New Honeypot.io documentary “Investors: A Masterclass”

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Honeypot has been producing high-quality content specifically for tech audiences since 2018.

Honeypot, Europe’s largest tech-focused job platform, is on a mission to find tech talent great jobs. But nowadays many developers create their own jobs: they play a key role in founding new Startups and making business ideas come true.

More than 220,000 tech talents have signed up to Honeypot so far, with up to 1,500 joining every week. Honeypot has offices in Berlin, Amsterdam, Zurich and Vienna – employing 75 Honeypotters. Launched in 2015, Honeypot is now Europe’s largest tech-focused job platform. In April 2019, Honeypot was acquired by enlisted New Work SE.

Being a developer is not only a profession but also an affiliation to a whole scene. With its media platform .cult, Honeypot.io depicts the developer lifestyle and created a space for “Untold Developer Stories”.

Through a combination of articles, documentaries and podcasts, contributors from the Honeypot community cover topics ranging from unorthodox tech careers and projects to mental health and burnouts – content by and for developers. Honeypot has been producing high-quality content specifically for tech audiences since 2018.

The elaborately produced video documentaries about widely-used open-source technologies like GraphQL and Vue.js (some of which have been viewed by more than 1,000,000 people) earned Honeypot and .cult the reputation of “Netflix for developers“.

“An idea that changes an industry. A business that generates billions. Becoming an entrepreneur and founding your own company… Is not a dream.”

These are the words that start the new Honeypot.io documentary, which can be found today on Honeypot’s media platform .cult and the associated Youtube channel

Honeypot filmmaker Guillermo López took this as an impulse to talk to scene heads about the role of developers in founding teams and also explored the questions of: 


What makes a billion-dollar idea? When is the right time to raise Venture Capital? What makes a great founding team? How to talk to a VC? What does a great Pitch deck look like? What does the future of the tech industry look like? 


These questions are being answered in a differentiated perspective by the following experts in “Investors: A Masterclass”: 

Claude Ritter, Cavalry
Claude Ritter, Cavalry

Insights from the documentary

About the role of developers in Startup Teams

Jonathan Becker: – “Developers are an extremely scarce resource, especially good developers are sought after by everyone. You can find a job in a great company that’s gonna pay you well and you can live a very comfortable life. But at the same time, you also have the chance to start something on your own and to have a really really big impact.” 

Jonathan Becker
Jonathan Becker

Filip Dames: – “We are incredibly excited about more technical teams coming to markets and developing their ideas. As a matter of fact, what we also believe is that developers and engineers within organizations will become the decision-makers of what software is being used inside of companies.”

About Venture Capital

Johan van Mil: – “When I founded my first company it took me years and cost me a lot of money. And these days it is really cheap to start your company. (…) Everything is available right now: offices, tech, cloud solutions. There is also a lot of money in the market. (…) So it is all about speed and all about execution.”

Simon Schmincke: – “It is very important (…) to understand that Venture Capital is a specialized product for a specialized type of company. And all those who don’t get funding from one of the top VCs are not failed companies or failed entrepreneurs. They very often build successful companies, which, at that time, wasn’t a fit for Venture Capital.” 

Simon Schmincke, Creandum
Simon Schmincke, Creandum

Johan van Mil: – “You should raise Venture Capital when you are ready for it. That means that your product is ready, that your team is ready, and that you know how to scale. And if your product is not ready, build your product and build it from your own financial situation. And if you don’t have that, try to find money from the government or from Angels. (…) If you really wanna scale, and you really want to grow faster, and you know how to do that – then it’s time to raise Venture Capital.” 

About what the future of the tech industry will look like

Jonathan Becker: – “It’s never been a better time to be a developer and to start a company. (…) What we generally see is: Software is eating the world. We are only at the beginning of digitization in every market you can think of. If you look at the Covid pandemic, it seems like everything has been accelerated. It’s like you went into a time machine and you went 10 years ahead.” 

Emma Tracey: – “Tech is in a certain way starting to get a reputation like `big pharma´ or `big oil´. This trend towards `big tech´ is something which I am not positive about. (…) I would like to see rivals to Amazon, rivals to Google, rivals to Facebook. (…) I don’t want that special feeling of being able to build something and have an impact to go because the tech industry has become so monopolised by such a small group of companies.”

Emma Tracey Angel Investor
Emma Tracey, Angel Investor