In this episode, Hall welcomes Christian Czernich, CEO/Founder/Managing Partner at Round2 Capital Partners. 

Round2 Capital Partners is a financing partner for European scale-ups with digital and sustainable business models. In the scale-up phase, outstanding entrepreneurs manage to transform their business from a successful venture into a real company. Round2 offers the innovative funding instruments and insights needed to master this transformation process. Founded in 2017, Round2 has pioneered revenue-based finance in Europe: a flexible, non-dilutive funding instrument.

When Christian together with Jan started to develop revenue-based finance in Europe back in 2015, Christian was driven by the vision to find better ways of backing great entrepreneurs than by diluting ownership through equity. Also, neither bank loans nor traditional rigid venture debt loans were a viable solution for funding asset-light and digital business models. Instead – he thought – by linking the funding to revenue one can offer a non-dilutive, yet at the same time highly flexible and simple funding instrument and thus solve the problem. Round2 was born.

Before founding Round2, Christian was working almost 15 years in European investment banking and Private Equity out of Vienna and Munich. He was responsible for more than 30 cross-border equity transactions with transaction sizes up to EUR 600m in various sectors and has built a leading Vienna-based investment boutique.

Christian developed his passion for entrepreneur-led young technology companies when working on his Ph.D. thesis at the Stockholm School of Economics and at Stanford University. In his research, he worked with close to 100 Founders of high-technology spin-offs from Swedish Corporations. His research won the Best Paper Award at the Academy of Management for the worldwide best research paper of a Ph.D. student in his field.

Besides entrepreneurship, Christian has a passion for education. During the last 20 years he has been educating hundreds of students on topics in finance, strategy and entrepreneurship at the Stockholm School of Economics, Stockholm University, and the Vienna University of Economics and Business at the Bachelor, Master and Executive level. This passion also led to the establishment of the Round2 Lab.

An Austrian national, Christian lives in Stockholm and Vienna with his Swedish wife and their three sons. He holds a Ph.D. from the Stockholm School of Economics and a Master in Business and Finance (with distinction) from Innsbruck University.

Christian discusses his investment thesis, advises startups and investors, and shares how he sees the industry evolving.

You can visit Round2 Capital Partners at www.round2cap.com, and via LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/company/round2-capital-partners/.

Christian can be contacted via email at cc@round2cap.com, and via LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/christian-czernich.

For a full transcript, click here.

Music courtesy of Bensound

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Disclaimer:
Hall T Martin is the director of Investor Connect, which is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to the education of investors for early-stage funding. All opinions expressed by Hall and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Investor Connect. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for the basis of investment decisions.