Jaime Novoa: From writing tech news to writing checks

Even though Jaime now is working on the VC side of the table, he assured me that he doesn’t wear a suit every day.

There’s not a lot of information in English about the Spanish startup ecosystem out there, but there is one person that has dedicated half a decade to covering tech and startups in Spain and that’s Jaime Novoa.

He recently went from writing stories about startups to writing checks as a part of the K Fund team.

Even though he’s not chasing breaking tech news anymore, he’s still doing a lot of the same work:

When I was a journalist I tried to find interesting companies before anyone knew about them, and that’s something I still do today at K Fund.

But there’s also a lot of obvious differences:

The biggest change is the amount of information that startups share with me now, compared to before. When you’re a journalist companies doesn’t share much with you, and they often don’t tell you the truth. But as a potential investor, they have to open their books and show you everything, and that’s pretty amazing.

Surprising

Even though Jaime has been known as a well-informed person in tech circles, being a VC opened his eyes to a different kind of information flow:

As a VC I was surprised to know how little I knew about the companies I was covering as a journalist.

And that makes him respect the journalists writing about startups and technology ever more than before:

I usually defend journalists writing critical articles about startups, because from the outside it’s very hard to know what’s the truth and have good data points. That’s why so many publications only write about funding rounds because that’s the one thing both investors and companies actually share.

A failed business

Even though Jaime succeeded in making Novobrief into one of the main sources of breaking startups news in Spain, creating a sustainable company was harder than he though:

I totally failed with making Novobrief into a business, but I see now that I should have been monetizing from day one. My idea was to build a brand first, and then make money, but that was my biggest mistake.

He adds that the blog is actually making him more money today, than back when he was doing it full-time.

The world of venture capital is new, but not rocket science according to Jaime, which explains that the things he needed to learn were the different stages of how an investment work, certain metrics and legal issues.

It’s a great time to be in venture capital in Spain, and that’s because it’s a great time for startups in general in the country. The ecosystem is growing tremendously and will continue to change and grow the next years for sure.

He always envisioned himself continuing to work as a journalist.

I never ever thought that I would be working in a VC firm, neither to work for a startup, I always thought that I would go on to work as a journalist. But Iñaki Arrola approached me and said they were looking for someone with my profile for K Fund, and for me, it was plainly the right time to do something different.

Bullshit detector

Many say journalists make good VC’s because they’re good at asking the right questions and seeing through founders attempt to paint a better picture of their company than what’s the truth. Jaime agrees:

I think journalists build up a bullshit detector, and that is helpful also as a VC.

These days he sees between 5–10 companies per week, mostly in Spain, but also outside the country.

Looking back to when he started writing around 6–7 years ago, he can with certainty say that the community of founders and tech companies has matured a lot.

There are so many things going on these days, in the whole country, not only in Madrid and Barcelona. These days Barcelona has the most momentum, but that can change overnight. I don’t spend time thinking about which city performs best, I think it’s a childish mindset.

B2B SaaS

What Jaime however does think about is young tech companies, and even though he doesn’t like trying to guess what kind of verticals or industries that will do well the next years, he has his thoughts:

I really like the B2B SaaS vertical and although I’m not a good at predicting, I think that Spain will foster more of these great B2B SaaS companies going forward.

And if you’re missing breaking startup news from Novobrief, Jaime is not here to comfort you:

I’m not planning on working as a journalist anytime soon. I have my full focus on K Fund and I have so much left to learn in this industry.

But there’s one thing he does miss about his old career:

There’s something special about the adrenaline you get by breaking news before anyone else, I do miss that thrill sometimes. If journalism is in your blood, you’ll write some way or another, and I’m happy to be able to write on the K Fund blog these days.

On commitment


View of the Mallorca island early in the morning, after long hours of night sailing

The other day a friend was arguing why he would never accept money from an investor to start a company. That would make him responsible and he would feel stressed by having to report to that future shareholder, specially when things go south. He was better off being “free”, doing always “what he really wants” and “not having to answer to anyone” for his actions.

Unfortunately, that is a generally spread idea that prevents even greater initiatives from developing all the time. To me that is the fear of commitment.

We humans work better collaborating together, sharing and compensating strengths and weaknesses. In order to do so, we build relationships based on trust, honesty and respect. That has always been the relationship I tried to build with my shareholders. I’ve shared with them the opportunities and also the uncertainties and the risk. Those who wanted and properly understood them, have decided to join me, compromise some money and bet for the best.

However,

  • I’ve never given up my freedom for that. It is quite the opposite, in many regards thanks to my shareholders, I can do exactly what I want and enjoy the most.
  • I never promised results, instead I made a plan and promised to fight for it with all my effort and heart, and I’m still doing so.
  • I never said I would always be working on a project, I formally signed for 24 months every time. If I keep doing the same thing it is because it keeps thrilling me, and it keeps being my greatest opportunity all things considered.
  • When things don’t go as planned, I’ve been straight and shared it with my partners, along with my new ideas and actions to undertake. It is nothing any of us didn’t know it could happen.

Thus, I keep committing all the time and love to do so. I commit with my employees, my shareholders, my clients, my suppliers, … but also with my girlfriend, my family and friends. What’s so wrong about committing? Commitments are not a burden, but the tangible consequence of our own decisions.

Beyond our words, it is our commitment and our consequent action what truly defines who we are and how we will be remembered.

Interviewing Ash Maurya, entrepreneur and author of Running Lean

Yes, Ash Maurya was holding a talk at itnig! He spoke about his second workshop, “The Art of the Scientist”, and we took the chance to make him some questions about him and the Lean Startup Movement. For Ash, “the principles behind Lean Startup are very simple and seem common sense and obvious. But practising it, is where the hard part comes.” Here you have the whole interview. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZoE11YZbyo

How did you get into Lean Startup movement?

I have been an entrepreneur for many years. And one of the things that I consciously kept running into was that the cycle time for going from “idea” to “successful product” was just too long. That’s why I have always been in search for finding better and faster ways to build successful products. And when I run into Lean Startup, a lot of the ideas resonated with me, and that’s how I got started. In many ways I decided to start testing a lot of its ideas, because putting them to practice was not as obvious… so I started a blog and that blog eventually turned into a book. That’s kind of the quick way how I got into the whole process.

What’s is your best definition of Lean Startup for someone who is just starting with it?

There is a lot of confusion about Lean Startup. For me, the most concise definition is that it is an organization that maximizes learning about what is riskiest in your business model per targeted time… so, speed is very important, learning is very important, and focusing on the right things is very important.

Does Lean Startup scale? How can we keep using its methodologies as we grow our team, and the company in general?

Sure, Lean Startup does scale. And there is lots of case studies that you can find about big companies, companies into it, using it… You can also study a lot of their models. Definitely, there are challenges. Fundamentally Lean is about breaking away the specialisation trap, so trying to build more cross-functional teams, trying to build an experimentation culture. I find that that’s sometimes harder to inject into a big company, which has lots of existing processes. So, I find bigger companies experimenting more with smaller innovation teams. For a small company, one of the challenges when you start practising Lean, as you grow, is try to maintain that level of culture experimentation and building smaller teams. And there you can look at models like Facebook: it is probably a good model of how do they build small innovation teams versus large vertical teams.

Do you have any killer strategy for prioritizing? How can we know we are prioritizing well?

That’s part of what I’ve been researching a lot lately and what I’ve starting to talk and blog about: I find that the principles behind Lean Startup are sometimes very simple and seem common sense and obvious. But practising it, is where the hard part comes. And it starts by prioritizing the right kinds of risks. So if you incorrectly prioritise risks, you start running experiments which have mediocre results. I would say that there’s just new work that’s being done. I don’t have all the answers yet, but part of it is, working with advisors, working with people, looking at key metrics in your product, and trying to focus on a few things at a time instead of trying to tackle everything about your business.