EUVC #250: Ondrej Bartos, Founder of Credo on Building A Venture Firm with A Lasting Legacy

Today we have Ondrej Bartos with us. Ondrej is a Founding GP at Credo Ventures, a 75m€ Seed stage venture fund in Prague (and a bit elsewhere!) to back Central Eastern European Tech Startups.Credo are investing out of Fund 4 with a total 250M€ AUM and an established portfolio of 60 companies and notable investments including UI Path, ProductBoard, PriceFX, Resistant AI, and Eleven Labs.


Chapters:
00:00:00 - Ondrej & Credo Bio
00:00:41 - Announcing Roundtable on The Evolution of European Venture
00:04:06 - How Ondrej Got Into Venture
00:06:34 - Pivotal Moments in Venture Investing
00:09:18 - The Challenges of Being an Entrepreneur and VC
00:12:07 - Struggling with Success and Collaboration vs Competition Among VCs
00:14:31 - Maintaining a Calm & Collaborative Approach in Competitive Deals
00:16:58 - The Transformative Power of Success
00:19:34 - Managing Expectations and Transparency
00:22:17 - Collaborative Competitive Rivalry
00:24:44 - The Meaning of Credo
00:27:15 - Supporting Entrepreneurs
00:29:32 - The Importance of Passion and Hard Work
00:32:15 - Respecting Reshma and Co-Investing
00:34:44 - Staying as a Seed and Pre-Seed Fund
00:37:13 - Building Towards a Franchise
00:39:53 - The Logic Behind the Crossover Fund Experiment
00:42:26 - Creating Relationships with Late Stage Investors
00:45:08 - Failure in Internships and Startups