Daniel Tomov is the founding partner of Eleven Ventures – one of the most active early-stage venture capital funds in Southeastern Europe. Since 2012, Eleven has invested in over 200 startups, helping shape the regional startup ecosystem — including Payhawk, Bulgaria’s first unicorn.
In the #307 episode of the Greg Albrecht Podcast, Daniel shares why he’s not a picker but a builder and how that philosophy changes everything about VC, founder support, and building lasting companies.
What you’ll learn in this episode:
✅ Why most startup boards fail — and how to build ones that actually work
✅ How Eleven supports founders before and after investment
✅ How many pivots does it take to find product-market fit — and are 24 pivots to unicorn a lot? (like Payhawk)
✅ How to decide when to pivot, persevere, or pull the plug
✅ What makes CEE founders unique — and what’s still holding them back
✅ How a personal health crisis gave Daniel radical clarity and focus
If you’re a founder, VC, or startup operator — this conversation will change your thoughts about early-stage investing.
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Transcript:
(This transcript is generated automatically and may contain minor errors)
Greg Albrecht: Today in Greg Albrecht Podcast, Daniel Tomov, the co-founder of Eleven Ventures, an amazing investment firm from Bulgaria that invested in almost 200 companies. And also one of them is a unicorn called Payhawk, a very special fund. But I will not tell you more before you learn about it from Daniel. Hello.
Daniel Tomov: Hi, Greg. Thank you for having me. It’s such a pleasure.
Greg Albrecht: I’m very excited to have you here. We had some conversations before and I felt it’s going to be amazing to actually have you here in person and discuss your philosophy, your experiences as an investor and all the rest. So the first thing that is very interesting, before we started, you said you are not a picker. but you’re a builder.
So I understand you are not trying to pick the best company like the majority of other venture capital funds, but you are trying to kind of build the best companies. What’s the distinction and how does it work.
Daniel Tomov: I mean, the major distinction is that there are two schools of thought in venture capital. So one of it is that we have to be very good at hustling and finding the best deal and to be the first to arrive at the destination.
And that’s why people invest a lot of money into networks, into tools to get to the best companies. So this is one theory. And then they say if we pick the best, then everything else will actually happen on its own. Now, the second theory is that, of course, you pick up something good and even great, but you put a lot of effort into actually building it along with the founders. And we very much believe in this theory because it’s like the difference between just having an idea and actually implementing this idea. And these days we see that it’s very important how you execute an idea. So it’s not just important how great your idea is, how unique it is, but actually how you execute on that. So we see a lot of failures in startups just because of the execution. So you might have a phenomenal team, but if the execution sucks or there’s something else that doesn’t work well, everything goes down the drain. So that’s why we decided to focus on building and to build the right playbook and the right infrastructure around founders that we work with. So that they could actually realize the maximum potential that they might have.
Greg Albrecht: So, you know, playbook sounds so great because every founder is somehow looking for a playbook. And of course, a lot of founders would say, well, there is no playbook if you’re building something new, something special. But I know you have built a playbook as Eleven and there is something special about it. You told me a bit about it. So could you explain what are the key components of the playbook and of your way of working with startups that actually make them collaborate with you and execute on some of the ideas or use the support that you offer. Because we all know founders tend to be very independent beings, which is great. But this might be also a challenge in terms of even using this support or believing in the playbook. So I’m curious about the playbook and how you make it work.
Daniel Tomov: When we say a playbook, it’s actually putting… all your knowledge in uh throughout the years all your experience from every single deal from every single situation in a systematic order because uh the knowledge in the venture capital industries is artisan knowledge so it stays with uh with particular founders so if a partner in a venture capital firm so if this partner decides to retire then the firm and the founders community, they actually stop having access to this knowledge. So what we do is not unique in a way. There are a number of great firms around the world that actually put a lot of effort in having all of this knowledge coming from the partners and putting it in a systematic manner.
So this is in a way, this is the playbook, or let’s put it, your own bible. So where you have all of this knowledge that comes from your own experience, from the founders that you invested before, and you make it available to all your founders. So what we have envisaged is that more or less doesn’t matter what is the industry, what is the project, but the path is more or less following the same principles.
Of course, each path is very unique. There are different challenges along the way, but the principles are more or less the same. So what we usually do is that when we meet a new team and we build a strong conviction that we have to invest in that team, so then we sit down with them and say, okay, listen, we have to have a plan what we would like to achieve in the next 100 days, in the next 12 months. So we sit together and we build this plan together. So we say, okay, this is what we have. These are the challenges ahead of us. These are the objectives that we would like to achieve. And these are the resources that we might need.
Greg Albrecht: Pre-investment is it part of the kind of investment thesis or and the pre-work that is part of due diligence or no you’re you’re sitting on it more after you invest it’s uh we start it’s a process but we start with uh before the investment because uh one of the major questions is okay how could we help these guys.
Daniel Tomov: I mean, if we work with these guys, do we have some unfair advantage, that is some know-how and knowledge or experience that we have and we could help them more than anybody else. Because this is part of our value proposition to the founders. And in a number of cases, founders do decide to work with us because of this. So we have a rough plan based on our conviction, what we could do for them, how we could actually help them create a great company. Of course, along the process, in collaboration with the founders, this becomes a very detailed operational plan. And by the time we invest, we already know exactly what we would like to do. And actually, the moment we sign all the papers, the first thing that we do with the team is to have an onboarding session of the new company, where we actually go through each element of the business. And we say exactly what we have to do, whether it’s about hiring, whether it’s about product, whether it’s about strategy, about anything. So we know exactly how to work and what kind of resources we have to bring to the company.
Greg Albrecht: And then we’re coming back to the second part of my question. So what if you realize that the founders do not comply with this vision and they may have their own opinion or they may… Just declare that they will be following the plan, but they’re doing something else.
Are there any ways of making them believe more in this joint plan and make them really execute. Because, I mean, these are the difficult parts. Of course, part of it is when you decide.
You try to pick the right, the coachable, the multiple, the reasonable founders. But, of course, this is like the first gate. But then you sit together. You create a strategy. You create a vision.
But in the end, it’s partially your vision, but it’s not your company in the end. It’s just part. Yeah. How do you work on this process to make it work.
Daniel Tomov: It’s a very good question.
There is no kind of a magic solution to that. And the reason is that by saying that we use this playbook to create this plan, it’s not our plan. It’s a plan for a company. That’s why we do it with them. And that’s why we start even before we make the investment.
In a way for us, it’s also due diligence on the team. I mean, if we start collaborating on certain ideas or processes and we see how they respond, how they engage, it’s actually early signs into how our collaboration would evolve over the future. So that’s why we try to, whatever we do together with them, it’s not something to impose on them. Okay, this is our plan for you and you have to follow it. But we say, okay, you would like to achieve that. So this is our idea.
So we go back and forth. They come with some interesting news. So usually we come up with something that, I mean, they have a good degree of buying.
Of course, in most of the cases, it’s not that people… don’t like to work on this playbook, what happens is that usually you set up a tempo that is very high. So sometimes founders could get overwhelmed with a lot of things that are getting around them. And you have a lot of unknowns and knowns. So sometimes you get derailed and not because you don’t have the desire to go for this plan, but there are so many other things that you have to fix on the way. So because of that, you get derailed. So you have to stop. You have to rethink the process. You say, okay, okay, if it’s too fast about this, or maybe you have to postpone this little bit and prioritize something else. And people got lost in certain directions, so you have to get them back on track.
And that’s why it’s good to have this plan, because you constantly could remind yourself and the whole team what we would like to achieve. And sometimes you might get… What usually happens is that… The biggest derailing comes from the lack of product market fit because we usually invest before you have a perfect product market fit and suddenly you understand that it’s not there. Then what. Then obviously you have to change the plan. And sometimes changing the plan or pivoting takes some time. I mean, just a good example is that PayHawk did 24 pivots before they came to the right product. Okay, they were kind of doing this very fast, but some teams are not as fast as PayHawk, and it might take a year, year and a half, and you get extremely derailed.
Greg Albrecht: That’s an amazing case because I think it will lead us to another question behind the question, which is a great case. I’ve seen investors, I’ve seen board members getting stressed, freaked out, irritated over one pivot, over lack of product market fit, over the challenge of not having the product market fit. For many reasons, like fear of losing whole capital, necessity to invest more in the thing that really actually doesn’t work, etc.
These are real pressures. But in the end, of course, there are successful cases and unsuccessful cases. So tell me about the role of the board over a small startup like this, early stage startup, and how to manage that. you know, the mentally managed, the lack of product market fit and this pivot and some kind of pressure that is obviously at the back of your head because you are supposed to return the investment to your LPs, right. So how does it work and how to properly buffer the pressure from the LPs to the founders while they are searching for product market fit. Yeah.
Daniel Tomov: First, you have to start with the concept that venture capital is not about protecting the downside, but it’s about optimizing the upside. So you entirely focus on the upside. Second is that it’s not guaranteed that everything will fly. Even if you go to the shop, to the gardening shop and you buy seeds, you see on the back of the At the end of the lot, it says like 85% of the seats will actually blossom.
And you don’t know if they blossom, whether one will be this big or that big. So it’s nature. So in a similar manner, you have to think about venture capital in the same way. And you always start with trust, trust in the team.
So you trust in this team. And you know, you trust that there is an issue that they tackle, that there is a big enough market. So it might be a matter of time. And we’ve seen many situations where great companies were born out of pivoting for two, three, four years. And, of course, you read in the newspaper something great happened.
Like I do recall an article in The Economist, which was the title was the 13-year overnight success of Netflix. So it takes time. So you have to have a strong stomach. and to be patient sometimes. Not everything flies from the first day.
So if you need to make a pivot, as a board member, you have to provide the framework or the right environment so that you could actually go through this as efficiently as possible. And you should… provide the right environment of boldness for the founders, which means support for the CEO, so that they could make this experiment and they could learn from them. I mean, we will be concerned, not from the failures, but from the lack of learning from the failures.
This would be our concern. So recently we had a very interesting case where a company that we invested was struggling for three years to find its product market fit. And of course we were supporting them because we knew that it’s an industry ready for disruption, but we didn’t know, and the founders especially, they didn’t know exactly how best to build the product. But then, after numerous discussions and experimenting and experimenting and listening to the customers, actually they embedded finance into their product. And suddenly, like a wildfire, the sales grew up. And now it’s an amazing success. But it took three years. Mm-hmm. And I think that what we’ve learned is that you have to help the founders stay disciplined, stay focused, and provide them with all the tools necessary to work through the customer needs, understanding better the customers as efficiently and fast as possible. And then it will come.
Greg Albrecht: Yeah.
Let’s stick to the topic of the board because we’ve seen founders being terrified by board members or even sometimes companies closely or being even killed by board members or investors. I’ve participated in one project like this and this is just terrible because you see something working, you see people involved and you see somebody who’s like, I don’t want to think about it anymore. I have my own vision. I know better. I know better. I’ll tell you how to do it. Just, you know, micromanaging from the board is from a supervisory board. It’s just, I mean, it’s funny slash terrible. And then I know you put some effort with you, with your colleagues to create a playbook, a board playbook, or what are the golden rules in your, in your premier experience in how to be a good board and, So could you emphasize a bit on what are the most important things any potential board member or any startup founder or a company founder that would like to start a board, what they should look for and what would be the few things you would focus on that make up for a good relationship and a supportive board, not a destructive board.
Daniel Tomov: I should start with saying that we’ve written this playbook because we had experienced a number of horror-like situations, the way you described them, where uh, a number of board members actually will be having very bad with, with the CEOs and the founders, uh, funding team, mainly because, uh, they misunderstand, uh, the role. Because I think that if they have the right by, by your articles to, to be on the board, that you know exactly what, uh, it means to be a board member.
In 95% of the cases, uh, This is not true. So many board members coming from the VC world, unfortunately, they consider this as a reporting format where you have the opportunity to meet with the CEO and the CEO to report the monthly, quarterly, whatever results to you and answer questions. They don’t understand that actually this is the governing body of the company and you have fiduciary responsibility not to your fund, But to the company this means that you have to work. This is a collaborative body where everybody’s equal and the chairman is The one who actually a colleague that actually organizes the work of the others so actually the board should build the process and the procedures to make it possible, to increase the chances of success of this company, and especially to support the CEO. So this means that in many of our companies, we have overhauled the board meetings. So these are working boards where, for example, each board member has a role. For example, if the company is fundraising, So one board member could be in charge of this process along with the CEO. This means that they go together through the strategy. This board member who might be having a very good experience with that might be helping the CEO to prepare better for specific interviews, how to prioritize, what tactics to use.
And of course, they kind of convene the board every two weeks and they discuss the progress and they resolve any issues that there might be. So this is one possible role. Of course, others could be in charge of partnership. Usually the chairman should be the one that is working with the CEO in a way also like a mentor or a coach. So helping the CEO kind of anticipate what’s in the future, how they should think about certain challenges and to help with challenges with other colleagues or with senior executives.
There’s so many aspects. But most importantly, is that you have to have fiduciary responsibility to the company. And we often see, especially in specific situations where board members, if they’re representing funds, they actually prioritize the interest of the fund rather than the interest of the company. And if a board member from a VC firm does his or her responsibilities well, you’ll see it in the investment committee of the particular fund.
And for example, a very good example where a year ago we had phenomenally heated discussions about a follow-up round in one company. It was a very challenging situation and we were split whether we should further support the company or not. And the leading partner for this company, he was fighting like a lion for this company, which was The typical fiduciary responsibility that you demonstrated as a board member, you have to make everything possible for this company to be funded.
While everybody else, which was an investment committee, we have fiduciary responsibility for the fund. So we had this kind of a healthy tension of trying to find in a constructive way what is the best solution for it. So, that’s why we’ve built that. We followed the good example of Brad Feld, who wrote this marvelous book, The Startup Board, which was more directed towards founders, how to think about the composition of the board and what kind of people they should choose. And we upgraded with, okay, now we have the board. how we could help the board members to be good board members rather than be bad board members.
And also to kind of open, to make this discussion, to discuss openly that this is an issue, because what will happen is that there are more negative examples than positive examples, and that’s why founders often find the existence of a board as a nuisance. And And a distractor because they say, yeah, okay, I have to prepare another report. I have to meet these guys. I have to lose time with them.
There is no value from them. And you constantly hear that. And the board shouldn’t be like that. It should be one of your best resources that you have at the company. This is an extension of your executive team. And if you have the right board members, this is an incredible resource. And I could tell you that we had situations with our naming companies that… At certain level, at certain stage, we have not accepted new investors because we were not sure that the new board member would meet the expectations of the board.
So we have to decline the investment offer. And also, the companies go through different stages. So if somebody is good for a particular stage as a board member, they might not be the right one for the next one. And it’s okay to kind of recycle in a good way your board members and refresh and bring additional talent that you might need for the next one. And also board members should be mindful about their capabilities and even they should be willing to step down where they see that For the next stage, they should leave probably a space for somebody more experienced.
Greg Albrecht: There are so many modalities that it’s difficult in a lot of these areas of the investment. It’s difficult to upfront say what is right, what is wrong, except for some edge cases, obviously, like stealing or the frauds.
Yes. You know, your fund is a pre-seed investor, which is usually the riskiest in a way because you’re kind of just betting on the horse and there is not much out there. Probably no product market fit, just a thesis and a team. So the trust part and the people part is crucial to actually make the right decisions. So what are the… the methods that you are using to triage the better startups from the worst startups or the selectivest teams.
Daniel Tomov: Yeah, you’re right. I mean, when you’re that early… you have a very limited amount of signals to judge. It’s much easier later stage when you have signals from the market, you have data, there are more things to evaluate. But at the early stage, of course, the team is very important, but let’s leave it to talk about it at the end.
But you usually look at things like… What is the problem. Do you understand the problem.
Is it a major thing. Is it a market that is growing or declining. uh what are the trends there is there changing consumer behavior uh what is happening there you you kind of try to to analyze the dynamics uh uh there of course you would like to understand to what extent the team uh understands these dynamics uh and what they know better or they believe they know better than anybody else, or at least what they’re thinking about it. So you try to analyze the opportunity, the timing, and all that. Now, if we come back to the team, Of course, you would like to see whether this is the right team. I mean, the right team from many perspectives, like the right team in terms of energy, where they stand in life, in terms of all these qualities that all of us read every day, like resilience, ambition, understanding about the market, chemistry.
in the team. And that’s why we have this kind of a process that a lot of or if not most of the opportunities these days that come through reference from other founders. Because if we know that we have trusted somebody and this somebody is referring somebody, then this is a good starting point because you could reference these people. So what have they have done in the past, how they managed to overcome certain challenges, what they have achieved, what they think about life. how they were doing so not that this is a guarantee for future success but at least this is a good basis to kind of evaluate the team and of course you try to build a process where you would like to actually have a very good feeling about the people. So how they respond to ideas, when you challenge them, when you ask them to do something, when you talk to customers, because even in the early days, they still have some customers and they are talking to them. So you’re trying to understand how good are they with the customers. So there is a bunch of things that you go through in order to kind of evaluate where this is a good opportunity, but everything starts with the team.
Greg Albrecht: Are there some red flags that are not as obvious to everyone as the ones that you can read in the first online manual on how to find the red flags in the startup. Is there something that you realize from the perspective of years of selecting, like thousands of people, thousands of thousands of people you met to be able to invest in more or less 200 companies is is there something that you would kind of subconsciously intuitively feel which is not so obvious like i don’t know they have no idea what they’re doing they have nothing to tell in this category right they don’t have their track record they don’t they don’t know one another they’re so these are like the obvious things is there some kind of like a red flag that can show up and maybe it showed up and in your experience a few times.
Daniel Tomov: Usually the red flags are in the first moments, minutes of interacting with somebody. And usually then you have to be very sharp.
It could be in the way they do the handshake, in the way their nails were polished. in the way they kind of interact with others, whether they keep distance or they stay closer to somebody, in the first words, usually if something is wrong, you would feel it then. Because afterwards, you tune up to them. And then you start, because the…
The role of the venture capital is not to find 1,000 ways why something will not happen, but to find ways why something could happen. So that’s why you start thinking in a positive way. So you get tuned to these people. So it’s very important in the first minutes and seconds.
I’ve learned this from one of my first managers in my first corporate job, is that it’s very important when you go to a new place, look at how people maintain, let’s say, the area outside of the building, whether it’s dirty or tidy, etc., A very good example is I have a friend who used to be deputy governor of the central bank in Bulgaria. And once we had a late walk and he looked at the building and there were two clocks on two adjacent walls. And one of the clock was one minute ahead of the other. And he absolutely got shocked.
And he picked up the phone and called somebody that they should fix it immediately. And I said, listen, it’s 10.30 in the evening. I mean, nobody’s passing. Why the hurry. You could do it in the morning.
And he said, listen, if somebody passes now and looks at the clocks and sees that one is one minute ahead of the other and it’s not fixed by tomorrow noon, they will say to themselves, if they cannot fix one clock, how are they going to manage our money. So these are all parallels that are very important. Some people are even harsher. I have some friends that they say, if you’re not in a good physical shape and… If you look tired, then probably you’re not fit for a founder because this means that you have to have much more energy than the average person in order to succeed because it’s very hard. So you have to be in good health, in good shape.
That’s why it’s good when you go to somebody for lunch or whatever it is to see what kind of food they pick up. all these kind of non-traditional but important signals about these people. I mean, they’re at you towards life. Because the startup or whatever you build is not something that you do on your spare time. This is your life. When you talk to founders and when you talk, okay, tell me about your life, they’re really confused.
could tell you anything outside of their founder’s life. It’s mainly this. So that’s why you have to be sure that they are in the right state of mind for this now. So this is very important, yeah.
Greg Albrecht: Thanks. That was really, really insightful and really eyes opening, I would say, because a very non-traditional approach that actually, yeah, it executes some signals and intuitively it’s difficult to disagree that in the end, it’s very easy to later on try to convince yourself and kind of fix all the biases just to make sure you’re moving forward with the idea. And that’s the bad part. And it’s also with recruitment. It’s exactly the same.
Daniel Tomov: Maybe just to add is that in order to kind of build additional valve or let’s say additional… way to get out is that we introduce the the team at stages to the team the founders team so if it’s let’s say I work with a team for some time then then at some point of time there is a second partner who meets the team to see whether I have missed something or not. And then at this later stage, they meet with the investment committee where you have the rest of the team. So it’s something all of us managed to miss. So there are at least a few other people that have the opportunity to catch it.
Greg Albrecht: The power of the crowd. Yeah. And then…
When do you pull out the plug. Because you said you had a very rough discussion on whether to support the company further or not. And I believe, you know, at this early stage, especially the death rate is pretty high or statistically, at least statistics say, well, it’s a huge rate. Like the majority of those companies will not survive, not only not return, but will not survive. Yeah.
How to manage this moment. Because also, to give you a context, I’ve worked just with a couple of startups, right. But I’ve seen situations where you think, okay, is there going to be a pivot. And we believe they will find it. And then shall we put some more time and money into that idea. Yeah.
Or is it gone. And a lot of founders really ask me, very early stage founders, like, Greg, tell me, what is the moment when I should give up. I mean, it’s a weird question, and you don’t want any founder to give up.
But at the same time, maybe there is a moment where you, as a partner, as an investor, you need to give up, because otherwise you would have been a charity company, not a fund. So how… again, maybe some signals, maybe some kind of things that are not so obvious, like lack of traction. Okay. Lack of product market fit also maybe for some time. Okay. So is there something that is like a warning sign that says probably it’s 70% that we will not support this company any further.
Daniel Tomov: I mean, the first, which is obvious to me, at least from experience, is that when you start caring, when we feel that we care more for the company than the founders, then it’s obviously something is absolutely wrong. There are a number of situations where we get into situations where we fight more for the company than the founders. And we say, okay, this is your company. We own 10, 15%, but you own the rest.
Should be fighting five times more than what we do. And this is obviously a sign that we should stop supporting the company. Another signal is if, I mean, usually what we try to do if things are stuck for whatever reason, is that it’s great if there is a near-death experience for the founders.
Like they almost go bankrupt, they cannot fundraise, they have to take some tough decisions to fire some of the people, or they have to have a really tough discussion between the founders or whatever it is. If they manage to survive… then this is very encouraging and we are ready to support them. So sometimes we just leave them to get into that situation so that we see how they manage to survive. And finally, probably, is that Sometimes we ask ourselves whether we might have become delusional. I mean, that things are not happening, but we say, okay, the next big thing is just around the corner and there’s so many corners.
But this is when your partners come and you have an investment committee and they say, listen, I mean, we don’t believe anymore in that. Because the founders don’t demonstrate the fight. They don’t have fast execution enough. So they’re moving very slow. They look disengaged. So there is no need to support them. And this is obviously a very good sign as well.
Greg Albrecht: Thanks. You’re coming from Bulgaria. We met in Greece. You’re very strong in Southeastern Europe. So what are a couple of things you can tell listeners about this region and the kind of power of entrepreneurship in that very region. Contextually. the, the, the specialties or, or like the, you know, the, the uniqueness, the uniqueness of people in that area. And what are, what, what the capabilities do you see there. And, um, you know, it’s, what’s that, um, unique about it. It’s interesting.
Daniel Tomov: I, I, I wouldn’t say that, uh, there’s something more unique there than, uh, what I could see here. I mean, uh, this whole region is, um, you see, um, very intelligent people, very talented people that have achieved a lot. I mean, a few generations have achieved a lot over the last 15, 20 years, which we often don’t give credit to because we are too much fixated in what happens in Silicon Valley or somewhere else. But if you think about the achievements and the speed of achievement of what happened in our part of the world compared to everything else, This is unbelievable, absolutely unbelievable.
If you look 20 years ago, I do recall when Gil Dibner was making this deck every quarter with the statistics about the deals in Europe and Israel, and there was a segment for centrists in Europe. It was missing. You know why. Because there was nothing happening.
So you couldn’t see the dot on the chart. And now yesterday on Vesby, we had this deal room report. I mean, amazing numbers, amazing figures. And this happened over like 15 years.
This is truly, truly amazing. So I think that this is the unique thing about people hungry. People are extremely creative, very resourceful, something which is absolutely true for everybody, very resourceful. They could achieve a lot with much less than their peers from Western Europe or from the US. Now, what I see in the last generations, not only in the South of Europe, but also here, is that there is ambition and there is confidence. Because for a long period of time, if you recall, people were saying, ah, they don’t have the business skills, they don’t have…
No, it was not the business skills. It was the confidence. The confidence that something great could actually be born, be created in this part of the world. And because we have all these successes all around the region, and this brings confidence.
So people know… that they could achieve. And they become even more confident in their future plans.
So this is very important. Second is that people are very cosmopolitan. So for them, like moving to the US or back or going east to do business or establish a company is not a problem. I mean, in the past, people were thinking twice when they hear the idea of, oh, I have to relocate somewhere. It was end of the world.
Now it’s not longer the case. People are much more connected, much more versatile. They have a much better understanding about the product, which is truly amazing. And also they have a phenomenal tool in their hands, and this is the diaspora. The diaspora, which was something distant, something there, now it’s part of our lives. I mean, people are very well integrated.
Some people are coming back, some are going forward. But you have this kind of business as usual. So this is truly unique, and this is a very strong region. Now, what we discussed in Greece, and I would like to see more of this, is that actually these different hubs, if they start talking more with each other and start collaborating and helping each other, this would be great because there are great hubs like the ones in Poland, the ones in Greece or Bulgaria or Romania, elsewhere. But we have more contacts and more knowledge about what is happening in the U.S.
rather than what is happening around us. And the success of the region is actually through a stronger collaboration with all these hubs. And I see it in some companies. I see companies hiring product people from Turkey because if you look around Turkey, In all these hubs, people over the years, they built expertise in specific areas they became extremely good at. And you could actually leverage on this, whether it’s on commercial skills, whether you could leverage by sometimes the access to a big client in the US is probably just going next door and talking to a client there who is the highway to this client. And we already have situations where people sold the product to an international company in one of the countries here in the region, and it was so successful that it kind of deployed in the rest of the world. And it’s much faster than actually if you try to go through the front door of the headquarters in the U.S., for example.
So we have all of these assets here, but we don’t use them. and it’s high time to use them sometimes we dream of oh it would be great if we have a founder mentor from the valley and i don’t know what but next door you have a phenomenal founder from warsaw for example who has who has built one of the most iconic companies in europe And you could have a conversation. It’s a two-hour flight from Athens.
Or it’s more from Sofia, it’s two hours. But you could have a lunch and they could be your mentor. And this is a great opportunity. And we could have that conversation. And it’s much more valuable because building a company from that part and knowing the context and what you have to overcome, because you always start with a handicap here. And they already know how to overcome this handicap.
So this is the really invaluable advice. And I do recall one of our great founders, he was very successful doing now, he’s a serial entrepreneur. And once I asked him, what kind of podcast do you listen to. And he said, only about local heroes. The ones that actually you do, Craig. And I said, why. Why you don’t listen to all these podcasts from the US or elsewhere. And he said, because it’s different. I live there and did a business there twice, but it’s totally different to build it from here. And I would like to hear how all these people managed to do it from here.
Greg Albrecht: Yeah, relevance. Relevance of experience, which is so important, I agree, and also the relevance of network that you’re mentioning as well. I mean, it’s so much greatness under your fingertip, right.
When you just use your smartphone, you can connect and you can do it. I agree. Daniel, I love your visionary approach. That’s something so magnetic that when we first met, I already thought, well, this is just amazing because you can move mountains with your vision. I’m curious how the vision of Eleven came to life. What’s the story behind the name. Yeah. And how… and and the most importantly what survived from the original vision and the still part of the core of the dna so many years later today right um before starting 11 i was also a founder doing different things and uh i do recall 2000 when we.
Daniel Tomov: working with software companies and it was extremely difficult to find other peers to share experience with them to find investors or clients or get to access to at the market.
It was very tough. And in the early days, I’m not sure whether it was like that here, but there were no office buildings, so all people occupied these small apartments and rooms in apartments. And one day I realized we all suffer from this isolation syndrome. We are just in that room.
Nobody knows in the world that we exist and we are here. And we don’t know where the other people in the other rooms. So it was all this isolation.
Even in an apartment, you were isolated from the people in the other room. So I said, okay, whatever I built one day for Founders, I would like to help all these founders overcome all these challenges and become successful. So when we had this opportunity to create 11 and we were looking for a name, we actually came up with one of the guys in the room said, you know that escape velocity is 11.2 kilometers per second.
And then we said, okay, well, then we should be called 11. Because we wanted to build this organization that actually helps founders overcome all these challenges and they become successful. And that’s why our kind of mission is that We help, we enable, we empower actually local heroes to build global success. And we very much believe in local heroes.
We believe in the talent. And until today, this is all true. Whatever we do, we do it for the founders. We always, when we start a new initiative or we do something else, we always ask, is this the best way to help the founders. That’s why we started putting knowledge in systems, because we knew that this is a much better way to help the founders in a scalable way.
So it works until today. And another thing that we actually figured out early on is that 11 is a community project. The success of 11 is a function of how well we could engage the community. By community, I mean like founders, investors, mentors, partners, everybody. Because there was this great essay by Paul Graham, who said, everybody knows that there is a huge failure rate of startups.
But in Silicon Valley, it’s much lower. And the only reason that it’s much more, that there is an antidote here, And the antidote is the community. This is your safety net. This means that if you have a challenge, you could ask for advice and there’ll always be somebody who went through this, overcome this challenge and they could help. There are always investors that could invest at the right time. There’s already people that will help you. And I’m very happy when I see situations where a company’s fundraising and other founders, they open their roll decks and they started calling investors they know and say, listen, there is a great founder, a friend here who is fundraising. You should look at that deck.
It’s an amazing company. And things are happening this way. And I think that this should happen in every community. This should happen in our region as a whole.
We should be helping much more everybody else. Because last edition of ESBI, it was Marcin from OTB who said, you know, we have achieved very little in this address in Europe. I’m very, very concerned. I was shocked to say, what do you mean very little. He said, we are 15 times bigger population than Israel. and we attract, I don’t know how many times less capital. And he said, this is impossible. And I think that to a great extent is that we still think of like small hubs here and there. While if we start thinking, okay, it’s one region, we share a certain DNA, We really could help each other. And we are next door. It’s easy. And if we start to find more reasons to work together and engage with each other, I think that we could achieve much more.
Greg Albrecht: I love it. I sign up for it because I think it’s not only efficiency. It’s not only working with the probability of success, but it’s also joy and fun, you know, because I agree because we are. In the end, we represent a little bit different cultures, so we can also get inspired by one another. And even having that meeting with some of your founders, portfolio founders from different countries in Athens, it was super fun, super cool, and interesting to actually interact with people that are living a bit differently, although being part of this global melting pot and kind of playing the same game of startups, which is purely global. So I think this is a great… great vision and I hope we will you know we will be able to somehow push this idea forward because every big change starts with the vision and we’re kind of spreading talking about the vision and making it happen yeah it’s absolutely possible and I see more and more people are actually would like to pursue it because.
Daniel Tomov: One of the last times in Athens, people asked me, could you bring some of the great founders from Poland. This would be fantastic for us because we would like to see that there are good examples of success from the region, not from the U.S. or not from Israel.
And so other people are thinking along the same lines. And also there is a great friend and also an investor in our fund. He’s a very successful tech entrepreneur from Greece who wrote an essay more than a year ago who said, for the last 20 years, we’ve been building companies to sell to Chinese or U.S. bigger companies. But what if we change our mindset and we start building companies to stay for a long period of time. to build great sustainable businesses that actually start acquiring US and Chinese companies.
Greg Albrecht: Well, I mean, there was no better timing to say that than right now. I mean, now you have this project, Europe Initiative. Yeah, which is fantastic. Which is great. So you have people kind of waking up.
I think that there might be a renaissance of Europe, which I strongly hope for. Daniel, could you share… a moment in your life that has kind of had a huge impact on yourself because we had that conversation behind the scenes when you told me about something that honestly blew my mind that was related to your diagnosis with the situation and it opened so many questions in my head also. So could you just share this story so everyone can feel this and maybe have a reflection around it.
Daniel Tomov: yeah it was uh i mean i had this uh hiccup in life i say uh it was uh three years more than three and a half years ago i was uh suddenly diagnosed with um with a pancreatic tumor and i had to quickly decide what to do because uh It was abnormally big. Later it turned out that it’s a very rare tumor. I was lucky that it was benign. But see, I went through this very complicated procedure, as if a gastro-like procedure. So, I mean, apart from that, something interesting that happened to me was that usually people You know, most of us, we read a lot and we talk about how to be Zen and how to distinguish between important and unimportant things, etc.
And I was absolutely mindful about this. But somehow, it’s one thing to know it, it’s a different thing to live it. But something that happened to me is that in an unexpected way for me. I had a very tough recovery period, pretty long, I mean more than a year.
where it was, I mean, a decent amount of suffering. And actually, the only thing that you could concentrate on was actually the moment, the current moment. So you cannot think about the next 10 minutes or you cannot think about the next one hour, not to speak about next week. So suddenly, I mean, your mind is a very interesting machine. it becomes very clear things. Things become very clear. So immediately you say, this is important without any doubt, and this is not important. And it became such a phenomenal filter of like what you should do about everything, about any decision, whether it’s a decision in life, whether it’s a decision in business.
You receive a call, you receive an email, and it’s amazing, right. And this was a great lesson for me. Now, the unfortunate thing is that I realized that some of these great lessons we receive only for suffering. And we read about this, but we don’t want to believe it or we are not ready to go through this because we We’re kind of with different degree of achievement, but we become much more hedonistic in our lives than what used to be before.
But it’s very important. And I know that you are a marathon runner yourself. And you know that you could actually self-inflict sometimes suffering through very hard physical activity, training, a lot of restrictions and anything else which kind of brings this clarity to your mind. And this is another way probably to achieve it, but it’s not easy. uh but it was it was a very uh very interesting uh situation for me and i and i don’t know i mean i i don’t wish anybody uh something like that but actually going through such moments of realization it’s a it’s quite helpful probably there are people that manage to achieve it um through meditation or through something else. For myself, I haven’t achieved it before that in any other way. But it’s very interesting.
Greg Albrecht: Yeah, it’s so difficult for me to actually grasp it because one thing is clarity, which is situational, but then there is like the long-term decision-making, like did you re-evaluate your values through this experience or did you re-evaluate your priorities on a bigger scale. Or you said, well, I’m actually kind of my life is put into the right boxes, so I I love what I do in business. I love my family.
I love my hobbies or whatever that is. And you haven’t changed anything. So was there something that pushed you to a transformation and you have made some kind of re-evaluation of values on a higher level. Or was it just the clarity to make more short-term decisions and situational decisions.
Daniel Tomov: I wouldn’t say that there was a reversion of values. that much, but I removed the noise from my life. So I always thought and kind of preached that we should focus on things that bring progress. Because you often have days where a lot of things happened, you felt exhilarated, and when you sit down in the evening and say, what happened today. And you cannot answer the question. Nothing happens and you haven’t moved an inch towards whatever you had there so So and and I always wanted to move forward in whatever it is so suddenly I Realize that I should stop certain things like I decrease significantly social gatherings Because in most of these situations, you sit there, you have conversation that doesn’t make a lot of sense. And this deprives you of the opportunity to spend time with your kids or with your family or reading something, or moving forward. So I stopped doing that. And I feel very well.
And so this is adjusting of lifestyle. And the great thing is that I don’t feel guilty about it. I mean, before that, I was feeling guilty.
Because people say, okay, they invited me here, I probably should go there, I should go there, I should be everywhere. It doesn’t help, actually. I mean, and I have some very good examples of other people around me that actually speak less, but they work a lot and they deliver a lot. And it’s also about the noise.
I mean, too much speaking sometimes. So for me, I have more time for reading, for thinking. And I think that these days, people don’t allow themselves to think deeper on anything. It shouldn’t be just business-related. It could be about life. It could be about anything. And I think that this clears your vision, your understanding about things. It’s much better.
Greg Albrecht: So you cut the noise. You focused even more on what you enjoy doing, what you’re good at. And to me, you somehow… seem like an interesting blend because you’re kind of a philosopher, an idealist, but at the same time, you work in the area of multiplying money in a way, right. Because a fund is a multiplier of money. How to balance this idealistic vision of supporting founders, you know, changing the world, kind of creating this impact and this pragmatic area where you have to make the return to investors, fundraise, you know, and in the end, Not always would there be a 100% alignment between the big vision and the value and the return. How do you find your way in order for it to be successful from a big business standpoint and at the same time so meaningful from a philosophical impact?
Daniel Tomov: Listen, I never start with the money. I mean, for me, it was always a byproduct or like a KPI of what I have done. I mean, I was always interested in the first part. Because if you’re doing well, what you do, I know and it has proven all the time that the results are coming. And I think that you have to, from my point of view, you have to be very good at the first part. And the reason is that. And one guy put it much better than me that there are a thousand ways for a startup to fail and probably two or three ways for it to succeed. And now the art is how to find these two or three ways. And it’s very hard. as you know. And that’s why you have to be different in your thinking, maybe more philosophical, maybe more visionary, but you have to be totally into that. Because everything else, it’s a mechanics thing. it’s not that… It’s not creating the value. It’s not creating value.
Greg Albrecht: It’s not creating value. It’s kind of like just the mechanics behind the scenes, but it will not make the upside. It won’t make the real… It won’t create the real value.
Daniel Tomov: So we have to… Because, I mean, obviously, you know that in order to be successful, you have to… return the money with profit and all this.
We always try this. And obviously… And you’re successful. Yeah. And obviously, it’s full of very smart people. So it’s one of the… greatest competitions in life in a way and it’s very exciting but you have to be entirely focused on your kind of style let’s say or way of doing things because this is what actually creates the magic.
Greg Albrecht: What was the first moment when you thought about becoming an entrepreneur?
Daniel Tomov: It’s an interesting question. I always felt something entrepreneurial. I didn’t know how to call it because when I felt it, there was… know this term in our part, but I always tried… I was always kind of excited when I do something. And I was quite relieved when I talked with one guy, a very experienced VC from the US, and he said, you know, you’re an exponential learner, so there is nothing wrong about it. There are many people like you. And… And this is when I actually kind of felt, in a way, I felt peace with myself, that there’s nothing wrong with me.
Greg Albrecht: How could that be wrong?
Daniel Tomov: Wrong in a way that there was always this push that you have to excel in academics. Although I was very good at math, I… didn’t enjoy that much the although I was doing well but it was I didn’t enjoy the academic way of learning while I very much enjoyed the experiential learning when I do things and I learn and there were very few kind of ways I could practice that so the moment I understood that there is such a term experiential learner And I’m an experiential learner.
And it kind of is if there was opening the floodgates. I mean, then suddenly I started experimenting and I started entrepreneurial journeys. They were very tough for me in the beginning. But I had to go through all these challenges and obstacles like all of us. And I always like that. I mean, it comes very naturally to me.
Greg Albrecht: Tanja, what didn’t I ask you, but you think it’s important and you would like to share it at the end of our conversation.
Daniel Tomov: I really am very thankful for this opportunity. And I really would like to see in five years, for example, from now to see a situation where we have more collaborations in whatever shapes and forms between the different hubs and people have partners. So we have teams like now when we meet a team from the US or elsewhere and say, I’m from this country, I’m from that country, we met there. I mean, to see teams where we met in this context, and I’m from Bulgaria, I’m from Poland, and I’m from Greece, and you have a very successful startup.
Greg Albrecht: So I wish us this. I also wish you more opportunities to visit Poland and enjoy and get closer with the community. I’m sure anyone interested can reach out to you and kind of have a conversation or try to start a conversation with you or with your fund. Thank you very much for sharing also your personal story and all the tips and all the best for you.
Daniel Tomov: Thank you very much, Greg. It was wonderful.
Greg Albrecht: Thank you very much. Thanks.
