The best products I’ve seen are built by founders who listen more closely to their customers than anyone else. Many of the strongest founders I know have lived experience with the problems they're tackling, and are building the products they wish they’d had. Inside their companies, they create feedback loops so tight that Sales, Product, and Engineering move in lockstep, turning what customers are telling them into products they love.
I learned to value this as a builder. At the beginning of my career, I started a product team from scratch inside a startup and learned (painfully!) how much better a product gets when every customer request, complaint, and edge case shapes what comes next. More recently, I set out to build a cybersecurity company of my own, developing a prototype alongside design partners from my network. I saw firsthand how hard the early days are, and I came to appreciate the criticality of truly obsessing over solving the problem you're after.
Throughout my career as an investor, I’ve been fortunate to work with founders from the ideation stage through major financings and acquisitions, and the biggest winners were usually the ones who learned the fastest. At N47, I partner with founders across Europe building in infrastructure, developer tools, cybersecurity, and AI. Perhaps above all, I look for genuine obsession and relentless curiosity: founders who go to sleep and wake up thinking about their problem, not because they’re worried about it, but because it energizes them. If you can’t stop thinking about what you’re building, I’d love to connect.