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#27 Ander Michelena: Scaling e-commerce from 0 to $100M+ sales, being acquired by Ebay for $165M and launching the biggest Spanish debut VC
Founding Partner at All Iron Group (investment firm including VC and real estate with €250M+ AUM), ex Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Ticketbis (platform to buy and sale tickets to events, acquired by Ebay)
We are Pol Fañanás and Gerard García, two friends passionate and curious about tech, startups, and VC sharing views from exceptional people creating the future. Thanks for reading!
Ander Michelena is one of the Founding Partners of All Iron Group, an alternative investment firm including Venture Capital and Real Estate, with over €250M AUM. In VC, All Iron stands out for being the biggest 1st time fund in Spain, a clearly defined “help but no interfering” approach and its unique operator insights that are leveraged to help their portfolio companies scale.
Previously, Ander was the Co-Founder & Co-CEO of Ticketbis, a secondary ticketing marketplace born in 2009 that scaled from nothing to $100M sales in 40+ countries until it was acquired in 2016 by eBay for $165M.
Ander started as an Investment Banking Analyst at Morgan Stanley and studied Business at Universidad Pontifica de Comillas.
Summary
👤 Story: Spain, banker, founder, $165m exit, VC founding partner
🥇 Win: building and scaling Ticketbis, selling it to Ebay
🚫 Fail and lesson: lack of product focus in Ticketbis
🚀 Great founder: execution machine, top hiring, fundraising
💸 Great investor: not interfering at all, helping if asked
📈 Markets: web3, specially metaverse and NFTs
🦄 3 startups: Jobandtalent, Preply
👍 3 investors: Jose Marin (FJ Labs), Sequoia, Tiger
📖 3 books: Lord of the Rings and other fun stuff, no work related
What is your story?
I was born in Bilbao, lived 9 years in Madrid, studied at Lycée français and then did a BBA at Universidad Pontifica Comillas. While at uni, I started to see movement in the entrepreneurial ecosystem, stuff like Tuenti being built. More importantly, I met a wonderful woman with whom I have four kids.
After graduating from university, I started working in investment banking but the entrepreneur vibe was already growing within me. I had no one in my family doing anything similar to that but I wanted to try, however I thought I had to learn more so I joined Morgan Stanley with the idea of being there 2-3 years doing M&A and then going out and build something.
Since the second year working there I started to see that the intensity of the job was only increasing, and even though I was learning a lot, the fire to do something on my own was getting stronger. As a result, I started to brainstorm about potential projects, with the support of friends such as Felipe Navío from Jobandtalent, and I ended up connecting with Jon Uriarte to launch a startup named Ticketbis which mainly was a webpage to buy and sell tickets.
The idea came after a bunch of hours studying early stage ideas that could make sense in Europe and seeing a problem without a solution. In 2009 after the financial crisis we left the bank and started Ticketbis, we launched the site in 2010 and it was quite complex to get the initial funding after such a crisis while also the Spanish ecosystem being so immature. Almost nobody was investing! Kibo Ventures, Bonsai, Cabiedes … really few investors then.
The 1st year we did €1M sales, the 2nd €5M, the 3rd €12M and then €28M and €56. Almost 100%+ YoY constant growth since the early days. Internationalization also was a key asset for us, starting in Spain, using Portugal as a test and then opening UK, France, Italy, LATAM and even Asia. In 2014 there were very few e-commerces with the guts to go to Asia but we tried and opened Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong. And then we did Australia and New Zealand too. Thanks to hiring top local teams and developing a replicable well engineered sales machine, we obtained a pretty interesting execution of our international expansion.
In that same 2014, we got approached by eBay and the story is actually quite fun. In my first contact with them, they clearly expressed interest to meet with us, so I was thinking “wow that’s cool”. They invited us to Wimbledon, football, great restaurants - all the full pack VIP type of thing. Anyway I was so hyped that I came back to the office and one of my team members was like “did they said something about an acquisition?” and I thought “damn, forgot to talk about that”. Later on, I understood that was their way of fishing the feeling of our culture in order to get to know more about who we were not just on a professional level but on a personal one too.
In 2015, we finally got an acquisition offer and we rejected it. For us the 1st offer was ridiculously low and we answered with a clear no. We thought that if they were truly interested, rejecting the 1st offer would give us a stepping stone to go up in price and if they were not, no problem, we continue with our vision and prepare a powerful funding round. But to be honest, given the nature of that offer, we felt like that was it, no second chance would come.
So we launched our 1st big round, talked with lots of funds, advanced significantly in the fundraising process, and while we were in a roadshow between London, New York and San Francisco, once in SF I got contacted again by eBay to have lunch with them. A guy from Bilbao like me can’t simply just reject free food, so we met. They changed the whole team, told me they were wrong with the 1st offer and asked me what was my price to close the deal. I told them 3x-4x the previous one, they asked me to help them understand the price and I mainly said “Take it or leave it, this is my round price right now. If you want to buy in the future the price will be at a whole other level.”. I came back to Madrid from SF again thinking that nothing would happen, and after 2 weeks they wrote us with a 3x offer. We said no. They went up again. We said no again, but this time was a “light no”. And then we got a new offer and we said yes.
Finally we entered in due diligence process in 2015 and we went through 9 months of complete hell. The process was so long and tedious that we closed the exit just 2 months before running out of cash.
When we sold Ticketbis to Ebay, we had to stay as lead of the international unit, mainly focused on doing Ticketbis in the UK and Germany for 3 years. We fought for our freedom and managed to stay only for 2 years in the company, which was important for us since being an entrepreneur and then working in a big corporation can be tough, specially when you are used to going fast and do everything yourself and suddenly, you have to adapt to your boss and play corporate politics. That was not our DNA so we were happy to be able to continue with our lives.
My Co-Founder Jon realized all of this before me and left faster than I did. I stayed a bit more, pushing against the wall until I saw it made no sense at all, so in 2018 I was out. We thought about what could be next for us and we wanted to invest in other startups (in fact we were already acting as business angels and we were getting quite a lot of dealflow because of our exited founder profiles), so it was kind of a no brainer to professionalize our activity and build a venture fund. Hugo Mardomingo and Diego Recondo joined and we started All Iron Ventures’ 1st fund in 2019.
We currently manage €200M+, we started with VC but also launched later a real estate arm with two main focuses - buying centric buildings and transforming them into short and mid-term services apartments, and managing building for third parties leveraging technology, automating as much as possible and improving margins.
What is the biggest win in your life?
Coming from a very corporate world and ending up being 20 something years old and getting people to invest money in you to build and lead your business - all of this limited knowledge of the internet, marketing or tech and figuring things out as you go while learning and growing along the way.
I very much value this whole experience of going from one world to another and realizing how gratifying it was to do it. I also loved working with other good people in the adventure of scaling up, opening countries and selling to eBay.
What is the biggest failure and lesson?
At Ticketbis, when we started, we wanted to launch a bunch of stuff early and fast, and a moment came when it was way too much distraction.
The marketplace was the core business that generated most of the money, however at times we experienced significant lack of focus since we had other business lines that even if less important still generated good results, up to €5M - €6M annual sales in some cases.
Finally we learned and decided to close everything except for the marketplace, thus focusing exclusively on that core product. The big lesson here was clear, do not bite off more than you can chew. If something works great, focus until the end and make it giant.
As founders we saw this clear and now as investors we try to keep that vision, looking for founders who are 100% focused day in and day out, until the end.
That being said, the moment of closing the side projects was tough, there were people we couldn’t re-use, we had to fire them, etc. Very complex situation but you learn a lot and thankfully, we finished on good terms with everyone.
What is your description of a great founder?
There are lots of important qualities, but if I have to pick one I’d say execution. Being an execution machine once you have the strategy and the market opportunity is absolutely key. Let’s go to A, if A does not work let’s go to B, if B does not work let’s go to C. Iterating fast and without stopping is a very relevant factor for a founder.
Then other thing that I believe is important to keep in mind: to be great at hiring and fundraising. Attracting talent and resources is a must.
What is your description of a great investor?
When we built Ticketbis, we looked for investors who did not interfere while we were working. We did not find anyone who knew about our sector so to hear stuff that wouldn’t make sense we’d rather have freedom to execute and not be slowed down by interferences. We were lucky and had some investors who didn’t interfere while supporting us a lot when we needed it, specially with key introductions when we were scaling up internationally. This is the ideal for me.
Consequently, what I appreciate the most as VC right now in All Iron, is to help but without disturbing. We let entrepreneurs fly free and learn from their mistakes, we will always be there for whatever they need but we will not be too noisy. For instance, a concrete example of this is that we do not really look for board seats, if they need something they can tell us directly. We believe this is quite unique and adds a differential value. In fact, his availability is something our entrepreneurs do appreciate.
As an extra factor, I’d like to add the fact that if an investor has previously been a founder, it is even better. In VC there are lots of PE/M&A/consulting type of backgrounds but few investors with startup experience, which I believe is an asset that can add an extra edge.
What markets are you most interested in?
We are going through one of the best moments in history to learn - more money, more drive to do big things, more skills to build impactful and scalable technology, great entrepreneurs, extensive markets, good ideas, exceptional fundraising opportunities … So I’m interested in quite a lot of things!
One of those things is the revolution we are experiencing related to web3, specially the metaverse and NFTs. The concept of the digital persona becoming more important than your physical persona, is starting to build a whole new reality layer that we can not even begin to understand.
I’m also very interested in the infra that makes web3 possible and acts as a catalyst for new digital projects to be created.
Not a fan of cryptocurrencies at all though, I might be wrong and it is a personal opinion, but too much of a casino feeling.
3 startups you like and why?
Jobandtalent. A startup making something really cool which I think will become the 1st Spanish decacorn. I know the founders and they built something amazing, turning around 4 really challenging situations and not just surviving but thriving. Great business model, proven scalability and as I mentioned, close to putting the Spanish ecosystem in a whole new level.
Preply. A language tutor marketplace and another of our portfolio companies (sorry for the PR!). The company is impressive and has been growing 6x since 2019. The founders are execution beasts with a great network and they have impacted a lot of lives in geographies where people have very low income and language learning can have a relevant added value to students while tutors can significantly benefit from being helped to connect with people that need their services.
3 investors you like and why?
Jose Marin (FJ Labs). Good business angel with very interesting approach. He helps if you need him but will not be interfering, he has with a great track record and also he was a Ticketbis investor who helped a lot.
Sequoia. I don’t know them in person but it is the classic mythical animal of the VC game. Anything they touch seems to turn to gold.
Tiger. I love how they disrupted the market and I had the chance to take a look at their numbers and I have to say they are pretty good. Tiger is securing 2-3x while getting in with bigger and faster money, breaking the game and evolving from fund to fund. New tickets, new valuations and new speed resulted in them single-handedly changing the industry. Additionally, the possible scenario of the VC paradigm changing and resulting in the asset class becoming more of a commodity that could end up with returns more similar to PE rather than the traditional VC exponential ones, makes Tiger’s approach even more interesting.
What books do you feel everyone should read and why?
You know what? I haven’t read almost any book about investors and founders, not because of some particular reason but I just prefer to read great articles that are shorter and faster and I’m always so busy working that I’d instead read something that can get my mind out of the work mood and into simply having fun and being entertained.
One example of this would be The Lord of the Rings, I read it, I fly out my busy mind and I love it. Being 24/7 reading about work related stuff gives me a bit of anxiety.
WILDCARD QUESTION
Given your experience as successful founder disrupting an industry, now that you are an investor what are your views regarding the current paradigm shift that venture capital is going through?
Each fund has to find its particular angle because everything is getting hyper competitive and if you are not able to be different you will be just one more. And this is only the start of the change in VC.
For us at All Iron Ventures, we try to embody what I mentioned of helping but not interfering, so we made the conscious decision of not leading rounds, not taking board seats in general and providing good platform services. This allow us to be cooperative with everyone in the ecosystem positioning ourselves in the international landscape as the investors who can help in expansion in Spain and also in LATAM due to our previous operating experience. And this is our edge to be different in this crazy market.
I believe each fund has to find its own way, there is not a unique path. Tiger has its own one that I mentioned before, the Sequoias and Accels of the game with their great reputation have another one, and in my opinion those who really are in danger are the ones in the middle. That is the space that is getting disrupted in VC right now. If you are there, you need to find a differential angle, you need to think about it a lot and you need to act because if you don’t, you are going to be left out of the game. Everyone should be thinking about fund strategy right now.
From that starting point and if we start talking about investment thesis, we find new challenges. If you are a specialist in a very concrete market, you can gather more specific experience and you can help more. If you are one of these traditional tier 1 monsters like Index or the ones already mentioned, it is natural to attack everything. If you are one of the new big players hitting hard like Softbank and Tiger, it makes sense to go after the existing tier 1s and challenge them. In any case, what is important to keep in mind is that everyone has to understand and decide who they are and who they want to be, but also get who they can not be. You can not be everything and risk succeeding in nothing, you cannot have $100M and invest in all stages, be a lead in everything and do all types of deals following the most generalist style possible. There will be room for a lot of players but the VC world is changing fast and if you don’t adapt and stand out, it is going to be tough in the long term.
And finally, regarding crypto … right now I’m not sure it would be a huge disruption for the VC business as we know it. It is my opinion and I could be wrong, but I’d need to see more data about returns on token-based VC investments to change my mind. Also, there are some qualitative characteristics versus equity like governance stuff (lack of control, etc) that makes me doubt about it substituting equity based VC. You can do a lot of money with crypto and a lot of super interesting projects are being born in the ecosystem though; it is just that I see it as a different thing.
Big thanks Ander for sharing your views with us!
Big thanks to you, reader, for your time and interest!
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