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How WunderGraph Raised $3M: Jens Neuse on Venture Market Fit

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Jason Kirby
Aug 1, 2023

 

Welcome to episode 9 of Fundraising Demystified. In this episode, we had the pleasure of speaking with Andrew Neuse, the founder of Wundergraph, a next-generation framework to optimize frontend, backend, & full-stack developer workflow. They've recently raised a $3 Million Seed round. We talk about how founders need to understand the VC game, why cold emails won’t work & why founders should focus on building a brand instead, & why he thinks the pitch deck isn’t as important as most think it should be. Let’s dive in.

From Self-Taught Software Engineer to Startup Founder

Jens recounts his journey from being a self-taught software engineer to starting Wundergraph. His experience in the field, working on a failed startup and honing his skills in various companies, led him to the realization that integrating multiple systems with different languages and APIs was a time-consuming process. This realization sparked the idea for Wundergraph, an open-source project that eventually evolved into a full-fledged company.

Wundergraph's team of four, comprising Jens and his co-founders, brings together diverse skill sets that complement each other.

The Fundraising Journey and Understanding Venture Market Fit

Wundergraph's fundraising journey was not without its challenges. Jens highlights the importance of building relationships and finding the right partners among venture capitalists (VCs) who align with the company's vision. Rather than solely focusing on convincing VCs about the idea, Jens emphasizes the significance of showcasing a strong team and demonstrating traction.

Understanding the VC game and achieving Venture Market Fit (VMF) is crucial for founders. Just like product-market fit, VMF ensures that founders are building something that VCs find exciting and are actively investing in. Building a brand, being accessible to VCs, and strategically timing funding announcements are essential aspects of achieving VMF.

Raising Funds: KPIs, Traction, and Building a Great Company

Jens emphasizes that having great key performance indicators (KPIs), good traction, and a proven business model are more important than having the best pitch deck. Founders should focus on building a great company and presenting it in a way that piques the interest of VCs.

Wundergraph's growth trajectory showcases the importance of persistence and customer-centricity. Acquiring their first customer who paid $3,000 per month was a significant milestone, and the company now focuses on fueling growth based on customer feedback.

Setting Up a C-Corp in the US for Non-US Founders

The founders of Wundergraph, based in Germany, explain the advantages of establishing a Delaware C-Corp. They highlight the benefits of the US tax system and the ease of attracting US investors. By setting up a subsidiary GmbH in Germany, they can pay regular salaries to the founders. The process of setting up a C-Corp through Stripe Atlas was straightforward, although legal counsel was sought to ensure the correct company structure and ownership of intellectual property.

Wundergraph's Future and Advice for Founders

Wundergraph is currently in the late stages of closing some exciting accounts and expects to optimize their KPIs before raising the next round. Jens advises founders to maintain relationships with VCs who passed on previous rounds, as updates and rapport can make future fundraising easier.

Jens provides valuable advice for founders looking to raise their seed round. He emphasizes the importance of shifting focus from technology to the customer, go-to-market strategy, and building a business that interests VCs. Highlighting the significance of marketing, unique selling propositions, and solving people's problems to generate revenue and attract investors.

Wundergraph, with its open-source product for working with APIs, offers benefits for startups and enterprise companies alike. To learn more, follow Jens on Twitter and visit Wundergraph's website and GitHub repository.

In conclusion, Jens Neuse's insights on venture market fit, building a brand, and navigating the fundraising landscape provide valuable knowledge and inspiration for founders at all stages of their entrepreneurial journey.


Links mentioned:

Wundergraph website - https://wundergraph.com/

Follow Jens on Twitter - https://twitter.com/jensneuse_de

Follow Jens on Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jens-neuse-706673195

Hosted by Jason Kirby - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonrkirby/

Email Jason at jason@thunder.vc

Don't forget to hit subscribe for more episodes!

How WunderGraph Raised $3M: Jens Neuse on Venture Market Fit

· Fundraising Demystified · Host: Jason Kirby · Guest: Jens Neuse (WunderGraph)

Watch the episode: YouTube link

Key themes: Open source to company, enterprise sales motion, delaying the press to coincide with product readiness, the concept of “venture market fit,” building U.S.-ready corporate structure from Europe, and practical fundraising lessons for technical founders.
Jens Neuse: kind of stuff, our style is really to just do it. And life is not perfect and it's fine. That's how we do it.
Jason Kirby: Fair enough. All right, sounds good. Welcome everyone. This is Jason Kirby, founder and managing director of Thunder.VC and your host of Fundraising Demystified. Today we have Jens joining us from Frankfurt, Germany over at WunderGraph who just announced their seed round of three million. Welcome Jens.
Jens Neuse: Hi Jason, thanks for having me.
Jason Kirby: Yeah, great. Yeah, glad to have you. Let's jump right in. Let's tell the audience a little bit about your background and what led you to starting WunderGraph.
Jens Neuse: Yeah, so I was a software engineer for about 10 years in various roles. I started with app development. The very first steps of my career were at a startup, which completely failed—we were super early—but that startup was my entry point for actually learning how to program because I never knew how to program and didn’t go to university or anything. I was interested in building a startup and someone had to build the Android and iOS app and the website, and nobody wanted to do it. The obstacle between us and creating a startup was that I had to learn to program. I went on YouTube, learned the stuff, and that’s how I failed my first startup but learned a lot about software engineering. Then I became an engineer in other companies and eventually moved up the ranks into management roles and as an architect. In those upper roles, I learned so much that eventually I wanted to build my own company, and that was WunderGraph.
Jason Kirby: Awesome. So basically you self-taught software engineering 10 years ago and then moved up the ranks without necessarily having a computer science degree—just hustling and making it happen. So what led to the idea for WunderGraph?
Jens Neuse: In my last job in the corporate world, I was an engineering manager responsible for three teams. One of our biggest obstacles was that we had a heterogeneous system of internal and external services—content management systems, databases, and APIs that spoke XML, JSON, GraphQL, gRPC, anything. We also had external partners like AWS with REST APIs, plus partners who sent us football data, financial data, and all sorts of feeds. One of our biggest problems was: how can you build an API on top of 30 other services when every system is different and speaks a different language? The solution was to build a homegrown API integration system. I realized this is not just a problem for us—everybody has to glue things together, and the go‑to solution is writing custom code. I think that’s a huge waste of time. About five years ago I started WunderGraph as a side project. Back then I thought: wouldn’t it be useful if you could just talk GraphQL—a query language similar to SQL—to all my systems? Then I wouldn’t have to build this manual glue layer; I could just plug in systems and talk to them, and that problem would be gone. I was just a nerd solving a technical problem. Over time, some people came to me saying, “Hey Jens, you have this open source tool. There’s something missing—can you help me?” I helped a bit. Then, about a year and a half ago, someone came to me and said, “Hey Jens, can I pay you 3K per month? Help me and my team get the most out of WunderGraph and improve it.” With that 3K MRR, I started the seed funding process, built a team, and turned a side project from a tech nerd into a company.
Jason Kirby: That's a fun story. What’s the timeline from initially conceptualizing the idea to getting that first MRR in the bank and going out to raise?
Jens Neuse: From first idea to that first customer, almost a year—because I rewrote it a couple of times in the beginning. Which, by the way, was one of the worst ideas you could have. I wouldn’t say I’m a great first‑time tech founder, but I learned a lot.
Jason Kirby: And are you the only founder or do you have co‑founders?
Jens Neuse: I actually have three co‑founders. Being the technical founder, I have Bjorn—who I worked with before—he was my CEO back then and is now our COO. He runs and operates the company and has experience in that. Then we have Dustin, our master hacker now that I’m not able to code that much anymore. And we have Stefan from Miami—more of the extrovert in the team—he builds connections and is responsible for growth. He’s the kind of guy who makes friends, and I’m the kind of guy who solves hard problems.
Jason Kirby: Good complementary skill set across the team. Walk us through the fundraise. You just announced it, but you told me you actually raised and closed the money a while back. What was the journey, and why delay announcing it?
Jens Neuse: Getting to seed funding was extremely hard at the beginning, and we had no clue what we were doing—huge disconnect between us and how VCs work. We got the money in the bank mid or a bit later last year. We decided to defer the announcement because back then we only really had an open source tool. We wanted to build a SaaS on top and thought: why announce and get attention when we have nothing to sell? We wanted to have something to sell and then tell the world. Some people think you’re only a real company if you have raised money— I don’t agree—but the perception is there. So we used the seed announcement as a marketing activity.
Jason Kirby: Founders are often excited to announce they raised money, but they don’t use it as client acquisition. If you’re going to put the effort in, leverage it. That strategy makes sense. You loosely said fundraising was difficult—let’s unpack that. Your LinkedIn post shed light on it. Can you share your journey and some lows—and how you figured it out?
Jens Neuse: The biggest issue was we thought: we’re smart, we have a great solution, we go to VCs, tell our story, we’re so good we get funding. Reality: we’re in DevTools. It’s not easy to understand what we do or the impact. A senior architect at a large enterprise reads our landing page and docs and sees value. Venture capitalists aren’t that technical architect. The most important bit is to build relationships and a network. Don’t see VCs as someone on the other side of the table—find the right partners. VCs specialize—even within a firm. Find someone who believes in your long‑term game. It’s hard to convince a VC who doesn’t immediately buy into your story. Ideally you find someone whose background helps them see it. Then get to the checkbox stage—where it’s about potential blockers like a weird cap table—rather than begging or chasing. It’s like dating: you present what you do and ask if they’re a great fit. You’ll work with them for years; find someone moving in the same direction. They won’t just give you money and go away—they’ll meet with you regularly. Ideally, they bring more than money (connections, etc.). Evaluate what they bring. Talk strategy. Ask what they think your direction should be. See if you’re close enough that you want to work with them—because they might have a board seat and be super annoying if you don’t like them. In the beginning you think they’re so powerful, but money is cheap; good founders with a good team and an OK idea are scarce. The more I work as a founder, the more I think the idea isn’t so important—it’s what you do with it, and whether the team can iterate.
Jason Kirby: You coined “venture market fit.” We all know product‑market fit, but preparing your business for venture market fit—building relationships instead of just pitching—is a crucial lesson. Sometimes founders should realize they shouldn’t chase VC and should bootstrap. Can you expand on your definition of venture market fit and how you reached it?
Jens Neuse: There’s product‑market fit—if you have to ask, you don’t have it. Similarly, if you have to ask for a seed round, you don’t have venture market fit, because VCs will come to you and ask to join your round. At some point this happened to us. Suddenly 20+ VCs overnight contacted us—even though it was too late. It’s like dating—success shows. VCs smell it; they’ve seen so many founders. As a founder, understand whether your thing is a venture play—hypergrowth—or not. If you intend to build a venture‑backed company, you have to play by venture rules and meet specific criteria. VCs look for market signals via Hacker News, Reddit, and their networks. If you want to be venture‑ready, ideally you don’t have to cold email—cold email didn’t work for us. Later, the same VCs we cold emailed contacted us after seeing blog posts, coverage, Hacker News threads, etc. Build a brand and be accessible so they get interested. That’s venture market fit: figure out how to make VCs email you.
Jason Kirby: How much effort did you put into fundraising before things clicked? What was the timeline from starting, not having success, to getting money in the bank?
Jens Neuse: The whole process took longer than six months. At the beginning it was a lot of cold outreach. We had conversations, especially with some European or German VCs, but they didn’t lead anywhere. We put effort into getting emails, contacting them, and polishing our deck the seventh time. In retrospect, at seed stage you almost need no deck at all—you need something else. In our case, I believe in luck—you can set yourself up for luck. We were working with GraphQL and an angel at Meta found us. Meta (Facebook) invented GraphQL. That angel looked for investment opportunities using the technology because he understood it. He looked at other tools—most were too big; another project didn’t look scalable. Then he found us and found us interesting. That angel brought other angels and introduced us to a VC, Essence VC (Eschenwood Ventures). In the end, that was our ticket because we didn’t have to convince them the idea made sense—they understood it. The conversation became about whether we were the right team to pull it off.
Jason Kirby: You hinted there’s an alternative to spending forever on a deck. What did you mean?
Jens Neuse: If you have great KPIs and traction—if you can show your business works—everything else is secondary. You don’t need the best deck; you need a good company or at least the right team. If you have traction, show it. Everything changes so fast at seed; a year later you’ve matured enormously. Don’t stress over the deck; build a great company and present it so VCs want to invest. It’s not that hard, actually.
Jason Kirby: What’s been your inflection point—from that first $3K customer to growth? Were you growing steadily or did you get that one $3K and then raise? What was growth during and after the raise?
Jens Neuse: For a long time it was flat—until the point where it gets scary. Our approach is open source and enterprise‑first. We’re under NDAs and can’t talk about many things, but we’re talking to the largest companies, and those deals take a while. It’s hard to get in and be respected as a potential vendor. We chose one of the hardest things to bootstrap from zero. But now we’re getting to a point where it’s absolutely crazy.
Jason Kirby: Crazy in terms of growth or scary? What do you mean?
Jens Neuse: Crazy in terms of what we’ve achieved with so little investment, and which accounts we’re now able to get into. Early on you have an ICP in mind, and then suddenly other people knock on your door. We didn’t anticipate such big companies would talk to us. The inflection point is when you don’t have to drive the company by vision alone. We still have a vision—“GitHub for APIs”—but in the short‑to‑mid term we’re driven by real customer demand. That’s so much fun: you build something, people try it, and they see the value. That’s where the fun in startups comes from.
Jason Kirby: Sounds like product‑market fit, and now you’re fueling growth—congrats! Many founders in the EU and elsewhere will be curious about when, why, and how you set up a U.S. Delaware C Corp while the team is mostly in Germany. What was the decision process and timeline?
Jens Neuse: There are multiple reasons. It’s actually faster to get a tax number in the U.S. than in Germany. Germany is one of the most startup‑unfriendly countries—they build barriers. Through our angel at Meta, we got introduced early to U.S. investors. We’re building “GitHub for APIs”—going big. It’s hard to get German VCs to buy into this; we wanted U.S. investors. We asked: how do we remove friction? We talked to angels—there are special things they can do with retirement funds, etc. We decided to create a Delaware C Corp instead of flipping later. We also have a German GmbH, but it’s a subsidiary of the American company. That makes payroll easy in Germany while the U.S. parent owns the IP. We used Stripe Atlas; the process was straightforward. If you’re aiming big, just go with the Delaware C Corp.
Jason Kirby: I agree. Many EU startups set up domestically first and make the U.S. a subsidiary—that creates control issues because VCs want to invest in the parent that owns the IP. Did you get legal counsel or set it up yourselves?
Jens Neuse: We got legal counsel and thought about it a lot. Maybe not at seed, but at Series A, investors want to invest into the IP. The Delaware C Corp owns the IP. Investors want to invest in everything there is. You want to make things frictionless and set up the company in the most straightforward way. If they like what you do and your metrics are good, don’t create friction with a bad structure.
Jason Kirby: What did it cost to set it up that way—thousands or tens of thousands?
Jens Neuse: A couple tens of thousands.
Jason Kirby: That’s something for startups to note. It’s the right move, but costs money—so make sure you have venture market fit before investing $30K to raise from U.S. VCs.
Jens Neuse: One note: the VC we worked with gave us a SAFE early so we could use their money to set up everything correctly. That’s a good move—a small SAFE that rolls into the seed. We didn’t have to use our own money. That’s how you start a good relationship.
Jason Kirby: So you didn’t set it up before going to market—you waited until VCs were at the table and used a SAFE to fund the setup. Great solution.
Jens Neuse: In our case it was easy because we only had open source, so nobody could own it yet. They invested in us as a team and the idea—and one customer. That’s okay for seed.
Jason Kirby: You closed roughly nine months ago. How do the next several months look—raising again soon? What’s next for WunderGraph?
Jens Neuse: We’re in the late game of closing some very interesting accounts. Hopefully they’ll allow us to share more in the next months. With that we’ll optimize KPIs, and then we’ll be at the point to start raising the next round.
Jason Kirby: What will you do differently this time versus last round?
Jens Neuse: The situation is different now because we’ve built a network of VCs and identified those that fit and understand what we’re doing. Some couldn’t join the last round, but we nurtured relationships, updating them on our progress. We don’t need to cold email anymore. It’s more like: here’s our update, here are new customers, here’s progress, and we’re taking the next steps because we’re reaching new demand and need to scale the team accordingly.
Jason Kirby: That relationship maintenance will make a Series A much easier. As we wrap, what advice—especially not yet mentioned—would you give founders raising seed?
Jens Neuse: Best advice to technical founders—because I’m one: take a step back. Don’t focus so much on the tech. Focus more on the customer, go‑to‑market, and building a business interesting to VCs. I love supporting founders and can sense quickly whether a technical founder is focused on customers or in love with their solution. If you ask what they’re doing and they talk only about features, it’s boring. Ask: how do you sell? You can’t just build a WunderGraph and people will come—nobody cares. What’s your distribution strategy? Most technical founders get this wrong. They keep building and think they can hire distribution—it doesn’t work. You need to figure it out. If you truly solve a problem and people pay for it, it doesn’t matter if it’s one PHP file or some serverless architecture. If customers pay, it’s much easier to raise money. Follow Steve Jobs’ advice: be obsessed with the customer, find a great solution, and build a brand and GTM. That’s my advice.
Jason Kirby: That triggers a couple of founders I’ve spoken to—exact same issue. I’m excited to get this episode in their hands. It’s been a phenomenal time hosting you. Where can listeners learn more about WunderGraph or follow your journey?
Jens Neuse: You can follow me on Twitter: JensNoise_DE. You can also go to wundergraph.com and check out the product. It’s all open source—github.com/wundergraph. If you’re a startup or an enterprise working with a lot of APIs, WunderGraph can be very interesting. Join our Discord, we can chat or hop on a call. It was a pleasure being on the show. Thank you, Jason.
Jason Kirby: Thanks for joining us. We’ll include all those links in the show notes and look forward to following your journey. Thank you so much for joining us.
Jason Kirby: Go ahead.

Episode FAQ

What is “venture market fit”?
It’s when investor demand becomes pull, not push—VCs who align with your thesis proactively reach out to join your round because your story, traction, and timing match their worldview.
Why did WunderGraph delay announcing its seed round?
They waited until the SaaS product was ready so the news could double as a marketing moment with something tangible to sell, rather than announcing with only an open‑source tool.
How can EU‑based founders raise from U.S. investors?
Minimize friction: make a U.S. Delaware C Corp the parent that owns the IP, keep local subsidiaries for payroll, and use programs like Stripe Atlas plus solid legal counsel.
Top fundraising tip for technical founders?
Obsess over customers and distribution. Great KPIs and a repeatable GTM beat a perfect pitch deck.

Jason Kirby
Jason Kirby

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