🚀 The Transatlantic Investment Divide: Why Europen Venture Capital Needs a New VC Mindset

📆 Management Summary

In this blog post, we explore the systemic challenges facing venture capital in Europe, as discussed in our podcast with Andy Goldstein, co-founder of the German Accelerator and Managing Director at VU Venture Partners. This article is ideal for tech founders, startup investors, and scaleup executives seeking to understand how Europe's VC ecosystem can evolve. Learn why Europe's investor mindset needs a reboot, what startup sales culture is missing, and how training the next generation of VCs could change the game.

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🤔 Why is Europe Lagging in Venture Capital?

Featured Snippet Answer

Europe lags in venture capital due to a conservative investor mindset, lack of early-stage conviction, and a limited culture of investor training. These systemic issues have slowed Europe's ability to scale startups globally.

Andy Goldstein points out that 75% of VC funds globally never return profits to their investors. In Europe, this is further compounded by investors' hesitance to fund outside their designated stages. U.S. VCs, by contrast, are stage-agnostic and prioritize ROI above all else. This difference in philosophy is holding back European founders.

📊 How Does Investor Education Improve Startup Success?

People Also Ask: "What is investor education and why is it important?"

Investor education is training potential VCs in deal sourcing, evaluation, and conviction building. VU Venture Partners runs an "Investor Accelerator," allowing participants to lead real deals and participate in investment committees.

• Real-time investment experience

• Deal flow of 20,000+ annually

• Training from GPs with 50+ years of experience

Investor education in Europe remains underdeveloped, which is why VU's model is so disruptive.

🌐 What Mindset Shift Does European VC Need?

People Also Ask: "What is the difference between US and European venture capital?"

• US VCs: Stage-agnostic, ROI-driven, aggressive in early-stage funding

• EU VCs: Stage-bound, risk-averse, slower to commit capital

VU Venture Partners aims to fix this by instilling a "return-first" mentality and teaching partners how to make confident, informed decisions across stages. Their success includes investments in companies like OpenAI, WeCrow, and HealX.

🌟 What’s Holding European Startups Back From Global Success?

People Also Ask: "Why do German startups hesitate to internationalize?"

Andy Goldstein observes that Germany's large, complex domestic market leads founders to delay international expansion. Unlike Israeli startups, which are "born global" due to smaller home markets, German startups can get too comfortable before scaling.

Tips for Global Thinking:

• Launch with multilingual assets

• Hire local partners in your target country early

• Use accelerators like the German Accelerator for on-the-ground support

🚗 Can AI Sales Tools Help Overcome Europe's Sales Culture Problem?

People Also Ask: "How can AI tools help in startup sales?"

Goldstein remarks that many European founders dislike sales. AI can flip the model by:

• Prioritizing high-conversion leads

• Reducing manual workload

• Accelerating product-market fit discovery

Example: Andy uses AI to manage his landline calls, filtering buyers from noise—a productivity boost founders should replicate.

🚀 The German Accelerator: A Launchpad for Global Expansion

People Also Ask: "What is the German Accelerator program?"

Originally launched in Silicon Valley, the German Accelerator helps startups break into international markets. With support from the German government and experts like Andy Goldstein, the program has expanded into nine+ global markets, including New York, Singapore, and São Paulo.

Founders receive:

• Market entry support

• Networking opportunities

• Government-backed credibility

📊 What Sets the Top 1% of Founders Apart?

According to Andy, these are the three key traits:

1. Massively better solution than the status quo

2. Targeting huge markets with transformative potential

3. Genius-level simplicity in marketing (e.g., Venmo’s "send with a phone number")

Combine these with passion and a solid go-to-market plan, and you have the makings of a breakout founder.

🔊 The Video Podcast

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🌎 Additional Resources You’ll Love

• YouTube video Andy refers to https://youtu.be/Xpqc-raS2bU?si=eX4SSqhLc5Hsaheb

• Why Startup CMOs Prefer Niche Podcasts to Reach B2B Buyers (coming soon)

• Top 5 Growth Marketing Mistakes When Entering Germany (coming soon)

• How to Measure the Success of Your Podcast Campaign in a New Market (coming soon)

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👨‍💼 About the Author

Jörn “Joe” Menninger is the founder and host of Startuprad.io -- one of Europe’s top startup podcasts that scored as a global Top 20 Podcast in Entrepreneurship. He’s been featured in Forbes, Tech.eu, Geektime, and more for his insights into startups, venture capital, and innovation. With over 15 years of experience in management consulting, digital strategy, and startup scouting, Joe works at the intersection of tech, entrepreneurship, and business transformation—helping founders, investors, and corporates turn bold ideas into real-world impact.Follow his work on LinkedIn.

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Automated Transcript

Narrator Dorsey Jackson [00:00:05]:

Welcome to startuprad.io. Your podcast and YouTube blog covering the German startup scene with news, interviews, and live events.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:00:20]:

Hello, and welcome, everybody. This is Joe from StartupAid.ao, your trusted source on the German, Swiss, and Austrian startup scene, now reaching global tech audience. Today, we're speaking to Andy Goldstein, admittedly a former colleague of mine at Deloitte even though we never worked directly together. He's a serial entrepreneur, cofounder of the German Axel Rainter, former colleague of mine at Deloitte, and manager director at VU Venture Partners Europe. We'll dive in to how he's reshaping investor education, why Europe needs to think bigger, and what it takes to bridge The Atlantic in startup investing. Andy, welcome.

Andy Goldstein | Partner Venture University [00:01:06]:

Great to be here, Jorn. Thanks for your time.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:01:08]:

Totally my pleasure. How would you summarize your, admittedly, a little bit unconventional journey from launching companies to building platforms like the German Accelerator and now VUE with a, I would say, extensive stint at Deloitte in between?

Andy Goldstein | Partner Venture University [00:01:29]:

Yeah. Absolutely. So I think I would describe it as in, two big buckets. One, which is reinvention, and the other is, fascination with what's missing. So, reinvention in the sense of, you know, I moved over to Germany when I was just beginning in my twenties as the IBM PC was launching. I spent twenty years building a business and exiting, really learning it the hard way in the market, and then started into, building the entrepreneurship center at the LMU, which gave me access to great technology and lots and lots of founders with a big brand behind it. We saw then that there was not enough, and we had to reinvent that. And that's where the German Accelerator came in and taking, really finding category leaders and taking them out.

Andy Goldstein | Partner Venture University [00:02:24]:

And, also starting my own angel funds, was a reinvention where I started to say, you know, I need to also get involved in helping startups to to start to get the money. And, and now actually becoming a VC and and really trying to change the way investors think in Europe. And all of those things, when I say fascination with what's missing, at the time when I began them, it wasn't clear that, that somebody needed to step up and do it. And now it is, of course, clear that there should be accelerators, but back when in the LMU accelerator started, it wasn't necessarily. And I think probably in five years from now, it'll be clear that we need to train our investor community much more as well. Mhmm.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:03:14]:

We may ask for our audience, most people are from the DACH area, but LMU means Ludwig Maximilian University. Yes. It's one of the premier, universities in Bavaria and I would say also a very good one in Germany. Yes. Of course. They also work together with, technical university, TUM, in Unterdammertung. Right?

Andy Goldstein | Partner Venture University [00:03:38]:

Yes. When I that was also one of the things when I first came on. It was, not so common that the universities work together, and I pulled together the LMU, the TU, the Hochschule Munich, so the University of Applied Sciences, and the Bundesfair, which is the army university, and pulled everyone together and started a, global summer school, which is still running. So kind of thinking out of the box and getting people inside the country to work closer together.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:04:06]:

Mhmm. For everybody who's interested down here in the show notes, we will, of course, link our interview with Ontellima Thumm. I was wondering what personal experience made you realize Europe had a gap in investor education?

Andy Goldstein | Partner Venture University [00:04:20]:

I think the real experience of that is when I started my two angel funds and realized that every time we wanted to have a major expansion, we ended up looking for US Investors. So simply there it's not to say that there aren't, European investors and it's definitely growing, but it just seemed that there's a real gap in it. There's a, there's a big, there's a lot of startup capital. There's a lot of government support, which you don't have in sometimes even in The United States here, which is definitely impressive. But then once you get much past your a round, you're pretty much looking outside of Germany and and hoping that you can find a a growth capital, partner as well that's from Europe or or from Germany. But clearly they're in The US and clearly they're in in Asia. So that was what really it was the reality that made me realize it.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:05:16]:

What I had in mind when you've been talking about that, like the bigger rounds, I've always heard it. Usually, rule of thumb, series a is 1,000,000 annual recurring revenue. And if you want to go bigger, like, 10,000,000, so you're talking about series b. What comes into mind is, like, Tiger Global, Insight Partners, Sequoia, but also from, China. We had, for example, Tencent as a big investor here. SoftBank, also pretty big investors, but all from abroad. I was wondering from our audience, what do you think Europe needs more, better startups or better investors? Drop us an answer in the comment or tag us on LinkedIn or post with start up hashtag startup radio debate. So let's get a little bit into VU Venture Partners, a fund that actually trains VCs.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:06:10]:

Can you tell us a little bit about what this exactly is and how is it disrupting the traditional VC model?

Andy Goldstein | Partner Venture University [00:06:20]:

Yeah. Absolutely. So when I, was onto my next step, recently, I started really looking deeply into why, YBC doesn't perform that well. And when I what I mean by that is, around 75% of venture capital funds, as a total number of funds, don't ever produce a carry, don't pay profit, and therefore, you know, don't pay their their LPs back, more than the money that they invested. That's just a a huge number. And one of the main reasons if you talk to VCs, a a lot of them will say the same thing, which is that it's the most expensive, training program of all. And that's the reason that, people are, the reason for that is that people are learning by doing with the money of their LPs. And what really is different about VU is that VU is a fund that allows you to do real investing by actually doing it.

Andy Goldstein | Partner Venture University [00:07:29]:

So every quarter, the name of the fund, VU Venture Partners, we accept, it's a it's a real program. We call it an investor accelerator. We accept between forty and sixty investors globally into the program, and those people, attend they're treated as partners. They attend every partner meeting. They come to every deal flow meeting. They're in every investment committee meeting. They are driving deals. They are each looking at around a hundred deals each during, let's say, a three month period.

Andy Goldstein | Partner Venture University [00:08:03]:

So what you have is you you have a situation where if you have 50 people in the cohort, then each looking at a hundred deals, we're looking at 5,000 deals a quarter. So 20,000 a year. That's about 10 times the amount that most, VCs are able to look at. And the you know, what's also very disruptive about it is that the people who are signing up are really on an extremely high level. So whereas most VCs, when they go into a specialist area, they need to go hire expert witnesses and things like that and people who are specialized in a specific area. With VU, we now have, VU stands for Venture University. We have now over 800, graduates, 800 Venture Fellows, which means that we have a huge network of people, and we always have an expert that we can call on. And the people who are in the cohort itself are also tremendously talented.

Andy Goldstein | Partner Venture University [00:09:02]:

So when you're talking about our health tech investments, we have three medical doctors that are in the, cohort this time. Yeah. We have professors when you're talking about deep tech. So, it really is a, a group of people that are able to analyze deals at a level that is quite uncommon in BC.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:09:25]:

You've already hinted at it. You let the participants of Venture University who gets trained there, who get trained there, as real investors to join the real investment committees. What kind of impact does this have?

Andy Goldstein | Partner Venture University [00:09:44]:

So it has massive impact because the the the venture partners are actually driving the process. So everything is remarkably well templated out. You get help on all of your due diligence. You get coaching from the general partners and weekly meetings, two of them where they go through and make sure you understand what topics might be missing in order to get through the investment committee. But in the end, the you learn how to build conviction for a deal that you're absolutely behind it. And unless there's a couple of venture partners that are absolutely committed to getting a deal done, it probably is not gonna come to investment committee because the venture partners are the ones that are saying we're ready to come to, to the IC. And, because everybody is invited to every IC, so the program runs, global online, California time. So the key meetings are like, you know, 6PM to 8PM, European time.

Andy Goldstein | Partner Venture University [00:10:48]:

When there's an investment committee, even if it's a deal that you're not leading, you're on the investment committee, and you start to see how, you're in the meeting. The you still have to pass through the two general partners, but, actually, that's the way every single venture capital fund works. Right? You always have to get the general partners to approve the deal. And last quarter, as an example, we did six investments and, had, eight investment committee meetings. So, there's a very large percentage of the deals that are actually getting done, and that's one of the big learnings is you come out of the program being an investor. You've done four to six deals in a quarter. If you stay for a full year and you do all four quarters, you've done 16 to 25 investments. Right? And you and you become much more proficient as you go along.

Andy Goldstein | Partner Venture University [00:11:42]:

So and you're also in the cohort with people who have been in already. So you're learning from each other, and you're getting strong coaching from two general partners that together have over fifty years of, VC experience and remarkable track records of, you know, actual paid back investment.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:12:01]:

You already hinted that you came over to Germany in your early twenties. For everybody who's watching this, they can tell that you're not in your early twenties anymore. Actually, we we had a conversation at the Business Angel Day and, know very well how mature you are, how senior you are. But, you you've seen over this time quite a lot, in The US and in Europe. And Viu is, as you said, also based in California. So what do you see as the main difference in mindset between the European and the American investors, and how does VUE address them?

Andy Goldstein | Partner Venture University [00:12:45]:

Yeah. Just for clarity, by the way, we are, the main office is in San Francisco, but we have offices here in Munich and Europe. We're in Hong Kong, and we opened Brazil recently. So about 65% of the deals come out of The US and 35, which is also not a bad representation of the number of startups that are really hitting the market. So, you know, the main difference that I see between the American and the European investors, and anytime you generalize, it's already wrong. But, let me say that the Americans tend to be much, much more stage agnostic. It's here in Europe, you you get a lot of no's because you hear it's too early for us or it's too late for us. Yeah.

Andy Goldstein | Partner Venture University [00:13:32]:

And and you don't hear that so much in The States. You see that the, you see that the even the big VCs are coming in very early, and they're staying very late. Here, it's much more what stage are we doing, and you're kind of I don't wanna say stuck, but you're more limited, in the stage that you're investing. And I think that and the Americans are definitely more agnostic because they're return focused. The key focus is not, you know, what stage it is. It's do I believe that there's going to be a return on this? We, for example, at VU, we invested, about six months ago in OpenAI, which you say, well, you know, what what is that about? But it's doubled since then. Right? And so, you know, we get into those kinds of deals because we have access to them via our alumni, but we really are focused on what's the return gonna be. The other thing we focus on is how transformative is it.

Andy Goldstein | Partner Venture University [00:14:34]:

Like, do we genuinely believe that it is transformative? And I think that there's a certain belief and experience in The US that shows that actually, yes, startups can completely transform industries. And we see that again and again, you know, whether it's from Google to you name it, Venmo and on and on. It's it's always been startups that have been cutting edge over the last fifty years. And so we're looking for those truly transformative companies. And the other thing I think is that we're still a bit more the American funds are a little more marketing focused, so trying to really understand what is it that's going to allow a startup to break into a massive market. What's the what's the hack that they have? You know, it so it's great to have a big market, but how are you gonna get it? Mhmm.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:15:29]:

When I look into some of the investments there, WeGrow, HealX, CellBreaks, Orchid Robotics, Isaac Health, AOA, Insight, and so on and so forth, Pretty interesting. And as you already mentioned, also stage agnostic more or less. Right? Yes. Yes. Yes. Especially given given the valuation of OpenAI, I would I would say it was a big later stage deal.

Andy Goldstein | Partner Venture University [00:15:59]:

Later stage deal. Absolutely. And and was opportunistic as well because we had a chance to come in.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:16:06]:

We've been talking a little bit about the mindset already. I would even go as far as fixing Europe's investment mindset a little bit. I've seen a lot of material about you where you also mentioned, for example, what I found pretty interesting, born global advantage of Israeli startups. Where does Germany hesitate to internationalize?

Andy Goldstein | Partner Venture University [00:16:31]:

I think, I mean, Israel has the there's nothing like necessity. Right? You know, the old saying necessity is the mother of invention. When your company is born in a market of six or 7,000,000 people, there's no question for you that you have to be international. Germany does have the somewhat, the disadvantage that, the market is massive in Germany. Right? So you don't have to go outside Germany because you could build a successful business, a very successful business first in Germany and then internationalize elsewhere. You have the challenge in Germany as well that you don't have the advantage of, let's say, The UK or of, France where as long as you're in Paris, you've covered the whole country. As long as you're in London, you've covered the whole country. It's not enough to be in Munich.

Andy Goldstein | Partner Venture University [00:17:23]:

You have to be in Munich. You have to do business in Berlin. You have to do business in Dusseldorf. You know, there's eight different places. So I think that the complexity of the German market combined with the size and the potential of it very often stops startups from internationalizing soon enough.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:17:43]:

So you would say it they should think a little bit early about it. I have to admit most startups that are pitching startup radio, they already think internationally because they want to be in an English speaking, podcast here. How can they think more globally from day one?

Andy Goldstein | Partner Venture University [00:18:06]:

I think that it has to do with a combination of thinking and doing. And that was also very much the impetus when we started the German accelerator program was, you know, let's not just think about being global. Let's let's go global. Let's get people over into other countries and and do that. So I think it's I think it one of the big things is to have partners on the ground, you know, from inside your business as soon as possible who are building the market just like you're building the market in the local country, that you're from. You know, just like you have a team in Germany, you want to really try and find people in the other markets as quickly as possible and not and not wait. Yeah. Because the longer you wait, the more entrenched you become and the more the problems in your local market become aware you become aware of them.

Andy Goldstein | Partner Venture University [00:19:00]:

Whereas when you're dealing with them in multiple countries at the same time, you just deal with them.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:19:06]:

For our audience, I was wondering if you would join a fund if it trained you and Lady Cole invest in real deals. Why or why not? As always, leave, the leave a comment here down in the show notes. Andy, we will be back after a short ad break, then we will be talking about scaling startups and sales in Europe. Andy, welcome back to scaling startups and sales in Europe. You said Europe has a sales problem in one of the interviews one of the publications are found. What's behind that and how can founders overcome it? I actually have to admit when I was, starting out by myself 01/01/2021, '1 of the hardest things that I had to learn over time is doing sales, getting out there, getting active. And I I kind of know what you mean here.

Andy Goldstein | Partner Venture University [00:20:28]:

Yes. I mean, I I do a, there's a, a YouTube video of mine, which has been out for well over ten years. It's called entrepreneurial thinking. And in that, in that lecture, which I've done for hundreds and hundreds of people, I always ask the question, you know, who wants to be a salesperson? And almost nobody raises their hand. Yeah. And it's because and this is, I think, the way to fix it is people have the wrong conversation going on in their head about sales. The conversation is salespeople are annoying people who sell you crap that you don't need. That's not true.

Andy Goldstein | Partner Venture University [00:21:04]:

That's a thought that's not true. And I think that as soon as people are able to understand that the conversate if you don't like to call it sales, then go right ahead and call it business development, whatever the word is that makes you feel better. But sales is nothing more than speaking your commitment. That's what it is. What are you committed to? What really what are you and and that's the thing. Startups you know, the thing most impressive about startups, they commit their life to something that is really hard to do. And it's impressive for other people to see startups and people see people just giving it all. Right? But they need to talk about that.

Andy Goldstein | Partner Venture University [00:21:45]:

You need to just talk about what you're why are you giving your life for this? Why are you so behind this? And not to not to get concerned about what's my picture of what a salesperson is, but really to think of yourself as committed. I often relate sales to marriage. Yeah. And I say to people, you know, it's like you don't wanna walk in and and say, hey. Listen. You've you know, you're not so terrific, but I'm pretty good. You wanna get married and see how it goes? No. That's not a good sales pitch.

Andy Goldstein | Partner Venture University [00:22:15]:

You know? A good sales pitch is I love you madly, and I don't wanna spend another day without you. I want you in my life. Absolutely. And I'm gonna be true to you. Well, it's the same thing with sales for, you know, anyone. This is why I want you to be my client. This is what you're going to get, and you can count on me. And I think that conversation we need to push out into the market.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:22:37]:

And I, actually, I also learned that marriage and raising children is always done, better if you do have a certain marketing mindset there.

Andy Goldstein | Partner Venture University [00:22:49]:

There you go. There you go.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:22:51]:

Yeah. We've been talking about sales here, and more and more popping up in my mailbox first were offer for AI sales tools. And now I do have a few suspects who really bombard my inbox with pitches for podcast guests. Do you think those AI sales tools are a game changer for founders with limited sales experience?

Andy Goldstein | Partner Venture University [00:23:17]:

I think they can be. And I and and the way in which they can be is when they're used for focusing on product market fit. So what I mean is helping you to find the right buyers. I think that, you know, the reality of sales is you spend, you know, 80% of your time talking to people that probably will not do 20% of your sales. And if you could change that, if you could flip that model and spend 80% of your time talking to the people who are gonna really make the sales, that can be a real game changer. And and I do think that AI tools hold out that possibility. And I also think that they hold out the possibility of dramatic increase in productivity, meaning that you don't necessarily need to hire the same number of salespeople. And so I think those two things put together, if you're able to achieve that, then, yes, they can really be a game changer.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:24:20]:

I actually even had or have still a AI tool that is replying to my landline phone, to my office phone. And, actually, it turns out this is also a pretty great thing because every time somebody wants to buy something, I get a message instantly to my phone and everything else is, put in a queue. So that that's working out pretty well for me. What do you think is the single biggest mistake when a start up, for example, from Germany, is scaling to and in The US? And maybe you'll mention the term accelerator because that's the next topic we're talking about here.

Andy Goldstein | Partner Venture University [00:25:02]:

I I think it really is the mistake of not being local fast enough and long enough. So I think that people wait too long to get into the other markets, and markets are always developing. So this idea that I'm gonna conquer one market and then I'm gonna go to another doesn't really work very well. And so I think that it's, you know, it's that idea of getting in. And I think that probably they underestimate the, power of partners that are in the market. So you don't necessarily need to conquer the whole market. You just need to look and see who's already asking you and wants to be you know, is a client already, and you all most of them have clients very, very early on. You know, really leveraging people in the local countries from a client perspective as well that are already using the product and building that out.

Andy Goldstein | Partner Venture University [00:26:03]:

So building from a, from a base of strength rather than trying to go out and and, you know, do everything all at once.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:26:12]:

Mhmm. Mhmm. I see. And personally, I've had the experience. It's a lot of people are doing very, very early on those first, like, testing the waters in different markets with, with co working spaces and just go from Frankfurt to New York and go there, stay there for some time, work, meet people, get to know the park and so on and so forth very, very early on, and that's something I see here. We already hinted about the German accelerator. I actually did a few interviews when I was in New York, but it's now seven years ago. There is a very nice coworking location where the German Accelerator is located, and they do have an awesome rooftop from which you could see in the background, the the the the New York skyline as well as the, 1 World Trade Center.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:27:11]:

Having this picture in mind, can you go a little bit back how this all built up, the origins of the German accelerator and what sparked all of that?

Andy Goldstein | Partner Venture University [00:27:20]:

Yeah. Absolutely. So it's great that you're talking about the New York location because that was actually the second location, and the first location was Silicon Valley. So originally, it was called the, the the German the German Silicon Valley Accelerator. Right? And the real spark was, professor Dietmar Harhoff, who went over on one of his trips and, walked into plug and play and saw that there were countries that were sending startups over and said, this is absolutely, you know, something that Germany has to be doing. So, and the other thing I think that that sparked it was that when the German government was convinced that they needed to be in the other country, we needed to have a a German presence, and that was supplied by, German entrepreneurship, which was a company I, I cofounded in Germany. And so we really had people on the ground who were able to convince the German startups, explain to them what they were doing, and could send them over there, as well and then really train them. So that was really the initial spark for the whole program.

Andy Goldstein | Partner Venture University [00:28:32]:

Mhmm.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:28:33]:

We may also add that you have now way more locations. For example, Boston comes to mind. But also in Asia, you do have offices in Singapore, Tokyo, Shanghai, in Latin America, in Buenos Aires, and Sao Paulo. So, basically, you can, you can get out into the whole world with this program. We've been already talked about that you you now support expansion into nine plus global markets. How did the program evolve from being first in a plug and play in Silicon Valley and then adding locations? Was it, like, a need based, request from the entrepreneurs?

Andy Goldstein | Partner Venture University [00:29:16]:

It was a combination. Yes. There was, there was definitely a request from the market size, side. So and there was also I I have to give a lot of credit to the German government. Regardless of the administration, there's various people. Johannes Felling is a name that I think, you can't think about the German accelerator without him. He was really the person who brought it through in the very beginning. Stefan Dreves, from the ministry has been and still is the one of the driving forces behind the German accelerator.

Andy Goldstein | Partner Venture University [00:29:55]:

And it really has a lot to do with the ambition of the of the government to be in and support, market leaders, from Germany to become global. And so it was very much done hand in hand with, where where entrepreneurs were asking, but also where the government itself said this is a priority for us. And that also, I think, shows the power of you know, that's what I meant before. Sometimes when you have one really great client, can actually take you very, very far, and I think that's something we also try and teach people in The US. And when they go to different whether it's Singapore, wherever they go, get some gets get a great client and expand along with them.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:30:42]:

That usually makes a lot of sense. It's also a, recommendation I've heard pretty early on, and it's kind of stuck with me over time. To wrap this a little bit up because I know you're not currently actively involved with the German Accelerator anymore. I would still be interested to pick a little bit your head about your framework on for deciding when a start up should expand beyond Europe.

Andy Goldstein | Partner Venture University [00:31:16]:

Yeah. So, I think that the important thing is that it's not about our frameworks. Yeah. It's really one of the things I like to say is, passion not included. Yeah. It's not about the it's not about a framework that says you're ready to do this. It's, are you passionate about being in the country? Yeah. Are you committed to doing that? Is it something that's absolutely on your roadmap and it's not and when we see that kind of passion yeah.

Andy Goldstein | Partner Venture University [00:31:50]:

And it's this another saying I'd like to use, is mission possible? Like, I believe I can do it. And when we see that we see the passion for doing it and we see that they that this startup has really, you know, believes that they're able to do it, those are the kinds of companies that we really, want to support. And, I think that that's worked quite well when you actually look at the results of the the German accelerator program.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:32:18]:

Mhmm. Yeah. I have totally agree. I think I'll dig deep in YouTube and maybe link the interviews that I did in, almost almost seven years ago in May 2018 in New York. Okay. For last piece, let's talk a little about a bit, VUE Venture Partners, the portfolio, and investment strategy. Are there any sectors and technologies you are particularly excited about right now?

Andy Goldstein | Partner Venture University [00:32:49]:

So we are a generalist fund. We invest out of six different verticals, fintech, prop tech, health tech, consumer, enterprise, and what we call pioneer, which would be deep tech and space. I would say we're probably like anyone today, not even just funds, very excited about AI, you know, but AI goes across everything. AI is really not in any way a vertical in in our opinion. And I would have to say that the two sectors that we're probably most active in right now and most excited about are health and space. So I think that the breakthroughs, especially in health, which are coming, specifically through AI, are just remarkable. And if we could, if we could get regulation to keep up with, with the breakthroughs of technology, I think the we would be saving a lot more lives today. And then I think that what's happening in space is just, yeah, goes without saying the cost of putting, you know, putting something up into space is just coming down dramatically.

Andy Goldstein | Partner Venture University [00:34:04]:

And as that happens, the possibilities increase dramatically as well. You know, we're looking into everything from, you know, setting up more real estate in, in space to how you do charging in space. And, so those are two areas that we're definitely excited about.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:34:26]:

Mhmm. I I vividly remember even a few years back, you already had companies that were doing, a lot of interesting analytic stuff with data they'd gotten from pictures of the Earth's surface. Was it building radar that did, like, tracking of large building projects to I remember, a company that was tracking that were forecasting Black Friday sales based on the occupation of the parking lots and stuff like that. So, that is already pretty interesting. Getting a little bit back to view, how does your program's deal flow differ from, traditional VC?

Andy Goldstein | Partner Venture University [00:35:10]:

Yeah. I think that is a really a very big differentiating factor. So and it continues to grow. Right? Every every quarter, we're graduating 40 to 60 additional investors. All of those people are incentivized for their entire career to bring deals in. We share any deal that you bring in as a, venture fellow alumni. You're going to get a very significant profit sharing on that deal. So we have, you know, remarkable access to deals that other people are already doing where we get allocations in deals where you would wonder, you know, how would a how would a a fund that's, you know, making ticket sizes between 200 k to 1,000,000 and can go up to maybe three or four and follow on getting into deals which have, you know, are raising 400,000,000.

Andy Goldstein | Partner Venture University [00:36:04]:

Right? And it's coming in from from our alumni. So I think that that's one of the very key factors that I just don't see any other fund having.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:36:14]:

I think that's maybe a little bit understatement that you've worked with dozens of founders. Maybe hundred hundreds. Yeah. What do you think are the three traits that separate the top 1%? You talked about passion already. You talked about sales already. Would you include them?

Andy Goldstein | Partner Venture University [00:36:39]:

No doubt I would include them. For sure, I wouldn't have said it before. I didn't think that was important. But I do think that the if I had to really say what are the three key traits, one is that the startup has a massive, differently better solution for handling the problem than the status quo does. Massively better. So it's a it's a magnitude of improvement that is just completely has the potential for transformation. So that that massiveness of the the difference to the status quo is one very big thing. The second very thing is is clearly the market size.

Andy Goldstein | Partner Venture University [00:37:25]:

You know? Are they are they targeting something that if it were to actually, if they were to be successful, would it be transformative? Right? So I think that's a that's a very, very important thing. And the other thing is something that people often miss, which is that there's a certain genius in simplicity of the way they market. Right? And so let me give you, like, a real life example. One of our general partners, Andrew Salison and Sky Fernandez are the two general partners inside of BU. Definitely look them up. Andrew was the first, wrote the first check to Venmo, you know, the payment company, which everybody in America, you know, people don't say transfer me the money. They say Venmo me. Right? It's a verb.

Andy Goldstein | Partner Venture University [00:38:12]:

Yeah. When that investment was made, I'm gonna guess there were probably a hundred companies out there doing payment transfers. So the I the the the the size of the market was obvious. Right? So what was the marketing hack? And the thing that the marketing hack was that Venmo was really the first company that said, all you need to transfer money is a mobile phone number. Yeah. That blew the market open with an incredibly interesting and simple interface. So I think those sort of three things together are really what separate the 1%.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:38:52]:

Andy, we are now recording, I do believe, for almost yeah. For for quite a bit. And I do believe, it was very interesting and insightful for our audience. Thank you for sharing these insights and for giving us a window into how you're transforming both startups and the people who invest in them. To our listeners, if you enjoyed today's episode, of course, give us a five star review and follow us wherever you're listening and check out our exclusive subscriber segment for more. And remember, this isn't just a podcast. It's a global startup intelligence network. Andy, thank you very much.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:39:32]:

It was a pleasure having you as a guest.

Andy Goldstein | Partner Venture University [00:39:34]:

Thierin, thank you so much.

Narrator Dorsey Jackson [00:39:40]:

That's all, folks. Find more news, streams, events, and interviews at www.startuprad.io. Remember, sharing is caring.