The startup studio model itself doesn’t sell by itself; we got to treat it like a sales process and nurture investors through the pipeline. This took almost 30 iterations of our pitch to fine-tune the entire thing. It wasn’t an easy process, but the learnings were immense. Following this exciting news, we sat down with our Founders and Managing Directors Michael van Lier and Sharon Klaver to get some up close and personal insights into their experiences with the fundraising process, and what they envision for the future of Builders.

Meet the founders

Sharon and Michael started their first company when they were only teenagers. Throughout their careers, they’ve been focused on building software businesses and have successfully launched, built and sold their businesses over the last decades. In their current endeavour, financed by their previous exits, they’ve combined all of their knowledge, network and capital to build software companies at scale, a challenging endeavour, but most fulfilling to say the least.

Here are some extracts of Michael and Sharon’s thoughts about themselves, Builders, this fundraising round and the future roadmap.

What drives you to do what you do? Why do you do it?

There are two life stories that have found each other in this case. First, in Sharon’s own words:

"After building at least 6 companies together with and for partners, I believed that there was a better way to build software companies using data-driven methods. Furthermore, learning from the seed steps every software company takes and using that entrepreneurial spirit around me to start building with companies really motivated me from day one."

‍Michael’s story is slightly different; He says:

"I had also founded a handful of companies before with the main focus on servicing clients with advice, software development and infrastructure. Throughout the years I saw that the value created by their software company was far greater than the value they captured. Over the years, I ventured into building companies together with partners instead of just building the product. This evolved into creating a sustainable and data-driven model around empowering entrepreneurs to build ventures in a data-driven way alongside Sharon."

How would you define yourself?

We believe in empowering entrepreneurs to build impactful software companies at scale. We’d like to amaze and stand apart by going beyond expectations set by and for ourselves. Our companies should be able to reflect our entrepreneurial and data-driven way of work to achieve their goals and create meaningful impact. Most recently, we’ve been actively looking forward to partnering with a diverse group of entrepreneurial spirits to map across every aspect of venture-building we can think of and include this within our models to create companies that make an impact.

Behind the Funding

Now, we switch gears to delve deeper into the fundraising process that Michael and Sharon just carried out for Builders Studio. Let’s talk about the good, the bad, the (not so) beautiful, and the learning moments of the past months.

You just successfully concluded a funding round. What was the biggest struggle you faced during the process?

Like with any fundraiser, the challenges you face are intertwined with learning about the gaps in your model. These are very humbling experiences you need to navigate with confidence. For any studio, including ourselves, the biggest struggle is to explain our relatively novel business model to investors. A studio investment is more like investing in a company holding than anything else. These investments are for the long term and have no set end date. Investors become part of everything we do in the long run, so both sides are looking for more than just a financial investment in the case of studios. They are looking for the promise that the people (in this case, us) bring to them that we have cracked the code to make things happen.

What was your key takeaway from this process?

This could be thought of as a struggle, but again, a reality check. When starting a studio it’s easy to assume that people will invest in your model and the story you pitch because of your entrepreneurial track record. They don’t. You have to show them that you know how to run this model successfully. You are building and raising the studio at the same time so to say. Early investors will believe in you because of your past, later investors will believe in you because you’ve found your first entrepreneurs, and even later ones will believe you once you start spinning out ventures. So your biggest challenge will be to strike the perfect balance between growing the studio, taking action on prevalent venture-building trends and fundraising. You always need to be the best (and the most experienced) within each area of venture-building. A successful startup builder is not a generalist; they are a tightly-woven core of specialists that help the studio and its ventures achieve success and glory.

By far, the most humbling learning is that you get better with every cycle you close. Despite the intellectual challenges you encounter, once you start growing, the investors start committing to your journey.

What did you note was the biggest difference between the first and second close?

It’s all about proving your worth the first time around; completing cycles of company building, forming the first idea, attracting cofounders, validating, shaping the company and launching it to the world — That’s what we realised with Obeyo, for example. The second close is different because you’re judged on your outcomes, not your initial process. In terms of a network, of course, the further you get the wider your network of the right investors opens up; it never gets easy, but you develop better instincts for who would be a better fit for studio investment.

What’s the secret to making successful funding rounds happen?

Treat it like you would a sales process. Only reach out to qualified leads, listen a lot before you sell your proposition, provide the correct information and always deliver on your promises. Keep in mind to go for the close only when everything is aligned. Be humble, listen to objections and be open to making changes when needed. Most of your early interactions will actually tell you exactly where the hurdles are, so keep an eye out to remove as many of them as you can. Inculcate a sense of interaction among stakeholders; we host dinner events to get to know each other. This helps the investors network just as much as ours, and magic can happen during these nights! If not, it’s a fun night of conversation for all of us. Perhaps most importantly, would be the last piece of advice — Be real. Don’t sugarcoat anything; everything will be fact-checked either way and it’s better for you to come out of this with credibility for not just your numbers, but also your words.

The Builders Vision

Keeping all these new experiences and learnings in mind, what do you envision as the future of work and living in relation to Builders?

We believe that a well-put-together studio holds learnings that are of great value for use time and again — both in similar markets and in different geographical locations. We’d like our studio to be a driving force at a European-wide level and believe we can achieve that by having a presence in multiple locations. To get there, we’re perfecting our discovery process each cycle until we get to a level where we can scale beyond our current location and build more than 2 companies per year. We’ll be the first to admit that we haven’t mastered the art of stage-gate models; we need to continuously complete studio cycles to finesse it. Another crucial part of our future involves finding and optimising a specialised talent pool and integrating their expertise into studio processes both in and beyond Rotterdam.

For now, we’re focused on building B2B SaaS companies for the future of work and living, mainly in the HR and PropTech industries. Depending on the market’s movement, we’ll grow our studio in new cities and map out our future verticals based on research data, access to specialised talent, and capital at the point in time.

Keep a lookout for our latest HR venture in the works, and reach out on LinkedIn to chat with Michael and Sharon. Are you an investor who wants to be part of our vision? Join us here.