Sign In

Martin Schilling

Managing Director Techstars Berlin

Martin Schilling is a dedicated Managing Director at Techstars Berlin, angel investor, and entrepreneur with a strong belief in building 750 more unicorn companies in Europe over the next decade.

With a background of co-creating and scaling up ventures over the past 15 years, including Orphoz, a subsidiary for McKinsey & Company, MARA foundation in Argentina, and the FinTech N26, Martin is committed to supporting entrepreneurs in achieving their goals of creating category-leading technology companies.

He is the author of 'The Builder's Guide to the Tech Galaxy – 99 Practices to Scale Startups into Unicorns Companies,' a resource aimed at assisting startup teams on their journey towards success. Martin is passionate about accelerating companies that contribute positively to the planet and connecting growth with purpose.

His educational background includes a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) and a Master of Science (M.Sc.) in Operations Research & Decision Science from The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), an Executive Master in Public Management in Public Management from Hertie School, and a Master's degree in Psychology and Economics from Freie Universität Berlin.

Martin Schilling has held various key roles in organizations such as Managing Director at Techstars, founder & Managing Director at Orphoz, COO at N26 Group, and Engagement Manager at McKinsey & Company, showcasing his expertise and experience in the startup and entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Highlights

Jul 31 · linkedin

📚 𝗙𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀 - 𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗿𝗲𝘃𝗶𝘀𝗲𝗱 𝘀𝘂𝗺𝗺𝗲𝗿 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗹𝗶𝘀𝘁

In my opinion, these are 15 reading highlights for your relaxed summer days and nights. 👇

𝗙𝗼𝗰𝘂𝘀: 𝗙𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘀  👉 Andrew Wilkinson - Never Enough: From Barista to Billionaire Shows a great transition from founder to investor and how this can be achieved

👉 Walter Isaacson - Elon Musk Shows surprisingly (?) how much Elon Musk's companies are driven by purpose

👉 Bob Tinker, Tae Hea Nahm - Survival to Thrival: Building the Enterprise Startup Show tips and tricks to boost your growth journey as soon as you hit product-market fit

𝗙𝗼𝗰𝘂𝘀: 𝗧𝗲𝗰𝗵 𝗲𝗰𝗼𝘀𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺  👉 Kai-Fu Lee - AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future Highlights ten futuristic scenarios how AI will transform healthcare, education, employment - good inspiration for business models

👉 Ashlee Vance - When the Heavens Went on Sale: The Misfits and Geniuses Racing to Put Space Within Reach Documents the commercial space industry's rise

👉 Chris Miller - Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology Examines global competition over semiconductors and how dangerous this can become

👉 Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Clegg - The Formula: How Rogues, Geniuses, and Speed Freaks Reengineered F1 into the World’s Fastest-Growing Sport Details how tech-driven Formula 1 truly is

𝗙𝗼𝗰𝘂𝘀: 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽  👉 Edwin Abbott Abbott - Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions Shows the relevance of taking other people's perspectives (published 140 years ago!)

👉 The Arbinger Institute: Leadership and Self-Deception - The Secret to Transforming Relationships and Unleashing Results  Shows how to stay "out of the box" and practice empathy - in a polarised world more relevant than ever before

👉 Michael Bungay Stanier - The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever Highlight the relevance of coaching as leadership skill - often underused by founders, operators and investors

👉 Rick Rubin - The Creative Act Inspires to be more creative

👉 Caroline Criado-Perez - Invisible women Shows how to empower women even more

𝗙𝗼𝗰𝘂𝘀: 𝗦𝗰𝗶-𝗳𝗶  👉 Ramez Naam - Nexus Trilogy Great sci-fi series on a drug enabling mind-to-mind communication

👉 Blake Crouch - Pines A mindblowing sci-fi about a dystopian reality that unfolds in a small city

👉 Martha Wells - The Murderbot Diaries Series
On a self-aware security robot who prefers watching soap operas but ends up protecting humans and uncovering conspiracies

🌟📖 What book would you add to our reading list? I am thrilled to read some of your recommendations. 👇🚀

Jul 4 · linkedin

“𝗡𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗽𝗶𝘁𝗰𝗵 𝗫” - 𝗜 𝗮𝗹𝘄𝗮𝘆𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱 𝗶𝘁 𝗰𝘂𝗿𝗶𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝗳𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗼𝗿 𝗶𝗻𝘃𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘀 𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗱 𝗯𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗲𝗳𝘀 𝘀𝗼 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗼𝗻𝗴𝗹𝘆.

When making investment decisions, it’s often about assessing probabilities rather than a single red flag. Ever heard of Bayes' theorem? When a founder pitches, investors assess the startup’s probability of becoming a “fund returner,” using prior experience and patterns in the market, business model, or team. The more data you provide, the more you (hopefully) shift the investor’s estimate of your "posterior" likelihood of success.

The catch: Each investor has a different way of assessing your startup.

To shed light on this, we analyzed the success of 58 companies in the Techstars Deep Tech Berlin portfolio (2022-2024) against 17 investment criteria.

We identified the top 4 criteria most correlated with early fundraising success—and the 3 least correlated (see picture and the first comment below).

Here’s what B2B or Deep Tech investors (pre-seed) typically look at:

📓𝐁𝐚𝐬𝐢𝐜𝐬 ➡ Commitment: Are all co-founders 100% committed to the company without running side projects? ➡ # of co-founders: Do you have at least 2, but no more than 4 co-founders? ➡ Cap table: Do you and your co-founders still own at least 75% after your pre-seed round?

🛵𝐓𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 ➡ Product traction: Do you have an MVP that attracts customers? (often not possible for Deep Tech founders) ➡ Sales traction: Do you have LOIs, proof of concepts or paying customers? ➡ Fundraising traction: Have you attracted angel investors, secured grants, or have soft commitments?

💡 𝐁𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐦𝐨𝐝𝐞𝐥 & 𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐚 ➡ Monetization potential: Can you get to EUR 100m in 7-9 years without capturing more than 10% of your respective market? ➡ Validated business idea: Have you done at least 50 customer validation interviews and secured some paid or unpaid pilots?

💸 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁 ➡ Market attractiveness and timing: Are there strong market and regulatory tailwinds and a clear “why now” story?

👩‍💻𝗧𝗲𝗮𝗺 ➡ Domain expertise (Founder-market fit): Does your team have prior experience, degrees (MSc, PhD), published papers, or a network in the relevant field? ➡ Completeness: Do you have both strong business and technical expertise on your team to bring the product to market? Do you have one CEO, one CTO? ➡ CEO Sales skills: Can the CEO pitch well? ➡ Ambition: Do you have “VC-level” ambition to build a unicorn with an aggressive plan for profitable growth? ➡ Tightness: Do you and your co-founders have a long-standing (>9 month) working relationship? ➡ Co-location: Are you and your co-founders located in the same place and working face to face? ➡ Speed of execution: Does your team hustle to make visible progress on product, fundraising, and/or sales within days, not weeks?

Martin Schilling
Add to my network

Location

Berlin, Berlin, Germany