think, where you feel the most vulnerable and lonely as a founder. I get a lot of support from just friends who build companies. My angel investors who are all in the same kind of mode and who live very similar lives. So I think that helps. But now, wait, we have Clubhouse now. So now we can all socialize and feel less lonely.

• 30:04Harry Stebbings?

  This is totally true. You're right. I look forward to doing a Clubhouse with you. Tell me, what three traits do you most want your children to adopt?

• 30:12Speaker 02

  Great question. I think I want my kids just to be happy, nothing else. I don't want them to become the next generation of tech founders or like. I just want them to figure out their own careers, whatever they want to do, I want to support them. I was lucky that my parents teach me to never be scared. That is, I think, the number one skill that my mother taught me. I'm just like insanely naive. I think I can build whatever I want and whatever I can dream of. And I think if my kids could adopt that from either myself or my wife or their grandparents, I think that would be the best skill I could forward to them.

• 30:51Harry Stebbings?

  Are you not scared of risk?

• 30:53Speaker 02

  Not really. I trust science. I think most startups fail. Pitch could certainly fail as well. That's just the reality. And if you view everything you're working on that way, it just makes life a lot easier. And you are able to make risky decisions a lot easier. But at Wunderlist, I had a lot of moments where I felt lonely, I felt scared. But I don't really mean it like I don't experience fear. But my parents were just really good at kind of like teaching me to trust myself. So I'm not even sure if they actively did something to create that. But I feel like my mother had a lot of influence on me in that one.

• 31:28Harry Stebbings?

  It was the book. It was Rich Dad, Poor Dad.

• 31:31Speaker 02

  Probably. I don't want to thank my parents. I just want to thank you all.

• 31:34Harry Stebbings?

  Just want to thank the book. You're driving sales through the roof today. Uh, tell me, penultimate one, okay, is best board member you've worked with and why?

• 31:43Speaker 02

  Oh, that's such an unfair question, right? One I really love working with is Kieran O'Leary. Uh, he's the founder of Blue Yard Capital in Berlin. And he was previously at Earlybird, who was invested in Wunderlist. We worked together on so many things. He's a close friend. I'm also an investor in Blue Yard. He's an amazing human being because he just, he's speaking with me on the exact same level. We're just two friends who try to do cool stuff together. He's on the investor side, I'm on the founder's side. So I think it's totally fair to mention him. That said, I respect all of my investors.

• 32:18Harry Stebbings?

  Do not worry. I ask many CEOs and all the board members get very upset. So you are indeed shit. But final one question is like, when you think about the next five years, what do the next five years hold for you and for Pitch? Like, just how big could this be? You know, we are bundling slides, we are bundling G-Drive. Help me out.

• 32:37Speaker 02

  I think Pitch has the opportunity to become a massive company. And I don't really want to just bring up numbers. But I think the reason I've started this is because I've realized that most Major economic decisions and political decisions are based on the output of presentation software. If you get your morning briefing as a CEO, you often get like marketing reports, executive reports of some kind. You can of course get like memos as well, but I think decks play a substantial role in like informing leaders in our world. So I think if I build the right tools that enables the next generation of leaders to build the best decks possible and 10 times faster than ever before, I accelerate humanity. That's honestly my belief. And I think

• 33:21Speaker 02

  all of us, students in universities, founders, executives, small companies, medium sized companies, big companies, everyone works with presentations. I agree that presentations like kind of got a bad rap in the last years, but I want to fix that. I think the next five years I will spend on building the product that I'm envisioning and my co-founders are envisioning and that's about it. And I hope by doing that, we create one of the most successful businesses Europe has ever seen.

• 33:51Harry Stebbings?

  Christian, I've so enjoyed this one. This has been so much fun. So thank you so much for joining me and I can't wait to see, what was it? The Jack Dorsey of productivity come to life in Europe.

• 34:00Speaker 02

  Now I feel bad because I brought this in. Thank you so much, Eric. It was wonderful.

• 34:07Harry Stebbings?

  I mean, if you couldn't tell, I just absolutely loved doing that one. And I think the thing that struck me is just what a brilliant and good person and leader, Christian. It's such a joy to do that show. If you'd like to see more from us behind the scenes, you can on Instagram at H Stabbings 1996 with two Bs. However, before we leave you today, I have to say I just love using Angel List Fund Admin Platform to manage my investments. The team and the platform at Angel List takes care of all my back office needs so that I can focus on working with great founders. Leading fund managers have made over 10,000 investments into 6,000 startups via Angel List, all online and all in one place. And with recently announced rolling funds, you can easily find and invest in these top fund managers on angellist.com/rolling. And

• 34:50Harry Stebbings?

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• 35:32Harry Stebbings?

  Terminal helps fast growing companies build remote, high performing tech teams by connecting you with elite global talent and owning end-to-end processes from hiring to onboarding to remote teams integration. Terminal delivers the product building powerhouse your business needs to grow. From workspaces to community to on-the-ground support, they take the guesswork out of remote management so that you can really thrive. But don't take my word for it, just ask high-growth businesses like Gusto, Chime, Earnin and Hims, all trusting Terminal with their remote teams. And you can find out more today at www terminal.io. As always, I so appreciate your support and I can't wait to bring you an incredible episode this Thursday with four guests, four incredible guests, all either founders or leading VCs. It's a special one, so stay tuned.