{
  "title": "Camel Investing at Gorilla Capital | Petri Lehmuskoski | Negotiator 179",
  "titleOriginal": "Kamelisijoittava Gorilla Capital | Lehmuskoski | #neuvottelija 179",
  "episodeNumber": "179",
  "guest": "Petri Lehmuskoski",
  "publishedAt": "2023-03-07",
  "duration": "37:23",
  "durationIso": "PT37M23S",
  "youtube": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XicvbLM7-GQ",
  "fiCanonical": "https://www.neuvottelija.fi/fi/episodes/266-kamelisijoittava-gorilla-capital-lehmuskoski-neuvottelija-17",
  "originalLanguage": "fi",
  "format": "full",
  "topics": [
    "investing_markets",
    "ma_exits",
    "saas_software"
  ],
  "description": "Gorilla Capital's founding partner explains a strategy built deliberately against the venture capital mainstream. Where VC prioritises growth at the cost of profitability and goes hunting for the one unicorn, Gorilla looks for camels: capital-efficient companies that are cash-flow neutral and do not depend on an unbroken series of funding rounds. Duunitori reached its exit on a single round and AutoVex on a couple of small ones. Lehmuskoski gives the fund numbers in his own words, sets them against the observation that only six percent of the world's VC funds return even their own capital, and describes the MVIR reporting model that arrives by the fifth of every month. The episode also asks why Finland has no compounders, why the buyer is always found abroad, and why the buyer — never the seller — decides when the exit window is open.",
  "chapters": [
    {
      "t": "00:00",
      "title": "The camel investing thesis, from a Harvard Business Review piece",
      "seconds": 0
    },
    {
      "t": "00:52",
      "title": "Toptronics at eighteen, Tietokeskus, and founding FiBAN in 2008",
      "seconds": 52
    },
    {
      "t": "01:32",
      "title": "Sitra's angel network and the Vigo programme: an investment company and an accelerator",
      "seconds": 92
    },
    {
      "t": "02:21",
      "title": "The lesson that inverted the accelerator: companies needing help are not investable",
      "seconds": 141
    },
    {
      "t": "03:05",
      "title": "Forty companies, or you do not get your own capital back",
      "seconds": 185
    },
    {
      "t": "03:45",
      "title": "Camels where others hunt unicorns — and a camel ride in Egypt",
      "seconds": 225
    },
    {
      "t": "04:28",
      "title": "Capital efficiency: Duunitori on one round, AutoVex on two small ones",
      "seconds": 268
    },
    {
      "t": "05:29",
      "title": "The three fits, and why Gorilla enters at the first",
      "seconds": 329
    },
    {
      "t": "06:09",
      "title": "Finding problem-solution fit is not the same as understanding it",
      "seconds": 369
    },
    {
      "t": "06:52",
      "title": "Duunitori's freemium model, and measuring learning instead of ARR",
      "seconds": 412
    },
    {
      "t": "07:39",
      "title": "A chain of small realisations, and GPT-3 in the sales scripts",
      "seconds": 459
    },
    {
      "t": "08:21",
      "title": "AutoVex, Schibsted and seven exits in a year",
      "seconds": 501
    },
    {
      "t": "09:05",
      "title": "Can the founder recruit people better than themselves",
      "seconds": 545
    },
    {
      "t": "09:51",
      "title": "Nettix, Otava and the compounders Finland does not have",
      "seconds": 591
    },
    {
      "t": "10:32",
      "title": "Acquisitions are not in the Finnish manager's toolkit",
      "seconds": 632
    },
    {
      "t": "11:16",
      "title": "Consolidated Papers, Uniper, and the case for small tactical deals",
      "seconds": 676
    },
    {
      "t": "12:08",
      "title": "Enriching something other than the state",
      "seconds": 728
    },
    {
      "t": "12:57",
      "title": "Product-led growth is rarely reality; customer understanding decides",
      "seconds": 777
    },
    {
      "t": "13:40",
      "title": "Eight criteria, and a team DD that asks whether the customer exists",
      "seconds": 820
    },
    {
      "t": "14:20",
      "title": "Filip Aminoff on the owner's burden, and refusing a follow-on round",
      "seconds": 860
    },
    {
      "t": "15:04",
      "title": "Every round analysed against portfolio history",
      "seconds": 904
    },
    {
      "t": "15:48",
      "title": "Selling to the lead, and one secondary this year",
      "seconds": 948
    },
    {
      "t": "16:40",
      "title": "Deal documentation, structured processes and DD on every investment",
      "seconds": 1000
    },
    {
      "t": "17:22",
      "title": "Angels invest on feeling; a fund owes a duty to its investors",
      "seconds": 1042
    },
    {
      "t": "18:03",
      "title": "Six percent of global VC funds return their capital",
      "seconds": 1083
    },
    {
      "t": "18:43",
      "title": "Fund I at 2x and 24 percent, Fund II above 40 and falling",
      "seconds": 1123
    },
    {
      "t": "19:24",
      "title": "Absolute return converges on the IRR",
      "seconds": 1164
    },
    {
      "t": "20:07",
      "title": "78 companies, and Jyri Engeström on the return distribution",
      "seconds": 1207
    },
    {
      "t": "20:50",
      "title": "Seventy percent of a VC fund goes into two companies",
      "seconds": 1250
    },
    {
      "t": "21:31",
      "title": "A limited number of rounds and a relatively good multiple",
      "seconds": 1291
    },
    {
      "t": "22:17",
      "title": "The right age is about 42, and Gorilla's founders skew older",
      "seconds": 1337
    },
    {
      "t": "23:02",
      "title": "Apple, Markkula and the experienced people who never make the headlines",
      "seconds": 1382
    },
    {
      "t": "23:47",
      "title": "Sculley from Pepsi, and why each stage needs different expertise",
      "seconds": 1427
    },
    {
      "t": "24:24",
      "title": "Bringing in people better than yourself",
      "seconds": 1464
    },
    {
      "t": "25:05",
      "title": "Strategic and tactical, never operational",
      "seconds": 1505
    },
    {
      "t": "25:50",
      "title": "MVIR: the minimum viable investor report, by the fifth of the month",
      "seconds": 1550
    },
    {
      "t": "26:35",
      "title": "A report two months late has no value left",
      "seconds": 1595
    },
    {
      "t": "27:19",
      "title": "Willingness, capability, speed — and the right things at the wrong time",
      "seconds": 1639
    },
    {
      "t": "28:07",
      "title": "An investment bank does not scale; 14 million in year one does not innovate",
      "seconds": 1687
    },
    {
      "t": "28:50",
      "title": "Duunitori's GPT-3 use and the move toward a data-driven marketplace",
      "seconds": 1730
    },
    {
      "t": "29:35",
      "title": "Graph paper and a compass: drawing the map on the way to Stockholm",
      "seconds": 1775
    },
    {
      "t": "30:17",
      "title": "Choosing the market that widens the exit options",
      "seconds": 1817
    },
    {
      "t": "31:11",
      "title": "The buyer decides the exit window, not the seller",
      "seconds": 1871
    },
    {
      "t": "31:56",
      "title": "Customer cash flow you can live on",
      "seconds": 1916
    },
    {
      "t": "32:37",
      "title": "Operational management executes; it cannot be outsourced to the board",
      "seconds": 1957
    },
    {
      "t": "33:20",
      "title": "175 travel days, and commitment as the second obstacle",
      "seconds": 2000
    },
    {
      "t": "34:00",
      "title": "The pandemic, and watching the founder's mental health",
      "seconds": 2040
    },
    {
      "t": "34:41",
      "title": "Accelerator and brake, and the entrepreneur as the centre of success",
      "seconds": 2081
    },
    {
      "t": "35:31",
      "title": "Finland, Sweden, Denmark, the Baltics — and broadly outside the capital region",
      "seconds": 2131
    },
    {
      "t": "36:20",
      "title": "Who should get in touch, and who should not",
      "seconds": 2180
    }
  ],
  "sourceTranscriptType": "macwhisper_srt",
  "subtitleMethod": "none",
  "provenance": "Owner page written from a MacWhisper transcription of the Finnish audio, cleaned cue-preserving against the entity glossary, and checked against YouTube metadata and the neuvottelija.fi episode record. Chapter timecodes are taken from the transcript cues rather than from the Finnish show notes, whose own chapter list contains duplicated and out-of-order entries. Guest background, company names and the FiBAN and Vigo details were verified against public sources. No English caption track is published with this page.",
  "slug": "ep179-kamelisijoittaminen-gorilla-capital-petri-lehmuskoski",
  "guestsCanonical": [
    "Petri Lehmuskoski"
  ],
  "guestPages": [
    "https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/guests/petri-lehmuskoski/"
  ],
  "page": "https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/ep179-kamelisijoittaminen-gorilla-capital-petri-lehmuskoski/",
  "markdown": "https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/ep179-kamelisijoittaminen-gorilla-capital-petri-lehmuskoski/index.md",
  "captions": null,
  "transcript": null
}