“Work backwards from a billion”: Lex Hoefsloot on fundraising
At Level Up 2025, the founder and former CEO of Lightyear says deep-tech founders should map their path to mega-rounds from day one..
Published on September 29, 2025
Lex Hoefsloot © Bram Saeys
Bart, co-founder of Media52 and Professor of Journalism oversees IO+, events, and Laio. A journalist at heart, he keeps writing as many stories as possible.
“Spend even more time on fundraising,” says Lex Hoefsloot when asked for his single biggest lesson. “Especially in deep tech, you know from the start you need a lot of money… quite often it’s not strange that you need a billion, or something in that region.” Hoefsloot was invited to start the Level Up 2025 event, where he shared his experiences during his startup's wild journey, Lightyear.
Hoefsloot argues that founders should plot the entire capital journey upfront: “Look at all the investors that might actually qualify to do those kinds of investment rounds, and realize the billion you probably only get from the really large American - or perhaps European, but it’s rare - investment funds.” Then, he says, “work your way back: Imagine where you need to be in five, ten years, with this risk profile of my company, this revenue or possibly etc. Then look at the investors before that phase who can lead me to that investor, know their risk profile, and work your way back.”
For a Dutch ecosystem dominated by smaller rounds, that means more global legwork earlier. “I would definitely encourage anybody, not only entrepreneurs but also investors, to do a lot more networking abroad, because we have to be realistic. We live in a different world.” He points to the scale of U.S. AI deals: “I think the last investment grant from Anthropic is 100 billion, right? That’s the level we need to play at.” The upshot: “As an ecosystem, I think we can get to that level, but it starts with raising almost a hundred times more than we’re raising today… We have to collaboratively find out how we’re going to make such a big round possible.”
The high: one car, thousands of parts, one orchestra
Asked about the moment he felt on top of the world, Hoefsloot doesn’t hesitate: the first production car. “You’re living up to that moment for seven years. You have the vision when you start with five students just out of university… and it takes way longer than you think it will take.”
What made it unforgettable was the precision and orchestration required to get there. “You have hundreds of people, thousands of parts that all come together - it’s almost an orchestra - that all come together to produce one car.” The scene unfolded in Finland: “We were in Finland and basically it felt like a big relief… all those thousands of signed parts and all the revisions and all the customers and the investors… it was ‘we achieved this.’”
Lex Hoefsloot at Level Up 2025 © Bram Saeys
The low: bankruptcy, a restart, and then another cliff
The toughest stretch came after Lightyear’s bankruptcy, in the turbulence of the restart. “We restarted with quite a big company, we had to downscale a couple of times… we went from 100 people to 70 people and then we had to pivot again and go to 30 people.” Each reduction was personal: “Every time you have to go back to the list of all the people you’ve been working with… and let go of people you’ve worked with for so long, maybe have friendships with.”
The pressure was relentless: “The money was running out as well, and the shareholders had some issues amongst each other… then the sky seems to be falling.” At one point, he says, “You’re faced with the possibility of a second bankruptcy, half a year after the first one.”
Did he ever think of quitting? “A lot of people ask me that… but you never see that as a possibility. You’re in it. There is no quitting.” He’s candid about the cost: “That’s also when you start to deteriorate your body and everything else around you.”
Failure as release, and an unexpected phone call
Paradoxically, failure sometimes opened doors. “A couple of times in my life I went through failure, sometimes big failures… it lowers the expectation that people have, and therefore it opens up a new opportunity to go at it from strength. There’s a burden that falls off you that gives you more freedom to just do the things you believe are important.”
He recalls a drone demo at university: “The drone crashed on the stage. A big failure. Everybody thought this was not going to happen anymore.” The next day brought a surprise: “I got a call from the board of the university… I didn’t want to take it because I thought they’d say I should leave. And then the board actually came to help me and offered me encouragement to keep going.”
From grey to black-and-white
Inside the arena, he says, everything is a dilemma. “When you’re in it, everything is grey, not black and white.” In hindsight, though, he would make bolder calls sooner. “One of the things I learned is to trust my gut feeling better… when you tap into it and start to think about why I feel like that, and then act on it… That’s really powerful. In hindsight, I would have been more black and white.”
Growth forces that shift, too. “Once the company grows bigger, you cannot give nuanced messages anymore, because they will get lost in translation… communication tends to be more black and white.” The job changes with scale: “There’s so much momentum in a company once it grows bigger; you have to be firmer to steer the tanker.” That can feel unnatural: “You’ll have to be this version of yourself that is less nuanced, at least in communication, that might not fit with your personality.”
Back to the money: plan for Mars, then chart the steps
Hoefsloot returns to fundraising with a metaphor: start at Mars and work backwards. “We’re going backwards, not forwards. Not step by step by step… You have to go to Mars and work backwards.” For him, that means mapping investor risk appetites over time, identifying who can lead each stage, and building those relationships abroad early. “If we had done that from day one, we would have done a lot more networking from the beginning in all the places… in the Netherlands and abroad.”
The closing note is both pragmatic and ambitious: “We have to take a big leap.” The leap, he suggests, is less about tempo than trajectory: know where the billion lies, then architect the route to it, long before you need it.