Iskender Dirik

11/08/2026

Behind the scenes on a growth fund raising its next fund generation. And at the end, the part where I get sentimental about Thomas Preuß. It happens.

22/07/2026

Passionfroot just announced a $15M Series A, led by Insight Partners (backers of Anthropic, Shopify, Wiz).

Congrats to Jen Phan, Lorenzo De Nobili and the whole team. Well deserved.

Why I find this space so fascinating: AI has changed the game for every software company. When anyone can build the product, distribution decides who wins. And distribution is shifting away from the classic channels toward the voices buyers already trust – creators.

Passionfroot built the infrastructure for exactly that: creator-led growth for B2B, with customers like ElevenLabs, Figma and Replit. The numbers back it up – 13x revenue growth in a year, profitable, with a team of 15.

Disclosure: I’m an angel investor in Passionfroot.

17/07/2026

Heute etwas für die Uhren-Nerds.
In meiner DEALMACHER mit Iskender Dirik Folge mit Verhandlungsexperten Matthias Schranner habe ich ihn gefragt, welche Uhr er zu welchem Anlass tragen würde:

Sales-Gespräch mit einem Enterprise-Kunden
Sales-Gespräch mit einem Mittelständler
Sales-Gespräch mit dem Staat
Fundraising-Pitch mit einem VC
Gespräch mit einem PE

Eure Tipps: Welche Uhr rechts im Bild gehört zu welchem Anlass?
Die Auflösung gibt’s im Podcast. Siehe Profillinks.

09/07/2026

Big claims are cheap. What makes one hold is the argument underneath.

Theo claims to be the AI system that runs real estate. The argument starts where it should: with the complexity. Regulation grew 20x in three decades. An owner deals with dozens of providers, each on their own software. For decades, no technology could run that.

AI is the technology that finally can. Theo is the system that does. Which is why the claim lands – and why owning real estate can finally become as simple as it should be.

I advise Jona Schaeffer on this story. He put the full version into 80 seconds. Worth watching.

03/07/2026

Dein Hirn hat im Deal-Meeting begrenzten Arbeitsspeicher.

Gehst du unvorbereitet rein, frisst jede Frage davon: Was meint er? Wie antworte ich? Was kommt als Nächstes?

Was übrig bleibt, reicht nicht für das, was wirklich zählt: Körpersprache. Den Raum lesen. Ruhe ausstrahlen. Zeigen, dass du hinter deinem Case stehst.

Die Lösung ist unspektakulär: Vorbereitung.

Genauer: der Pitch Reflex. Du legst dir vorher die Antworten auf die wahrscheinlichsten Fragen und Einwände zurecht – und übst sie, bis sie reflexartig kommen.

Wie beim Autofahren: Am Anfang frisst jeder Schulterblick Konzentration. Irgendwann läuft alles automatisch – und du hast den Kopf frei für den Verkehr und andere Gedanken.

Genau so gehst du in dein nächstes Meeting mit Investoren oder Kunden: Antworten als Reflex. Kopf frei. Raum kontrolliert.

02/07/2026

Andercore has secured a €30M revolving credit facility from UniCredit and KfW.

Andercore is an AI-native supplier of industrial materials – it runs trade and distribution end-to-end, on its own account. I advise CEO Philipp Andernach and the team, so I see the model up close.

The model is asset-light: every trade is matched against confirmed demand and supply – no inventory, no price risk. Working capital covers exactly one thing: the gap between paying partners and collecting from customers.

Which is why a revolving line is the right instrument. More credit means more simultaneous trades, more volume distributed across Europe, faster delivery – all non-dilutive, on top of the Series B equity base.

The software already works at the speed of compute. Now the capital line keeps up.

Congratulations to Philipp, Elsa Cordonnier, and the entire team.

30/06/2026

Today, Theo announced €25M from Insight Partners and funds and accounts managed by BlackRock.

Real estate is the largest asset class in the world. And owning it still runs on a chain of disconnected parties: managers, brokers, insurers, each in its own silo, each on decades-old software. Owning property is a second job.

That complexity is real for a reason. It was simply too much for traditional software, the kind that needs a fixed rule for every case. So the work stayed manual.

AI is the first technology that can handle it. On Theo’s platform, the system answers the tenant, commissions the repair, approves the invoice, closes the books. Experienced operators step in where judgment matters, and every decision trains it.

That is the shift: from managing real estate to operating it. You own the asset. Theo does the rest.

More than 25,000 apartments run on it today. Insight has backed Theo from the start and pre-empted this round.

I advise Jona Schaeffer, so I see the work up close. It holds up.

Congratulations, Jona, and the whole team. Glad to be in your corner.

Full announcement: https://hallotheo.de/series-a

25/06/2026

24/06/2026

€13M Series A für JUPUS. Glückwunsch, René Fergen.

Was diese Runde für mich besonders macht: René und ich arbeiten nicht zum ersten Mal zusammen:

Die Seed hat er über mein FundraisingCOUP-Programm aufgesetzt – über Monate, mit meinen erprobten Frameworks und meinem Sparring.

Die Series A habe ich dann in 1:1-Advisory begleitet.

Genau diese zwei Wege spiegeln, wie ich Fundraising sehe – und welche Überzeugung ich gerade in den Markt tragen will:

Der beste Fundraiser für ein Startup ist der Gründer selbst. Keine Investment Bank.

Die besten Gründer lernen, ihre Runden selbst zu führen – und das funktioniert nicht „auch ganz gut“, sondern um ein Vielfaches besser als mit einer Bank.

Wer die eigene Story, den Prozess und den Verhandlungstisch beherrscht, gewinnt Runden, die keine Bank für ihn gewinnen könnte. Das gilt für die Seed, für die Series A, B, C und weiter. Erst beim Exit wird das anders.

Meine Rolle dabei ist nicht, das für den Gründer zu übernehmen – sondern ihn dahin zu bringen, dass er es kann.

Im Early-Stage-Bereich über FundraisingCOUP, bei Growth-Runden in 1:1-Advisory. JUPUS zeigt beides in einer einzigen Founder-Journey: vom Programm in der Seed zur eng begleiteten Series A.

31/05/2026

Full circle moment - my first wedding.

Enis, the groom, is the son of Ibo Abi (on my left in the second picture). I grew up with Ibo Abi and his brother Osman (on my right in the second picture).

I met Enis personally last May, over lunch. He was working at a small company, no touch points with tech whatsoever. Three minutes in, I felt this enormous energy radiating off him - hunger, drive, street smarts. I told him to consider a sales role in tech and to join 2hearts.

Two months later he had a job at Stripe in Dublin. He moved there with his fiancée Ceyda, who now works at Pinterest. On Friday, the two of them were kind enough to invite me to their wedding.

A reunion with his family - and a kind of satisfaction no professional achievement has ever come close to.

And this was only the first of several 2hearts weddings this year. Next milestone, I guess: the first official 2hearts baby 😇