20 VC 067: Scaling Startups Into Unicorns with Atomico's Mattias Ljungman and Carolina Brochado

Mattias Ljungman launched Atomico in 2006 alongside Niklas Zennström. In that time, Mattias has been involved with exits including Supercell (sold a majority stake to SoftBank), 6Wunderkinder (acquired by Microsoft in 2015), The Climate Corporation (acquired by Monsanto for $1.1B in 2013), Xobni (acquired by Yahoo! in 2013). Mattias works closely with a number of portfolio companies on their expansion, including Truecaller, Klarna, Hailo, and ChemistDirect. Prior to launching Atomico, Mattias was the head of investments at CLS Holdings where he was responsible for the sale of Sit Up TV for $360 million in 2005.

Carolina is Vice President @ Atomico, working on sourcing, evaluation and due diligence of investments. Carolina is based in London, however she travels frequently to Latin America to evaluate opportunities for Atomico to help companies in the region to scale. Prior to Atomico, Carolina started her career at Merrill Lynch’s investment banking division before moving to private equity firm Madison Dearborn Partners.

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In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

1.) How Mattias and Carolina made their way into the VC industry with Atomico?

2.) How important is it for VCs to have entrepreneurial backgrounds?

3.) What advice would Mattias and Carolina give to anyone looking to enter the VC industry?

4.) What is Atomico’s selection criteria? Average cheque size? Round preference? Sector preference?

5.) Why is now the best time to be a European entrepreneur? What has changed?

6.) What does it take for a tech ecosystem to thrive and grow?

7.) What is required for startups to scale from small markets to mass market adoption?

Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:

Mattias’ Fave Book: The Girl Who Saved The King of Sweden by Jonas Jonasson

Carolina’s Fave Book: Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt

Mattias’ Fave Blog or Newsletter: Benedict Evans

Carolina’s Fave Newsletter: The Skim, Dan Primack: TermSheet

Atomics’s Most Used Productivity Tools: Wunderlist, Evernote, Pocket, SmartNews

Atomics’s Most Recent Investments: TrueCaller, GymPass

As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC, Carolina and Mattias on Twitter here!

For a more colourful image of Harry and maybe some mojito sessions, follow Harry on Instagram here!