Patrick Haede on giving back millions of investors money, being the Head of Product at Gorillas, selling a travel startup in the pandemic and more...

"Money also brings distraction"?

Despite his young years, Mapify Travel founder Patrick Haede has already had a turbulent journey. Find out why he decided to return the money he invested in Mapify back then, what he learned from his time at Gorillas , and what criteria he uses to make investment decisions in this podcast interview....

You can listen to the full interview here. (German)

Founded in 2017 by Patrick Haede, startup Mapify was on a clear path to the top with over $1 million in VC funding when the pandemic hit. Not an easy situation for a startup in the travel industry:?

Rather than continue, the founding team made the somewhat unusual decision shortly thereafter to give investors their money back:?

"We would have had enough money to get through this period," the founder clarifies,

"However, we saw that the market in which we actually wanted to operate would not exist in the next one to two and a half years. Of course, we tried for half a year, even during the pandemic, to find a way for our company. But in the end, we decided to return the investment money and sell the company."?

Since a buyer for the company was found relatively unexpectedly, the situation was a lot less dire than it could have been. Still, the decision was not easy for the founding team, he said:?

"It was extremely hard for all of us, of course. When you've worked on something for three years with so much time on your hands, of course you don't want to let it go under. We had invested a lot of time to build a fantastic team, but had to let it go after half a year."

For him, it was a matter of a sense of responsibility in the end:?

"We only wanted to spend the money if we believed we could really build a great company," Patrick Haede explains,

"We were very frugal with Mapfiy and were responsible with our investors' money even before the pandemic. At some point, we came to the point where we had to ask ourselves if we should spend the money somehow, trying different things, or better give the money back."?

Even though it was a tough moment for the team behind Mapify, the founder learned a lot in the process. For one, he advises other founders not to completely neglect their personal lives:

"I now have a different view of work-life balance. For two years, we invested almost every minute we had in the company. But even if you come in at 110 percent as an entrepreneur, an act of God like Corona can pull the rug out from under you. Today, I would take a more balanced approach to building a business like this."

His second piece of advice is to ask yourself if you really need investment money.?After all, a full account all too easily creates a comfort zone that can prevent you from validating the product early enough:?

"There are a lot of ice cream stores that do more revenue than the average startup," the entrepreneur says:?

"When the account is full, the pressure is not as strong. One mistake we clearly made at Mapify was shying away from validating our product with customers. But you have to have the discipline as a founder to validate the product market fit even though the account is full"

Across the board, he finds VC money to be a double-edged sword:?

"If money solved everything, big corporations would make the most money. Money also brings distraction. Of course, you can say you raise two million and leave the money in the account until you have the product market fit. But you have to have that discipline as a founder."

He built his new startup without VC investment for this reason:?

"Our new company is already profitable. We know that we work with and for our customers every month, and that's how we earn our money. Since we've only invested our own money, we've automatically become more frugal and look more at validation."?

What exactly his new start-up is about, he doesn't want to reveal yet. What is certain is that he was able to take away quite a few learnings not only from his time at Mapify, but also from his subsequent year-and-a-half as Product Manager at Gorillas.

"The first few months at Gorillas were neck and neck and no one knew where up and down was," the young entrepreneur recalls,

"We had to make strategic and technological decisions very quickly back then in order to scale. The discipline to say in the right places that you want to grow, but still follow certain processes, helped me a lot at that time. Another big challenge was having to hire people for areas I had no plan for at all."?

The young entrepreneur has since left Gorillas to devote more time to his own projects. That's because the entrepreneur has now not only founded a new start-up, but is also a podcast host and investor with Quick Coffee :?

"We want to get on board where we believe we can really help on the product and design side as well," says Patrick Haede when asked what criteria he uses to invest: "My investment hypothesis is simple: we ask ourselves whether we ourselves can identify deeply with the product. It is important for me to feel that I can also provide meaningful input"

Want to learn more about the wild ride between Mapify, Pandemic and Gorillas? If you want to benefit from more learnings from the founder, investor, product manager and podcast host, listen in to the podcast. (German)

Fabian Tausch's newsletter: If you want to know what it takes to be a startup founder, you can join my WhatsApp Newsletter powered by charles . I regularly update on insights to the VC world, upcoming podcast interviews or content pieces that you need to see as a founder.

Thanks for reading, Fabian