inde­pen­desk: Right reaso­ning despite strange advice #DHDL

Prac­ti­cally all the lions present agreed imme­dia­tely after the pitch that founder Karsten had hit the nerve of the times with his busi­ness model. A plat­form on which you can book work­places by the hour, which are also billed precisely. This way, cowor­king spaces, whose busi­ness model is this anyway, can further utilise their capa­ci­ties. But compa­nies, cafés, restau­rants or hotels with temporary vacan­cies can also earn some extra money this way, but are probably also incre­a­singly using this oppor­tu­nity to increase their profile.

The founder firmly believes that the number of flexible workers will continue to increase, even if at the moment free­lan­cers, who are classic for this type of work, still make up the majo­rity of his users. But the lions see it the same way, they believe that the socially and above all envi­ron­men­tally very desi­rable change towards more jobs close to home will come.

Although the indi­vi­dual foun­ders can only show rela­tively small figures so far – probably due to the long lock­down in Germany – only Ralf Dümmel is drop­ping out because it is simply not his busi­ness model. All the other lions form up to make offers: Carsten Masch­meyer, toge­ther with Dr. Georg Kofler, initi­ally offers the desired €150,000, but the two want 25.1% instead of the 15% offered. They parti­cu­larly like the founder’s inter­na­tio­na­li­sa­tion plans and empha­sise how strongly they can support them. Dagmar Wöhrl then offers the same amount for 18%, and finally Nils Glagau offers the founder exactly the deal he wanted. The first two lions then increase their offer to €251,000 for 25.1%, so that it is exactly the same valua­tion of €1 million that the founder had envi­saged at the begin­ning. Dagmar Wöhrl also joins in and even offers a slightly higher valua­tion: €200,000 for 18%.

So there is already plenty of action before the founder makes his phone call. He calls his friend and advisor, as he says.

But he surpri­singly only focuses on the offers, the lions seem to be comple­tely unknown to him – at least based on what the viewer gets to hear. He describes the double offer from multi-​investor Carsten Masch­meyer and media profes­sional Dr. Georg Kofler as not really inte­resting because it lies outside what the founder probably imagined. Nils Glagau’s offer there­fore fits pretty well, and in Dagmar Wöhrl’s mathe­ma­ti­cally even better offer he sees a matter of consci­ence. What he means by this unfor­tu­na­tely remains hidden from us.

After a brief shift to the lions, we only hear the founder ask whether he can ask for that. The consul­tant’s answer sounds almost like a commer­cial for a moti­va­tional work­shop. He has three ques­tions for him, he says. Whether he believes in his product, in his figures and, above all, that he is the right person to imple­ment ever­y­thing as planned. The founder duti­fully answers yes, and is then asked to nego­tiate hard. Which he does.
The lions will later say that he has elegantly ripped them off, but the founder makes a decisive argu­ment.

Although his advisor’s comments did not suggest it, he is prima­rily targe­ting the double team; unlike him, he knows the lions and has given them some thought. He argues that he will probably need several more rounds of invest­ment if he really wants to become big, and there­fore does not want to give away so much at such an early stage. He now even „worsens“ his offer and wants a whop­ping €200,000 for 15%, but with a right of first option to buy for the next round – unusually, even more than just compen­sa­tion for the dilu­tion, namely up to the desired 25.1%.

The lions seem to agree, but with an addi­tion: they then want a discount on the next round of 20%. What sounds like a small addi­tion can, however, make a huge diffe­rence. Because if inde­pen­desk actually manages to achieve strong growth – also with the help of the lions – and can reach a valua­tion of 5 million euros in the next round, for example, the lions will get their turn first, but only pay a valua­tion of 4 million. If the start-​up then needs capital of at least 1 million euros to grow further, it would normally have to give up 20% for this, but now mathe­ma­ti­cally 25%. And at such a reduced valua­tion, they can then not only get a few percent against dilu­tion, but another 10.1% more.

We cannot be sure whether the founder was aware of this. In general, however, start-​ups should be very careful with discounts and not grant them too quickly before they have thoroughly calcu­lated and thought through ever­y­thing. Depen­ding on the constel­la­tion, a some­what lower valua­tion but no discount may be better in the medium term already. But you certainly shouldn’t let a few old-​fashioned moti­va­tional slogans push your ego to the point where it stops you from calcu­la­ting.

Hope­fully, that did not happen in this case, and it simply remained a strange conver­sa­tion during an other­wise successful perfor­mance. All in all, the founder now has two new inves­tors on board who will support him with more than just money, and hope­fully give inde­pen­desk the growth spurt he was hoping for.

Photo (above): TVNOW / Bernd-​Michael Maurer