Big VCs Don’t Care Unless You’re in Their Top 5% - Michal Rokosz, Inovo Venture Partners - EP#118

Big funds may not fight for you unless you’re in their top 5% of companies, and Michal Rokosz explains how to tell which kind of investor you’re talking to. Michal is a partner at Inovo Venture Partners, a Warsaw-based seed fund and one of the leading early-stage investors in Central and Eastern Europe. Before investing he was an operator, as managing director at foodpanda and COO at Booksy, and he has backed more than 25 companies. In this conversation with David Politis, he breaks down how fast VCs decide, why capital can beat operational excellence, and how his region went from copying proven startups to building frontier AI companies. Key takeaways 1. Investors decide faster than you think: Michal can often tell within the first five minutes whether a founder is an outlier, and the full decision takes about two weeks. His fund found that its fastest investments tended to perform best. 2. Your backstory is part of the pitch: From an Olympiad win to an overnight drive for a missing part, the stories founders skip are often what set them apart. Michal says a founder who can’t explain why they’re exceptional will lose to one who can. 3. More money can beat better operations: At foodpanda, his team was less efficient than several competitors but had more funding, and that was enough to win. In AI, the same logic means a company that grabs the market while losing money can beat one that gets the economics right first. 4. A VC isn’t grading your business: Michal says his job is to find the anomalies. A fund needs one or two companies to return the whole fund, so a founder with a lower ceiling shouldn’t expect the same valuation as one with a higher ceiling. 5. Big funds may not fight for you: Outside a large fund’s top 5% of companies, you may get little attention, while a smaller fund may treat you as one of its most important bets. Talk to a few of an investor’s founders before you sign. 6. Not every founder should raise venture capital: Michal argues that some founders are better off bootstrapping to a profitable business, and that VC only makes sense if you’re aiming to build something huge. Quote of the Show : “If I have like five times more money and I'm 20% less efficient, I'm still going to win” - Michal Rokosz, Partner at Inovo Venture Partners Guest Featured in this Episode: Michal Rokosz, Partner at Inovo Venture Partners LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrokosz/ Inovo Venture Partners : https://www.linkedin.com/company/inovovc/home/ We also break this episode down into a full write-up on Substack, where we turn every conversation into a practical playbook with the biggest lessons, frameworks, and strategies discussed in each episode. Chapters: 00:00 Meet Michal Rokosz 02:07 What Inovo looks for in a founder 04:07 Why your backstory is the pitch 09:23 How fast Inovo decides to invest 11:10 Viktor and the founder who killed his own project 16:40 Why big VCs won't fight for you 19:56 How Central and Eastern Europe has changed 28:00 Are we in an AI bubble? 31:21 Why VCs need a company that can return the fund 36:21 Two founders, one wins by losing money 41:15 What founders get wrong about VCs 43:04 Why Michal loves being an investor