#68: Redstone's Samuli Siren on building a succesful VC fund and the challenges of working with corporate investors

Hi, I'm Jeppe and welcome to my bi-weekly podcast/newsletter on Corporate Venturing.. My aim is to provide a comprehensive perspective on the latest developments in the field and its related topics, drawing from the insights of top management, venture capitalists, founders, LPs, and family offices. I aim to offer valuable information and thought-provoking content that will aid in understanding the importance of Corporate Venturing in business strategy.

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In this episode of the EUVC podcast, Andreas and our in-house CVC expert,?Jeppe H?ier,?are joined by Samuli Siren, CEO of Redstone, one of Europe's most successful venture capital firms.

Together, we’ll dive deep into Redstone’s approach to corporate venture capital, exploring how they’ve built a portfolio with around €600M across ten different funds. Redstone specializes in Series A rounds and is headquartered in Berlin, focusing on DACH (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) and global markets—particularly the U.S.

Redstone's focus spans multiple sectors, though always with a digital and B2B edge. Some of their standout investments include PlanRadar, Liqid, Psy, Finanzguru, Atlas Metrics, and Yoto. With Samuli, Redstone has excelled in attracting corporate investors, making his insights invaluable to anyone looking to understand how to raise capital from corporates.

Watch it here or add it to your episodes on Apple or Spotify ?? chapters for easy navigation available on the Spotify/Apple episode.

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?? Guest’s show notes

We believe in giving you our guests' thinking directly and unaltered. Therefore, no changes, no AI, no nothing has been done to the following sections.

Principles and learnings for building Redstone VC

• Own Values of being an Entrepreneur. Great company is when the employees can make the most out themselves, this will be a win & value add for the clients -> leads to revenue and value creation
• CEOs job is to create an environment, where the employees can perform. I’m serving them, not the vice-versa,
• Corporates are looking to learn and gain access. They operate in Quartals and VC (CVC) is always the nice-to-have project. Challenge is, how to make impact in a corporation?

What learnings would you say have been pivotal for you on this journey?

• How to gain a long term commitment from corporates? Instead VCasaS, classic GP-LP mode.
• People don’t pay much for data.
• Create early impact

Deep Dive on your latest raise and how you work with CVCs

• Takes always much longer than you think. Regulatory is pain and slows down everything enormously
• Fastest commitment, 30m in 35 minutes
• Slowest: 1m in 12 Months
• Don’t they, you have to meet people 7 times to convince

How did the last raise for your fund differ from prior raises before the tech reset?

• Example our Fintech 3 fund. 70% from old investors, closing planned end of the year, 1st closing minimum already reached,
• Pre Reset, we were rather newbies in GP-LP so not a good comparison

What were the three things that allowed you to be so successful?

• Endurance
• Usage of my network
• Amazing support from our shareholders and mentors
• The team, partners, family - their commitment, attitude and believe in me

Core learnings from your last Corporate LP raise, and what makes you successful in raising from Corporate LP’s?

• For sure our speciality are the banks. We have a good concept, but more so we understand in detail their regulatory and accounting challenges and can solve the issues raised.
• Capital allocation plans are something to understand

A look at the person behind – Samuli Sirén.

• Passionate entrepreneur – it’s like sailing, you’ve arrived while sailing, not in a harbour.
• Positive thinking and endurance
• Balance in life between family-myself-job - > creates satisfaction
• AND, Redstone is not a job form, it is a way of living

Advice to young people in the CVC industry.

• Learn how to sell, it is psychological game – you will need it always
• Humor is a good instrument to use
• Learn to listen (in detail and what behind, what somebody says)

Most counterintuitive learning.

• Innovation and digital are not always very high prioritization, although they change the world
• Internal ”crappy” teams win against external professionals
• Founder of a corporate is the only entrepreneur there

I hope you enjoyed this newsletter. If you have any suggestions or contributions that you would like to share with me, please do not hesitate to reach out. I would be delighted to hear from you.

/Jeppe