Lessons from a failed IPO led Christian Magel to great success in his own businesses. Now he’s built a shared work space applying those valuable lessons. A bravura interview recorded live at Venture Lane Startup Hub.
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HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE:
Introduction to the Podcast and the Guest, Christian Magel
Sal Daher Explains How Nell Meosky Luo Connected Him to Venture Lane
How Venture Lane Came About
The Value of Being Mindful About the Needs of Startups
“We are building community, but most and foremost is actually about creating that impact for companies”.
The No-Jerks Policy
“… let them interact around their interests but find other ways on how they connect”.
“…if you're not a tenant here or not a member here, like how can you still take advantage of whatever we're doing here for early stage startups”.
Sal Talks About His Investment in Fine Tune Learning
What Christian Magel Got from the Failed IPO of Lestbuy.com; Listening to the Customer is Key
What Brought Christian Magel to Become an Entrepreneur
Post the Bankruptcy of Letsbuyit.com: “…frankly it was probably the toughest time that I had in my career”.
“If you're not employed, it's going kind of you're a non-person. It's really tough”.
The ABCs of MVNOs
“So, you go online, fill out a profile and then a SIM comes in the mail”.
“So, it was a crazy successful venture. And we were really proud of being the challenger. So, we could see things from the customer centric view of what would you do if you had been a telecommunication company without a network. And you can actually focus on customers rather than on your network and all the infrastructure”.
Why Christian Started His Second Venture in Australia
Big Turning Points in Christian Magel’s Life
How Christian Magel’s Family Life Affected His Career
How Christian Ended Up Studying in Germany, in France and in Phoenix, Arizona.
Christian Magel’s Deeply Felt Advice
Question from Saeid Gholami, M.D., Founder of iCareBetter
Question from Ross Palley, General Manager at Venture Lane
Questions on Pricing, Mistakes, and Purpose
Startup Parade – A Mental Tour of the Companies at Venture Lane
Transcript of “Venture Lane Startup Hub”
GUEST: REPEAT FOUNDER, CHRISTIAN MAGEL
Introduction to the Podcast and the Guest, Christian Magel
SAL DAHER: Welcome to Angel Invest Boston. I'm your host Sal Daher an angel investor who delights in the fascinating tech companies being built in Boston's singular startup ecosystem. Because of the unique concentration of great universities here. Boston is a massive exporter of great startup ideas and a huge importer of capital. This idea-rich and capital-poor environment gives me the opportunity to invest early in the companies that will be changing our world. Companies such as Fine Tune Learning. I'll tell you a bit more about Fine Tuned Learning later on. Today we are at Venture Lane right near the financial district in Boston and the guest on the podcast is the founder of Venture Lane, Christian Magel.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: Great to have you guys here, eventually.
SAL DAHER: Awesome. I was just hoping to pronounce your name correctly Christian.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: Absolutely. You can only be right.
SAL DAHER: An improved American pronunciation.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: Exactly.
SAL DAHER: Okay. Thanks for being on the podcast and hosting us in this really wonderfully supportive space for startups. Listeners should know that we are recording live before an audience from whom we hope to hear later on. I'm also grateful to Betsy Scherer, Community Manager, thumbs up and Ross Palley, General Manager for their really invaluable help in making this event happen. They're really a big part of what makes Venture Lane's culture so appealing.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: Absolutely. Yeah.
Christian Magel Bio
SAL DAHER: It's a cool place. Anyway, Christian Magel is German as you might've detected from the accent and had a peripatetic business education in Germany, France and the U S. We're going to get to that later on. I was very curious how that ended up happening like that. It's amazing. He built a career in digital marketing starting out in conventional media companies and eventually working for a Swedish eCommerce site during the first blossoming of the internet in Europe and witnessing his first IPO. Christian then ran his own marketing and media consultancy until co-founding Simyo, S-I-M-Y-O, an online based mobile virtual network operator that went on to great success by attending well to customer needs. Christian co-founded another such MVNO. That's what these types of mobile networks are called, in Australia, called Amaysim that had a successful IPO in 2015.
SAL DAHER: Three years ago, Christian started thinking about his next venture and took all his experience of ably focusing on the customer and launched Boston based startup hub called Venture Lane. This is a really impressive career.
Sal Daher Explains How Nell Meosky Luo Connected Him to Venture Lane
SAL DAHER: Christian, the first I heard of Venture Lane was in an email from Nell Meosky Luo co-founder of Folia Health, who's a tenant here. It struck me that I'd never heard a tenant of a shared workspace being so enthusiastic about this kind of a place. So, I thought, let me have a look. I'm a landlord. I don't know if tenants write-
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: That explains it, yeah.
SAL DAHER: ... Enthusiastic emails about my properties, but. So, I was kind of like, my goodness, let me check it out. And so, I came over and I found the usual things, great location, pleasant layout, good coffee, welcoming staff. But what really caught my attention was the so many great founders I had interviewed in the podcast were based here. Gabor Bethlendy of Meenta. Will Foussier of AceUp, Susan Conover of LuminDX, Sean G. Eldridge of Gain Life. And Nell, of course, I even ran into Semyon Dukach, founder of One Way VC. How has this exceptional confluence of really amazing founders, how does that come about?
How Venture Lane Came About
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: First of all, super great to have you here and talk a little bit about the story of Venture Lane and we'll be building here. If I go back, where the thought was born, it was probably going back in 2016 so it just after IPO, and we will get to this a little bit later. But I was thinking about like what's my next gig? And there are a couple of things that I thought about doing and I had a couple of first ideas around what I wanted to do and which area I wanted to be in. I want to stick to the early stage. Always loved that. I got so much support in my own life as an entrepreneur that I thought I would want to continue giving back to early stage founders in a phase where things are not all planned out and all going well. Sometimes a little wobbly and helping these guys along. So, I went off and actually visited three continents to visit a couple of cities with workspaces on the search to what is the perfect environment for an early stage startup.
The Value of Being Mindful About the Needs of Startups
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: And I came to the conclusion it's the one thing that all the places had in common was an awesome location in a great city. The second one was actually what I called the hum. And the hum is all the things that come together in a great spirit, a great community, a great people that come in, great quality. But it seemed like the great space is really exceeded by being very mindful around doing things. So I was hooked. I knew that we would move from Sydney to Boston and looking here into the startup ecosystem, I thought like, okay, this is a really good proposition because there's nothing out there. There's either a couple of accelerators or there are a couple of chain offices, but nothing in between where you actually really have a support system that is curated and is really mindful around the needs of a startup.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: So, that was where the idea of Venture Lane was born. And yeah, we launched in February, 2019 about 10 months ago. And yeah, now we have 22 companies in and we're doing quite great. And then on the journey I met all these amazing people that I'm really grateful to have them around us as a team and help them out. And yeah, we became really a hotspot and a hotbed for hot startups with ideas and great personalities.
SAL DAHER: That's tremendous. It's striking that you've really gone out of your way to create an environment to make it work the way that it does. And it's also a human scale. It's not massive.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: It's actually a tribal size. So we kept it... There's actually a scientific approach behind it that even in the army you have groups between a hundred and 150. And this is where the human brain can still put a face to a name. And we are here, we are having a capacity of about 130 so it's just about that tribal size. And that's our goal to actually build a work tribe here.
SAL DAHER: Excellent. So number 150 is much larger than the number 22 which is the startups you have here. Why did you decide to start Venture Lane into the first place? What makes it different? I know you did this whole tour of the world. It's a not a mental tour, a physical tour.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: Yeah. We sold three companies and one of my motivations where it's actually to build something said you don't have to sell. That's one thing. Something that you actually can keep. But then after-
SAL DAHER: A lifestyle company.
“We are building community, but most and foremost is actually about creating that impact for companies”.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: Well, that's the funny thing is, it's in the tech space, people look at something that's maybe a little bit more cashflow driven. So, I look at this as an impact business in a physical space. And this is like how can we be mindful around having impact for young startups? And for me this was really about how can I and how can we as a team kind of formalize a little bit and provide an environment that helps young entrepreneurs and really awesome teams to go to the next step. And therefore we're having a program. We are building community, but most and foremost is actually about creating that impact for companies.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: And with that, with helping those companies, we help those ideas to see the light of the world and develop into awesome companies with a great impact and results in the world. So on top of it we're surrounded by smart and intelligent people that help each other. I wanted to build something that is really a big foundation in value and culture and infusing that early on and really growing a community hands on. It's not the most scalable business, but it was never meant that way. It was meant to give home to people that need it.
SAL DAHER: Excellent. Excellent. Now I hear you say that Venture Lane is curated, clue us in on the selection criteria. What do you have to do to get in, what hurdles do you have to meet?
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: So, all in all, actually I think you have to convince us. I think probably 95% of the companies that come in here come through recommendations. It's usually people that know us, they reach out to us and say, wouldn't that be a company for you? And then we sit them down and actually we are trying to find out can we make an impact with this company? If the company says, listen, and we want to just sit in a corner for ourselves and don't want to interact with it. So then we say like this, there's too many tables and chairs out there, you can rent one of those no problem. If you come in here, you have to fulfill a couple of criteria. Usually is high-growth. It's a dedicated founder team that is really, there's not a lifestyle business, but you're really dedicated. You usually have taken some money. We have one or two companies in here that are bootstrap, but the rest usually took some money. There's some validation there.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: And we really see that the traction with a company in the market. And it's usually a good sizable market and we see that this can go somewhere. And then the other side is the personal side. So we look at the founder. What's the profile of the founder and is this somebody that is really community oriented, is it somebody who's collaborative? So if we have one thing here that you might've known from other spaces, like we all about give first. So if you see that somebody has a need, you put up your hand and you'll make an introduction or you help out. So, you don't wait until somebody asks you. And if somebody... I learnt this in Australia.
SAL DAHER: You have a very congenial with the approach the Techstars.
The No-Jerks Policy
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: Exactly. So I learnt this in Australia actually or in New Zealand. There's the rugby team and they have a no... policy. And the was-
SAL DAHER: This is a family friendly... no-jerks policy.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: No-jerks policy. What does that mean in their context? You come through the door, you are a superstar most likely. But you become a part of a team and that makes you not a superstar but it makes you a team member. And you help everybody out so that the team overall can succeed. And we are looking for that quality.
SAL DAHER: That is tremendous. That's tremendous. So no jerks, no idiots. Yeah, we have a lot of parents delivering seven-year olds to school who listen to the podcast.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: Go it. I've heard, this is the lunch test. I was like, we need to be more radical.
SAL DAHER: If deal with a lot of early stage ventures here, what do you find to be the most valuable support that you give them?
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: Yeah. So, we can divide this up a little bit. Why are we only taking early stage companies or why are we phase specific? Because we want to cater as much program as we can. And Ross is doing a really awesome job in bringing this all together in our program. We want to bring as many people and as many good mentors and excellent subject matter experts in here that help the companies at that stage. And that's usually big thing is go to market, fundraising. And what we find is actually strategic decisions and execution. So helping them along, building in that.
“… let them interact around their interests but find other ways on how they connect”.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: And the foundation of that is obviously the culture that we do. For them we do workshops, we do one on one sessions, we have office hours, we have panels for all of that. And then Betsy comes in and actually does a really awesome in creating the community. So we had a Christmas party this week. We had an Oktober Fest in October, tomorrow we are going to do a philanthropic event going out and helping a community here in Boston with about 15 people or so. So we believe that all of this is actually that makes the community. It's not just put a couple of people in a space, but let them interact around their interests but find other ways on how they connect. So I think that makes Venture Lane very different and hopefully very special.
SAL DAHER: Wonderful. So Christian, let's project five years out. Where do you see Venture Lane being?
“…if you're not a tenant here or not a member here, like how can you still take advantage of whatever we're doing here for early stage startups”.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: Right now, we're still phase one and phase one is, we're actually finding the space, getting everything ready, getting the first member companies in here. And we're right at the end of phase one to kind of get this all rolling and get it all set up. And I think we've done a good job, but we're still trying to improve. Phase two, we're looking actually into virtual memberships. So we're producing a lot of content. Actually, this month we started streaming our workshops on Introvoke so people can be part of that. You don't have to be here and you can be part of that workshop, for example. We're trying to develop that idea over the next couple of months of if you're not a tenant here or not a member here, like how can you still take advantage of whatever we're doing here for early stage startups.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: And then the other thing is that we're looking into building a program where we select really two or three companies a year that we really help hands on through a three-month program and helping them along. Be it for an expansion into the US.
SAL DAHER: Kind of like a mini accelerator.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: Mini accelerator. But think of it like everything is really a hands approach that we're really in there and not just delegating it to a big organization. And then phase number three, we'll see how we go. I believe there might be a room for something where we help really a curated bunch of companies to become successful. And maybe create great opportunities to invest or to do other things with them. But we think that small is beautiful. What we're doing here is really unique. If anything, we want to grow this in Boston. Be the best startup place in Boston first, then on the East coast and then in the world.
SAL DAHER: Well, I'll watch your future career with considerable interest, as P.G. Wodehouse would say.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: You are always welcome.
Sal Talks About His Investment in Fine Tune Learning
SAL DAHER: That sounds really fascinating. All these very impressive plans. Tremendous. Coming up next, I will ask Christian Magel of Venture Lane about his early career as a founder with altogether three exits. However, before we do that, this is a little bit of a plug for my investment syndicate.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: Go ahead. It's an awesome investment.
SAL DAHER: Yeah. I like to tell you a bit about another interesting company in which I was an early investor Fine Tune Learning. When I invested Fine Tune was called Academic Merit and it had a software that helps deepen their engagement with literature. It was the brainchild of a high school teacher, really inspiring high school teacher from Maine named Ogden Morse. But now 3.6 million high schoolers who are going to take the College Board's AP exam will have their essays scored on Fine Tune software platform. So they are scoring essays and written essays on a software platform. And the amazing thing about this is that it's available not just for scoring tests, but also for use in the classroom. This is the next step that they have in their product roadmap. So, a teacher can save half her or his time that they would spend correcting an essay. They can get more assignments. And what do you think that will do to kids learning how to write?
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: Yeah. Spend more time on the right stuff and not correcting.
SAL DAHER: The more they write, the better they know how to think. So it's a really cool thing. It's kind of like, think of it as AI, making people smarter.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: Beautiful, love it. And supporting teachers that need all the support they can.
SAL DAHER: It's kind of like working alongside with the teacher and making the teachers... giving superpowers to the teachers. And helping the kids learn. Because the beginning of technology, a lot of it has sort of like done this down. The video games, we're talking about this earlier today about video games and despite the fact that Akili interactive, for example, has video game that might get approved for treatment of ADHD, helps people with major depression and so forth. But the early impact of technology hasn't been great for making people smarter, but this has the potential to do that, which is really remarkable. I love the company. So if you're an accredited investor and want to invest alongside Boston's leading angels in such interesting startups, do consider my investment syndicates.
So Christian Megan, you lived through the dot com era while employed at a Swedish e-commerce site called letsbuy.com. Would you care to tell us a bit about those days and what you learned from that experience? I mean, it's just...
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: Yeah. It's probably even in filling. It was interesting I joined the company in-
SAL DAHER: It requires a beer.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: Yeah, there's goods and bads in that altogether actually in the end good. So, I joined letsbuy in 1999, I worked for media company, back at the time and they decided to do media for equity deals and to invest in the company. And then they hired me as their marketing director for the German speaking countries and later on it became the European marketing director. Nobody at back at the time figured out what e-commerce would be. So believe it or not, people thought that maybe co-shopping would be a thing or eBay, back at the time nobody would do is it bigger or is-
SAL DAHER: So, shopping was like two people got together to buy things to go-
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: The more people buy a refrigerator, the cheaper it gets.
SAL DAHER: Like a Groupon for appliances?
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: Exactly. But no Groupon for physical goods.
SAL DAHER: For physical goods.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: So, but that's the interesting difference because the Groupon really figured it out because it's virtual goods in the way they're giving discounts and vouchers. Whereas we had to deal with warehouses. But these guys, Swedish founders, some of the founders of Eigen Media Lab thought that out. And that was the second highest financed startup in Europe in the dot com times after bull.com. So, there is about 200 million dollars or 200 million Euros at the time. And we build out that huge e-commerce company with 350, 400 people, $50 million revenue, which seems small today but big at the time. Had maybe 2% of the population were e-commerce buyers, believe it or not. And so we took the company on and rolled it out into 14 countries. The goal of the founders was actually to do an IPO with this company. And that's probably where it started to go wrong.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: So instead of loving what you do for the sake of actually delivering value, you have a focus and the focus is how can you list that company. So, we brought in the number three from Nike, back at the time. The banks would tell you, "Hey, bring in a big executive and do this and do that." And we brought this guy in and we did an IPO in the end in June, 2000. But there was three months too late. So we got a little less money or quite a bit less money than we thought. And then that was the downhill spiral from there. All of a sudden you have to reorganize the whole thing. 14 countries down to four, so real rollercoaster ride.
What Christian Magel Got from the Failed IPO of Lestbuy.com; Listening to the Customer is Key
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: So, for me the learning was actually, if you have customer centric view really on the benefits, you might not do great but you do well because you have your customer in sight. If you're getting absorbed by an exit or how that is going to pay you money, then this is the wrong objective altogether from the get go. And the great thing that came out from there is like we got a lot of our tool sets that we would deploy later on. So without that startup, all of our other startups probably would have turned out much different. And I met my then to become co-founders at that, at that venture. So Rolf and Andy and four years later we would come together again for four Simyo.
What Brought Christian Magel to Become an Entrepreneur
SAL DAHER: Interesting. Interesting. So after, letsbuyit.com, calm, you set up your own marketing consultancy and what threw you to make that leap to start your own business? It's kind of like, I mean it's Germany, it's not a place people do a lot of that unless it's a family business.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: I had a career like every year or second year, like added on something to my title and it was all going in the right direction and all of a sudden letsbuyit Germany at that point went bankrupt, let's buy it international, stayed on. And as part of that I had to leave and our second daughter was about to come in two-months’ time, my wife was pregnant. And for the first time in the last time in my life I was actually unemployed for a whole month. I got unemployment money. And then you could do one thing, you could start your own business and actually they would pay you out five months or something like that. Is that like a startup capital?
SAL DAHER: It's probably the only startup provision.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: So, that's Germany. I had a lot of knowledge around marketing. Nobody wanted to do anything about internet. Like everybody said like, oh God, I'm so happy that this whole internet thing has gone now. And then I started my consulting business. One man show took me six months to land my first like long lasting project. I was down to about a thousand bucks on my bank account. Actually we lost a lot of money in the, let's buy it adventure. I bought shares for 250 and the last one I sold for six cent I guess. So we lost a lot of money in that.
SAL DAHER: I've been there Christian.
Post the Bankruptcy of Letsbuyit.com: “…frankly it was probably the toughest time that I had in my career”.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: Yeah. And frankly it was probably the toughest time that I had in my career. Not only self-doubt of what you're doing there, but down to can I bring the bacon home for my family with a newborn? Very stressful. The one thing that really taught me is we got through this and I knew that whenever I would fail with a startup, at least I could pick up the pieces and find somebody to give me some money that would feed my family. And then for me it was always mentally the kind of safeguard of I could do crazy risky things all over the world. But I knew that at least I have some capabilities that other people would think are worthwhile, give me some money and therefore I could risk it. I could lose it all because we lost it all.
SAL DAHER: The worst case I’ll set up in marketing consultancy. And I can make a living. I can pay the mortgage or whatever.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: Not that that was my dream, but like frankly there was no other way.
SAL DAHER: That's your life boat. So this would have been 2000-
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: 2002.
SAL DAHER: Yeah, I went through something like that in the late eighties. At the time I was laid off by the Bank of Boston. They offered me-
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: What did you do?
SAL DAHER: I was offered a lateral move within the bank and I didn't like working with that group and so I said well give me out placement. And I had this idea that I was going to go off because I've been involved with distressed assets and so forth. And I wanted to just get involved with some of the slightly distressed mortgages that the bank had and do some stuff like that. And I had some mandates and all that stuff. And it's a period where basically, I drew down on my home equity loan because I had a one and a half year old at home and I had a mortgage, a spouse, wife. It was kind of scary. So I max-
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: Probably also transformative for you, right?
SAL DAHER: Yeah. Oh yeah. And also the feeling you get all of a sudden I'm not an officer to Bank of Boston, I'm not a Vice President to Bank of Boston. I'm just off of my own. And there was quite an experience, but then a few months, it didn't last long. Like your thing was like a month, my thing lasted basically the summer. And I ran into a guy from Citibank old days. Was an old Boston Yankee, Jim Hammond is the same. I said, why Sal you've to meet my friend Bobby Smith? And that became my business partner for the next 25 years and we've made so much money together. And I ran into this guy in the street, we were pushing the stroller.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: Sometimes you have to take a leap of faith and sometimes you need to get pushed. Right?
“If you're not employed, it's going kind of you're a non-person. It's really tough”.
SAL DAHER: Yeah. But I remember the feeling, so much of your identity in America is tied to your work in Brazil. I was born in Brazil. In Brazil people ask you where you're from, right? Who's your family and they want to place you in your family. This town you're from or whatever. In America, they ask you what you do. If you're not employed, it's going kind of you're a non-person. It's really tough.
The ABCs of MVNOs
But anyways, let's move on to this funny name. MVNOS knows, kindly explain to our audience what MVNOs are because it's important to the discussion we're going to have next. The mobile virtual network operators, what are they, why do they exist?
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: Just super, super short. An MNO is a big networks T-Mobile, Verizon, sprint here and there more or less infrastructure providers, but they're private infrastructure providers. The thing is with infrastructure usually you don't get a lot of players, so it's an oligopoly. So in order to have actually some competition in the marketplace and not just the owners of those networks, then regulation would say, listen, if you own a network like this, you need other people. Let them play on their playground. Obviously after years and years and years of developing dominant marketing position or market position, invite a couple of other players in there. So MVNOs would do that. There was a big thing in the mid-2000s in Europe and there's a couple of players here in America. Actually about a billion dollars of venture capital got sunk into Disney mobile and all of that stuff. Nobody actually really pulled it off here in the United States.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: In Europe, the regulator said big telcos, please let's have competition. And this is how we started actually applying. Like how can we do this? How can you have a chance against a 20 30, 100 billion dollar company? I think here in the U S alone, Verizon would have like, what was it, like a billion dollar marketing budget or something like that. So, how can you go against that? But the regulation gave you market access and that gave us a chance to actually think about like, what's our way to get into that market that is couple billion dollars and it's only dominated by usually three or four players? Yeah. And that's what we did.
SAL DAHER: Excellent. Excellent. So please tell us the founding story of Simyo S-I-M-Y-O, and what you learned from that experience?
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: As I said my two co-founders Rolf and Andy, we got together, actually Rolf had the idea, there was a company in Denmark that figured out how to sell mobile services online. And the idea was you take a little SIM card so there's a little chip that goes into your phone and then you would sell it over the internet and make it really simple. No contracts, no nothing, nothing attached.
“So, you go online, fill out a profile and then a SIM comes in the mail”.
SAL DAHER: So, you go online, fill out a profile and then a SIM comes in the mail.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: A SIM card would come and you put it in your phone back at the time was awesome because all those phones were subsidized. So somebody paid for the phones or the big companies already paid for the phones. And then you would put a SIM card in and you could offer a rate that is 50% lower than everybody else's because you didn't have to subsidize the phone. So, Rolf came up with the idea, we came together as a team and said like, listen, there is something here, we can do this. And we pulled off a joint venture with Royal Dutch Telecom. By the time we were so poor and didn't have any extra money that we actually had to go into a 90/ 10 joint venture with KPN Telecom and started this business off. Started it in 2005, gave it the name Simyo simple and the yes and the active yo. And started a whole revolution in the telecommunication space because that business model would take about 25% of the whole market.
SAL DAHER: Wow.
“So, it was a crazy successful venture. And we were really proud of being the challenger. So, we could see things from the customer centric view of what would you do if you had been a telecommunication company without a network. And you can actually focus on customers rather than on your network and all the infrastructure”.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: So, we started that and we weren't sure how this would be going. And probably the first half year we had already a half a million customers and like, wow, this is better than sliced bread. Like this is crazy. And then the guys came to us and said, "Hey, we have another country here, we have another network. Do you want to do this? You want to help us?" And so we helped roll this out. In the end we built the largest online-based MVNO worldwide and with a couple of hundred million dollars in revenue with a really slim team. So it was a crazy successful venture. And we were really proud of being the challenger. So we could see things from the customer centric view of what would you do if you had been a telecommunication company without a network. And you can actually focus on customers rather than on your network and all the infrastructure.
SAL DAHER: Right, right. Because when you have the network you sort of have a little bit of monopoly power and you don't need to really cater that much to your customer.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: Exactly. So, we would be the e-commerce guys that would come in and be really the customer centric guys. So really think everything around the customers, nobody has really done that in that industry and disrupted it totally. And build a really awesome brand and actually started probably another 20 or 30 brands around the same business model that just copied what we did. So we made that really, brought it out there into the market.
SAL DAHER: Excellent. Excellent. So then you went off to Australia and you set up Amaysim. This is a recurring theme of the SIM card.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: Yeah, same as for SIM card, but also for simplicity. Simplicity was always the core of everything because everything was so complicated. I don't know if-
SAL DAHER: But why Australia?
Why Christian Started His Second Venture in Australia
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: Good question. So we had our then to become business partner, Peter O'Connell came down to Europe and he had a project there. He was a telecommunication executive and looked for best practices and he found us and he just wanted to exchange, but he loved it and said, why don't you guys come down and maybe want to check out Australia. And we go, it's a little farfetched, from, would you go down like 10,000 miles in the other part of the world. But we said like, anyway, let's go and spend a week down there. So the four German founders, we all went down there, had a great week. Pete was a great host that did everything to convince us that Australia would be the right place to be for us and our families. And I think we were ready to sign up after three hours or so.
SAL DAHER: There so many other places in the world that are worse than Australia!
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: Exactly, exactly. And then we thought, oh, we need to do some diligence still. So we found out over the next couple of days that it actually, there was a great opportunity down there. Usually Australia, sometimes in technology can be a little bit, couple of years back and nobody did what we were doing in Europe. And so we went back, decided that we want to do it, told our wives and decided eight adults, nine children and a horse that we would move to Australia and go down there. We passed on the baton on Simyo to our team and they did a fantastic job for multiple years afterwards. And then we started down there negotiating a contract raising 25 million US dollars and started from scratch again. This time we kept the majority of the business, which was a nice change. We sold our share at back at the time in KPN and we started all over again. Now just in a very different part of the world and came with some struggles in the beginning. But we finally figured it out again, customer centric approach.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: And five years later we were the largest independent mobile provider in Australia with close to a million customers, 170 million US in revenues and the team of 150 and there was a great opportunity for, we knew of opportunity for an IPO. So we listed at the ASX 300 and the company today is turning over about 350 million in US dollars and is a mobile slash energy player in that market. And we decided like after that one, by that time we worked together for probably 15, 16 years, we said like, okay, let's take a break, we finally had a really nice exit that was really awesome. Let's have a little bit of time for our families and we schlepped them around the world-
SAL DAHER: And the horse.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: And the horse. And we said, okay, let's take a break. And that then where I started to think about like, okay, what's next and what would I do? And then we decided as a family that'd be would move here to Boston. Boston people sometimes don't understand all of that. When you ask them in winter time, why would you move from Sydney to Boston? But been here many, many times in many years.
SAL DAHER: You came for the weather; you stay for the traffic.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: Exactly, exactly. We love Boston. We love doing that.
SAL DAHER: Awesome. But actually speaking of traffic, there's like four lines of the MBTA. They all intersect within-
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: They're all right here. It was one of the reasons why to pick this location. I came here, everybody said you need to be close to the red line and now we're close to every single line here-
SAL DAHER: The Blue Line, the Orange Line, the Green Line. Even the Silver Line.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: Like maximum 500 block. Exactly.
Big Turning Points in Christian Magel’s Life
SAL DAHER: Even the Silver Line to the airport. It's pretty amazing. Anyway, this is a standing question that we have on the podcast. We like to ask our extremely successful guests if there's a moment in their life when they kind of clicked, this is what I'm meant to be doing. This is what I was put on earth to do. Did you ever have that moment of click in the sense, this is what I'm supposed to be doing?
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: I think I probably had many turning points. Not just one. Actually I thought about your question earlier and probably the first one was in 1996 realizing I wanted to be in media. And media is one too many and then the internet came along and internet all of a sudden would be many to many. And not just media or maybe some business applications, but everything, organizational, politics, everything could be influenced by it. So that for me in 1996 was the, oh, there's something going on. And somehow I was right from then on like every single business that I've been part of had some part of internet in it. And I'm really glad to, Malcolm Gladwell talked about sometimes the accidental things that happen. And for me it was like I got out of school more or less when the internet became public. And that was my big luck.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: The other one was actually seeing how Let's Buy It was built like in two years’ time we would raise a bunch of money and roll this into 14 countries and it has never been done before. And it was like pioneer stage like, holy crap, this is awesome. If you can do this and people support this, I want to do this my whole life. And then with Simyo and Amaysim we saw what good we can do with building our own culture and companies taking care of our own people. But also being a customer here, taking care of others. So I thought like how good is that, that we can do good every day in a way and really enjoy it. And then coming here to Boston doing Venture Lane is that kind of theme all over again, like helping and supporting others and really building a great community around values and great things. So there was a transition over the years and nobody could have known where we would be today, but it felt in 1996 that it's going down that direction. And it was an awesome ride so far.
How Christian Magel’s Family Life Affected His Career
SAL DAHER: Well, I appreciate that very thoughtful answer. The family you grew up in, what your family did, how did that affect your career?
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: So, my dad was a very humble guy and very responsible. He just passed away like two months ago. I realized everything is coming full circle. So, as a 12 year old I would say like I want to... he worked in the hotel business. I don't want to be part of the hotel business. And he said, no way, like don't bother, do something else. I think threatened like I'd do film school. Like, yeah, that wasn't the thing. Actually now I'm coming full circle actually having something like Venture Lane, which is partially in a way a hospitality business but in tech. So he left me that and that kind of hospitality helping in our language here it is members, in his language it was guests and other people. Helping them along and providing them with a really great environment. So, I think my mom and my dad provided me and us with great values that I get to take on and live on in other places than my parents.
How Christian Ended Up Studying in Germany, in France and in Phoenix, Arizona.
SAL DAHER: Pretty cool, pretty cool. How did it come about that you were studying in Wiesbaden in Germany, La Rochelle France, Phoenix, Arizona for college. How did that come about?
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: So, I went to a school, I started actually just studying Munich, at the LMU. But I always wanted to do something international. It felt like my city in Munich would be somehow too small if it would just be that. So I needed to get out. And I met Lisa 25 years ago, my wife, she's a Bostonian. So that got us down the way of even being an international family. And then my business interests and what we did as startups that brought me. So, the international bit was always something that I loved, I was curious. I was adventurous. It was risk-taking, it was invigorating. Although it's sometimes really tough to be in a different culture. It gives you this great perspective from a different angle and I love that.
Christian Magel’s Deeply Felt Advice
SAL DAHER: Tremendous. So Christian Magel, as we wrap up the interview and before we open up for questions, feel free to address any topic that's important to you and that you think would be valuable for our audience, founders, angels and people who work at startup.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: There's one thing that comes back to my core values, but also what we're doing here at Venture Lane. Let me share an observation with you. So when I came here to Boston, my question would go like, if I can help you, let me know. That would be how I learned it, back in Europe. And Boston learned me actually to say how can I help? And it seems the same sentence because the same intention but it's a completely different result. One is an unconditional offer and that changes the whole conversation. And it's not only in the startup world and it's not only here at Venture Lane, this is being at home or being with other people or friends and family. Like how can I help for me really embraces the paying it forward, giving it first.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: And I believe so much in good karma that things will come back to you. Lisa asked me actually this weekend if I asked somebody, how can I help you? Doesn't everybody just take up my offer? You can sleep, you can babysit my kids and all that stuff. No, actually people are very reasonable and taking that offer with a grain of salt, but it opens many doors for the other person you might think. But mostly for yourself and for your intentions. And I love this as a basic philosophy probably in any kind of aspect of life. So, just can encourage it.
SAL DAHER: That is extremely valuable and it's funny how the difference. If there's anything I can do to help you, let me know versus how can I help? It doesn't sound like it should make that much of a decision, but when you think about it really does.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: Absolutely.
SAL DAHER: It's much more open and not conditional. That's a really important thought. Yeah. I remember in my childhood, my father, whenever he saw me not doing something, he said, go ask your mother what you can do to help her. I hated it because I knew she always had something for me. My mother would have had something always invariably something to do.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: They would never be, mom, how can I help?
SAL DAHER: I can never think of doing that? Because I knew that she always had a project for me. My late mother. Rest in peace up.
Anyway, so now take a few moments to invite our guests here. If anybody has any questions that they want to address to Christian, please come up to the mic. When you come up to the mic, you are authorizing us to record your voice and to broadcast it and to manipulate it in many different ways to make it sound like Donald Duck... No, no, no, wait, we don't do that.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: This is a line of a hundred people; I can't believe it.
SAL DAHER: So please state your name and please ask your question.
Question from Saeid Gholami, M.D., Founder of iCareBetter
Speaker 3: Hi, my name is Saeid. I am the founder and CEO at iCareBetter. Thank you very much. Great discussion. Christian question. So you said you come from e-commerce background, it made you being customer centric person. You brought that experience into telecom and you made some successful company on exits. Now you're in this business Venture Lane you held earlier stage startups. I wonder how customer centricity is playing a role here and what you are doing specifically to be customer centric to startups. You already explained what you do, but I want to know what is making you different than other companies that you think you are more customer centric here if you are.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: Really good question and I think it's maybe a different context. We just lately threw around a couple of ideas around actually this accelerator idea that has a huge go to market component. Part of the program is a 360 degrees on your company that helps you in all kinds of stages. And then we thought, what is the one that actually helps all the other areas if you get that right? Is it the product that you build, is it your finance department, is it operations or is it actually marketing and sales? We came into the conclusion that where rubber hits the road is go to market and where your product hits the customer. And that has an impact and actually gives you feedback on if all the other stuff works. If your operations doesn't work, you might not find out until you have your first customer.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: So, in that respect, I think we are leading very much with the go to market strategy and really have a lot of content and a lot of insights around, what is your pain? And again the pain leading rather than the market. I feel sometimes some people choose the market and then they're looking for a pain. I think early stage you start with the pain, the pain if you want to. That's the customer centricity. To give you an example, in Europe usually I find if you can generalize at all and stereotype, but people start with finding a solution to a problem. Not thinking for whom that is. Great inventors, great inventions, they're really awesome. But I think in America, things are very different. People think of coming from the pain and the pain defines whom do I talk to? Who is my audience, what's the messaging? All of that.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: And if you think about the pain is nothing but the expression of a problem that needs solution. So I think here we are really a lot around actually the go to market and addressing customers centricity through all our processes that you need to have to find your go to market strategy. I think this is our way of expressing customer centricity even in B2B, B2C, wherever it is. You start from the pain and the pain actually makes sure that the pain is big enough that somebody needs some solution for it. Because there's no point of having a little bit of pain but not wanting to move. Yeah, so I think that keeps us kind of customer centric I would say.
SAL DAHER: Excellent. Excellent.
Question from Ross Palley, General Manager at Venture Lane
Ross Palley: Hi, my name is Ross Palley, I'm the general manager at Venture Lane. Christian, I think that one thing we actually haven't even talked about yet is founding team at Simyo. The three of you. I think a lot of voices in this ecosystem will make the point that at such an early stage at the idea stage, it's that founding team who you have to put a lot of stake in and a lot of conviction. Because you can be certain that the product will change, your target market might change, but really it's going to be that founding team that's executing on the vision. Could you maybe talk a little bit about the three of you? What were some of the tangibles and intangibles that all of you together were bringing to the table? How you work together and why that founding team was such a powerful engine for the growth of the company?
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: Yeah, good question. Actually, we were four founders. I missed Tommy who joined us a little later in the first venture and then we ultimately were five founders in Amaysim. Everybody goes like, how is that possible that you can manage five founders? I have to say all credit to Rolf. He did a really good job in kind of orchestrating that. I think the comparison is it's a bit like a band. Even like a boy band. There's a lot of characters. And the way I would say is the singer thinks, listen, without me, this band would not exist. And the group is only here for me, the guitar player says, listen, I'm writing all the songs without me, the singer would not be anywhere. The bass player is silently thinks like, hey I'm putting this all together, I'm organizing all the gigs and the drummer says, listen like if there's really an upheaval in the group, like I'm usually calming everybody down.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: So, in one word, everybody actually plays a role to bring all of this together. If you then pull the group apart and how many times have you seen they split, everybody thinks they can be a solo singer or a solo artist. And that doesn't work anymore because that magic is gone because everybody complements each other. But the complementing each other only comes with everybody actually taking a step back with their ego of, hey, I'm the guy, or who's the most important. So I think we organized this really nicely over a long, long, long period of time. That's one thing. And the other thing we really had radical openness and radical honesty with all of us. And that made us kind of a peer group who would continuously challenge each other.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: And we would, by the end of that 15, 16 years we would do really well by ending each other's phrases. And even understanding like I became a much better technology person by listening to Andy. And Andy got great insights about strategic management from Rolf and Rolf learned some other things and Pete did some... So we learned from all these experiences, it is a tight game that needs to be played well. And I think we were all got, things got old enough and mature enough to do so. But I just actually listened to one of your podcasts yesterday, professor from Stanford who said like-
SAL DAHER: Chuck Eesley, yes, yes.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: Larger teams do actually better. And I feel that everybody gets pressured into like, hey, find a co-founder. How about the third founder of the fourth founder? It's not easy, but think of it like four people more or less, you can run a whole company with four people. And many times, we started with four or five people would be just us, but what a high quality that is when you just, we started with the founders that all complement each other and have quite some maturity and great background. The foundation must be sensational if you do this correctly.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: And then last but not least, I think we always started with values so we identified who we were and then we infuse those values in the company and added on to that. And you as a founder need to understand who you are will have an impact on what the values of this company is. If you embrace it and really make it part as this core and make it understandable for everybody, it can be a huge, huge advantage against any competition out there. Or maybe even big corporates that don't have that really. So, really loved that phase and learned a lot, a ton from all of my co-founders actually would not want to miss that experience.
SAL DAHER: Tremendous, tremendous. Anybody else? Step up to the mic and give us your name.
Questions on Pricing, Mistakes, and Purpose
Speaker 5: My name is Terry from Benu concept. So I have a two question. One is very practical, when you start up, you are very first business, how did you set your price, your service? And if you can share some mistake story, that would be great. And that's the first question. Second question is when you're very start doing your business and when you have a, or when you lost sense of a purpose doing it and as it were that made you feel that while you at doing it? And when you lost that sense of purpose, how did you get it back?
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: Okay, got it.
Speaker 5: So that's the two questions.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: Okay, got it. So on the first one, how do you find out your price? We had actually a couple of great experts on that here in the space. And there's a very easy one. That's actually when you do your customer experience, ask them. And there's a couple of questions that you can ask around, doesn't necessarily need to be, how much would you pay for it? But actually it could be what do you think would be too much if we charge this, you would not consider it at all anymore? And then the other thing is if you had to make a decision now, like what would you be happy to pay? And most likely your end price will lay between those two. But it helps you actually defining the top and the bottom of where you want to be with your pricing. Now this is obviously not just one interview, it might be dozens or hundreds. That's one.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: And another one is, I mean there's a couple of ways to do it. Another one is actually really looking into what kind of value are you providing? What's the problem that you're solving? And if that problem solved, save somebody $100,000, what is a good share of that? And maybe even you can even verbalize and say like if you do that, then it's going to be that. And if you only do that, then it's going to be that. So there's a couple of ways to set your first pricing and then once you have your pricing set, you'll probably see through churn rate and other indicators, how that works and how much price plays a role. Sometimes price doesn't even play a role anymore after a while because people are getting so fine and so convenient that you do that. So pricing is probably one of the most undervalued marketing instruments I find. Because in an instant, you can give away a million bucks by just making the wrong decisions.
SAL DAHER: Very easily. And in many situations, price discovery is really, really hard. Anyway, the next question was the mistakes. There's a podcast, that's nothing except my worst investing mistakes by-
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: People listen to that?
SAL DAHER: Andrew Stotz. Actually lives in Thailand. No, no, no. It's very important for investors to think about. And his biggest problem isn't getting people to listen, people are very interested to listen. It's getting guests to confess to making mistakes, so.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: I mean, needless to say, plenty of mistakes, right? The question is how you deal with it. A thing like just to start with that is I think it's an attitude question of you can make the wrong decision, have a failure as long as you learn from it, no problem. Embrace that. That's actually really... I like that. If you never make a mistake, then you haven't taken the chance and then you didn't move or you didn't do anything that's moving anybody. To give you one example, we started Amaysim, we started with a product that was a tariff minute based so we people would pay a phone call by the minute, 15 cents a minute or something like that. And we got good research back but 30% of the market would be addressable, but we did not take into account that actually that the answers that we got backwards weren't really reflecting reality. Reality was that like here in the US it's usually a monthly price in a whole package, but we did variable pricing.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: So, we went out, we got a couple of customers, but actually we would not make enough money to keep the company alive. The investors were ready to pull the plug on the company saying, listen, we're not investing in this anymore. This is not going anywhere. And so on. And we were just a couple of days away to launch the new product, which was a package price and actually the first unlimited telecommunication product in Australia. And that saved our butt. So there the learning is, it's radical change. If you see it that something is not going a certain way, then don't ponder around and make a radical decision to turn it around and go in the other direction. Many times I feel like, yeah, we should still do a little that and maybe we try this out here maybe... So don't rock the boat altogether.
SAL DAHER: Don't tinker.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: But don't, okay, now we're doing five things at the same time. Let's see what works. I can tell you with focus, it needs radical action all above in a critical time and then it needs full focus and you can't do 15 things at the same time. All above with scarcity of resources. And then you said about purpose. That's an interesting one. Actually I did an exercise before coming up with the idea of Venture Lane above my purpose. And my purpose, I identified my purpose being a change agent. Like I love change and I love helping other people to do that and facilitate that. And it seems that not everybody actually embraced this change. So there might be a need of a couple of people that are change agents. I'm a change agent. So you see it's a broad enough topic, to be a change agent in many areas. That helps to maybe never lose your purpose, maybe re-dedicate it.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: I think when you have the feeling that you lose your purpose. For me, the first question, did you find your true purpose in the first place? And then number two is, most likely you found a true purpose already. But you need to maybe adjust that purpose may be in a bit of a different area, tweak it rather than rocket it. So I'm sure there's a couple of gold nuggets where by just reevaluating your original purpose, you will see how much more gold nuggets are in there that is just a bit of a redefinition of your purpose. So I found that working quite well with, if you have a vision for a company, get it so broad that it actually gets people moving and connecting. And you can move for a little bit, leave a little bit of a wider angle that you can still make a difference. But it's not that one thing. And if that one thing doesn't work out, everything is gone.
Startup Parade – A Mental Tour of the Companies at Venture Lane
SAL DAHER: Excellent. Excellent. So why we do a little bit of a startup parade, a mental tour of Venture Lane through the startups that are here. Tell us a name and tell us what they do to kind of get people an idea of the kind of stuff that goes on here at Venture Lane.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: Well, the great thing for you is since you had a couple of interviews with those companies already, some of your listeners might extra recall those.
SAL DAHER: Listeners should know that I've interviewed five of the 22 companies that are here.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: Yeah, pretty good hit rate, I have to say. Yeah, so we're obviously proud of all the companies that are in here, but to say how this all came together, we are looking for pre series A companies. We are industry agnostic but face specific all pre-Series A, and we don't do life sciences, drug development or anything like that. Because we don't have-
SAL DAHER: You don't have the set of up.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: Lab here or anything and we don't do hardware. Because we think they need a different kind of attention. So mostly B2Bs, some B2C companies here and some of them like Care Academy. Really proud to have them in here. They're currently growing for our Series A, great growth. So they're providing education for caregivers in this huge growing market of caregivers and educating caregivers. They're putting a platform together and helping those guys.
SAL DAHER: I've seen a pitch by the founder.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: Helen.
SAL DAHER: Yes, Helen and I would like to interview her at some point.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: Beautiful. Yeah, here we go.
SAL DAHER: Yeah, here we go. We're getting more to your list which is great.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: Absolutely. I have a list of another 21.
SAL DAHER: Okay.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: So AceUp. You know, AceUp and Will, a formidable team was in Techstars and they really deliver personalized executive coaching through their platform and really up skilling enterprise and medium size businesses. Really great team, great growth right now.
UptimeHealth, also a Techstars company that actually helps manage facilities in the healthcare space. So think of like a CTO for an outpatient care center for example, that they can't afford that. Really awesome team I have to say, like great growth but really like plowing through the different stages that you need to take as a startup.
Core dna, one of our first members here. Sam, a friend that I made here in Boston, funny enough, coming from Melbourne, so we bonded over Australia. Sam has been around for quite a while. Build a fantastic company in Australia and at some point said, listen, this is for the world. I'll bring this to the US. So, they're building a SaaS digital platform that integrates web content, e-commerce, internet and marketing. So if you have like a multi brand environment that is a website or a platform that you can put all this on and doing really, really well.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: Toucan Toco, a French company actually just got a $30 million check in their last round. That is going to finance their rollout here into the US. So, we have a small team here and help them along here in the US and they have a data visualization tool. And had some incredible growth back in Europe and now we're trying to help them a little bit here getting going in the U S.
risQ, a team of Northeastern students and PhDs. They do fascinating things like using really data in AI from climate risk and putting this all together and actually selling it to municipal funds in wall street. To have a better risk assessment for their investments.
One Way Ventures of course, you know Semyon who is probably the one that doesn't fit the bill as a startup. Semyon is he such a great guy that we thought, let's invite them in. They have such a great network. He's a great founder and entrepreneur and investor himself and-
SAL DAHER: A shout out to Lex.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: And Lex of course.
SAL DAHER: Who's a listener to the podcast.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: Beautiful. So great to have them in here and their focus is a early stage fund on immigrant founders, which obviously I being from Germany, and here with 14 nations represented, we can absolutely support.
We got Wispli, this a funny story. Sylvain and I actually met before eventually Venture Lane in Sydney, so he's a French entrepreneur who started his business as a whistleblowing platform in Sydney. He has been a whistleblower himself and he found that the solutions that are out there are not really sufficient. Started the business in Australia then moved here to Boston a year after myself and so we invited him right away. He did the Y Combinator program and is in parallel rolling out to Europe. So very impressive story.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: Quality Interactions, the team around Michele that provides training for racial bias in healthcare environments. So, really great impact company really love their growth right now.
Folia, that you had already on your podcast Nell. And then as a team they really provide an app that helps family keep track of the progress that you do with your patients and then you can share this with your doctor.
SAL DAHER: Yeah, tracking the information from the other 340 days of the year when the patient doesn't see a doctor. Exactly. And then therefore having a huge impact on recording the other data that is actually helping to improve the customer's a health.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: Meenta that you even had on your show. So scientific equipment sharing platform. So they are going to make, starting with genome sequencers and then growing into other areas, but make all these really high priced assets but with low usage where they are in their institutions available to a bigger market. And have kind of a marketplace model there, which is really cool.
Tally Street, we have Brian here who's a co-founder of Localytics and just starting his newest venture, becoming a virtual analyst for accounting, bookkeeping, and financial professionals in the SMB space. So, if you're a small business and you can't afford an analyst, why not let the machine do it for you, right?
SAL DAHER: Absolutely, yeah.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: Gain Life. Sean, you know him.
SAL DAHER: Yeah, I know Sean.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: Just famously took a great round from [General] Catalyst, have great traction on anything, a process in the worker's compensations area. Totally undervalued in short tech play, but like awesome team that's really plowing away.
Pluto with Shana awesome founder, really using AI as a text based social assistance. So, using AI in a different context as you usually know it and helping you lead a better social media life if you want to and connect to your friends.
Relevize with Mike came onboard and Patrick, they're in the mar tech area and they really helped big brands reach out to their partners. See a beverage company, reach out to the pubs that actually distribute their drinks. And help them actually deliver campaigns on their own social media, on their own media and helping them making that transparent.
SAL DAHER: Yeah. So you have two marketing technology companies, the one from Australia and this one that you're mentioning.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: Exactly.
SAL DAHER: And Boston is sort of a hub for marketing technology.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: Yeah. That's probably was attractive in the first place.
We have MindMics actually the only little bit hardware-oriented company. Anna is from Poland. She went to Harvard and really started building a hardware that allows you to do EKG with your ear buds, with your buds. I think it's the last innovation in this area, has been done like 30 or 40 years ago. So it's the same technology and now how do you make this in these times, how do you make it for everybody? You don't need to be in a clinic and have somebody standing beside you. Actually, you could do it at home with just some ear buds, just did it myself last week. I'm glad I'm still in good health.
SAL DAHER: Good to hear, good to hear.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: Bithoop, Rai, they reinvent the idea of how a desktop could look like for a company that deals with a lot of information, has problems finding information everywhere. So really great technology. If you think that nowadays you're using 15,000 apps and yeah, Eric is here, who's supporting them too.
Shareaholic came in, I think about a month ago. Jay and his team, they're really working on array of tools that helps websites to grow traffic and engagement.
And LuminDX with Susan, who is our latest addition. Obviously revolutionizing the area of making everybody being like a skin doctor with the right technology. So using a phone to have an intelligent application to act like a skin doctor, which is really awesome and huge. So you see there's a lot of things having a lot of impact. This is probably a little bit the consensus that we have. We like big markets, but we like great ideas that have also an impact.
SAL DAHER: Thanks a lot for that tour. Very interesting.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: It was a mental tour.
SAL DAHER: A mental tour, yeah. You latched on to that term. Christian Magel, founder of early stage tech startup hub Venture Lane. Thanks a lot for making time for this really engaging interview, we really appreciate your graceful hospitality in this really wonderful space.
CHRISTIAN MAGEL: Thank you for being here at Venture Lane, hope to see you soon again for some of our other companies.
SAL DAHER: This is a wonderful place. I'd like to invite our listeners who enjoyed this podcasts to review it on iTunes. This is Angel Invest Boston conversations with Boston's most interesting angels and founders. I'm Sal Daher.
I'm glad you were able to join us. Our engineer is Raul Rosa. Our theme was composed by John McKusick. Our graphic design is by Katharine Woodman-Maynard. Our host is coached by Grace Daher.