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Robin Haak

@esenty

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Founder & Solo GP @robincapital | €30M AUM
Built SmartRecruiters → Unicorn → SAP
Built Revaia → €600M AUM
80+ investments | 8 unicorns

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For ten years, I wrote letters to Aubert de Villaine asking if one day I might be allowed to work a harvest at Domaine de la Romanée-Conti. Eventually, he said yes. It remains one of the greatest honors of my life.

One afternoon, after harvesting Montrachet, I was driving back to the Domaine with Bertrand de Villaine, today its co-manager. He told me something I have never forgotten: as a harvester, you are the last person to touch the grape. Your hands, your attention, your heart and soul go into what follows.

That is how I think about excellence.

At Romanée-Conti, excellence is not a slogan. It is thousands of small decisions made with extraordinary care, repeated year after year, generation after generation. Families work together. Friends return for the harvest. The owners are there themselves. The focus is relentlessly on the product and the people who create it.

Of course, startups are different. The best product does not automatically win. A brilliant product nobody buys is still a failed business. Sales, distribution and closeness to the customer matter enormously.

But the deeper lesson remains: you are who you hire. Work with exceptional people. Trust them. Pursue the highest possible standard. Do it consistently for long enough, and reputation becomes the consequence, not the objective.

At lunch one day, Aubert asked me to sit beside him. He told me that one of the greatest joys in life is to truly believe in someone, trust them, and then watch them thrive.

I think about that often. Once you have built things yourself, there is an extraordinary privilege in being at service to someone else’s journey. To believe before the outcome is obvious. To stay through the difficult years. And, sometimes, to watch them succeed.

That is what I want Robin Capital to become.

We invest in people. Companies and products may change. Some will succeed, some will fail, some founders will build two or three more companies over the decades. But if integrity remains the North Star, our relationship should survive the outcome.

Once Conti, always Conti.

Once Robin, always Robin. by @esenty

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16 days ago

I believe it’s human nature to create. I searched for God and found only myself. I searched for myself and found only God. Within us lies divinity, and life is a miracle, a wonder. Each of us is unique, forging our own paths. Life is suffering, and to transcend it, we must let go of greed, anger, and foolishness. Wisdom, generosity, and loving-kindness are the antidotes to these poisons.

You were enough the day you were born. Be abundant and rooted in service. As founders, many of us were different. We took risks, followed our paths, and created space for what matters. Often, we were alone, misunderstood. To be different is to risk rejection. Many fail, some get lost, often due to a lack of support. We need peers to talk to.

Look to Star Wars – the force, the light, the choice between good and bad. Humans are born good by nature. If everything around seems dark, look again, you may be the light. You are not a drop in the ocean; you are the entire ocean in a drop. In dark places, you think you’ve been buried, but you’ve been planted.

We humans are capable of so much. We need to believe and act. There is no courage without fear. Be proud to do things differently. At Robin Escape, we value those who create, who are different, who choose the right path. We select for integrity, kindness, soul, and good heart.

Now we offer a safe harbor, a place to learn and grow. We are a community that moves, constantly flowing like the universe. Most importantly, we support one another. We accept, tolerate, and appreciate with kindness and care. We strive for collective and individual success. We fail, we rise, and through this process, we are forged. We are not alone. We support one another. In faith, we find our path. This is Robin Capital. In Founders We Trust. As One. People First.

A heartfelt thank you to the founders we’ve invested in, our portfolio that placed their trust in us. To our Limited Partners, whose support makes all of this possible. To the dedicated team and everyone who works with us, and to all the supporters and sponsors who brought this event to life – we are deeply grateful. taken in St. Salvator (Friesach) by @esenty

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2 years ago

When we had a conversation he told me: “We all have our weaknesses. We need to help others to weaken those and strengthen their strength. The greatest gift in life is to trust someone and see them strive.” I am thankful I had the opportunity to help a tiny little bit during the harvest and I am grateful I have seen such leadership and dedication - I will follow his advise.

Aubert de Villaine (co-owner and co-director of the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti), September 2022, during the harvesting at Domaine de la Romanee-Conti Batard-Montrachet Grand Cru · Cote de Beaune, France. taken in Chassagne-Montrachet by @esenty

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4 years ago

There is no overnight success.

Most things worth building take a decade. For years, nobody sees you. You work in the dark. You get rejected, make mistakes, start again. People who started with you disappear. Sometimes you wonder if you are the stupid one for still being there.

And then one day, something works. From the outside it looks sudden. It wasn’t. They see the moment. They don’t see the ten years that made the moment possible.

I think we overestimate talent and underestimate endurance. You don’t have to win every day. You don’t have to feel motivated every day. You don’t even have to know exactly how you will get there. You just have to stay in the game.

Keep showing up. Keep learning. Keep doing the work when nobody is watching. For a long time, nothing happens. Then everything happens.

Don’t quit. by @esenty

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2 days ago

Their success is my success.

I think one of the greatest joys in life is believing in someone and then watching them become everything you knew they could be.

I love people. I love their stories, their courage, their ambitions. And I love being a small part of their journey.
Having been a founder myself, I know that building something meaningful takes years. There will be beautiful days and terrible ones. Moments when everyone believes in you and others when almost nobody does.

When I decide to invest, I decide to walk that road with you. Not just as an investor, but as someone who genuinely wants to see you thrive. To share what I’ve learned, open whatever doors I can, listen when things get difficult, and be of service wherever I’m needed.
Sometimes these relationships become friendships. Sometimes they last longer than the companies themselves. I find that beautiful.
Give me good people. Smart, kind, resilient people with grit. People who dare to build something that matters. Who believe in something so deeply that quitting isn’t really an option.
And when I see that rocket ship, I want to jump in.
Not to take the wheel. Just to be there for the ride, help wherever I can, and watch you fly.
Because somewhere along the way, your dreams become a little bit of mine, too.
And your success becomes my success.

In founders we trust.
Once Robin, always Robin. by @esenty

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3 days ago

Everyone is a little lost.

So stop following footsteps. That path is already taken.

Find the thing that is yours. Even if it is small. Even if nobody understands it yet. Something you are strangely good at. Something you care about enough to do it again tomorrow. And the day after.

Passion is nice. Obsession is better.

Because motivation disappears. Discipline stays. And doing something for a very long time is still one of the great unfair advantages in life.

Be yourself. Everyone else is taken.

And remember: no one is coming to save you.

You have to build your own life. Trust your own judgment. Think bigger than people think is reasonable. Their opinions are theirs. Your life is yours.

And sometimes, don’t ask how to make the old thing 10% better.

Start again.

Build the thing that should exist.

Then keep going. taken in Berlin, Deutschland by @esenty

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4 days ago

Maybe one of the biggest mistakes we make is treating life like a pilgrimage, as if we are constantly going somewhere and something is waiting for us at the end. We build the company, raise the next round, chase the number, the house, the person, the exit. We tell ourselves that when we finally get there, we will breathe. We will be happy. Life will begin.

And then sometimes you actually get there. It feels amazing for a moment, but surprisingly quickly the extraordinary becomes normal. The applause disappears, the number becomes just another number and there is this strange vacuum asking: what now? So you find the next mountain.

I think I understood this far too late. There is nothing waiting for us at the end. Alan Watts compared life to music and dancing. You don’t listen to a song to reach the final note. You don’t dance because there is a particular place on the floor you need to arrive at. The music is the point.

Maybe that is also what faith means to me. Not believing everything will be easy, but accepting life as it comes. The pain, uncertainty, failures and chapters you would never have chosen. You carry them and keep going. You do the work in front of you as well as you can. You care about your craft. You are present with the person sitting across from you. You love, laugh, help, create and notice who is walking beside you.

Because this is it. The random Sunday morning. The coffee. The difficult week. The dinner that went on too long. The ordinary moments we keep rushing through while waiting for life to happen.

Have goals. Dream big. Work hard. But don’t sacrifice today for some imaginary tomorrow.

It was always about the journey and the company you kept along the way.

The music is already playing. Dance. by @esenty

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5 days ago

Day one. Or one day.

Everyone wants motivation. I think motivation is overrated. Discipline is what remains when motivation is gone.

You don’t need to wake up inspired every morning. You just need to show up. Again. And again. And again.

Building a company taught me this more than anything else.

There will be a million moments when you want to quit. People won’t believe in you. Investors will say no. Customers will say no. People will question your vision, your ability, sometimes even you as a person.

Don’t take it personally.

That might be the one thing I would tell my younger self. Be less emotional about the no. Keep moving.

Because sometimes, just before the wave breaks, the water pulls back.

The hardest moments can feel like everything is moving against you. Maybe the answer isn’t to fight that feeling. Accept it. Embrace the pain. Go through the storm. Keep moving when there is no applause, no validation, no visible progress.

And then, sometimes, it breaks.

Not because you found some secret. Not because you were motivated every day. But because you were still there.

Resilience. Perseverance. Grit. Call it whatever you want.

I call it not quitting.

Building something meaningful takes years. Often ten years or more. And somewhere along the way you realize the destination was never really the point.

It was who you became by refusing to quit.

Day one. Or one day. by @esenty

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6 days ago

I increasingly believe that there are very few “best people”. There are the right people for the right chapter.

Jack Ma once told a story from the early days of Alibaba. The company had around $5 million and he had hired experienced executives from large corporations. One of them presented a $12 million marketing plan. When Jack told him the entire company only had $5 million, the executive replied that he had never made a plan below $20 million.

He wasn’t a bad executive. He may have been an exceptional one. He was simply exceptional for a different chapter.

I think about this a lot when building companies. At the beginning, you don’t always need the biggest title, longest CV or most impressive company. You need athletes. People with curiosity, hunger, humility and grit. People who can operate without a map and learn faster than the company changes.

And then you grow together. Give people autonomy. Help them master their craft. Give them purpose. Create enough trust to disagree, make mistakes, speak the truth and learn. Sometimes the person you hired before they were “ready” grows into the leader you could never have hired.

But chapters change. Someone extraordinary at 10 people may not be right at 1,000. That doesn’t make them better or worse. It makes timing part of talent.

And then there is something harder to describe. Frequency. Science might call parts of it values, trust, relatedness or team fit. I like frequency. That feeling that people see the same mountain. That the energy is right. That you can challenge each other without losing trust and everyone wants to become better together.

Maybe great teams aren’t about collecting the most impressive people. Maybe it’s finding the right people for the right mission at the right time, and growing into the next chapter together.

Right person. Right role. Right time. Right frequency.

Talent matters. Timing matters too. by @esenty

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7 days ago

Life comes in chapters. One of the most important chapters of mine was being a founder.

We started at zero and built B2B enterprise software across Europe and the US. We raised from Seed through Series E, built a team of more than 500 people and crossed nine figures in ARR. Our last private round was $110M at a $1.5B valuation, led by Silver Lake. Eventually, we became a unicorn and a centaur, and the company was acquired profitably by SAP.

I spent years between Europe and San Francisco learning the craft by doing it. Fundraising, enterprise sales, GTM, hiring, leadership, secondaries, scaling global operations. But probably the most valuable lessons came from the things that don’t appear on a pitch deck: uncertainty, mistakes, responsibility, difficult decisions, resilience and simply continuing when things don’t go according to plan.

I am deeply grateful for that chapter. But I don’t want to repeat it. I want to use it.

Today, I am no longer the founder asking someone to believe. I get to be the person who believes.

That is what investing means to me. Being at service to founders. Sharing what took me years to learn. Opening doors. Making introductions. Picking up the phone when things are difficult. And sometimes simply being there when someone needs another person to believe that it can be done.

Having been a founder doesn’t mean I have all the answers. Far from it. But I know many of the questions. I have sat on the other side of the table. I know what it feels like to build something from nothing, to carry responsibility for hundreds of people, to raise the next round, to make mistakes and to keep going.

Maybe that is what chapters are for. You live them, you learn from them, and eventually you get the opportunity to turn what you learned into something useful for others.

I spent one chapter building.

I would happily spend the next decade giving back.

At service. In founders we trust. by @esenty

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8 days ago

Conviction is earned.

I have spent 15 years on both sides of the table.

I have raised at Pre-Seed and at Series E.
I have invested from Pre-Seed to Series D.
I have seen companies from zero to pre-IPO.

That experience taught me not to outsource conviction to the crowd.

We do the work. Commercial, legal, market, references. We question the assumptions. We study the details. We try to understand what others may have missed.

And then, eventually, the spreadsheets end.

There is a human being sitting across the table.

Someone with a vision that may still look improbable. Someone asking you to believe before the evidence becomes obvious.

That is venture.

The greatest companies are outliers. And outliers rarely look like consensus at the beginning. Venture itself follows a power law; historically, a remarkably small share of investments has generated most of the returns.

So we don’t want to follow the signal.
We want to do enough work to have our own.

And when we believe, we believe for a long time.

Not for the round. Not for the next mark. For the journey—the first company, perhaps the second and third, and sometimes from founder to LP.

Because in the end, venture is not about pattern recognition.

It is about recognizing the human before they become the pattern.

In founders we trust. Courage is a co-founder. by @esenty

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10 days ago

After SmartRecruiters, I didn’t know what came next.

We had built a unicorn, crossed €100M ARR, and eventually sold the company to SAP. I took some time off, traveled the world, learned a lot. Then I came home.

And I had no plan.

So I started calling people. Hundreds of them. Not because I knew what I wanted, but because I didn’t.

One conversation led to StepStone and an advisory board role. Another opened the door to venture capital. Eventually, I helped build a €250M first-time fund from scratch. And that journey ultimately led me to start Robin Capital.

None of this was obvious at the beginning.

That’s the point.

If you do nothing, the outcome is certain: zero.

If you go out there, call 300 people, ask questions, listen, meet, try, fail, try again, it might still be zero.

But it might be something.

You don’t always need to know where you’re going.

Sometimes you just need to move. by @esenty

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14 days ago