Picking the right investors for our business and stage
We decided to pick our financial backers with one goal in mind: Set our team up for success. Our latest financing round was led by Point Nine. Christoph Janz, the co-founder and one of only 4 general partners at Point Nine, will join our board. Christoph is an incredibly well-admired and experienced early-stage board member and B2B SaaS investor. We knew about Christoph from his countless blog posts that have inspired and coached numerous early-stage founders like us. If you ever hear of the SaaS Funding Napkin or the Whale when talking about types of SaaS businesses in future conversations in the startup ecosystem, then you can thank Christoph :)
More importantly, we have gotten to know Christoph as an incredibly caring, respectful, and hard-working partner who acts as if every deal is his first one. His humility and desire to learn more about a new space despite his impressive track record convinced us that he is the right choice. We believe Christoph will act as a great addition to our pre-seed investor, Anton Waitz, General Partner at Project A. Given the last two years with Anton and Project A’s operational team were a blast, we are very much looking forward to next years to growing Root with the combined support of Point Nine and Project A.
Next to our institutional investors, we once again have selected a diverse group of food industry veterans, generalist company builders, and functional experts to join our journey. Beyond entrusting us with their capital, our angel investors act as mentors and sparring partners for our early team members in their corresponding roles.
We generally divide our cap table into 3 types of investors and advisors that we can benefit from while building Root:
F&B and Climate Industry veterans: They are experienced leaders with decades of experience in the industries relevant to us. They support us with gaining industry know-how and make useful introductions.
Experienced functional leaders: They are startup operators with many years of experience in a specific function at technology companies: B2B SaaS sales, product marketing, product management, engineering, etc. They help us with best practices and tailored tactics for current decisions at hand.
Early-stage startup operators: These are mostly generalist startup operators currently active in early-stage technology companies that are 1-3 years ahead of our stage. They support us with company building, day-to-day operations, and hiring mostly.
How we collaborate with our angels & advisors
There are a couple of ways in which we regularly engage with our angel investors and advisors. When we say “we”, it can really be anyone in the team that is facing a difficult decision or needs operational advice for a project they are working on. Often relationships are forged between our advisors and individual team members, beyond the relationship that exists with us, founders.
Build up a personal relationship: Often our angels will come visit our offices and get to know the team and the Rooties they will be most in touch with. Regular lunches and coffee chats across the year take place, with in-between interactions via phone calls and WhatsApp.
Problem-solving sessions: In certain cases, it makes sense to book a 60-90min slot with an advisor in order to dive deeper into a topic and get the most relevant data points and opinions. Often, we send a quick pre-read so our vis-a-vis has the necessary context to help.
Adhoc phone calls and WhatsApp messages: WhatsApp is the most used way of interaction with our advisors - typically we just call or leave a voice note for them to answer when it is most convenient.
Over the last 2 years, we have benefitted enormously from these relationships. Here are a couple of examples of how our angels and advisors have been actively supporting us over the last few months:
Pete Hamilton, co-founder and CTO of incident.io advised us, co-founders, on how to “formalise” our company culture. We met at the Point Nince summit in Potsdam to speak about it and had multiple calls to exchange thoughts on how workshops can be run, how top-down vs. bottom-up the process should be, the pros and cons of having external moderators and how ultimately guiding principles can or should be lived on a daily basis.
Jasson Schrock, the first designer at YouTube after its acquisition by Google, spent 1h each week with our founding product designer, Dominic. These sessions were invaluable for Dom as the sole designer, providing a sounding board for ideas and offering feedback on both detailed work and strategic decisions. This mentorship was crucial in shaping the design approach and strategy as we scale.
Eva Spannagl, ex-VP Strategy @Moss and cofounder @Climatos, and Mengting Gao, founder @KitchenStories, were pivotal in helping us shape our recruiting efforts and convincing candidates to join our cause. Mengting took the time do record multiple recruiting videos with us where we talked about our ambition, company culture, and the open roles at Root while Eva introduced us to multiple candidates and conducted final-stage calls to give candidates an outside perspective on Root and the team behind it.
Mike Rötgers, co-founder and CTO of cargo.one, has been relentless at the start of our journey to help us shape our engineering recruiting process, technical interview guides, and worked hand in hand with Mira (our first engineer at the time!) and Rodrigo (our CTO) to interview and convince some of the stellar engineers we have the privilege to call colleagues today! He was also a helping hand in convincing Victor (VP Product @cargo.one) and Veit (VP Sales @cargo.one) to join our latest equity round!
Jascha Romanski, Director of Customer Success @QYOBO and early team member @Celonis, worked hand in hand with our Customer Success Manager, Veith, to advise on Customer Success processes and the overall team setup. For instance, the two met in Munich to go over customer health score frameworks, candidate evaluation schemes, and team routines.
If you are excited to create more such stories and join our mission at Root Global, then apply to our open positions! We would love to get to know you better!
PS: Finally, for all those brave souls out there starting a company, there are some young operators and sporadic angel investors that were incredibly helpful and committed to us and would recommend anyone to get them on board right away: Robin, Jakob, Julian, David, Pico, Luka and Patrick.