Venture Everywhere Podcast: Nicolas Christiaen with Jenny Fielding
Nicolas Christiaen, co-founder and co-CEO of Donna chats with Jenny Fielding, Managing Partner of Everywhere VC, on episode 71: Hey Donna.
In episode 71 of Venture Everywhere, Jenny Fielding, co-founder and Managing Partner of Everywhere Ventures, talks with Nicolas Christiaen, co-founder and Co-CEO of Donna, an AI-powered sales assistant designed for field reps on the move. Nicolas shares his journey in launching Donna, inspired by a critical gap in CRM adoption among sales teams constantly on the go. Nicolas also discusses how Donna enables sales reps to update CRMs via voice, delivering real-time, context-rich insights that boost productivity and streamline sales operations.
In this episode, you will hear:
CRM adoption challenges for field reps.
Real-time contextual data enables personalized, proactive sales support.
Building on deep CRM integrations to ensure seamless enterprise deployment.
The future of hyper-personalized sales enablement at scale.
Donna’s vision of CRM evolving into a “system of context” powered by agents.
If you liked this episode, please give us a rating wherever you found us. To learn more about our work, visit Everywhere.vc and subscribe to our Founders Everywhere Substack. You can also follow us on YouTube, LinkedIn and X for regular updates and news.
TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00 VO: Everywhere Podcast Network.
00:00:14 Jenny Fielding; Hi, and welcome to the Everywhere podcast. We're a global community of founders and operators who've come together to support the next generation of builders. So the premise of the podcast is just that, founders interviewing other founders about the trials and tribulations of building a company. Hope you enjoy the episode.
00:00:34 Jenny: Welcome everyone to Venture Everywhere. Today, I'm very pleased to have our guest, Nicolas Christiaen, the cofounder and CEO of Donna, which is described as the most knowledgeable and proactive sales assistant for sales reps on the go.
00:00:48 Jenny: So we're really excited to have Nicolas on the show. And we're gonna dive into Donna, our history together, and lots of great topics including where he's calling in from today, which is a little unusual. We don't usually talk to too many founders in Belgium, so we're pretty excited about that. Welcome, Nicolas.
00:01:08 Nicolas: Hi, Jenny. Great being here.
00:01:10 Jenny: So the first question I have to ask is why are you not wearing your jacket today, your sports blazer? Funny story about Nicolas. We have been friends for a decade. I was his first investor in his last company, Cashforce, which we'll talk about.
00:01:25 Jenny: And everyday, he would come into the office in New York, even though it was a very hot New York summer, wearing a button down shirt and a sports blazer. It would really define his style. So take us back to those Cashforce days and starting the company and give us a little background on you.
00:01:44 Nicolas: Amazing indeed. It’s a story that I think every time that we meet comes back to the surface. So great to be here. Actually, I'm living back in Belgium in a city called Ghent. I've been always passionate about solving problems since I was 14.
00:01:59 Nicolas: Solving the problem of my father's GP office. He wanted to have a software that would run his practice. And I guess at 14, 15 years of age, I put something together which helped him for an entire ten years to run his practice.
00:02:13 Nicolas: And then basically afterwards, when I did my studies, I stumbled on a couple more ideas. One of them, I found out as a right hand person of a CFO of a private equity portfolio company. I had to do a lot of working capital and cash management, which was all done in Excel.
00:02:29 Nicolas: Long story short, we thought, “Hey, let's create a software for this.” And we, at some point, were in touch with lots of people around an investment in Cashforce at the time. But we stumbled across Techstars and that led us to go through an MBA program for startups as it was called at the time. But it felt really like that.
00:02:49 Nicolas: We moved from Belgium to New York with a couple of days' notice. And what happened was pretty phenomenal. So it changed everything. It's changed my life ultimately. It was super exciting to go through the program and obviously meeting yourself and the entire team.
00:03:03 Nicolas: But our end customers were large corporates and these treasurers. They were all buttoned up, suited up, had ties and everything else. I said, “Well, let's at least dress like them to make sure that we could make a good first impression.” That was the way that this story started.
00:03:22 Jenny: You were really into it. Because I do recall coming into the office one morning, very early, and you and a few of the other guys had slept in the office, and he had slept in his blazer. And I did take a picture of it. I was like, “Wow. This guy is dedicated."
00:03:37 Jenny: When I met you, we were looking for fintech and fintech adjacent companies to come into our program. And one of the things that really struck me was that you had a global first mindset.
00:03:49 Jenny: You're living in Ghent. You're running a cash management business, which potentially had big applications throughout Europe. But I think what was so unique about you, beside your blazer, was that you really had this big vision of going global first.
00:04:03 Jenny: So where do you think that comes from? And tell a little bit more about how you see that. And, obviously, now with Donna, what is geography? You're gonna be selling to customers around the world. But what made you so confident, 2014 when we met, to be running a global company?
00:04:22 Nicolas: As a person, I'm very, in a way, opportunistic, but always with a touch of naivety, which I think is key to saying, "Hey, why would boundaries or languages or currencies stop us?"
00:04:33 Nicolas: But the interesting thing is we pitched to several companies. They always said like, "Hey, can Cashforce handle our overseas instances with this particular currency?" And this happened quite a few times.
00:04:45 Nicolas: So we were talking to companies who had instances or offices in Asia, across North America, across South America. And we were thinking like, "Whatever we will be doing as cash management applications has to be cross border."
00:04:58 Nicolas: And the other piece, it's not really related to a lot of tax legislations in the end. It's about moving currencies globally, which obviously is what banks do as well all the time. All these elements added up to the fact that we would need to be, in order to be successful, global first.
00:05:15 Nicolas: But obviously, it has to come from the persons and our people as well. So, it was on the one hand side, just that the problem we're trying to solve was a global problem. And on the other hand, me being naive and opportunistic at the same time saying, "Hey. If we wanna do this for real, we need to go and think big."
00:05:33 Jenny: Fast forward a few years, you guys get some really big, interesting global customers. And then I get a call saying, "I think we're going to entertain an acquisition." So tell us a little bit about your great acquisition and what that meant for you.
00:05:48 Nicolas: I think after the several years running Cashforce, as you said, we had banks, Citibank, Bank of America, really large banks, really large clients across the globe that were using CashForce. So it was super exciting.
00:06:01 Nicolas: And at the same time, obviously, this is the treasury market. So it's a slow growth market which still had a lot of other challenges still to come. But we were really on a roll.
00:06:11 Nicolas: So being on a roll was super exhilarating for the entire team. We had our greatest quarters. And suddenly there was this lifelong partner of ours that said to us, like, "Hey, guys, we would like to acquire you."
00:06:23 Nicolas: And at the time, it wasn't really in our minds, to be honest. So we were like, "Huh. Interesting." So we scratched our heads and said, like, "No. Let's double down. Let's keep on doing the business." And then there was other parties that equally got interested.
00:06:35 Nicolas: And it got us to a point to say, like, "Look, let's sit down for a second and let's see what is now the best step for the business and for what we built." And what we built with Cashforce was really changing people's lives, companies' lives. So we were like, "Okay, let's make sure this is a long term story for all these clients and all the people that are inside the company.”
00:06:54 Nicolas: And we ultimately would need to scale with a lot of more distribution power." So, how do we get distribution power? Build it ourselves or build partnerships or entertain these acquisitions that would lead to that scale. And that happens.
00:07:06 Nicolas: So, there were several companies that got interested. And the lifelong partner that was first was also the more logical to complement our solutions. So they were a payment solution. We were a cash management solution. The two together made a lot of sense for the businesses. So when it made a lot of sense for us, for the businesses, for our people in the company, we got really excited about that future.
00:07:30 Nicolas: And as an entrepreneur, indeed, there's so many things going through your heads. I remember me, without hesitation, just picking up the phone and say, "Hey, Jenny. Let me know what should I be thinking of as well in order to be really serious about this."
00:07:42 Jenny: It's such a great story because you hadn't raised a ton of money. You'd been very conservative with your own cash, so good cash management. And so you had a lot of options. You were happy to continue the business. You were controlling your own destiny. And you sold as the market was going down and you had a great acquisition. That was very exciting.
00:08:00 Jenny: So let's fast forward. The company is acquired. And maybe even a year or a couple years later, I find myself in Belgium. You and I have lunch. And I'm like, "Alright, Nicolas. What's next?"
00:08:13 Jenny: What was really cool was that I think when you're running the business going so hard, it's very hard to be a central part in an ecosystem. And so even though you were one of the big success stories coming out of Belgium, you were so heads down. And so I think after Cashforce was acquired, you had a little time to pop your head up and see what other founders were doing.
00:08:34 Jenny: And I know that you started mentoring some other founders and starting some interesting collaborative workspaces and getting involved with that. So give us a little bit of insight on what was happening in Belgium. It's a small ecosystem, but it really is bubbling up.
00:08:50 Nicolas: It is. And at the time of the acquisition, first, I wanted to hand over the business in a nice manner, which was done. And I got a lot of phone calls from people within the business that were happy about what has happened, et cetera. So I had, as well, a bit of time to think.
00:09:05 Nicolas: But as you said, you said it correctly, you're so heads down. You're so much into the business that I wasn't even realizing what was happening around me. And there were actually several exits happening from several founders. Some of which I have never heard of, which I should have heard of if I would have had my head a little bit above the clouds.
00:09:23 Nicolas: So I started to meet up with several of these people who had super interesting stories to tell. So I was running from place to place, meeting one person after the other. And it really bumped again my interest at least to do something along the journey a bit later, not really setting a fixed timing.
00:09:42 Nicolas: So I met, for example, Lawrence Bogart in this space. I met the people that exited from Henchman. And then, I met also Jonas, who got to be my co-founder here and co-CEO at Donna. So that was also super exciting.
00:09:55 Nicolas: So, exciting times to meet so many people. Now in Ghent, there are so many of these founders who have these stories and who are not afraid to tell these stories to others and influencing and helping out others to be equally successful. And I think that got me really energized to the point that when we actually met, I was already thinking of another idea to start with.
00:10:19 Jenny: And I remember having lunch, and you were getting really excited. You weren't exactly sure, but you were doing some preliminary testing and thoughts on what you're doing now. And I remember leaving that meeting and saying, "Okay. Just make sure I'm your first call when you decide to raise money," which you did, which was really fun. I've had the privilege of backing you twice, and I'd love to now turn a little bit into Donna.
00:10:44 Jenny: When we were talking, I wouldn't say I was discouraging, although maybe you can opine. But the space that you were going into was very busy. Sales automation, I was getting pitched one or two of these a week by seemingly competent founders. And so I said, "Just beware that there's a lot of noise in this space." And that didn't deter you. So what was the interesting white space that you saw? And tell us a little bit about the Donna journey.
00:11:13 Nicolas: Well, first of all, I remember when I spoke to you, I was bringing up a Cashforce story as one of the founding ideas. And there were a couple, but that one stood out. We actually had a perfect assistant at the time at Cashforce called Donna. And we would call her from the car to update our CRM. And it wasn't me that was doing that. It was actually a colleague, which I later found out that he was doing that.
00:11:36 Jenny: So this was an actual person that your sales team at Cashforce would call because they didn't wanna use the CRM. It was too complicated to input all their notes and their contacts. Yep. I think we've all been there, seen that.
00:11:49 Nicolas: Yep. Exactly. And I think the fact that we would call her from the car, so when we were having idle time, that kept hanging in the back of our heads.
00:11:56 Nicolas: Now, as you said, super busy space. So the first steps that we took, we were like, "Woah, this is another competitor. Oh, they're actually doing the same. And oh, now they are already gone from the space." So it was really noise, as you said.
00:12:10 Nicolas: But there were two conversations that we had with customers that led us actually to a bit of a different place. One was a conversation with a chocolate manufacturer. What was interesting is when we pitched our solution, which was the next best step by Donna, they actually said, like, "Hey, but we don't have any data actually in the system."
00:12:30 Nicolas: And we would actually go back and say, "Why?" "Well, we have 600 people that are on the roads constantly. And we try to coach them to input things in the CRM, but our CRM is pretty empty." And we said, like, "Why?"
00:12:44 Nicolas: “These guys are on the road. They typically aren't the first ones that would fill in the CRM. They don't have a handy mobile app. It's super clunky. We invest millions to actually get an input. It doesn't work. And at the end of the day, they arrive at home, and they still have to input after all these visits, and they spend tons of time in the car.”
00:13:01 Nicolas: And that's the time that we said, like, "Wait, this is interesting." The second conversation led us to look at field sales, not SMB level, but global and enterprise level. So, if we would look at field sales on the enterprise level, there's really a gap. There is a gap for good CRM adoption, good sales effectiveness that is not solved by the traditional sales enablement, sales automation tools.
00:13:25 Nicolas: And the moment that we saw that, we were having an instant happy moment because we were thinking like, "Hey, everyone told us rightfully that this is a super busy space. We at least can now tell them we found something really interesting."
00:13:39 Nicolas: And the moment that we started to pitch to a couple of these companies, we could easily hear that we were pretty much the first that was ever pitching to them this one. So we got this almost greenfield space in a way with a nice first mover advantage, which got us really excited.
00:13:55 Jenny: I love it. I love going so specifically vertical within sales and really finding that niche that you experienced firsthand. I also love that you're a Belgian company and your first customer or your first insight was from a chocolate manufacturer that is just too cute. So I love it.
00:14:13 Jenny: Okay. So now tell us a little bit about your team. You've teamed up with some folks that you knew, some new folks. And I think this time around really tapped into the ecosystem in Belgium. So tell us about putting your team together.
00:14:28 Nicolas: It was a very interesting journey. And I have to say, in this market, everything goes so fast. Speed of innovation goes so fast. So for us, building a team at the same speed is the main challenge and thing that we put as a big, big priority.
00:14:42 Nicolas: How this came together? Well, first of all, I was actually a Venture Partner at The Fund. And at one of the LP events I met Lawrence Bogart. Lawrence Bogart had a startup ecosystem that he was building and he was into sales tech.
00:14:57 Nicolas: And there I met my first co-founder, Lander, who basically was trying to deep dive into what are all these solutions here, how can we test them, how can we make a better product.
00:15:07 Nicolas: And that ecosystem led me actually to find Xander, who is our miraculous CTO. He basically hacks things together in such a short amount of time, which is a unique trait that is today very, very important because everything goes so fast.
00:15:24 Nicolas: But at the same time, I call it dating with Jonas. And Jonas eventually became our co-CEO. And how did that happen? Well, we're both actually fascinated by health and health tech. And we were both testing a glucose meter and it was put on our shoulder.
00:15:38 Nicolas: So, what happened is that one of our coaches that was basically coaching both of us, like, "Hey, I know another person that has the same glucose meter.”
00:15:47 Jenny: I love it. The biohackers meet.
00:15:50 Nicolas: Exactly. So, the guy actually connected us and we started to call each other at 2 PM on a Saturday. And I think our wives were both trying to say, like, "Hey, what are you guys doing?" And we were just trying to get acquainted and we were talking so many of our stories.
00:16:06 Nicolas: And it was, from the start, clear that at least we would actually cooperate, do something with each other. And we became friends very soon afterwards. I was thinking to myself, this is a business that's going to require us to move super fast. I would like to have a perfect sounding board that would really help this business go crazy.
00:16:28 Nicolas: Then actually, Jonas helped us a little bit on a few things. But I think it was also with the mindset of if this really works out on both ends, this could be really a massive step forward for the team. So that's actually how the co-founding team got together.
00:16:41 Jenny: It's so interesting because I think as first time founders, and I made the same mistake, like you often team up with people maybe for the wrong reason. They're there or they have the skill set. And I think as more mature second time founders, you're a little bit tentative because you have some scar tissue and you take things a little bit different.
00:16:58 Jenny: So I love the fact that you guys were very thoughtful and really wanted to get to know each other. Things were moving fast, and you could have just said, "Okay. Let's do it." But you spent the time making sure that it was right and obviously that always pays off.
00:17:11 Nicolas: Absolutely. Jonas is also second time founder. Had a company, Daltix. So we had a lot of things to talk about. And both of us like sales, go to market and enterprises. So that got us connected as well. So there were many overlaps, but equally things that we could help each other. So that was super cool.
00:17:29 Nicolas: And actually, quite a bit of talent around us also started to get into shape. We got, for example, on our customer success side, a lady that comes from Showpad, which is also from the Belgian sales enablement ecosystem. We were really inspired to hire our VP Growth, was formally at Cashforce at the time working on product and connection with sales.
00:17:52 Nicolas: So it was fun to have people from previous businesses or from the networks that were immediately attracted to the Donna movements that we were putting in place.
00:18:02 Jenny: It's such a cool ecosystem. I have a funny story. There was a teammate of yours at Cashforce. She was the one that would always send the financial updates. She was intense. I liked her quite a bit, but she was all business. We just had a lot of back and forth on email and whatnot.
00:18:17 Jenny: And then a couple years later, a different startup that I backed. All of a sudden, I got the update from their financial update, and there was her name. And I was like, "Oh my gosh. She's back in my life."
00:18:29 Jenny: I do feel the good people recirculate into great companies and especially in smaller ecosystems. So that was really fun to see her in two different companies that I've invested in totally randomly. And all of a sudden, there was her name in my inbox again. And I was like, "Is that the same woman?"
00:18:44 Nicolas: It's super cool to see different people that were parts of our lives circulating around and getting back in touch. So that's what basically makes it fun to do.
00:18:53 Jenny: For sure. So tell us a little bit about behind the scenes of Donna and what are Donna's superpowers.
00:19:00 Nicolas: If you would get a behind the scene look for Donna, it would be something like the following. So first of all, we have to accommodate a real time conversation with Donna. What basically happens is a field sales rep gets into his car and gets a call from Donna. You have a real time conversation about that meeting, about the CRM, about your next visit.
00:19:21 Nicolas: So in order for Donna to get to know all of that information, we have to provide that context. And in order for you to have a fluent conversation, low latency, real time with a Q&A and with a bit of coaching even inside. It’s quite an intense operation. So in order to do that, it's good context selection from CRM, public data, calendar, pictures, notes. It's accommodating real time conversations.
00:19:49 Nicolas: Last but not least, we have a very deep integration into like Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics. So it involves really understanding deeply how a customer or like a client, an enterprise client is set up. Because let's not forget, everyone has a different Salesforce. Everyone has a different Microsoft Dynamics. So really, behind the scenes, it's a complex operation.
00:20:11 Nicolas: Now, in terms of what she does is she gives recommendations. She will get into a Q&A. If you forget something, by the way, Jenny, you'll get a question back. So she'll be literally trying to get all the information that is required to maximize CRM adoption. So that's it. And that's our product and engineering team trying to make that work.
00:20:31 Jenny: I love that. Taking a step back, where do you see the future of sales tech heading? Obviously, personalization is a big one. And you tell the story of one size doesn't fit all in terms of salespeople going and typing in things if they're sitting in the car. But big vision, how do you see sales tech unfolding, would you say?
00:20:49 Nicolas: A fair point you're making. We chose a very narrow segue. And this narrow segue is you call from the car and you update the CRM and you entertain whatever needs to be done in the CRM.
00:20:59 Nicolas: But it's a little bit more than that because if you think about a field salesperson rising in the morning, sitting at his or her breakfast, he or she needs to plan the route for the day, needs to select the right clients to go to, and make the right calls.
00:21:13 Nicolas: There's maybe inbound calls from customers that are not happy or want the complaint to be solved. You have to interact with people internally. You have to get good coaching. So there's a lot of activities that are still up for grasp and still can be covered.
00:21:28 Nicolas: What's maybe most exciting from another angle is that we are now seeing so many set of contexts. We have voice. We have image. We have pictures. We can think ourselves within a few years walking around again with the glasses or maybe the devices that would record a voice or that would take a picture of the room. So there's a lot of sets of context.
00:21:50 Nicolas: So we feel that today, as we know the CRM, that's a system of records. And we feel that Donna will actually be able to replace CRM as we know it because there's gonna be a system of context which includes those pictures, those images, those texts, those voices, those videos.
00:22:09 Nicolas: And we're gonna have Donnas or agents that are hyper-personalized to every of the sales team members. Hyper-personalized that will be able to be in touch with each other as well as with that system of context. So simply put, the system of records, the CRM will be replaced by a set of agents that will be crawling around the system of context.
00:22:32 Nicolas: That's actually where we see sales tech evolving. It's not gonna happen just like that tomorrow, but we already see it happening a little bit today. And a little proof point of that is in Donna. We already have so much more context about several conversations that took place than whatever is actually pushed back to the CRM. So we already see that happening.
00:22:52 Jenny: Interesting. Are salespeople going away, we think?
00:22:56 Nicolas: It depends what type of sales. So let me nuance that answer. If you order a computer online, that's already without a salesperson advising you. So it's basically online. And twenty years back, you would go to a shop and there would be a person advising you. So for sure, there's going to be different products and goods and services that are going to be purchased without salespersons.
00:23:16 Nicolas: However, whenever there is a bit of competition and complexity involved, there's going to be relationship building required and that relationship building will get perfected, will get optimized. While the admin, hopefully, because that's our end, that will be replaced by systems, by AI, by anything else. But the relationship building, that's what we believe at least will still stand out. But it will be perfected, it will be optimized for better experience.
00:23:41 Jenny: Alright. So we still have a chance as us humans. I love it.
00:23:44 Nicolas: Yeah. I think.
00:23:46 Jenny: So switching gears a little bit. I think in your transition time when you were exploring, you were able to also dip your toe into becoming an angel investor and investing in a few companies. So now you've had a taste of both sides.
00:23:59 Jenny: I'm curious as someone who built two companies and then turned to the dark side, what were some of the things that you liked or didn't like about being on the investment side?
00:24:08 Jenny: I know one thing we talked about at our lunch when I came to visit was you're not in control of the company, so you're there to give guidance. But sometimes you just get so excited and you wanna lean in. So I'm just curious, what were some of your experiences being on the other side?
00:24:23 Nicolas: Well, first of all, as I started my story, I like numbers and financial figures were at the heart of what Cashforce was building. So I got a little bit of a passion of let's see what the other side actually does. So I became a Venture Partner at The Fund.
00:24:36 Nicolas: Well, two things. It was exciting to actually learn the actual economics, financials and how a fund actually works. So I'm sure I got pitched six, seven times before, but I actually only got it when I worked on the other side.
00:24:50 Jenny: And it's a great point because most entrepreneurs don't really know how our business works. And so sometimes it's a surprise to them when we say it doesn't fit our model and they scratch their head. So it's really great as an entrepreneur, I think, to understand how our business model works.
00:25:04 Nicolas: It's super helpful. An entrepreneur has the experience or could learn that in a way. And then nowadays there is a lot of content online on that. But I think ten years back there wasn't a lot of content there so it was the dark side, an unknown bit that got exposed to me. So I got excited very much there.
00:25:20 Nicolas: Secondly, I got excited as well, meeting other founders and seeing their stories, also their ideas, where they came from, how it ended up to be an investment and then finally, how the investor actually looked at potential outcomes, et cetera. So that got me excited as well.
00:25:37 Nicolas: But I think the realization came quite quickly when I was advising a couple of the businesses that you're not the one that drives the car or that sails the ship. And I think that was a big realization because you come home and you say, like, "Hey, where's that extra bit that I would now put into it to drive it further?"
00:25:55 Nicolas: And that wasn't there because that was, of course, not in my hands, but in the hands of the people running these businesses which is how it should be. So I got also to that point.
00:26:04 Nicolas: Maybe in a later phase, because I love talking to so much people and to see them inspired by their ideas. Not saying that would not be something for me, but not completely for now. So that's why I decided let's at least do another business because I love ideas and then together with the team members execute up on them.
00:26:22 Nicolas: But let's also be mindful of a couple of businesses as an angel investor that maybe need a bit of help, financially or advisory-wise. So at least I keep my agenda and mind open for a little bit to entertain those conversations.
00:26:36 Jenny: Yeah. If you do ever start your own venture capital firm, I think you'd be surprised how much it is running a startup. Because different than when you're a venture partner and you're not taking out the garbage, not raising the money, not dealing with all the fires. You're there for a purpose.
00:26:51 Jenny: I actually really enjoy running our fund because I get to wear so many different hats that feels more like being a founder. Although it is definitely not as intense or as hard, it has some inklings that bring me back to that.
00:27:04 Jenny: Alright. This has been super fun. We'll do a final speed round before I let you go. So is there a book, a podcast, or some type of media that you are enjoying right now?
00:27:14 Nicolas: Yeah. So We Love SaaS is actually a Dutch podcast that brings together West European founders and they tell their story very open and blunt. I love listening to that podcast.
00:27:25 Jenny: We Love SaaS. Okay. Check it out. If you could live anywhere in the world aside from Ghent for one year with your family, where would it be?
00:27:33 Nicolas: Difficult one. I love to travel. I love to actually stay in so many places. I think Bali.
00:27:38 Jenny: Not expecting you to say that. I thought you'd say New York or, I don't know, Hong Kong, but Bali. Wow. Okay. You're gonna have to lose the blazer there, though. This is a good one for you. Favorite productivity hack?
00:27:50 Nicolas: Many hacks, but I think the best one is sports. I like to play a lot of tennis or padel. That's pretty much the only thing that really gets my head empty, which basically then pumps you up for whatever you're gonna need to do next.
00:28:02 Jenny: I like that. Much better answer than some software tool. So pretty great. Alright. Final question. Where can listeners find you and learn more about Donna?
00:28:11 Nicolas: Well, I'm very active on LinkedIn. So, for sure, send me over just a text or a LinkedIn request, and I'm sure we'll get in touch. You can also meet me live. There's this awesome winter circus thing in Ghent, which is a great community. So if you want to meet me live over there.
00:28:26 Nicolas: Plus I'm traveling frequently to New York. Actually, I'm going to be there beginning of May, so would be cool to meet up there. And if all else doesn't work, over email, of course.
00:28:36 Jenny: I love it. Everyone should go to Ghent and look you up, and you'll definitely take them out for a walk if they make it there. Alright, Nicolas. This was so fun. It's, as I said, so amazing to be able to see your journey, not once, but twice. So really excited for Donna and what's comes next. So thanks for joining.
00:28:54 Nicolas: Thanks, Jenny. It was lovely talking to you again.
00:28:58 Scott Hartley: Thanks for joining us and hope you enjoyed today's episode. For those of you listening, you might also be interested to learn more about Everywhere. We're a first check pre-seed fund that does exactly that, invests everywhere. We're a community of 500 founders and operators, and we've invested in over 250 companies around the globe. Find us at our website everywhere.vc, on LinkedIn and through our regular founder spotlights on Substack. Be sure to subscribe and we'll catch you on the next episode.
Read more from Nicolas Christiaen in Founders Everywhere.