Afleveringen
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Enrico Mellis spent a year at the startup that became Foodora, nearly five at Project A, and four and a half more at Lakestar. In November 2025 he launched Animal: no fund, no management fee, just his own check going in first on every deal, with a small group of angels invited in behind him.
Here’s what stuck with me:
* Venture is really three jobs wearing one trenchcoat: sourcing, selecting and supporting. Enrico believes most angels and family offices are better than VCs at supporting, since they don’t have to manufacture an opinion just because they sit on a board. Where they lose out is sourcing, because founders worry an unfamiliar name on the cap table sends the wrong signal. Wrapping them into one “Animal SPV” line solves that: founders get hand-picked help without the signalling risk of a dozen unknown names.
* Venture capital is bottled water, and most of the industry still won’t sell it like one. Enrico’s comparison: Perrier turned tap water into a premium product through positioning alone, and venture should work the same way. Most managers still act as though marketing is beneath them, a habit left over from when there were 10 firms rather than 10,000.
* Saying “not for me” is a superpower most VCs lack. Enrico tells founders immediately when he’s out, something he thinks most VCs struggle with. It isn’t that they’re difficult people; partners at bigger firms need to keep the option of saying yes later, in case a colleague talks them into the deal. As a solo GP, there’s no colleague to answer to.
* His own check has to actually hurt. He writes it first, before anyone else’s money goes in: comfortably under €50k, yet well above a typical angel ticket. He’s still surprised nobody has ever asked him to prove it. The number matters less than whether writing it cost him something.
There’s also a fun detour into the AI setup he’s built to match his network of angels to founder requests (his assistant is literally named Wolfie), and his theory that you don’t need much capital to be a great investor, just patience and enough obsession to keep going.
Hope you enjoy it,
DG
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A few weeks ago I sat down with Sarah Drinkwater, founder of Common Magic.
Sarah came to venture from the outside. Journalist, club night runner, vintage clothing shop owner, operator, angel. Her journey looks nothing like a straight line. As you often find, that’s kind of the point.
Her fund, Common Magic, backs products with community at their core, building on her experience creating products with community at their core, from music nights to Google Maps.
There are a few things she said that resonated strongly for me:
* Companies don’t usually die because they run out of money. They die because emotional capital runs out first. Co-founder misalignment, a loss of belief, or something else that’s a drain on vibes. Across 68 investments, Sarah said the pattern is consistent. What I took away from this is something you hear frequently, which is that true passion and a deep “why” behind what you are building are vitally important. I think this is especially valuable to bear in mind if you are investing in the “current thing” during the peak of a hype cycle. The “current thing” attracts tourists, who aren’t always building for the right reasons. When the going gets tough, the energy reserves necessary to keep pushing deplete rapidly unless the belief and core values in the founding team are strong and consistent.
* Somewhat related to (1): the hardest problems in building a company are social, not technical / rational. Organisations are just groups of people. They make decisions emotionally, they are subject to politics. This touches every aspect of entrepreneurship.
* Product: especially when you can vibe-code things rapidly, building a deep understanding of the human behaviours and needs for whatever you have in mind is vital. It’s about understanding how people think, and what they want - even if that’s different to what they’re telling you.
* Sales: if the champion loves the product but the buyer isn’t there yet, you’re not going to sell anything.
* People: if the team are running on fumes, underpaid and overworked (as is always the case in startups), but absolutely aligned on where they’re going, you can achieve a remarkable amount. If they’re well paid, not stretched, but misaligned, you can achieve remarkably little. As Elon puts it, the outcome of any given company is the vector sum of the people within it.
* Every investment is a vote for the world you want to see. This is something we really believe strongly at Odin, and is the reason we decided to build this company. More people should be voting with their money on the world they want. For Sarah, this shapes everything from how she sources to how she runs LP coffees and how she thinks about her portfolio’s go-to-market.
We also got into the state of the European venture ecosystem and what she’d tell someone thinking about raising their first fund right now.
Hope you enjoy it!
PR
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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Adam Besvinick of Looking Glass Capital has been investing at pre-seed for over a decade — solo, and on his own terms. In this episode, he joins Dan to talk about cold-emailing his way into a role at Lowercase Capital, what he learned from Chris Sacca that still guides him today, and what marks don't tell you about the companies that matter most.
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Odin’s research lead Dan Gray takes the conversation online to meet emerging managers and solo GPs from around the world, unpacking their investing journey and thesis. In this episode, Dan sits down with Arian Ghashghai, who founded Earthling VC in 2023 to back weird, fringe, early-stage companies across future computing, robotics, AR/VR, AI, bio, and more. They discuss the challenges of raising in one of the hardest LP markets in memory and why a wonky strategy can be an asset, and debunk some of the myths and incentive structures distorting venture capital today.
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Lawrence Lundy-Bryan is the General Partner & Head of Research at Cloudberry VC, Europe’s first dedicated semiconductor VC, launched in 2025. In this episode, he joins Paddy Ryan to discuss chip investing, photonics, and why the next decade may be built in the physical world.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit blog.joinodin.com
