Visionaries Club

Our team is often asked what we look for in Founders. One of the answers we give surprises them… 🗣 It’s important to be a strong storyteller - Founders need to be able to translate their vision effectively to early team members, financial partners and customers, and convince them to support their (sometimes crazy sounding) idea! 📝 This means we’ve taken communications seriously from Day One at Visionaries, and this year we decided it was time to find someone who could take this to the next level for our founders, helping to communicate their vision, amplify their progress, and build long-lasting brands. 🚀 Enter Katy Sexton-Darby, our new Vice President of Comms based in London, who has joined Visionaries’ leadership team to supercharge our comms strategy and to work closely with our founders on storytelling. Katy joins us from consumer investor, Verlinvest, where she set up the company’s Global Marketing and Comms function from scratch, establishing them as 𝐭𝐡𝐞 consumer growth experts across Europe, Asia and the US. ⁠Prior to Verlinvest, Katy spent almost seven years at then-startup advisory firm, Milltown Partners, where she helped investors and fast-growth startups on both sides of the Atlantic to strategically build and shape their reputations, whether through public policy challenges, M&A transactions, or media milestones. Welcome to the team, Katy! We’re excited to see the incredible impact you’ll have at Visionaries ⭐

In a time of increased business uncertainty and macroeconomic shifts, businesses need the tools to make quick and informed decisions now more than ever. Speaking to Bloomberg Daybreak: Europe this week, our co-Founder and CEO Eléonore Crespo explored the need for businesses to be agile in the face of change to remain profitable, and the role that AI can play to create robust business plans and what-if scenario analyses. 

We are thrilled to announce our lead investment in Adfin‘s €4.5m seed round, co-led with our friends at Index Ventures 🚀🌟 While point-of-sale and e-commerce payments have seen incredible innovation, bill payments remain stuck in the past, creating a frustrating experience for consumers and costly delays for businesses. Tom Pope and Ciprian Diaconasu bring decades of expertise from their time at Tink and Mambu. They are now on a mission to revolutionise bill payments with Adfin. By combining open banking and card payment technologies with AI-driven insights, Adfin ensures that bills get paid quickly and efficiently, reducing administrative burdens and improving cash flow for businesses. With Adfin’s innovative platform, businesses can expect a seamless, modern billing experience that aligns with the convenience of today's payment technologies. We are excited to support Tom, Ciprian, and the entire Adfin team as they bring bill payments into the modern age. Check out more details here 👉 https://lnkd.in/g3DkWhzG

🚀🌟 Our Partner Robert Jäckle (aka Bobby), joined Marcin Lewandowski in the EU-Startups Podcast to share his incredible journey from Intern to Partner at Visionaries Club. He dives into his experiences from almost five years in VC, secrets to rapid success, and how Visionaries Club's hiring Philosophy of passion over experience drives their achievements. During the episode, Bobby discusses how he applies his Oxford education to real-world investing, spotting winning founders and standout Investments in Leapsome, Hakuna, Apron, and WorkFlex. He also covers emerging trends in fintech, HR, and compliance and offers predictions for the future of European tech. Don't miss this episode packed with valuable lessons and great tech insights! 🎧✨ Tune in here: https://lnkd.in/eiy8KcSF

🎉 Welcome Betty Lu to our Visionaries Club family! 🎉 We are beyond excited to announce that Betty Lu has joined us as Chief of Staff in London! In her role, Betty will help drive portfolio support, platform strategy and overall company building efforts. Betty joins us after almost a decade of experience at Bain & Company, where she served a range of clients across diverse industries, with experience in business unit strategy, transformation strategy, change management, and operational performance improvement - deeply grounded at the intersection of technology & industrial application. Betty has also led teams in commercial due diligence efforts for private equity, institutional, and strategic investors, supporting over 35 such projects over her time at Bain, with expertise in particular in the B2B Fintech space. Betty's positive energy and entrepreneurial mindset have impressed us since our first conversation! As an alumna of the Northwestern University - Kellogg School of Management, Betty earned her MBA and was honored with the Dean's Distinguished Service Award for her stellar leadership and contributions to student life. We're thrilled to have Betty on board and already feel the amazing impact she'll have on our team. A warm welcome to Visionaries Club! 🌟

Ready to unlock the secrets of startup-enterprise synergy? Join our partner Sahar Meghani at London Tech Week tomorrow! ✌🏻 Partnerships between startups and industry giants can be tricky, but Sahar will discuss some insights to make them thrive. 🌟 Don't miss out! 📅 Date: Wednesday, June 12th 🕑 Time: 14:05 📍 Location: FoundersStage Be there to transform your collaboration game! #LondonTechWeek #Visionaires #InnovationUnplugged

🚀 Join us at Visionaries Club as our new Visiting Analyst! We're seeking a curious and driven high-potential individual (m/f/d) to join our Visionaries Club Investment Team in Berlin or London from September for 6 months. You’ll be working alongside the Investment Team, the Founding Partners, the Portfolio Team, and the entire Visionaries network in a truly unique environment within the startup community. Join our dynamic team at the intersection of investments and entrepreneurship! Are you ready to make an impact? Apply until June 21st (EOD) or refer someone in the comments who would be an outstanding asset to our team! Here: https://lnkd.in/eSUZmFv6

Meet our Visionaries family on stage at SaaStr this week 🔥🙌 ⭐ Our Partner Johann Butting will explore the transformative impact of AI on SaaS with DeepL’s CEO and Founder Jaroslaw (Jarek) Kutylowski. Be sure to catch their talk at 2 PM on Stage A "Beyond the hype: How AI is transforming SaaS". ⭐ Join our Partners Robert Lacher, Sahar Meghani, and Harry Stebbings for an in depth session on "Navigating Fundraising and the VC Landscape in 2024," at 4 PM local time on Stage B! Do VCs really add value to SaaS founders? Which implications does the current VC landscape have for founders? Will you be there? We’d love to meet you - Let's Connect!

🚀 Exciting news! We're thrilled to partner with H Company on their mission to shape the next frontier of AI with a multi-agent multimodal approach ✌🏻 At Visionaries Club, we believe a lot in the intersection of the SaaS application layer and new foundational model approaches to push the boundaries of AI Enterprise Automation. Led by Charles A. Kantor, Karl Tuyls, Laurent Sifre, Daan Wiestra & Julien Perolat and complemented by our friends Daniel Dines, Brandon Deer and the UiPath team as partners, H is is poised to revolutionize enterprise automation and beyond.🔥 Europe's industrial economy stands at the brink of this next wave of AI applications, and we're excited to be a small part of this transformative journey alongside Accel, Eric Schmidt, FirstMark, Elaia, Eurazeo, Yuri Milner, Motier Ventures, Creandum and many more. https://lnkd.in/gD8bQicH cc Visionaries Club Robert Lacher Marton Sarkadi Nagy

Nailing go-to-market in 2024 🚀: Five tips from Europe’s SaaS leaders Mastering Go-to-Market (GTM) is the number one pain point we hear from our SaaS founders in 2024. To tackle this head-on, we brought together global sales leaders and our Visionaries Club Partner Johann Butting (ex-Slack, Dropbox and Google) for a day in London to dive deep into GTM strategies and share insights. Here's what we learned in a nutshell: 📞 Embrace outbound  Outbound lead generation may be scary for teams that are used to organic leads, but it’s key to scaling. Make sure your teams are prepared with the right sales materials, ensure they truly understand the product and let them have fun with it, shared David Parry-Jones (CRO, DeepL), to supercharge lead generation. 💡 Collaborate on your playbook  For a successful playbook, you need to work with the account executives who are making the calls, as well as sales leaders and the VPs. Co-creation ensures everyone in the team feels ownership and is empowered to deploy it in the best way. 💰 Invest in BDRs as soon as possible  Business development reps will fuel your sales engine - and they are the research lab for your ICP and optimal pitch. Johann’s advice: hire them as soon as you can and be prepared to pay to get the best experience possible - they can make a huge difference. 📈 Learn to love failure High-growth teams don’t succeed all the time and that’s ok! Shoot for the stars, learn from the mistakes, and celebrate both wins and learning opportunities, said Geraldine MacCarthy (CRO, Personio). This builds a successful culture and leads to winning teams. ❤️ Customer success is your secret weapon  Customer success teams should be focused on one thing: make sure that your product is a huge success for the customer, delivering massive value, something Chris Mills (Global Head of Customer Success, Slack) knows a lot about. To pull this off, make sure your CS team has a commercial mindset but prioritises customer value above all else. Read the whole insights from our roundtable event in London on our website: https://lnkd.in/eqN5JJ43 What are your top tips for GTM for early-stage companies? Share in the comments!