Riding Unicorns: Venture Capital | Entrepreneurship | Technology · Riding Unicorns Productions

Building Europe’s Investment Rails with Martin Kassing, Founder & CEO @ Upvest

·39 min·2 clips

Martin says he still hires the entire exec team himself and does not work with recruiters.

1. Riding Unicorns: Venture Capital | Entrepreneurship | Technology features Martin Kassing and Upvest’s investment infrastructure for Europe. 2. Martin Kassing is Upvest’s founder and CEO, and the hosts use his background in tech, finance, Rocket Internet, and private equity as the setup. 3. The episode asks what it takes to build the rails that let digital banks, brokers, and wealth managers offer investing through one API. 4. Martin says Upvest lets clients offer ETFs, stocks, mutual funds, and other assets to end users. 5. He says the platform is meant to improve user experience and lower costs for investment products. 6. Martin says he started Upvest seven and a half years ago and that it is his second venture and second fintech. 7. He links the company’s origin to earlier work in tech and finance, plus a desire to build something from scratch and be independent. 8. The conversation turns to Shopco, his first exit, which started as a one-click checkout product in Germany and moved to California about half a year later. 9. Martin says Shopco taught him that product-market fit is hard, especially when clients do not use a product regularly or margins are weak. 10. He says the lesson from Shopco carried into Upvest: focus on the right product and the right market early. 11. Martin says people problems are still among the hardest parts of building a company, especially finding, growing, and sometimes letting go of people. 12. He argues that the first 10 hires need strong behavioral overlap and ambition, because they must multiply the founder. 13. He says it helps if candidates are skilled and understand the domain, especially on engineering teams. 14. Martin says early-stage recruiting is a sales job because “you are the brand” before the company has one. 15. He says he still hires the entire executive team himself and reaches out on LinkedIn, which he says converts well. 16. He describes his interview process as testing future plans, weak spots, reference checks, and a final six- or seven-person challenge with a strict “hell yes” rule. 17. Martin’s tone is direct and operational, with repeated focus on process, hiring, capital, and execution. 18. The format is a founder interview with long answers, specific examples, and several digressions into personal routines and team-building. 19. People building fintech infrastructure or hiring early teams will likely get the most from this episode. 20. Listeners looking for abstract startup theory or short entertainment probably should skip it.

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