The Counder Podcast

Counder • The Network for Collective Understanding
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Collective Understanding, One Perspective at a Time. Everybody wants to understand what is going on in the world. We sit down with leading voices from across geographies, industries, and generations to unpack their perspectives — and bring their insights to everyone.

Episodes

  1. 3d ago

    €800M in Revenue, a $4.5B Valuation — the Round He Now Calls a Blessing in Disguise | Julian Teicke

    He scaled WeFox to €800 million in revenue and the fastest unicorn valuation in insurtech history. Then, as a $6.5 billion term sheet fell through, he raised again anyway at $4.5 billion — a decision he now calls a blessing in disguise, one that changed how he thinks about building companies entirely. Julian Teicke joins Tobi to trace the WeFox story from founding to the fastest insurtech ever to reach a billion-dollar valuation — an €800 million revenue run, a 1,500-person team across Europe, and valuations that peaked near $6.5 billion — through the 2022 down round at $4.5 billion that came bundled with liquidation preferences and set investors against each other. Julian reflects on that raise today, and how the experience reshaped how he builds: it's now the foundation of The Delta, the 15,000-square-meter campus in Berlin he's built to co-found and support up to 1,700 early-stage founders a year. A candid conversation about the discomfort every founder has to sit with to grow, why Julian trains entrepreneurs like athletes, and his campaign to make Berlin — via the BAD1 conference he pulled together in 60 days — the center of a distinctly European tech narrative. Guest: Julian Teicke, Founder, The Delta (Co-Founder & Former CEO, WeFox) Connect with Julian Teicke • LinkedIn Connect with Tobi • LinkedIn • Email: tobias@counder.com Follow Counder on: • LinkedIn • Instagram Learn more about Counder

    €800M in Revenue, a $4.5B Valuation — the Round He Now Calls a Blessing in Disguise | Julian Teicke

  2. 5d ago

    From Building Billion-Dollar Companies to Backing South Africa's Youngest Founders I Henrik Persson Ekdahl

    He's built billion-dollar companies across Europe. Now he's living on a farm outside Cape Town — and funding the continent's early-stage founders. Henrik Persson Ekdahl joins Tobi to walk through that arc: a sports-betting company he built with a Norwegian co-founder and sold in 2010 for close to €100 million — the biggest deal he'd done at the time — followed by Catena Media, which he took public in 2016 and which became the world's first billion-dollar iGaming affiliate company the year after. He's also backed other ventures that have gone on to reach unicorn status, including an early bet on a Spanish challenger to Klarna. In 2022 he relocated his family to South Africa, and this year launched what he believes is the country's first fund built purely to write the hardest cheque of all: the first one, for founders nobody else will bet on yet. A candid conversation about the failed startup that cost him everything at 20, why financial success was never the point of moving to South Africa, and what it takes to back a founder before anyone else will. Guest: Henrik Persson Ekdahl, Serial Entrepreneur & Investor, Founder of Oakvale Invest Connect with Henrik Persson Ekdahl • LinkedIn Connect with Tobi • LinkedIn • Email: tobias@counder.com Follow Counder on: • LinkedIn • Instagram Learn more about Counder

    From Building Billion-Dollar Companies to Backing South Africa's Youngest Founders I Henrik Persson Ekdahl

  3. Aug 20

    Africa's Most Active Seed Fund and the Exit Problem Nobody Talks About | Margaret O'Connor

    She chairs the most active seed investor on the African continent. Her discipline: never deploy a dollar until you can already see the exit. Margaret O'Connor joins Tobi to trace the route from a desk at the Korean Ministry of Finance and MasterCard's Asia-Pacific build-out to chairing Launch Africa Ventures, a fund launched over Zoom in July 2020 that raised $36.3 million against a $15 million target and now holds more than 180 investments across 25 African markets and 15 tech verticals, backed by 400 LPs from 45 countries. She explains why Launch Africa became the first fund in Africa to hire a head of exits, how secondaries and trade sales rather than IPOs create liquidity on the continent, and where capital is moving next: climate tech, agri tech, data centres and Francophone West Africa. Her conviction is that Africa needs to come out of the impact bucket. Fund One sits at 1.51x with 7% DPI in year six of a 2020 vintage, on par with top-quintile US funds, and Margaret makes the case that the continent offers profit and purpose rather than a trade-off between them. Guest: Margaret O'Connor, Chairperson, Launch Africa Ventures Connect with Margaret O'Connor • LinkedIn Connect with Tobi • LinkedIn • Email: tobias@counder.com Follow Counder on: • LinkedIn: • Instagram: Learn more about Counder

    Africa's Most Active Seed Fund and the Exit Problem Nobody Talks About | Margaret O'Connor

  4. Aug 18

    Building an Airline in the Middle of COVID and Why It Was the Perfect Time | Gidon Novick

    Nobody starts an airline in the middle of a pandemic. That, he says, is exactly why it worked: aircraft were cheap, good people were suddenly available, and the competition was struggling. Gidon Novick joins Tobi to explain how LIFT got off the ground, and why an industry that has collectively lost money since the Wright brothers first flew still pulls him back. He traces it to a childhood spent sitting in cockpits at the airport where his father worked, through kulula.com, to the four years at LIFT where the hardest days are the ones he now remembers most fondly, including the week the bank had not cleared the payment gateway while flights were already on sale. He and Tobi get into what actually makes airlines so hard: brutal fixed costs, volatile fuel, and the pricing discipline the industry keeps giving away. Most of his energy now goes to SA Harvest, a food rescue operation moving 30 million meals a year in a country where roughly a third of the food produced is thrown out while around 10 million people do not have enough to eat. Asked for the target, Gidon does not offer a number he is confident of hitting. He names the problem instead: billions of meals, in South Africa alone. A candid conversation about restlessness, why business is really just problem solving, and what a genuinely optimistic leader does to the people around them. Guest: Gidon Novick, Entrepreneur & Investor, Co-Founder of LIFT Airline Connect with Gidon Novick • LinkedIn Connect with Tobi • LinkedIn • Email: tobias@counder.com Follow Counder on: • LinkedIn • Instagram Learn more about Counder

    Building an Airline in the Middle of COVID and Why It Was the Perfect Time | Gidon Novick

  5. Aug 13

    Europe Has the Minds and the Capital. What It Takes to Build the Giants. | Dr. Hendrik Brandis

    Since 2011 the S&P 500 has run away from European stocks, three times over. Take the ten most valuable companies out of each index and the gap almost disappears. Dr. Hendrik Brandis joins Tobi to explain what follows from that: Europe's problem is not talent or technology but the absence of hyper-scaling companies — for Europe about ten of them, for Germany two. He names what holds Europe back: ambition that stops at a unicorn where the US treats it as the beginning, regulation that killed Lilium over a safety threshold a thousand times stricter than the one applied to helicopters, and capital, at 70 euros per inhabitant a year in Germany against 800 dollars in the US. He and Tobi also get into the space economy, Isar Aerospace's shot at a European launcher, and whether the two trillion dollars flowing into data centres will pay off. Hendrik calls himself a structural optimist. He came out of the dot-com bust as one of three German venture firms left standing from more than a hundred, learned early that money is shy and that no concept beats a track record, and still holds that Europe has the brilliant minds and the capital already. What is missing, he says, is the commitment. Guest: Dr. Hendrik Brandis, Co-Founder and General Partner, Earlybird Connect with Dr. Hendrik Brandis • LinkedIn Connect with Tobi • LinkedIn • Email: tobias@counder.com Follow Counder on: • LinkedIn • Instagram Learn more about Counder

    Europe Has the Minds and the Capital. What It Takes to Build the Giants. | Dr. Hendrik Brandis

  6. Aug 11

    85,000 Metal Fans in a Village of 2,100 and the One Thing You Can't Buy | Holger Hübner

    A pub idea in a village of 2,100 people. Thirty-five years later, 85,000 metal fans from more than 90 nations show up on the same field. Holger Hübner joins Tobi to share how Wacken Open Air went from that first edition in 1990 to a temporary city built across almost 500 hectares and ten municipalities. He talks about booking the early bands on a fax machine and his employer's copier, the near-collapse in 1993, and why they still run their own ticketing and merchandise to this day: nobody in the industry wanted to work with long-haired metalheads, so they built it themselves. He and Tobi get into how the festival actually works as a business, why they brought Superstruct on board in 2019, and what the 85,000 guests leave behind in the region. Holger's answer to the investor question is unambiguous: you can buy infrastructure, market rights and event capacity, but you cannot buy the feeling on the ground. The same conviction runs through how he sees live experience in an age of AI, and through the motto he has kept for 35 years: authentic, honest and loud. Guest: Holger Hübner, Co-Founder, Wacken Open Air Connect with Holger Hübner • LinkedIn Connect with Tobi • LinkedIn • Email: tobias@counder.com Follow Counder on: • LinkedIn • Instagram Learn more about Counder

    85,000 Metal Fans in a Village of 2,100 and the One Thing You Can't Buy | Holger Hübner

  7. Aug 6

    From a Special Forces to the World's Third-Largest Private Donor I Niclas Kjellström-Matseke

    He Took On a State Lottery Monopoly and Helped Build the World's Third-Largest Private Donor. Now He Carries Desmond Tutu's Legacy. Niclas Kjellström-Matseke joins Tobi to share his journey that can not be simply put into one box: 15 generations on a Swedish farm, a father from South Africa's townships, and a Special Forces unit where 93 of 5,000 made it through. He shares how a lottery startup in a Stockholm apartment took on the state's monopoly, scaled to almost half a billion euros in sales with private profit capped at around five percent, and helped make Europe's postcode lotteries the world's third-largest private donor, putting him in rooms with Mandela, Clinton, Branson, and The Elders. And why Desmond Tutu asked him to chair the Desmond & Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation: "You will never let me down." Guest: Niclas Kjellström-Matseke, Investor & Ex-CEO Novamedia / The Postcode Lottery Connect with Tobi • LinkedIn • Email: tobias@counder.com Follow Counder on: • LinkedIn • Instagram Learn more about Counder

    From a Special Forces to the World's Third-Largest Private Donor I Niclas Kjellström-Matseke

  8. Aug 4

    From the Cockpit to Africa's Biggest Online Payments Company I Eran Feinstein

    A Pilot Who Had Never Set Foot in Africa Took One Call From a Small Kenyan Airline. He Ended Up Building the Payment Rails for a Continent. Eran Feinstein joins Tobi to share how that call brought him to Nairobi, where no bank could process an online card payment, so he built the solution himself. That side project processed the first online card payment in sub-Saharan Africa outside South Africa and grew into DPO, at its peak the biggest online processor on the continent, moving billions of dollars a month across 23 countries. Eran and Tobi trace what it took: 23 regulators, a seven-hour wait at Nigeria's secret service headquarters, a fraud-prevention centre built from scratch in Nairobi, and a sale to Network International for just under $300 million, after which he handed the company to the African team he had trained. A candid conversation about Eran's conviction that Africa is not a country but a continent, the patience it demands, and what it means to build for Africa, by Africa. Guest: Eran Feinstein, Co-Founder & Former Group CEO, DPO Group Connect with Eran Feinstein • LinkedIn Connect with Tobi • LinkedIn • Email: tobias@counder.com Follow Counder on: • LinkedIn • Instagram Learn more about Counder

    From the Cockpit to Africa's Biggest Online Payments Company I Eran Feinstein

  9. Jul 30

    From a Conservative Youth Party to Europe's Biggest Cannabis Company I Finn Hänsel

    His journey started in a conservative youth party. Today he runs Europe's biggest cannabis company. Finn Age Hänsel joins Tobi to share his journey from that political awakening to founding Sanity Group in 2018, building against decades of stigma, navigating a regulatory landscape that shifts country by country, and educating the public on the benefits of cannabis. He and Tobi trace how the company's revenue has grown over the past three years, and where Finn sees it heading: a rise that speaks to cannabis as both a serious business case and a subject society is only beginning to make sense of. A candid conversation about Finn's conviction, the stigma behind cannabis, and what happens when you follow your intuition in your entrepreneurial journey. Guest: Finn Age Hänsel, Founder & CEO, Sanity Group Connect with Finn Age Hänsel • LinkedIn Connect with Tobi • LinkedIn • Email: tobias@counder.com Follow Counder on: • LinkedIn • Instagram Learn more about Counder

    From a Conservative Youth Party to Europe's Biggest Cannabis Company I Finn Hänsel

  10. Jul 28

    Africa's First G20 and the Bet on the World's Last Real Growth Market I Dr Anthony Costa

    He Brought Global Business to Africa's First G20. His View: Africa Is the Last Real Growth Market on Earth. Dr Anthony Costa joins Tobi to explain how he helped pull it off: building a lean secretariat from scratch, getting companies from other economies into one constructive process at a moment of real geopolitical strain, and channelling the work of eight task forces and 1,000+ contributors into recommendations that fed into the G20. Anthony shares his central conviction, that Africa is the last real growth market on Earth, home to a quarter of the world's people by 2050, and why the rest of the world is only starting to make sense of what that means. Guest: Dr Anthony Costa, Head of Secretariat, B20 South Africa Connect with Dr Anthony Costa • LinkedIn Follow Counder on: • LinkedIn • Instagram Connect with Tobi • LinkedIn • Email: tobias@counder.com Learn more about Counder

    Africa's First G20 and the Bet on the World's Last Real Growth Market I Dr Anthony Costa
  • 10 Episodes

About

Collective Understanding, One Perspective at a Time. Everybody wants to understand what is going on in the world. We sit down with leading voices from across geographies, industries, and generations to unpack their perspectives — and bring their insights to everyone.

Information

  • Creator
    Counder • The Network for Collective Understanding
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    10
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Counder • The Network for Collective Understanding
  • Show Website
    The Counder Podcast