Posted on 16th February 2024 by Harry

Christian Hecker is the Founder and CEO of Trade Republic, the company making it easy and inexpensive for everyone with a smartphone to invest. To date, Christian has raised over $1.3BN for the company from the likes of Sequoia, Founders Fund, Accel and Creandum to name a few. Previously, Christian worked in Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s Investment Banking department.

Johan Brenner is a General Partner at Creandum. Johan has led Creandum’s investments in iZettle (acquired by PayPal for $2.2bn in 2018), Trade Republic, Klarna, Pleo, Neo4J, Vivino and more. Johan was previously a repeat entrepreneur, founding one of the first online brokers in Europe in 1997 (sold to E*TRADE in the US), then JobLine (sold to Monster), Bookatable (Michelin) and Tradera (Ebay).

In Today’s Episode with Christian Hecker and Johan Brenner We Discuss:

1. Selling 75% of Trade Republic for €600,000:

• How did Christian come to sell 75% of Trade Republic for €600K?
• How did Johan and Creandum solve this challenge when they invested?
• What are some of Christian’s biggest pieces of advice on cap table construction?

2. Raising $1.3BN From the Best Investors in the World:

• What are Christian’s biggest fundraising lessons from raising $1.3BN from the best in the world?
• How did Doug Leone and Sequoia come to lead Trade Republic’s round? What was the meeting with Doug like? What questions did he ask? How did it go?
• How important of a skill does Johan believe being a great fundraiser is for founders?

3. Scaling into Europe’s Next Decacorn:

• What are the single biggest issues that arise when scaling so fast? What breaks first?
• Does CAC increase with time or decrease?
• Why did Christian decide to stop paid marketing on Google and Facebook and stop spending $100M+ there overnight?
• Why is Christian so bullish on influencer marketing? What works? What does not work?

4. Europe: A Hub for Innovation or a Retirement Home:

• Does Christian believe that young people in Europe work hard enough?
• What are the biggest challenges to scaling teams in Europe?
• Why does Johan believe the biggest challenge in Europe is the lack of exit markets?
• What can Europe do to improve and increase our chances of being successful?