Cristobal Alonso, investor at PROW 2025 Timișoara: ”I hate the unicorn terminology”

Cristobal is a General Partner in two active funds of Startup Wise Guys, the most experienced B2B accelerator in Europe, Challenger Fund 2, and Wise Guys Cyber and Defense. 

Previously, leading as Global CEO of the accelerator, he was in charge of the company's expansion from Estonia to become a European and Global powerhouse, and also leading several corporate innovation initiatives, both in the public and private sectors. 

He is known as El Patron in this startup world, having seen more than 10.000 pitches  and invested  in more than 400 companies. He isnt a fan of the unicond word and concept, but he is a strong advocate of ambition, resilience and failure as a measure to success. He also strongly believes that any entrepreneur or investor must define its own succes and then pitch it to the family and to the partners to see if theyr in full alignment  when the boat hits rock bottom to always have this north star in the form of a clear definition of success. 

You can read some of the highlights from our PROW talk on stage with the investor and also listen to the whole discussion in the video. Also, if you're a founder in need of guidance, money or connections, you can reach out to Cristobal, he actually encourages you to do so. 

Below you will find the most important things he said, direct quotes from the mind of one of the most important investors in Europe.  

We should stop using the word digital. To me, it's about how can we make products that people want. It's actually products that are thinking about the customer journey from the beginning. 

Make specifications for functionalities. What do you need for that? Think about the customer. So I think there is two things that I would say that make the top of those goods. 

One is understanding the UX, the digital journey of the customer. 

Secondly, understanding defensibility.

Because in a world in which every product can be replicated with AI within two days, apart from the UX, that you can actually have defensibility. So to me, products that are very good UX and understand how we're going to have defensibility on usability, I think are two of the areas to make good products, not good digital products. 

I'm going to sound so pedantic today in this one.

I don't give a shit about founders who make good digital products.

I give a shit about founders who build companies, great companies, which product is one side of it.

So we've been looking at CEE founders for a decade. I love CEE founders. That's where I have done 80% of my investments. So I know they can build great products, but can they be good leaders? Can they build good companies? Can they actually raise money to do it? That's what I'm looking for. 

I think by default that they make good products, right? And if not, my IT team, my tech team would say, shit, the intelligence didn't pass it.

So I'm looking forward to leadership traits. I'm looking toward ambition. Today we're talking about 10x. Can you do 10x every year? Can you, when I tell you that, don't start sweating and mumbling just thinking about it. Because I don't want 10x this year, I want 10x for 10 years.

You don't know the answers to that, right? But how do they answer that? How do they involve the rest of the team players answering the questions? What is their ambition level? Do they have something that is not money that is motivating them to do it. 

Those are the traits that I usually see in founders who might make it. They will make it or not, statistically it is very difficult. And I think one very important trait that comes from the region is resilience. So I think we see way more resilience in CEE founders, Romania included, than we see in Western Europeans. And I think that's very, very useful. 

The second trait we need to find right now more than ever is adaptability. Because you're probably going to have to pivot. Pivot is overused in the past, but again, with the whole AI part, you might have to pivot every six months, until you really get the traction. And especially if we invest in founders above 40. Below 40, I assume you are adaptable. You're young, you better be adaptable. But if we find most experienced founders, 40 plus, do they have the adaptability to keep changing every two, three months? 

And that includes also us investors. So I think looking at those two things, those are the traits that we are looking for and that I usually find in the founders who reach success. 

We invest in pre-seed. My job is to make sure you get to the 1 million ARR and you can make it to 10 million ARR. After that, I don't care. It's not my job. It's somebody else's job. So I make sure that every good founder can make it 1 million. Making it to 10 million is difficult. And that's what I'm also trying to observe when I'm making the assessment.

I don't give a shit if you're going to be a unicorn. That's not my job. And actually, I hate the unicorn terminology. But can you make revenue consistently and fast? And can you then multiply it by 10 consistently and fast. That's what I'm trying to guess and that's what I get paid for. 

Basically within 90 seconds and 3 minutes, we know we want to invest in you or not. That's how long it takes. The rest is to make sure that we're not making a mistake. So then we keep talking to you, to find red flags or orange flags, but then I pass to somebody else in my team to confirm or not. 

But in 90 seconds, I know if I like you or not.  

I want to probably ask you many questions to make sure that I like you more, right? So then I need to find a GP in my team who really dislikes you. So I ask you a lot of questions to confirm that they don't really like you. And then we're going to have a fight, right? And that's what enriches the discussion.

But my key thing is ambition. And something that backs your ambition, that you're going to make it, that you really love to tackle this problem, that you really understand the customer on this problem, and that you really like the people you're working with to tackle this problem. That's how we spot the diamonds in the rough.

When I look at AI, I think software. To me it is a bullshit word. If you don't use it, rebuild your product from scratch again with AI. So you just have to use it. 

I think what I'm looking at is data models. And actually, do you have an opportunity to create something? I wouldn't say proprietary, but can you enrich your models with data that you actually have and others don't have? Can that give you defensibility?

Can you learn faster and can you create a better customer journey by understanding the data? Will you have access to the data? So that's what I'm looking when people start pitching me AI, blah, blah, automation, etc. 

Will that be better and can you actually quantify it versus the current process? 

Do you at least have a hypothesis how you will quantify that your model is better?

That's what I'm looking to spot bullshit versus reality. 

This is a small region: Timisoara is a small region, Romania is a small region, or even the CEE is a small region. So we need volume. Without volume, there is no gain. We need pipeline. If you talk to any VC coming up, the main issue is: ”is there enough pipeline”?

So we need volume, then we will specialize. Then maybe we get two or three companies who become very good in a particular industry, and that success will replicate.

Of course, if you have industries with large enterprises, that you can actually create around them something, if you have very large universities that are very good at something, likely that will lead some specialisation.

We need to get volume to specialize. 

I was looking at the statistics. About 16% of university students create their own companies. So when we get to 40% of students creating their own companies, then we're talking. Then we can start specializing. Then we're getting volume. So as long as you guys want to work for the government, for banks, or for software companies, we're fucked.

As an industry that invests in talent, we need talent to create their own companies as fast as possible and we need to create the mechanisms, capital, education, to do it as fast as possibly. Volume first.

Professionalism. 

2015, we had our first bootcamp and thinking about their pitches, this was so small, this was amateurish. The founders have learned a lot. 

People pitch much better, people understand much better, the tools out there to get data are completely different. So we say we are in a much more professional environment. That's the biggest difference. 

I still see the hunger level, so that's good. That's something I don't think we have lost. I start seeing people that think bigger, or believe in bigger, they can be bigger than before. And I see way more capital. I think access to capital in the region is completely different from 10 years ago. 

Success calls success. The more companies that we have doing well, the more private investors are going to put money, the more small countries that go through the startup ecosystem like Estonia, the more motivated governments to put money there and not to put money in outsourcing or in other type of industries.

Education. I think every university today that does finance economics needs to talk about entrepreneurship. That was not the case 10 years ago in many places. So I think that is a big change.

I think people see right now entrepreneurship as a vertical, as a professional journey. And I think that it's a fundamental part because we're going to be working until we're 70 or 80, so we better actually learn how to create our own companies, because many of you will never be hired by anybody, ever. You will hire yourself, you will be working in teams that move constantly.  

It will be like in the movies: you get called, you make a movie, two years, finish the movie, make another movie, you will never work for a company with a salary. You will always be a contractor, a team, right? And I think we need to adapt to that model. 

But this deals with uncertainty in a completely different way. And I thing we need to all teach our kids that uncertainty is good. And that uncertainty brings advantages. And if we teach that to them, the next generation will be better because they are not facing an easy journey. 

Forget about China, forget about the US, and start creating our own culture. Because I'm tired of Silicon Valley, now China. So if you do that, compare to these two, we are fucked. It's over, game over, they won, that's it, let's retire and cook good food until we die.

So let's forget that part. But we need to be way more ambitious. We need to believe in ourselves way more. So that's the number one thing. 

I think Western Europe and Eastern Europe, the resilience is completely different. 

In Western Europe, we're comfortable people living a nice life. And that life is over. So either adjust to that quickly, or we're going to suffer. I think here, because of the political, geopolitical past and present, I think the resilience level is much higher. I think that's very important. But I think we need to build ambition. And to be ambitious, you need to fail.

Failure is not in the educational system of any European country. So we need to accept failure much more. We are overprotecting kids. Let them fall. Did they break their head? No. Okay, that's fine. The way we don't let teachers already say bad things to them. Oh, you humiliated my kid in front of the other colleagues. So what? My kids use the word bullying, every second interaction No, that's not bullying, honey, that's no bullying. Bullying is something very different. 

So I think we are labeling things, we are overprotecting, which means that failure is very difficult, right? So I think failure and ambition are two things that go together that we need to do way more of it. The only failure is death. The rest is a journey. 

At some point, it's just too comfy making a nice salary, you know like: ”I'm working too much, and I just want somebody to buy me and to have a couple of million in my bank account”. 

The most difficult thing for us to assess when we invest is: will this founder, when they get the 10 million euro offer, and he owns 80% of the equity, set for 8 million? Because then we are fucked. Because as an investor, a 10 million exit where I invested that 4 million is failure. I don't do anything with that. So I need to say to that guy: I'm worth 150. I can build something much bigger, much more impactful. But it's super difficult because 8 million in the bank account, after I worked so hard for three years...man. 

I would love to be more capital in Europe. I hate the whole, ”we need to go to San Francisco, blah, blah, blah” bullshit. I think we can make it in Europe. It's more difficult sometimes. Yes, but we live much better. Much better food, much better education, much more secure, much better nature. So there's a lot of things why to stay here. 

There is enough money, it's just broadly put in the European context, but money is there.

But we need the ambition to keep growing. We need the ambition, to want to buy companies, not to get bought by companies. And go through that, we need that. And I think we need society to be proud of successful people and not to be envious of successful people. We should be very proud of successful people. 

We need to create more success and more role models out of people who make it. Might be money, might be employment, might be leadership. That's what we need more. I think that's why we are not scaling now, one of the reasons.

In all ages and in all levels, redefine success. Success is not just making a journey. There are many ways to be successful.

And I think it's also redefining success personally. So when we start the journey, we should ask ourselves: what is success to me in this venture? 

I was thinking that because we are launching a fund in the region and asking my partners, what is success for them? And I thought, we need to define our brand and we need to talk about this.

And we haven't had that conversation, because that conversation needs wine, hours and tranquility. But you should ask yourself, what is success for me? And secondly, go home and ask your partner, what is success for you? Because we are going to be in this journey together and hopefully talk to your kids and ask them what is success for us in this venture? Because you are a team and you're going to be there for 10 years together and I don't think we ask these questions hard enough.

That will allow you when you're in the deep shit, talk to your partners about why we continue together, why are we going to fight one more time and that comes with a lot of these conversations in advance, right?

We're already launching a fund here and launching two new funds. So I'm going to be a GP in three to four funds.

Reach out. LinkedIn, WhatsApp, World Networks. I don't answer, reach again. I will answer you. I answer all the questions. Always. Sometimes your messages didn't go through, right? But at the end of the day, be persistent. Show me your passion. And find me.

What I can do most is connect. I can give you feedback and I can connect you with people. Those are the two things I think I do well. But sometimes you don't have the time and when you have it, you have to do it.

So if you're an entrepreneur, chase me. Politely, but all the time, until you get an answer. And if you don't do that, you don't deserve feedback, you don't deserve money, and you won't make it. It's as clear as that. Not with me, with everybody else, but that's a trait that shows me this person wants it enough. 

You need to chase opportunities. The opportunities are not coming for you. They're uncomfortable. Get out of your fucking comfort zone. Especially, ignore AI things. Talk to people. I send an email, call them, go to a meeting, chase them. They go where they smoke, that's where you find the people. 

So don't forget that human interaction will beat AI. Human interaction becomes a premium in the AI world.