1 00:00:00,120 --> 00:00:01,320 How many years are you in Sequoia now? 2 00:00:01,680 --> 00:00:03,840 Nearly five years. So what are you looking for? 3 00:00:04,120 --> 00:00:06,560 So when we. Invested precede, we basically 4 00:00:06,560 --> 00:00:08,840 have two criteria. We basically look for an outlier 5 00:00:08,840 --> 00:00:11,600 team right on some of the four dimensions I mentioned earlier 6 00:00:11,720 --> 00:00:14,440 and something that we call like positive market dynamics, 7 00:00:14,600 --> 00:00:16,720 meaning you're building in a category that is on the right 8 00:00:16,720 --> 00:00:18,920 side of history. This is George Robson, partner 9 00:00:18,920 --> 00:00:22,240 at Sequoia Capital, who joined the firm when he was only 25 10 00:00:22,240 --> 00:00:24,080 years old. He was also recognized for his 11 00:00:24,080 --> 00:00:27,880 achievements by being included in the Forbes 30 Under 30 list. 12 00:00:28,000 --> 00:00:31,080 Prior to that, he honed his expertise at Revolut, a multi 13 00:00:31,120 --> 00:00:33,920 billion dollar fintech giant, where he was one of the first 14 00:00:33,920 --> 00:00:36,160 product owners. The winning edge, if it exists, 15 00:00:36,440 --> 00:00:37,640 is just the culture and the people. 16 00:00:37,760 --> 00:00:39,920 Your culture doesn't need to be for everybody, right? 17 00:00:39,920 --> 00:00:41,960 In many ways, your culture is for somebody, right? 18 00:00:41,960 --> 00:00:44,840 It's some notion of a, of an employee or a team member or 19 00:00:44,840 --> 00:00:46,760 whatever it might be that you have in mind. 20 00:00:46,800 --> 00:00:48,920 And it's for you to kind of set the rules and expectations of 21 00:00:48,920 --> 00:00:49,920 how you're going to work together. 22 00:00:50,080 --> 00:00:52,840 What kind of businesses do you think would exist in the future? 23 00:00:52,920 --> 00:00:55,360 It's a little bit intimidating to say this, but like as an 24 00:00:55,360 --> 00:00:58,040 early stage business, I'd say the pressure on you to like 25 00:00:58,040 --> 00:01:00,800 future pref your company is actually as great as it's ever 26 00:01:00,800 --> 00:01:02,920 been because the world is spinning, you know, faster than 27 00:01:02,920 --> 00:01:04,440 it ever has. So the reality is, you know, a 28 00:01:04,440 --> 00:01:06,840 lot of these businesses that are going from a million to 10 29 00:01:06,840 --> 00:01:09,200 million of AR, we don't really know whether they're going to 30 00:01:09,200 --> 00:01:11,320 have any revenue in three years how we should. 31 00:01:11,880 --> 00:01:15,280 Start-ups think about equity. We actually don't like 5050. 32 00:01:15,320 --> 00:01:17,960 We think it's a negative signal. You and your Co founder have 33 00:01:17,960 --> 00:01:20,200 5050 empty. The reason for that actually is. 34 00:01:22,600 --> 00:01:25,480 Yeah, thanks a lot for coming. A few years ago, I was also a 35 00:01:25,480 --> 00:01:29,280 student on Imperial and one of the things I noticed that Leon 36 00:01:29,280 --> 00:01:33,280 was the enterprise lab had some great advice. 37 00:01:33,520 --> 00:01:37,320 But that was the only part that I could find advice in Imperial. 38 00:01:37,840 --> 00:01:43,000 And then I could not actually see a lot of folks coming to the 39 00:01:43,000 --> 00:01:45,920 university to speak, having run startups, having build, build 40 00:01:46,240 --> 00:01:49,160 really big businesses. So that's the reason why I'm 41 00:01:49,160 --> 00:01:54,560 coming back doing this events. And for this one, we have George 42 00:01:54,960 --> 00:01:57,880 from Sequoia. Sequoia is arguably the best 43 00:01:57,880 --> 00:02:00,880 fund in the world for the last probably 20-30 years, I believe. 44 00:02:01,640 --> 00:02:04,640 So thanks a lot for joining. I'll give an introduction. 45 00:02:04,840 --> 00:02:09,800 George studied in LSE and man, he did a classic group and he 46 00:02:09,800 --> 00:02:12,200 went to Morgan Stanley. So that's I want to ask you 47 00:02:12,200 --> 00:02:17,040 about that joined the revolutes. Obviously everybody knows 48 00:02:17,040 --> 00:02:20,160 Revoluts, right? One of the first product owners 49 00:02:21,480 --> 00:02:25,320 and then joined at age 25. The best fund in the world is 50 00:02:25,320 --> 00:02:29,400 the the second person joining as an investor in Europe. 51 00:02:30,640 --> 00:02:33,680 So thanks for joining me. Honestly, it's amazing to be 52 00:02:33,680 --> 00:02:36,080 here. I, we used to tear that up. 53 00:02:36,080 --> 00:02:38,320 I mean, my experience at LSE I think was a little bit similar. 54 00:02:38,320 --> 00:02:40,560 I think London is this remarkable place where you have 55 00:02:40,960 --> 00:02:43,360 so many of the world's best universities to excel at. 56 00:02:43,360 --> 00:02:44,960 You know, one or two things, right? 57 00:02:45,600 --> 00:02:47,920 But actually that connectivity, I think even on campus or within 58 00:02:47,920 --> 00:02:50,880 campuses is, is not trivial. And I think that I think about 59 00:02:50,880 --> 00:02:53,200 some of my experiences when I was studying it honestly shaped 60 00:02:53,200 --> 00:02:55,080 and well, maybe we'll talk about this, but it very much shaped my 61 00:02:55,080 --> 00:02:57,600 trajectory going into Revolute and and beyond. 62 00:02:57,600 --> 00:02:58,880 So like make the most of this group. 63 00:02:58,960 --> 00:03:00,960 And honestly, being here is is definitely the first step. 64 00:03:02,600 --> 00:03:07,120 I think the consensus for people when they live in period is to 65 00:03:07,240 --> 00:03:10,800 go to investment banking. Would you suggest it's a good 66 00:03:10,840 --> 00:03:12,480 idea if they want to launch a company? 67 00:03:13,720 --> 00:03:16,240 Yeah, I mean, I so my trajectory, as you said, so I 68 00:03:16,240 --> 00:03:20,120 studied economics and maths. That LC really the thing that I 69 00:03:20,120 --> 00:03:22,800 think shaped my experience most. There was I was part of this 70 00:03:22,800 --> 00:03:25,120 team setting up this program called Kickstart when I was 71 00:03:25,120 --> 00:03:26,840 studying, which was kind of founded around the inside of. 72 00:03:26,960 --> 00:03:28,720 I knew I wanted to build a business or be part of 73 00:03:29,040 --> 00:03:30,800 entrepreneurship, but honestly I didn't really know where to 74 00:03:30,800 --> 00:03:31,960 start. I didn't know how to find people 75 00:03:31,960 --> 00:03:34,200 that were similarly motivated, I guess, as myself. 76 00:03:34,200 --> 00:03:36,440 But also to build a great company, you obviously need 77 00:03:36,440 --> 00:03:38,360 people that come from a range of different backgrounds. 78 00:03:38,360 --> 00:03:40,760 And when you're studying in a degree program in a relatively 79 00:03:40,760 --> 00:03:43,080 specialist university, it's not always easy to find that 80 00:03:43,080 --> 00:03:44,960 yourself. And actually, when I was in my 81 00:03:44,960 --> 00:03:47,880 final year studying, I was on a panel, you know, representing 82 00:03:47,880 --> 00:03:49,440 that, you know, very small accelerator. 83 00:03:49,680 --> 00:03:52,400 And just by chance, Revolute was on that panel with me when 84 00:03:52,400 --> 00:03:54,640 Revolute was a PRECEDE company just coming out Who? 85 00:03:54,640 --> 00:03:56,880 Who was it from the world? Alan Chang, who studied here in 86 00:03:56,880 --> 00:03:59,520 Imperial actually, you know, Once Upon a time and ended up 87 00:03:59,520 --> 00:04:01,520 hiring me into Revolut and really, you know, setting a 88 00:04:01,520 --> 00:04:03,400 bunch of things in motion that that changed my life. 89 00:04:04,240 --> 00:04:06,560 And I think that, you know, that that openness was kind of there. 90 00:04:06,560 --> 00:04:08,960 I think the rationale for going to Morgan Stanley at that time 91 00:04:08,960 --> 00:04:10,520 really was I didn't know any better options. 92 00:04:10,600 --> 00:04:12,520 I mean, I perceived it as in tech in London. 93 00:04:12,520 --> 00:04:14,320 You, you can work at Google. You wanted to work at Google. 94 00:04:14,320 --> 00:04:16,040 I know I didn't want to do that. I didn't want to sell, you know, 95 00:04:16,079 --> 00:04:17,640 ads for ice cream companies, things like that. 96 00:04:18,120 --> 00:04:21,279 And, and I knew that I wanted to kind of identify myself as 97 00:04:21,279 --> 00:04:24,000 someone who had a pretty high pain threshold, right, and was 98 00:04:24,000 --> 00:04:26,640 willing to work pretty hard and, you know, try and identify 99 00:04:26,640 --> 00:04:29,880 myself when I, at a time where I felt, I guess my CV was, was 100 00:04:29,880 --> 00:04:31,360 kind of naked. I didn't know where else to 101 00:04:31,360 --> 00:04:33,560 turn. The reality was I was there for 102 00:04:33,560 --> 00:04:36,200 about 9 months. I was really, you know, in 103 00:04:36,200 --> 00:04:38,520 Canary Wharf. Revolute happened to be founded 104 00:04:38,560 --> 00:04:41,520 at level 39, which is like all of 80 meters away from Morgan 105 00:04:41,520 --> 00:04:43,600 Stanley's office. And I kind of kept in tough 106 00:04:43,600 --> 00:04:46,840 touch with Alan, seeing how the company was moving and it and it 107 00:04:46,840 --> 00:04:48,840 just piqued my interest. So I always knew going into it 108 00:04:48,840 --> 00:04:50,520 that I wasn't going to be there forever. 109 00:04:50,880 --> 00:04:53,000 I think the thing I would say that for people who were kind of 110 00:04:53,000 --> 00:04:55,160 considering a decision like that, sometimes people go into 111 00:04:55,160 --> 00:04:57,280 that because they want to understand how to think about 112 00:04:57,280 --> 00:04:59,600 businesses, right? And how to describe good and bad 113 00:04:59,600 --> 00:05:01,880 companies. It definitely helps gives you 114 00:05:01,880 --> 00:05:03,800 some of the terminology, but it's not the same thing. 115 00:05:03,800 --> 00:05:05,840 It's a little bit like the difference between, you know, 116 00:05:05,840 --> 00:05:07,800 shadow boxing or sparring, right? 117 00:05:07,800 --> 00:05:10,360 It's a very different level of intensity of doing the thing you 118 00:05:10,360 --> 00:05:12,160 actually think you want to do long term, which is taking 119 00:05:12,160 --> 00:05:14,480 ownership, being inside a company and being accountable 120 00:05:14,480 --> 00:05:16,320 for it's success. Being an advisor is not the same 121 00:05:16,320 --> 00:05:17,760 thing. So make sure not to mix them up. 122 00:05:19,160 --> 00:05:22,240 What's the first product you work on in the Revolut and was 123 00:05:22,240 --> 00:05:24,080 that your first role? Yeah. 124 00:05:24,080 --> 00:05:28,200 So I I joined basically to do the same job that I did for the 125 00:05:28,200 --> 00:05:30,280 entirety of the time I was there, which was to build a 126 00:05:30,280 --> 00:05:33,120 consumer subscription business. So Revolute had this slightly 127 00:05:33,120 --> 00:05:35,320 contrarian bet as a lot of consumer companies do, 128 00:05:35,320 --> 00:05:37,520 particularly those going into categories where you have a 129 00:05:37,520 --> 00:05:40,320 pretty big incumbent or a number of incumbents and that they knew 130 00:05:40,320 --> 00:05:42,080 they didn't want to make money from FX, right. 131 00:05:42,080 --> 00:05:44,800 The original product was a multi currency account, a travel card 132 00:05:45,000 --> 00:05:46,480 that was really the act one of the business. 133 00:05:46,920 --> 00:05:48,880 But the Act 2 and the act three of the business was to go much, 134 00:05:48,880 --> 00:05:51,400 much deeper into everyday financial services and to find a 135 00:05:51,400 --> 00:05:54,320 way to do that profitably just by giving up, you know, a lot of 136 00:05:54,320 --> 00:05:56,480 the fees that banks typically charge you for in a very 137 00:05:56,480 --> 00:05:59,160 intransparent way. So the way to do that was this 138 00:05:59,160 --> 00:06:01,840 hypothesis of having an Amazon Prime type product that sell at 139 00:06:01,840 --> 00:06:03,040 the core of the Revolute offering. 140 00:06:03,600 --> 00:06:05,560 I launched Allen hive me, you know, to to launch that 141 00:06:05,560 --> 00:06:08,800 business, take it from the UK, take it across Europe, you know, 142 00:06:08,800 --> 00:06:11,240 scale it eventually to kind of hundreds of millions of dollars 143 00:06:11,240 --> 00:06:13,200 of revenue. And by the time I left across, 144 00:06:13,200 --> 00:06:16,120 you know, 40 plus markets and the the goal was always the 145 00:06:16,120 --> 00:06:17,720 same. Just to convince as many people, 146 00:06:17,720 --> 00:06:20,040 you know, a high, high percentage of our monthly active 147 00:06:20,040 --> 00:06:22,600 users to be on these paid plans and to have the kind of full 148 00:06:22,600 --> 00:06:24,560 degree of flexibility in terms of how we achieve that. 149 00:06:27,280 --> 00:06:28,960 How? How are the teams formed inside 150 00:06:28,960 --> 00:06:33,240 of Revolut? So I think Revolut Revolution's 151 00:06:33,240 --> 00:06:35,600 always been known for having a relatively intense culture. 152 00:06:35,800 --> 00:06:38,240 And I think that actually, for me, that was something I really 153 00:06:38,240 --> 00:06:40,040 wanted to seek out. I think that was the best bit of 154 00:06:40,040 --> 00:06:41,160 investment banking, to be honest. 155 00:06:41,160 --> 00:06:44,280 That stayed with me is that idea of just moving quickly and, and 156 00:06:44,280 --> 00:06:45,880 with purpose. And I remember when I 157 00:06:45,880 --> 00:06:47,920 interviewed with Nick, he gave me this line, which was like, 158 00:06:47,920 --> 00:06:49,880 coming here is like going to the gym. 159 00:06:49,960 --> 00:06:51,520 If it doesn't hurt, you're not doing it right. 160 00:06:51,880 --> 00:06:54,600 And I was, Yeah, you know, you feel it. 161 00:06:54,960 --> 00:06:56,920 And I remember thinking, you know, who would say that in an 162 00:06:56,920 --> 00:06:58,760 interview? But at the same time, you know, 163 00:06:58,760 --> 00:07:01,360 I knew that was the people for me and it showed up in how the 164 00:07:01,360 --> 00:07:03,480 company was actually structured. Because what you basically had 165 00:07:03,480 --> 00:07:06,360 at Revolut is product is like a horizontal layer, right? 166 00:07:06,360 --> 00:07:08,120 Everybody reports up into product. 167 00:07:08,120 --> 00:07:10,240 That's a little bit contrarian because in lots of companies 168 00:07:10,520 --> 00:07:12,480 you'll have kind of engineering leaders, you'll have marketing 169 00:07:12,480 --> 00:07:14,200 leaders, you'll have maybe business development leaders, 170 00:07:14,440 --> 00:07:16,080 and you'll have these people that own product and they 171 00:07:16,080 --> 00:07:17,600 typically only own product metrics. 172 00:07:17,600 --> 00:07:19,640 So like conversion rates, activation rates, you know, 173 00:07:19,640 --> 00:07:21,160 things like that. I revolute. 174 00:07:21,160 --> 00:07:23,800 There was this idea that if you just did that people would never 175 00:07:23,800 --> 00:07:25,720 care about the business. They'd only care about, you 176 00:07:25,720 --> 00:07:28,400 know, pure product metrics. So everybody was really they're 177 00:07:28,400 --> 00:07:30,400 in a product type role was really more like a general 178 00:07:30,400 --> 00:07:32,240 manager. You know, they own some PNL for 179 00:07:32,240 --> 00:07:34,280 some business line. So in practice what that means 180 00:07:34,280 --> 00:07:36,840 is, you know, I turned up as someone who, you know, wasn't 181 00:07:36,840 --> 00:07:38,240 technical by anybody's standards. 182 00:07:38,560 --> 00:07:40,480 I'd actually never worked with software engineers running a 183 00:07:40,480 --> 00:07:41,760 product. I'd never been a hands on 184 00:07:41,760 --> 00:07:42,800 designer. If I'm honest. 185 00:07:42,800 --> 00:07:45,280 I'd always thought design was like a, you know, dark art. 186 00:07:45,680 --> 00:07:46,800 That was something you were born with. 187 00:07:46,800 --> 00:07:48,840 I hadn't fully appreciated. You could like work away and 188 00:07:48,840 --> 00:07:51,560 work into that over time. And it was probably the most 189 00:07:51,560 --> 00:07:54,640 difficult, like still the most difficult 1 1/2 years of my life 190 00:07:54,640 --> 00:07:57,360 when I joined making that transition because I turned up 191 00:07:57,360 --> 00:08:00,040 in this company that really valued product above all else 192 00:08:00,040 --> 00:08:02,800 and I knew I needed to be there. So basically, you know, Nick 193 00:08:02,800 --> 00:08:04,360 gave me that, you know, least of trust. 194 00:08:04,960 --> 00:08:06,880 I invested, you know, my blood, time and energy in it. 195 00:08:06,880 --> 00:08:08,800 And it did hurt, right? As he said, he was right. 196 00:08:09,480 --> 00:08:11,320 But it was worth it because at the end of the day, you know, I 197 00:08:11,320 --> 00:08:14,360 ended up running a pretty multi functional team that frankly was 198 00:08:14,360 --> 00:08:16,920 way broader than it would have been able to find anywhere else. 199 00:08:17,400 --> 00:08:19,600 And the whole culture is built around this idea of you set 200 00:08:19,600 --> 00:08:22,360 goals every six months of what you want to achieve for that 201 00:08:22,360 --> 00:08:25,080 multi functional team. You are not dependent on anybody 202 00:08:25,080 --> 00:08:27,160 else to do it because you have all of these different functions 203 00:08:27,160 --> 00:08:29,240 in house inside of your, you know, local unit. 204 00:08:29,520 --> 00:08:31,640 If you achieve that goal, your team grows and you get more 205 00:08:31,640 --> 00:08:33,679 responsibility. And if it doesn't, the team gets 206 00:08:33,679 --> 00:08:35,480 disbanded. Because effectively the way to 207 00:08:35,480 --> 00:08:37,520 think about it is if you're running a seed stage business 208 00:08:37,520 --> 00:08:40,360 going out, you know, you have your 18 months of runway, It's 209 00:08:40,360 --> 00:08:42,600 not that easy for you to always say to your investors, give me 210 00:08:42,600 --> 00:08:44,400 more time, right? The bar is always set, you know, 211 00:08:44,400 --> 00:08:45,760 in advance for where you need to get to. 212 00:08:46,160 --> 00:08:48,600 So Nick ran the business and still runs the business really 213 00:08:48,800 --> 00:08:50,720 with that, you know, focus and that position. 214 00:08:52,280 --> 00:08:54,400 Conceptually, that's very interesting in closing these 215 00:08:54,400 --> 00:08:56,320 teams, but how many teams did you see closing though? 216 00:08:57,080 --> 00:09:00,720 Honestly, all the time, yeah. You, you, you live in this sort 217 00:09:00,720 --> 00:09:04,120 of suspended state where you need to keep moving forwards. 218 00:09:04,280 --> 00:09:07,160 And and it's communicated, you know, to you directly by Nick, 219 00:09:07,160 --> 00:09:10,440 by I'd say more generally in the culture, you see it in the arc 220 00:09:10,480 --> 00:09:12,240 of companies. I mean, Alan is a great example 221 00:09:12,240 --> 00:09:14,960 of people who've been able to consistently grow their mandate 222 00:09:14,960 --> 00:09:18,480 inside of the business. And I think it's a good reminder 223 00:09:18,480 --> 00:09:20,760 for me because obviously when now it's Sequoia, you know, we 224 00:09:20,760 --> 00:09:23,520 invest in businesses that are just coming out of the company 225 00:09:23,520 --> 00:09:25,760 formation stage, right, preceding seed companies. 226 00:09:26,120 --> 00:09:28,080 And there's this notion of like when should we start to think 227 00:09:28,080 --> 00:09:30,200 about the culture we want to set in our organization? 228 00:09:30,480 --> 00:09:32,880 And the reality is on day one, right, you should actually start 229 00:09:32,880 --> 00:09:35,520 to think about exactly that because a little bit to Nick's 230 00:09:35,520 --> 00:09:37,440 comment of, you know, going to the gym, if it doesn't hurt, 231 00:09:37,440 --> 00:09:39,800 you're not doing it, right? I think you start to set these 232 00:09:39,800 --> 00:09:41,760 sort of virtue signals to the kind of people you want to 233 00:09:41,760 --> 00:09:43,280 attract. And then the goal is to 234 00:09:43,280 --> 00:09:45,800 obviously attract higher and ideally retain those exceptional 235 00:09:45,800 --> 00:09:47,360 people. And you need to set those 236 00:09:47,360 --> 00:09:49,600 frameworks in place really from day one when you start. 237 00:09:50,200 --> 00:09:51,960 So yeah, Nick, really, you know, lives and lies by it. 238 00:09:52,960 --> 00:09:57,920 I think at the time you are in revolutes a lot of the things 239 00:09:57,920 --> 00:10:01,400 that we're going getting out and pretty subscribes into the same 240 00:10:02,320 --> 00:10:05,840 cultural elements by the way. But you had so much going on 241 00:10:05,840 --> 00:10:08,440 from Financial Times against Revolution and so on. 242 00:10:08,440 --> 00:10:12,480 You had so much. But press, how did you guys deal 243 00:10:12,480 --> 00:10:15,200 with it? I think there was always a 244 00:10:15,200 --> 00:10:18,240 perception that things were way better inside the building than 245 00:10:18,240 --> 00:10:19,800 people perceive them outside the building. 246 00:10:19,920 --> 00:10:23,120 I also think it's easy to forget sometimes that when you, you 247 00:10:23,360 --> 00:10:25,600 know, you're the founder of a company and you have to define 248 00:10:25,600 --> 00:10:27,880 the culture, your culture doesn't need to be for 249 00:10:27,880 --> 00:10:29,960 everybody, right? In many ways, your culture is 250 00:10:29,960 --> 00:10:32,440 for somebody, right? It's some notion of a, of an 251 00:10:32,440 --> 00:10:35,000 employee or a team member or whatever it might be that you 252 00:10:35,000 --> 00:10:37,160 have in mind. And it's for you to kind of set 253 00:10:37,160 --> 00:10:38,880 the rules and expectations of how you're going to work 254 00:10:38,880 --> 00:10:40,520 together. And I think what was always 255 00:10:40,520 --> 00:10:42,440 interesting to me is, you know, we'd have lots of people that 256 00:10:42,440 --> 00:10:45,360 would drop out of the kind of employment funnel right when we 257 00:10:45,360 --> 00:10:47,720 were hiring these people because they felt the culture didn't 258 00:10:47,720 --> 00:10:49,040 align with how they wanted to work. 259 00:10:49,280 --> 00:10:51,080 When I first saw that, I remember thinking, wow, that is, 260 00:10:51,120 --> 00:10:52,320 you know, that's, that seems quite scary. 261 00:10:52,320 --> 00:10:54,200 And Morgan Stanley, we would never want that to be the case, 262 00:10:54,200 --> 00:10:55,920 right? We want everybody to love it and 263 00:10:55,920 --> 00:10:57,480 then only to hire a subset of those people. 264 00:10:58,000 --> 00:10:59,960 But actually, Nick believed very strongly that you should be 265 00:10:59,960 --> 00:11:02,760 virtually signalling way earlier in the process to self select 266 00:11:03,000 --> 00:11:04,200 the kind of people that would go through it. 267 00:11:04,200 --> 00:11:06,360 And what it meant was actually other people were there were 268 00:11:06,360 --> 00:11:07,760 there for exactly that reason, right? 269 00:11:07,760 --> 00:11:10,600 Like myself. So it kind of hurts when you 270 00:11:10,600 --> 00:11:12,080 know the time you would rethink like that. 271 00:11:12,480 --> 00:11:15,160 But I think the reality is that, you know, we had a whole bunch 272 00:11:15,160 --> 00:11:18,040 of competition as Revolut founded around the same time, 273 00:11:18,040 --> 00:11:20,960 you know ±2 years. If you look at the current step, 274 00:11:20,960 --> 00:11:23,600 like size of the business, Revolut is more valuable than 275 00:11:23,600 --> 00:11:26,080 all of their competition in Europe combined, which is 276 00:11:26,080 --> 00:11:28,280 remarkable statistic. And that's in financial 277 00:11:28,280 --> 00:11:30,280 services, where there's really no black magic. 278 00:11:30,280 --> 00:11:32,240 Like everybody roughly builds the same things. 279 00:11:32,280 --> 00:11:33,760 They build it in slightly different orders. 280 00:11:34,080 --> 00:11:36,840 And I would argue some companies like a business with that, with 281 00:11:36,840 --> 00:11:38,400 that culture build it much more quickly. 282 00:11:39,040 --> 00:11:41,600 So really I think the winning, the winning edge, if it exists 283 00:11:41,800 --> 00:11:43,120 is just the culture and the people. 284 00:11:43,760 --> 00:11:45,640 And I think that's kind of indication for for that 285 00:11:45,640 --> 00:11:50,840 strategy. I, I remember this, there was 286 00:11:50,840 --> 00:11:57,560 this event that the CEO of N 26 was there and Monzo and yeah, 287 00:11:58,960 --> 00:12:04,600 and it was a super weird conversation. 288 00:12:04,600 --> 00:12:07,120 But one of the things I wanted to ask you, like it was very 289 00:12:07,120 --> 00:12:11,120 evident that Nick was super convinced, very, very focused on 290 00:12:11,120 --> 00:12:14,440 winning from that, from that video. 291 00:12:14,920 --> 00:12:18,800 But why would you say that Revolut won at the end? 292 00:12:18,840 --> 00:12:21,560 Because if you compare Monzo today, it's a much smaller 293 00:12:21,560 --> 00:12:24,080 company with Revolut. If you compare N 26, I think 294 00:12:24,080 --> 00:12:28,160 it's much, much smaller. So why did Revolut win? 295 00:12:29,040 --> 00:12:30,680 Yeah, so that, that's a great memory. 296 00:12:30,680 --> 00:12:33,400 I, I, so I watched the live stream of that in our office and 297 00:12:33,400 --> 00:12:35,840 it was a tech crunch Disrupt. It was probably in like 298 00:12:36,480 --> 00:12:39,360 20/16/2017. He finished the panel with like 299 00:12:39,360 --> 00:12:42,200 a being quite a tense panel. And the moderator basically 300 00:12:42,200 --> 00:12:43,720 said, nice question for all of you. 301 00:12:43,720 --> 00:12:45,560 Which of these three companies would you want to run? 302 00:12:45,560 --> 00:12:47,600 And it can't be your own, which is just a freebie. 303 00:12:47,960 --> 00:12:50,400 And everyone else said the other business and how nice it was. 304 00:12:50,400 --> 00:12:52,200 And it concluded with I don't really ever want to run 305 00:12:52,200 --> 00:12:53,480 Revolute. I don't know what these guys are 306 00:12:53,480 --> 00:12:56,280 doing etcetera. And you know, you watch that and 307 00:12:56,280 --> 00:12:58,680 you actually feel quite proud, right, Because someone who is 308 00:12:58,680 --> 00:13:01,640 unapologetically himself, right, runs a business that way. 309 00:13:02,000 --> 00:13:04,040 It was, it was quite, quite remarkable to watch. 310 00:13:04,600 --> 00:13:07,640 But I think to your question, I mean, firstly, the incredible 311 00:13:07,640 --> 00:13:09,320 thing about Nick is he never thinks he's won. 312 00:13:09,520 --> 00:13:11,960 Like if you see him today, he has exactly the same intensity 313 00:13:11,960 --> 00:13:13,920 as he did when I first met him. And you know, before that, when 314 00:13:13,920 --> 00:13:17,240 he founded the company, I think what he did or, or what he's 315 00:13:17,240 --> 00:13:19,440 always been able to do very well is when you found an early stage 316 00:13:19,440 --> 00:13:21,960 business, you know, when you come and pitch someone like us, 317 00:13:22,400 --> 00:13:24,680 you always have this balance between how do I articulate my 318 00:13:24,680 --> 00:13:27,040 crazy large vision for the world of something that is crazy 319 00:13:27,040 --> 00:13:30,040 ambitious with the reality today of being a pretty small team 320 00:13:30,040 --> 00:13:31,520 with no funding and no product, right? 321 00:13:31,520 --> 00:13:32,920 How do you bridge those two realities? 322 00:13:33,480 --> 00:13:35,560 And the way you do it is you sort of tell your business is 323 00:13:35,560 --> 00:13:37,960 like an arc, right, Where you have an act one of the business, 324 00:13:37,960 --> 00:13:39,760 an act 2 of the business, an act three of the business. 325 00:13:40,200 --> 00:13:42,480 And Nick was always able to explain that like, yes, we get 326 00:13:42,480 --> 00:13:44,240 it today. The act one, we're like a multi 327 00:13:44,240 --> 00:13:45,720 currency account, a free travel card. 328 00:13:45,720 --> 00:13:48,160 We know that's a tough business, but the Act 2 is we're going to 329 00:13:48,160 --> 00:13:50,240 use that as a wedge to earn an everyday banking relationship 330 00:13:50,240 --> 00:13:51,840 with our customer. That's the that's sort of bank 331 00:13:51,840 --> 00:13:53,360 account. We're going to use that to go 332 00:13:53,360 --> 00:13:55,760 deeper into financial services, you know, savings, investing, 333 00:13:55,760 --> 00:13:58,240 crypto, all these things. But the large vision, you know, 334 00:13:58,240 --> 00:14:00,760 don't forget the large vision is financial super app and you'd 335 00:14:00,760 --> 00:14:03,040 always manage to sort of anchor the reality of whatever the 336 00:14:03,040 --> 00:14:05,880 business does today with that much higher goal of a financial 337 00:14:05,880 --> 00:14:07,800 super app. I think that's why, you know, 338 00:14:07,800 --> 00:14:09,640 over time, the company's managed to attract, you know, 339 00:14:09,640 --> 00:14:11,600 exceptional people at the scale that it is today. 340 00:14:11,800 --> 00:14:13,800 It's managed to keep expanding into different geographies and 341 00:14:13,800 --> 00:14:15,960 keep building new product because no one ever forgets that 342 00:14:15,960 --> 00:14:19,320 high vision. I have two more questions about 343 00:14:19,320 --> 00:14:21,200 the Revolut before we go to Sequoia. 344 00:14:22,040 --> 00:14:25,760 The first one is Revolut always comes with these new products. 345 00:14:25,960 --> 00:14:28,080 How did the new products came out like the new ideas? 346 00:14:28,320 --> 00:14:32,320 Was it from the top, was it from the teams internally? 347 00:14:32,600 --> 00:14:34,800 And I I've seen for example, Ezim, like how would you 348 00:14:34,800 --> 00:14:36,800 conclude in the Ezim question, right? 349 00:14:36,800 --> 00:14:39,240 Like So what? How are these ideas generated? 350 00:14:39,480 --> 00:14:41,320 Yeah, I think so. It's a combination. 351 00:14:41,320 --> 00:14:46,080 Nick today is effectively still CEOCPO and Head of Design. 352 00:14:46,080 --> 00:14:48,440 You know, there are people, people that own various aspects 353 00:14:48,440 --> 00:14:50,840 of that, but this is a company with nearly 10,000 employees 354 00:14:50,840 --> 00:14:54,200 where nothing is sort of approved at the design stage to 355 00:14:54,200 --> 00:14:57,120 go into development and then eventually released without Nick 356 00:14:57,120 --> 00:15:00,280 testing it on an Android or an Android and iOS phone. 357 00:15:00,280 --> 00:15:02,440 So he actually sees everything go out and there are releases 358 00:15:02,440 --> 00:15:05,080 every single week. So he's like an incredibly 359 00:15:05,080 --> 00:15:07,480 product focused CEO and that's one mold of ACEO. 360 00:15:07,480 --> 00:15:10,120 But that's definitely his take. But in terms of how the ideas 361 00:15:10,120 --> 00:15:13,320 surface, again, it's sort of this very clear performance 362 00:15:13,320 --> 00:15:15,560 management. If you set the KPI you're going 363 00:15:15,560 --> 00:15:18,040 to achieve every six months, you give people these cross 364 00:15:18,040 --> 00:15:19,800 functional teams. So they're small kind of 365 00:15:19,800 --> 00:15:22,120 self-sufficient units. I mean, it's actually for the 366 00:15:22,120 --> 00:15:24,800 teams to propose the road map. And really the main thing that 367 00:15:24,800 --> 00:15:27,920 he's focused on is he draws this distinction between kind of big 368 00:15:27,920 --> 00:15:30,320 bets and everything else. So I think he lives in this 369 00:15:30,320 --> 00:15:33,280 world of if you want to expect, you know, a meaningful change in 370 00:15:33,280 --> 00:15:35,320 the state of the company, there needs to be a meaningful change 371 00:15:35,320 --> 00:15:36,440 in the state of the product, right? 372 00:15:36,440 --> 00:15:38,400 You can't just make these small changes and iterations. 373 00:15:38,880 --> 00:15:41,680 So the main way that he provides input on that is just to push 374 00:15:41,680 --> 00:15:44,200 you to think bigger, right, and to be more aggressive and to be 375 00:15:44,200 --> 00:15:46,680 more daring. But actually a lot of that, you 376 00:15:46,680 --> 00:15:49,400 know, innovation is bottom up. The E SIM product was actually 377 00:15:49,400 --> 00:15:53,680 something that was first kind of idealized maybe in 2015, 2016 in 378 00:15:53,680 --> 00:15:55,200 Revolute, but the infrastructure didn't exist. 379 00:15:55,200 --> 00:15:56,960 It kind of wasn't possible at that point in time. 380 00:15:57,240 --> 00:15:59,880 So there's always this backlog of things across the company 381 00:15:59,880 --> 00:16:03,000 that are being restacked and resurfaced when they come to 382 00:16:03,000 --> 00:16:06,000 light. And what are your learnings from 383 00:16:06,000 --> 00:16:10,600 Nick? I think so. 384 00:16:10,880 --> 00:16:14,080 We all use this phrase to describe, I think, exceptional 385 00:16:14,080 --> 00:16:17,280 founders about being relentless. And, you know, there's this 386 00:16:17,280 --> 00:16:20,240 concept of like, you know, the consistent application of force, 387 00:16:20,400 --> 00:16:22,200 right, that sits behind that relentlessness. 388 00:16:22,640 --> 00:16:24,760 Nick is just the ultimate extreme of that, right? 389 00:16:24,760 --> 00:16:27,720 If you look at his ability to sort of squeeze the most out of 390 00:16:27,720 --> 00:16:30,280 people and also to not compromise on that. 391 00:16:30,280 --> 00:16:32,280 If people aren't delivering, if they're not growing at the rate 392 00:16:32,280 --> 00:16:34,640 that he expects, you know, he doesn't shy away from conflict. 393 00:16:35,040 --> 00:16:36,680 She doesn't shy away from telling you and sort of 394 00:16:36,680 --> 00:16:38,600 replacing you inside of the company if needed. 395 00:16:39,200 --> 00:16:41,320 And for a lot of people, you know, they, they might start 396 00:16:41,320 --> 00:16:43,360 building the business that way. But the reality is that's a very 397 00:16:43,360 --> 00:16:46,200 tiring way to live, right? To continue to sort of drag 398 00:16:46,200 --> 00:16:48,880 people with you. I, I guess if you go along, but 399 00:16:48,880 --> 00:16:51,480 actually when you're replacing your like head of growth for the 400 00:16:51,480 --> 00:16:55,160 seventh time in six years, whatever it might be, most 401 00:16:55,160 --> 00:16:56,680 people at some point would just compromise. 402 00:16:56,760 --> 00:16:59,000 And it doesn't compromise. He continues to run the company 403 00:16:59,000 --> 00:17:00,320 that way. And you might have seen the 404 00:17:00,320 --> 00:17:02,640 financial results, you know, over the last week, the business 405 00:17:02,640 --> 00:17:05,160 has really managed to push back a lot of naysayers. 406 00:17:05,160 --> 00:17:06,680 You said this could never be profitable. 407 00:17:06,680 --> 00:17:08,359 You know, it would never be a company of that scale. 408 00:17:09,079 --> 00:17:10,359 And we've proven that you can do that. 409 00:17:10,400 --> 00:17:12,560 And I think you can do that, you know, out of London or in Europe 410 00:17:12,800 --> 00:17:15,560 and you can build a company that is as big as any fintech on the 411 00:17:15,560 --> 00:17:17,240 planet that's been built over the last few years. 412 00:17:17,640 --> 00:17:19,560 So it's very exciting for the future of of this ecosystem. 413 00:17:20,880 --> 00:17:24,800 And now there is this point in time that Revolute grows like a 414 00:17:24,800 --> 00:17:26,920 road achievement. You decide to leave the company. 415 00:17:28,920 --> 00:17:30,720 How did you make that decision? Yeah. 416 00:17:30,720 --> 00:17:33,880 I think the nice thing about the Revolute culture is it it kind 417 00:17:33,880 --> 00:17:36,240 of pushes you to have agency, I think in what you do. 418 00:17:36,320 --> 00:17:39,680 And it was sort of 2020, it was just as COVID was hitting, 419 00:17:40,120 --> 00:17:41,640 Revolute was a much bigger business. 420 00:17:41,640 --> 00:17:45,160 You know, it was maybe 6 or 7000 people at that point in time. 421 00:17:46,080 --> 00:17:48,320 And if I could be for me, I, I'd always thought about what I, I 422 00:17:48,320 --> 00:17:50,600 previously founded some very bad companies when I was studying at 423 00:17:50,600 --> 00:17:53,360 university and I felt like I had a lot more learnings at that 424 00:17:53,360 --> 00:17:54,880 point in time to go out and build again. 425 00:17:55,520 --> 00:17:57,480 And I went out right literally as COVID was hitting. 426 00:17:57,480 --> 00:18:00,840 So February 2020 to raise seed funding to set up a business 427 00:18:00,840 --> 00:18:01,880 that was in the healthcare space. 428 00:18:01,880 --> 00:18:03,840 And not even for Infantech, but somewhere that I'm very 429 00:18:03,840 --> 00:18:06,360 passionate about that was kind of focused on distributing 430 00:18:06,600 --> 00:18:08,840 personalized medication for chronic health conditions. 431 00:18:10,120 --> 00:18:12,160 And it was at that point in time actually when I intersected with 432 00:18:12,160 --> 00:18:14,240 Sequoia. Of course, Sequoia didn't have 433 00:18:14,240 --> 00:18:15,840 an office in London. You know, I'd, I'd heard of 434 00:18:15,840 --> 00:18:17,680 Sequoia, but I'd never met anybody from Sequoia. 435 00:18:17,920 --> 00:18:20,280 And we had a few investments in Europe kind of going back to two 436 00:18:20,400 --> 00:18:23,560 2000 and seven, 2008, you know, companies like Klarna and Unity, 437 00:18:23,560 --> 00:18:25,800 but they'd always been long range efforts, if you like, from 438 00:18:25,800 --> 00:18:28,000 the US. And it was during that process 439 00:18:28,000 --> 00:18:30,480 that the team, you know, highlighted, I think why that 440 00:18:30,480 --> 00:18:32,960 business is an interesting idea, but not the right, you know, 441 00:18:32,960 --> 00:18:36,080 size of opportunity to go after and sort of pitch this idea 442 00:18:36,080 --> 00:18:38,120 that, you know, there is a moment in time to come and join 443 00:18:38,120 --> 00:18:40,840 the team and be part of this story that Sequoia's building in 444 00:18:40,840 --> 00:18:42,600 Europe. And that was what convinced me. 445 00:18:42,600 --> 00:18:45,040 So it wasn't, you know, thinking about becoming an investor. 446 00:18:45,240 --> 00:18:47,320 Honestly, I'd never invested in a company and I'd never really 447 00:18:47,320 --> 00:18:48,720 thought about it before I joined Sequoia. 448 00:18:48,720 --> 00:18:50,880 And I think there's sometimes a notion that you do need to do 449 00:18:50,880 --> 00:18:52,320 all of those things. You actually don't. 450 00:18:52,600 --> 00:18:54,600 You just need to be someone that's hopefully being busy, 451 00:18:54,720 --> 00:18:56,720 surrounded by hopefully interesting people and they're 452 00:18:56,720 --> 00:18:58,360 at the right point in time. So really it was that 453 00:18:58,360 --> 00:19:01,000 combination of those things and just a huge amount of luck. 454 00:19:02,960 --> 00:19:06,920 And then, but you, you just alluded to it, how do you when 455 00:19:06,920 --> 00:19:10,360 you join a firm like Sequoia, how do you actually learn how to 456 00:19:10,360 --> 00:19:12,400 invest? Was that a process internally? 457 00:19:13,200 --> 00:19:15,480 I heard somewhere we were discussing earlier that that 458 00:19:15,560 --> 00:19:19,000 that is coming from the Bay here to have discussions. 459 00:19:19,200 --> 00:19:22,400 How is that knowledge transfer? So it was quite surreal for me 460 00:19:22,400 --> 00:19:26,240 because so when I joined it was, it was like August 2020 461 00:19:26,240 --> 00:19:28,720 eventually when I started. And that is right in the middle 462 00:19:28,720 --> 00:19:31,760 of COVID, the US borders were closed for like a year and a 463 00:19:31,760 --> 00:19:33,640 half of when we opened. We couldn't go and see our, you 464 00:19:33,640 --> 00:19:35,160 know, US based colleagues in person. 465 00:19:35,800 --> 00:19:39,280 It was basically a wonderful colleague, Luciana and myself, 466 00:19:39,280 --> 00:19:42,520 you know, in our respective homes on Zoom, not travelling to 467 00:19:42,520 --> 00:19:44,640 meet founders. It was quite surreal actually. 468 00:19:45,480 --> 00:19:47,200 You know, building on top of the fact I'd never invested in a 469 00:19:47,200 --> 00:19:49,080 company. So I think the reality is when 470 00:19:49,080 --> 00:19:51,720 you work in venture, unlike working in a in a business, when 471 00:19:51,720 --> 00:19:53,480 you work in a business, you have a lot of like hands on 472 00:19:53,480 --> 00:19:55,200 experience. You get pretty fast feedback 473 00:19:55,200 --> 00:19:58,080 loops on the work that you do. You get a lot of feedback from 474 00:19:58,080 --> 00:20:00,280 people inside the organization. You have more experience than 475 00:20:00,280 --> 00:20:01,680 you. It's kind of how it works. 476 00:20:02,240 --> 00:20:04,600 The reality of a venture is it's basically an apprentice based 477 00:20:04,600 --> 00:20:06,840 business, right? You have to sort of see stories 478 00:20:06,840 --> 00:20:09,880 play out to have existence proof of what the trajectory of these 479 00:20:09,880 --> 00:20:12,360 companies might look like. Again, remembering that like 480 00:20:12,560 --> 00:20:14,440 unfortunately, you know, there's only a handful of businesses 481 00:20:14,440 --> 00:20:17,080 founded each year that have the potential to be generational 482 00:20:17,160 --> 00:20:19,160 right in nature. So the reality is you got to 483 00:20:19,160 --> 00:20:21,240 hope if you're going to be training your algorithm, if you 484 00:20:21,240 --> 00:20:23,400 like, on what those amazing companies look like, you're 485 00:20:23,400 --> 00:20:25,680 going to at least have the chance to see one or two to be 486 00:20:25,680 --> 00:20:28,200 able to appreciate that journey. So the way that works at 487 00:20:28,200 --> 00:20:32,120 Sequoia, I'd say is in two ways. One, we tell a lot of stories as 488 00:20:32,120 --> 00:20:33,720 soon as it sounds. You know, we literally had 489 00:20:33,720 --> 00:20:36,680 Friday story time for like 4 years where people would tell 490 00:20:36,680 --> 00:20:39,800 these stories of the different chapters or acts of these 491 00:20:39,800 --> 00:20:42,400 generational companies, how they changed and evolved, how the 492 00:20:42,400 --> 00:20:44,920 assumptions changed, how the founders look different, you 493 00:20:44,920 --> 00:20:46,480 know, at different stages of the company's growth. 494 00:20:46,480 --> 00:20:47,880 So the sort of power of storytelling. 495 00:20:48,360 --> 00:20:50,840 And then the second thing is we have this quite remarkable 496 00:20:50,840 --> 00:20:53,240 partnership at Sequoia where it's a relatively small team. 497 00:20:53,240 --> 00:20:56,880 There's only 20 people at Sequoia, fun fact, but they all 498 00:20:56,880 --> 00:20:58,320 are very different. They all have very different 499 00:20:58,320 --> 00:21:01,040 routes to the firm and they frankly, like think about 500 00:21:01,040 --> 00:21:03,160 company building and investing in companies in very different 501 00:21:03,160 --> 00:21:04,960 ways. So you get a chance to sort of 502 00:21:04,960 --> 00:21:08,440 witness and be an apprentice to all these different styles. 503 00:21:08,440 --> 00:21:10,680 And yet someone like Doug, you know, who spent a week a month 504 00:21:10,680 --> 00:21:13,400 here for maybe a year and a half, you know, flying in in the 505 00:21:13,400 --> 00:21:15,120 middle of COVID just to spend time with us. 506 00:21:15,320 --> 00:21:17,760 And it was just having breakfasts with him and meeting 507 00:21:17,760 --> 00:21:19,640 founders with him and learning about his approach. 508 00:21:20,680 --> 00:21:22,280 Can we hear one of these stories? 509 00:21:24,120 --> 00:21:29,040 Yeah, I think like everybody has a slightly different approach 510 00:21:29,040 --> 00:21:31,960 to, you know, what they look for in a 30 minute meeting with a 511 00:21:31,960 --> 00:21:34,280 founder. And I think some people, you 512 00:21:34,280 --> 00:21:36,680 know, really want to spend time understanding their strategic 513 00:21:36,680 --> 00:21:38,960 thinking on the market or their understanding of the market 514 00:21:38,960 --> 00:21:42,440 context or, or things like that. And I'd say for Doug, you know, 515 00:21:42,440 --> 00:21:44,160 that's important. You know, at the end, of course 516 00:21:44,160 --> 00:21:46,640 those things are are really important factors, but I think 517 00:21:46,640 --> 00:21:47,960 he really listens for two things. 518 00:21:47,960 --> 00:21:51,320 He spends a lot of time on founders kind of personal 519 00:21:51,320 --> 00:21:53,640 stories and if you like their founding moments, not of the 520 00:21:53,640 --> 00:21:56,040 company, but you know, take me back, you know, where did you 521 00:21:56,040 --> 00:21:57,920 grow up? What was your experience? 522 00:21:57,920 --> 00:21:59,400 Do you have siblings? What do they do? 523 00:21:59,400 --> 00:22:01,280 Why is why is what you do different to that? 524 00:22:01,720 --> 00:22:05,120 He wants to look for kind of evidence of agency, I think, 525 00:22:05,240 --> 00:22:08,720 and, and kind of grit and domain and functional expertise that's 526 00:22:08,720 --> 00:22:10,720 been built over time. And he's found the stories. 527 00:22:11,040 --> 00:22:13,160 And frankly, he goes much further back and goes much 528 00:22:13,160 --> 00:22:15,560 deeper than the average person or certainly than I would have 529 00:22:15,560 --> 00:22:17,440 thought to have done, you know, without that experience. 530 00:22:17,920 --> 00:22:20,360 I'd say that's insight one and then insight 2. 531 00:22:20,800 --> 00:22:23,440 You know, he is someone who doesn't believe that he can sort 532 00:22:23,440 --> 00:22:25,000 of over intellectualize the world. 533 00:22:25,360 --> 00:22:27,160 He actually just wants to understand what the customers 534 00:22:27,160 --> 00:22:28,600 think. And for a lot of people, you 535 00:22:28,600 --> 00:22:30,480 know, as an investor, you can sit there and hear a version of 536 00:22:30,480 --> 00:22:33,040 the story and you can try to kind of choose to think about it 537 00:22:33,040 --> 00:22:35,000 from first principles and go into the details. 538 00:22:35,400 --> 00:22:36,560 But in reality, who are you, right. 539 00:22:36,560 --> 00:22:37,760 You're not the customer for the product. 540 00:22:37,760 --> 00:22:40,040 You don't necessarily understand all the nuance of that. 541 00:22:40,040 --> 00:22:41,240 You can just speak to the customers. 542 00:22:41,520 --> 00:22:43,920 So Doug kind of angers himself to the individual, you know, in 543 00:22:43,920 --> 00:22:45,880 their full founding story, their life path. 544 00:22:46,160 --> 00:22:47,480 And yeah, the voice of the customer in that. 545 00:22:49,640 --> 00:22:53,520 Well, learning all these stories and so I believe, how many years 546 00:22:53,520 --> 00:22:55,440 are you in Sequoia now? Nearly five years. 547 00:22:55,680 --> 00:22:58,160 Nearly five years. So what are you looking for? 548 00:22:59,520 --> 00:23:02,720 Say that someone approached you today from the audience. 549 00:23:03,200 --> 00:23:08,320 What would you be looking for? I think that sort of my 550 00:23:08,320 --> 00:23:10,840 observation, I think the revoluted experience was 551 00:23:10,840 --> 00:23:12,160 helpful. You know, I'm fortunate enough 552 00:23:12,160 --> 00:23:14,880 that a few of the companies that I work with at Sequoia have have 553 00:23:14,880 --> 00:23:17,320 become quite large. So like a business like Penny 554 00:23:17,320 --> 00:23:18,600 Lane and we just raised a bunch of money. 555 00:23:18,600 --> 00:23:21,400 A few weeks ago I worked with this great team called Anterior 556 00:23:21,400 --> 00:23:24,400 that came out of London Trade Republic, organizations like 557 00:23:24,400 --> 00:23:26,800 that. I think what is true in all of 558 00:23:26,800 --> 00:23:28,760 those founding teams, even though the businesses are 559 00:23:28,760 --> 00:23:32,000 totally different, is they all have an incredible amount of 560 00:23:32,000 --> 00:23:33,440 respect for their own time, right? 561 00:23:33,440 --> 00:23:36,040 The people that think that time is very precious, they want to 562 00:23:36,040 --> 00:23:39,600 move with speed and intensity and they have a sort of scale of 563 00:23:39,600 --> 00:23:42,520 ambition, which is a phrase that we use a lot internally that 564 00:23:42,520 --> 00:23:44,320 kind of matches us. And we want to hear that 565 00:23:44,320 --> 00:23:45,800 articulation. Why is something you want to 566 00:23:45,800 --> 00:23:48,160 build? You're going to be gigantic and 567 00:23:48,160 --> 00:23:51,040 be a generational company, but how do you sort of articulate 568 00:23:51,040 --> 00:23:52,320 the path to be able to get there? 569 00:23:52,920 --> 00:23:55,360 And I think really what we do to pass that is we look for kind of 570 00:23:55,360 --> 00:23:57,440 four components. I think 1, you know, we want to 571 00:23:57,440 --> 00:24:00,080 understand, do you have a domain expertise that is, you know, 572 00:24:00,120 --> 00:24:02,160 relevant to this company? Have you built a functional 573 00:24:02,160 --> 00:24:05,200 expertise or some technical skill set that is tightly 574 00:24:05,200 --> 00:24:07,360 correlated with the success of this business? 575 00:24:07,800 --> 00:24:09,400 Do you have evidence of being someone that has that 576 00:24:09,400 --> 00:24:11,640 perseverance and that grit, right, to be able to take you 577 00:24:11,640 --> 00:24:13,480 there? And then finally, the 4th 578 00:24:13,480 --> 00:24:15,680 factor, is there some element of luck, right, or being in the 579 00:24:15,680 --> 00:24:18,320 right place at the right time or the set of technologies kind of 580 00:24:18,320 --> 00:24:20,840 coalescing around this market opportunity today? 581 00:24:20,840 --> 00:24:22,480 That means that this can happen today where it couldn't have 582 00:24:22,480 --> 00:24:24,760 happened yesterday. And generally at that stage, you 583 00:24:24,760 --> 00:24:27,560 know, if we're investing at seed and precede, it's probably 80% 584 00:24:27,560 --> 00:24:28,960 team. And if we go to precede, it can 585 00:24:28,960 --> 00:24:31,320 be even higher, right? So realities is we're really 586 00:24:31,320 --> 00:24:34,400 leaning on those 4 features. So like, find a way to tell your 587 00:24:34,400 --> 00:24:36,440 story, right, that articulates that. 588 00:24:36,440 --> 00:24:38,560 And I would just really recommend that you practice it. 589 00:24:38,960 --> 00:24:41,000 I think it's, you know, particularly European, and if 590 00:24:41,000 --> 00:24:43,480 someone who's European, we just don't do that very often. 591 00:24:43,480 --> 00:24:45,640 People don't look in the mirror and sort of pitch themselves. 592 00:24:45,640 --> 00:24:46,840 It's not. It's very unamerican. 593 00:24:46,840 --> 00:24:48,720 It's, yeah, it's very, exactly, very unamerican. 594 00:24:48,720 --> 00:24:51,800 And I think that the reality is you need to learn how to do that 595 00:24:51,880 --> 00:24:54,240 and in a pithy way to be able to articulate why you're the 596 00:24:54,240 --> 00:24:56,200 person, you know, the guy or the girl to found this company. 597 00:24:58,920 --> 00:25:01,960 If, if, if, if you were a founder today, or maybe your 598 00:25:01,960 --> 00:25:04,120 advice to the audience, what should students work on? 599 00:25:05,600 --> 00:25:10,200 I think, I think I would generally recommend like there 600 00:25:10,200 --> 00:25:13,120 are absolutely some people who just go out into the wild and 601 00:25:13,120 --> 00:25:14,720 and build a business. I mean, firstly, I would 602 00:25:14,720 --> 00:25:17,440 recommend you to find mentors. It's a very special thing being 603 00:25:17,440 --> 00:25:19,480 a student, right? You have this incredible calling 604 00:25:19,480 --> 00:25:21,560 card where people respond to your emails, they pick up the 605 00:25:21,560 --> 00:25:23,320 phone, they spend time with you for free. 606 00:25:23,520 --> 00:25:25,720 I promise you that doesn't happen as easily later in life. 607 00:25:26,120 --> 00:25:27,960 So if you don't like squeeze that lemon, you're honestly 608 00:25:27,960 --> 00:25:29,560 missing a trick. And particularly in a place like 609 00:25:29,560 --> 00:25:32,400 London where you have this incredible depth of specialized 610 00:25:32,400 --> 00:25:34,760 talent and most of that specialized talent just because 611 00:25:34,760 --> 00:25:37,080 of culture. I think in other things, they 612 00:25:37,080 --> 00:25:39,400 don't get asked all the time to be giving their hell back and be 613 00:25:39,400 --> 00:25:41,120 spending time with, you know, people who are coming up. 614 00:25:41,440 --> 00:25:45,320 So I think .1 genuinely fine mentors, I think .2 you can 615 00:25:45,320 --> 00:25:47,560 either decide that you want to found a business just to get 616 00:25:47,560 --> 00:25:49,840 through the machinations of founding your first company, 617 00:25:50,120 --> 00:25:51,240 right? Which in some ways is like 618 00:25:51,240 --> 00:25:52,840 learning on your own time, right? 619 00:25:52,840 --> 00:25:55,680 Had to be a better founder. I think option 2 is to learn on 620 00:25:55,680 --> 00:25:58,480 somebody else's time how to be a better founder and really just 621 00:25:58,480 --> 00:26:00,960 solve for getting close to founders that you think are 622 00:26:00,960 --> 00:26:02,680 exceptional. And by the way, like that might 623 00:26:02,680 --> 00:26:04,960 be the individual, it might be their style of operating, it 624 00:26:04,960 --> 00:26:07,560 might be their intensity, it might be their taste, right, and 625 00:26:07,560 --> 00:26:10,000 their product intuition. In the perfect world, it's also 626 00:26:10,000 --> 00:26:11,760 the business, right? And the business can go on to be 627 00:26:11,760 --> 00:26:14,360 large and you might make generational money yourself. 628 00:26:14,680 --> 00:26:16,600 But if nothing else, surrounding yourself with people that you 629 00:26:16,600 --> 00:26:18,960 can sort of emulate, right as you go through that journey. 630 00:26:18,960 --> 00:26:24,040 I think it's really critical. Let's get into a bit of trouble. 631 00:26:24,880 --> 00:26:27,360 What percent of investors in Europe do you think are good 632 00:26:27,360 --> 00:26:31,720 company builders? I think in the US you grew up in 633 00:26:31,720 --> 00:26:34,920 a cocoon of start-ups from such a young age, right? 634 00:26:34,920 --> 00:26:36,240 You see it in the investor community. 635 00:26:36,240 --> 00:26:38,720 Frankly, you see it in how prolific many of the angels are 636 00:26:38,760 --> 00:26:41,240 as well. I think the reality is, you 637 00:26:41,240 --> 00:26:43,680 know, Europe is just less mature and needs more work. 638 00:26:44,160 --> 00:26:46,120 I think that it's even different than that. 639 00:26:46,120 --> 00:26:49,080 I think that, well, I said this is an apprentice based business, 640 00:26:49,080 --> 00:26:51,880 Your ability to help the next founder build a generational 641 00:26:51,880 --> 00:26:54,680 company is kind of a function of your ability and your life 642 00:26:54,680 --> 00:26:56,800 experience. If you hadn't had an experience 643 00:26:56,800 --> 00:26:59,160 seeing one of those companies being built at scale, it's not 644 00:26:59,160 --> 00:27:01,640 easy to be calibrated on it. And I think it's why I'm excited 645 00:27:01,640 --> 00:27:03,640 to see more and more people coming out of these, you know, 646 00:27:03,840 --> 00:27:06,480 businesses that are Unicorn plus type businesses becoming 647 00:27:06,480 --> 00:27:09,040 investors because they've they understand a little bit more and 648 00:27:09,040 --> 00:27:11,240 they have more empathy for how difficult it is, I think, to 649 00:27:11,240 --> 00:27:16,880 build a company. You, you alluded to that a bit 650 00:27:16,880 --> 00:27:19,760 earlier, but how much do you expect the founder to have 651 00:27:19,760 --> 00:27:22,200 figured out the vision in the very early stages? 652 00:27:22,800 --> 00:27:26,320 So when we invested precede, we basically have two criteria. 653 00:27:26,800 --> 00:27:29,560 We basically look for an outlier team, right, on some of the four 654 00:27:29,560 --> 00:27:32,560 dimensions I mentioned earlier and something that we call like 655 00:27:32,560 --> 00:27:35,160 positive market dynamics, meaning you're building in a 656 00:27:35,160 --> 00:27:37,560 category that is on the right side of history, right? 657 00:27:37,920 --> 00:27:40,280 So the bar is relatively low at the precede, right? 658 00:27:40,280 --> 00:27:42,840 There's two components sort of said differently, exceptional 659 00:27:42,840 --> 00:27:45,560 person building in a generally interesting space, right? 660 00:27:45,560 --> 00:27:47,040 Those are the two articulations we care about. 661 00:27:47,520 --> 00:27:50,480 As you move from a precede to a seed, we add kind of one other 662 00:27:50,480 --> 00:27:53,080 layer to it, which is this notion that you have an 663 00:27:53,080 --> 00:27:55,320 authentic and compelling insight. 664 00:27:55,320 --> 00:27:58,720 The authenticity comes from the founder problem fit right that 665 00:27:58,720 --> 00:28:00,640 you may have earned. It may come from your domain 666 00:28:00,640 --> 00:28:03,280 expertise, your functional expertise, the curiosity you've 667 00:28:03,280 --> 00:28:05,000 shown, your ability to speak to customers. 668 00:28:05,200 --> 00:28:07,520 So it's authentic, right? It's justified in some way. 669 00:28:07,840 --> 00:28:10,480 And compelling implies better right than what exists in the 670 00:28:10,480 --> 00:28:12,520 world. So if you can combine outlier 671 00:28:12,520 --> 00:28:15,560 team, positive market dynamics and this authentic and 672 00:28:15,560 --> 00:28:17,800 compelling insight, then generally we're going to be 673 00:28:17,800 --> 00:28:22,080 excited about business. What have you seen from Revolut 674 00:28:22,200 --> 00:28:26,440 maybe and other companies in that the goods good companies 675 00:28:26,440 --> 00:28:30,400 were doing in in building great team cultures and maybe teams? 676 00:28:30,960 --> 00:28:35,520 I think that there's this like concept in game theory called 677 00:28:35,520 --> 00:28:38,320 like shelling points and effectively it's like a 678 00:28:38,320 --> 00:28:42,480 coordination problem of if you are a smart person, you know and 679 00:28:42,480 --> 00:28:44,960 you want to work on an impactful project, it's very difficult for 680 00:28:44,960 --> 00:28:47,120 you to tell outside in which those might be right. 681 00:28:47,120 --> 00:28:49,280 But the best way to tell it is to look at other places where 682 00:28:49,280 --> 00:28:51,120 other exceptional people are already working right. 683 00:28:51,120 --> 00:28:52,520 You want to Co locate with those people. 684 00:28:53,200 --> 00:28:56,160 And honestly, I think the most important signal you can send to 685 00:28:56,160 --> 00:28:59,000 like the market is this idea that you're attracting, hiring, 686 00:28:59,000 --> 00:29:02,000 retaining exceptional people. But the reality is, again, to do 687 00:29:02,000 --> 00:29:03,960 that is exhausting. I think if you build that into 688 00:29:03,960 --> 00:29:06,520 your process, you can sort of have this funny, particularly 689 00:29:06,520 --> 00:29:08,400 for first time founders, this funny conflict where people 690 00:29:08,400 --> 00:29:11,360 perceive it as, you know, admitting failure if they've 691 00:29:11,360 --> 00:29:13,880 hired people that are not great and sort of letting them go is, 692 00:29:13,880 --> 00:29:15,680 is stressful. It can sometimes be upsetting. 693 00:29:15,680 --> 00:29:17,400 It's something that you want to do right by those people. 694 00:29:17,400 --> 00:29:20,000 All of those things are valid. But the reality is, if you can 695 00:29:20,000 --> 00:29:22,440 do that in the right way, it can actually elevate the culture 696 00:29:22,960 --> 00:29:24,720 because for the people who stay at the company, they feel like 697 00:29:24,720 --> 00:29:27,160 they're part of this elite team, a small, you know, a small team 698 00:29:27,160 --> 00:29:29,400 of exceptional people building something great. 699 00:29:29,800 --> 00:29:31,680 So I would say that's the kind of the most concrete learning. 700 00:29:31,680 --> 00:29:34,040 It's something we see. You know, talent density is 701 00:29:34,040 --> 00:29:36,760 sometimes underestimated, despite the fact that everybody 702 00:29:36,760 --> 00:29:37,920 would assume it's going to be important. 703 00:29:39,600 --> 00:29:41,240 I think that's part of the creative process. 704 00:29:42,080 --> 00:29:46,840 It's like as if you start writing a document down and you 705 00:29:46,840 --> 00:29:49,680 start erasing so many things of the thing that you write and 706 00:29:49,680 --> 00:29:51,880 team culture is pretty similar. You're going to do a lot of 707 00:29:51,880 --> 00:29:57,080 mistakes, but you have to always go back and erasing how we 708 00:29:57,080 --> 00:29:59,480 should start-ups think about equity. 709 00:30:01,600 --> 00:30:04,720 So it's a good question actually. 710 00:30:05,920 --> 00:30:08,640 So sometimes people have this disconnect between kind of 711 00:30:08,640 --> 00:30:11,120 culture and performance management, right? 712 00:30:11,120 --> 00:30:13,160 And I, I would consider sort of equity in the culture of 713 00:30:13,160 --> 00:30:15,240 performance management because obviously compensation is the 714 00:30:15,240 --> 00:30:16,720 reward, right, for great performance. 715 00:30:16,720 --> 00:30:19,760 And what I would say is just like, make it consistent, right? 716 00:30:19,760 --> 00:30:23,080 We see a few methods of that. Sometimes we see solo founders, 717 00:30:23,120 --> 00:30:25,080 you know who because they're a solo founder, they have 718 00:30:25,080 --> 00:30:28,000 effectively a bunch of the ESOP or a bunch of the options they 719 00:30:28,000 --> 00:30:30,720 can redistribute among the team. Sometimes we see a preference 720 00:30:30,720 --> 00:30:34,040 for them having a relatively large number, not 100, but maybe 721 00:30:34,040 --> 00:30:37,080 like 5 people who are very equity compensated, who are not, 722 00:30:37,120 --> 00:30:38,960 you know, Co founders of the business, but they're more like 723 00:30:38,960 --> 00:30:41,640 founding team members. And the idea is they can build 724 00:30:41,640 --> 00:30:43,840 this squad who have this multi functional skill sets. 725 00:30:43,840 --> 00:30:46,120 I think that works well. But I think it's a general 726 00:30:46,120 --> 00:30:47,960 comment. Like I'm a big advocate for 727 00:30:48,440 --> 00:30:51,080 being generous with equity from a performance basis. 728 00:30:51,320 --> 00:30:54,160 But again, the equity vests and you understand that there are 729 00:30:54,160 --> 00:30:56,280 clear expectations attached to that vesting. 730 00:30:56,520 --> 00:30:58,560 And if people don't perform, then they won't be there to vest 731 00:30:58,560 --> 00:30:59,600 it. Because really what you're 732 00:30:59,600 --> 00:31:02,360 giving is an incentive, right? It's it's a reward, but it's an 733 00:31:02,360 --> 00:31:04,480 incentive for continued performance. 734 00:31:04,760 --> 00:31:06,720 So if you view it in that way, and again you have a performance 735 00:31:06,720 --> 00:31:08,160 culture consistent with that, it can work. 736 00:31:09,120 --> 00:31:12,680 If we go earlier than that and you consider Co founding equity, 737 00:31:13,200 --> 00:31:16,680 there is always this this kind of some people say 5050, some 738 00:31:16,680 --> 00:31:18,400 people say something very different. 739 00:31:18,400 --> 00:31:19,320 What's your take? Yeah. 740 00:31:19,320 --> 00:31:21,440 So we we actually don't like 5050. 741 00:31:21,440 --> 00:31:24,080 We think it's a negative signal if you and your Co founder have 742 00:31:24,080 --> 00:31:27,240 5050 equity. The reason for that actually is 743 00:31:27,240 --> 00:31:30,280 the reality is like the team is unlikely to be that balance. 744 00:31:30,720 --> 00:31:32,360 The way you should actually think about it with your Co 745 00:31:32,360 --> 00:31:34,760 founder is, you know, look at the business you want to build 746 00:31:34,840 --> 00:31:36,280 and you have some hypothesis for it. 747 00:31:36,960 --> 00:31:40,080 Write down almost each of you your set of core competencies, 748 00:31:40,360 --> 00:31:42,240 right, that you think you can contribute today and in the 749 00:31:42,240 --> 00:31:44,680 future for that company. I say today and in the future 750 00:31:44,680 --> 00:31:48,040 because in some cases, you know, the 1st 6 to 12 months relies 751 00:31:48,040 --> 00:31:50,720 relying on one, maybe the second year, you know, relies on the 752 00:31:50,720 --> 00:31:52,120 second. Sometimes you see that in like 753 00:31:52,120 --> 00:31:54,560 technical teams and then there might be a more commercial go to 754 00:31:54,560 --> 00:31:57,200 market focused team, right? So timing is also important. 755 00:31:57,720 --> 00:31:59,960 And then you basically got to pitch to the other person, 756 00:32:00,080 --> 00:32:02,320 right? Why you think that skill set you 757 00:32:02,320 --> 00:32:04,200 have is particularly differentiated, right? 758 00:32:04,960 --> 00:32:07,760 And the reason I call that out is if it's 5050, what that kind 759 00:32:07,760 --> 00:32:09,920 of tells us is you didn't want to have a tough conversation 760 00:32:09,920 --> 00:32:12,080 about it because it is tough and it is awkward. 761 00:32:12,080 --> 00:32:13,720 And this is the person that you hope to be able to build a 762 00:32:13,720 --> 00:32:15,440 company with for the next 15 years. 763 00:32:15,880 --> 00:32:17,880 But honestly, a lot of building a business is having tough 764 00:32:17,880 --> 00:32:20,840 conversations from first principles and being able to get 765 00:32:20,840 --> 00:32:23,000 through it right and keep the team together and keep building 766 00:32:23,000 --> 00:32:25,080 Despite that. So, yeah, I would say we are 767 00:32:25,240 --> 00:32:28,400 suspicious when we see 5050. And we often ask people, you 768 00:32:28,400 --> 00:32:29,880 know, why do you think that is right? 769 00:32:30,600 --> 00:32:32,320 And you're not short changing people, right? 770 00:32:32,320 --> 00:32:34,280 It's actually, you know, it's a, and you can have someone by the 771 00:32:34,280 --> 00:32:36,160 way, to moderate it if you think it makes it easier. 772 00:32:36,320 --> 00:32:38,760 Sometimes that can help. But it's just this idea of I 773 00:32:38,760 --> 00:32:41,040 know how to do these things. I am this good at these things 774 00:32:41,040 --> 00:32:42,960 and these things are that important and you should be 775 00:32:42,960 --> 00:32:47,920 pitching it in that way. How should founders think about 776 00:32:47,920 --> 00:32:55,440 the right investors? So I mean, if you wanted a more 777 00:32:55,440 --> 00:32:58,600 like cynical view of like how can investor help you, I think 778 00:32:58,600 --> 00:33:01,880 basically investors can help you with, you know, hiring in some 779 00:33:01,880 --> 00:33:04,360 cases they can help you with distribution, meaning 780 00:33:04,360 --> 00:33:06,640 understanding your customer, finding access to your customer, 781 00:33:06,640 --> 00:33:08,920 things like that. They can help you with brand, 782 00:33:09,120 --> 00:33:11,280 right, to sort of elevate the brand of your business to the 783 00:33:11,280 --> 00:33:13,680 point where you are an early stage company no one's ever 784 00:33:13,680 --> 00:33:15,000 heard of. And your investor may 785 00:33:15,000 --> 00:33:16,640 potentially be someone who people have heard of. 786 00:33:16,640 --> 00:33:19,440 And then I'd say that like half point, and I attach the half 787 00:33:19,440 --> 00:33:21,880 point because it depends very much on the investor and it 788 00:33:21,880 --> 00:33:23,760 depends on your relationship and their expertise. 789 00:33:24,040 --> 00:33:26,200 They can genuinely help you with company building, right? 790 00:33:26,840 --> 00:33:28,480 And the way to think about it is, you know, companies are 791 00:33:28,480 --> 00:33:31,040 millions of decisions made in a certain order that lead to a 792 00:33:31,040 --> 00:33:33,800 certain outcome, right? There are maybe 10 to 15 793 00:33:33,800 --> 00:33:37,680 decisions a year you make that are deeply strategic, typically 794 00:33:37,680 --> 00:33:40,320 irreversible, or at least have some level of path dependency, 795 00:33:40,360 --> 00:33:41,920 right? And you really need people to 796 00:33:41,920 --> 00:33:44,520 help you identify those decisions as early as possible 797 00:33:44,640 --> 00:33:47,160 and then to get them right. And it's very hard to do that, I 798 00:33:47,160 --> 00:33:48,920 think, when the investors where you don't have a high degree of 799 00:33:48,920 --> 00:33:51,000 trust because you're never going to feel like you can have a 800 00:33:51,000 --> 00:33:53,080 proper conversation about it. If you feel that they don't 801 00:33:53,080 --> 00:33:55,600 understand your market, right, They don't have any insight into 802 00:33:55,600 --> 00:33:56,880 the dynamics of what is happening. 803 00:33:57,040 --> 00:33:59,280 They may not have seen businesses being built either of 804 00:33:59,280 --> 00:34:01,960 a similar scale, similar market intensity, whatever it might be. 805 00:34:03,280 --> 00:34:05,160 And I think that like, at the end of the day, you really need 806 00:34:05,160 --> 00:34:07,360 to like the person that you're working with as much as you'd 807 00:34:07,360 --> 00:34:09,320 like the firm. Because the reality is, you 808 00:34:09,320 --> 00:34:11,239 know, even if you work with some of the best names in the world, 809 00:34:11,239 --> 00:34:13,679 you will probably spend 80% of your time with that one 810 00:34:13,679 --> 00:34:15,600 individual or that, you know, that very small team. 811 00:34:16,159 --> 00:34:18,199 So I think if you're realistic about how important those 812 00:34:18,199 --> 00:34:20,719 different criteria are and you feel that there is that 813 00:34:20,719 --> 00:34:22,480 understanding in that trust, you should go for it. 814 00:34:22,840 --> 00:34:25,159 But if you don't, you should hold a very high bar and keep 815 00:34:25,159 --> 00:34:28,760 moving. I think we we now have this 816 00:34:28,760 --> 00:34:31,920 platform change with AI. Probably the Internet was the 817 00:34:31,920 --> 00:34:36,360 first I said when I was mobile. Now we have this new platform 818 00:34:36,360 --> 00:34:39,560 change. How would you advise people to 819 00:34:39,560 --> 00:34:42,320 be thinking about it and what kind of businesses do you think 820 00:34:42,320 --> 00:34:46,040 would exist in the future? I think I mean, there are there 821 00:34:46,040 --> 00:34:48,639 are both, you know, a bunch of new market opportunities. 822 00:34:48,639 --> 00:34:50,600 There are also a lot of new ways to think about building your 823 00:34:50,600 --> 00:34:52,679 company, right. You can obviously achieve a lot 824 00:34:52,679 --> 00:34:55,000 more with a lot less today. You can be way more capital 825 00:34:55,000 --> 00:34:56,480 efficient. You know, these incredible 826 00:34:56,480 --> 00:34:59,320 stories of these four person teams getting to 10 million ARR 827 00:34:59,320 --> 00:35:02,880 and being able to push through. So that is like an opportunity 828 00:35:02,880 --> 00:35:06,400 to maximize, you know, value from so I'd say like build that 829 00:35:06,400 --> 00:35:08,040 again into your culture and build it into your start up 830 00:35:08,040 --> 00:35:09,800 working. I think in terms of the terms of 831 00:35:09,800 --> 00:35:13,720 the opportunities that exist, it's a little bit intimidating 832 00:35:13,720 --> 00:35:16,680 to say this, but like as an early stage business, I'd say 833 00:35:16,680 --> 00:35:20,320 the pressure on you to like future proof your company is 834 00:35:20,320 --> 00:35:22,480 actually as great as it's ever been because the world is 835 00:35:22,480 --> 00:35:24,400 spinning, you know, faster than it ever has. 836 00:35:24,920 --> 00:35:26,720 So the reality is, you know, a lot of these businesses that are 837 00:35:26,720 --> 00:35:30,560 going from a million to 10 million of AR, we don't really 838 00:35:30,560 --> 00:35:33,120 know whether they're going to have any revenue in three years, 839 00:35:33,120 --> 00:35:34,840 right? And that's not like 10 years, It 840 00:35:34,840 --> 00:35:37,800 might be like 3 or 4 years out. And I would argue that's almost 841 00:35:37,800 --> 00:35:39,640 never been true, right? There's always been an ability 842 00:35:39,640 --> 00:35:42,240 to somewhat extrapolate a little bit of the curve for these 843 00:35:42,240 --> 00:35:45,080 companies because again, the structures of the market, who 844 00:35:45,080 --> 00:35:47,960 the competitors are, how competent they are, has kind of 845 00:35:47,960 --> 00:35:50,320 been, you know, relatively stable, I think in some of the 846 00:35:50,320 --> 00:35:52,720 previous market cycles. So what I would say is you 847 00:35:52,720 --> 00:35:55,160 really got to make sure that you're being very thoughtful 848 00:35:55,200 --> 00:35:57,920 about all of those market dynamics that you understand, 849 00:35:57,920 --> 00:35:59,640 you know, what is happening if you're building an AI, for 850 00:35:59,640 --> 00:36:01,800 example, inside of the big labs, right? 851 00:36:01,800 --> 00:36:04,120 If you don't know, you should be asking investors, trying to 852 00:36:04,120 --> 00:36:06,520 speak to researchers, getting a sense for their priorities, 853 00:36:07,000 --> 00:36:09,640 building an understanding of like, you know, if you're 854 00:36:09,640 --> 00:36:12,280 building it again in AI, how much of the nuance comes either 855 00:36:12,280 --> 00:36:14,720 from the data set that you're using to train a model or fine 856 00:36:14,720 --> 00:36:17,720 tune a model versus how much of it comes from the nuance of the 857 00:36:17,720 --> 00:36:19,560 workflow. And if you have, you know, one 858 00:36:19,560 --> 00:36:21,960 or both of those, you're in a much safer space than if you're 859 00:36:21,960 --> 00:36:23,880 building in something that is very much, you know, square in 860 00:36:23,880 --> 00:36:25,720 the headlights and some of these larger research labs. 861 00:36:26,160 --> 00:36:28,680 So I would just encourage you, you know, really try and future 862 00:36:28,680 --> 00:36:31,560 proof your company in a way that will seem quite intimidating on 863 00:36:31,560 --> 00:36:32,960 day one, but I think it's very important. 864 00:36:34,760 --> 00:36:37,840 If we consider financial services and maybe in banking 865 00:36:39,920 --> 00:36:42,560 and we can get to your opinion about how AI is going to change 866 00:36:42,560 --> 00:36:44,560 them, what is what, what does it look like? 867 00:36:45,160 --> 00:36:51,120 So the last wave of Fintech sort of 2016 onwards effectively is a 868 00:36:51,120 --> 00:36:53,600 lot of it is, you know, the migration to mobile, right, to 869 00:36:53,600 --> 00:36:55,800 building a mobile version of a service you previously got 870 00:36:55,800 --> 00:36:58,480 through desktop or offline. And I would put by that, you 871 00:36:58,480 --> 00:37:00,720 know, neo banking, neo broking, things like that. 872 00:37:01,480 --> 00:37:03,840 And then 2 is, you know, providing much more transparency 873 00:37:03,840 --> 00:37:06,520 around fees because you have a lower marginal cost to serve the 874 00:37:06,520 --> 00:37:08,560 customer because you digitize the experience. 875 00:37:08,560 --> 00:37:10,840 So a lot of it was front end focus, you know, end customer 876 00:37:10,840 --> 00:37:13,960 focus and the like. The reality is if you look at 877 00:37:13,960 --> 00:37:16,440 the distribution of even market cap that exists in financial 878 00:37:16,440 --> 00:37:19,360 services, most of that is inside organizations that did not 879 00:37:19,360 --> 00:37:21,200 participate in the last technological cycle. 880 00:37:21,200 --> 00:37:23,520 So I would include in that, you know, wealth management as a 881 00:37:23,520 --> 00:37:26,160 whole, right, Rias, you know, financial advisors. 882 00:37:26,520 --> 00:37:29,760 I would put insurance very much in that bucket for sure. 883 00:37:30,000 --> 00:37:32,160 I would put alternative lending. That was something where there 884 00:37:32,160 --> 00:37:34,320 was a little bit of innovation, but, you know, really didn't 885 00:37:34,320 --> 00:37:35,520 push as far as it could have done. 886 00:37:35,960 --> 00:37:38,320 And crucially, it was a lot of the cost base that was tied up 887 00:37:38,320 --> 00:37:41,200 in operating those very, very large incumbent banks and things 888 00:37:41,200 --> 00:37:43,240 like compliance and, you know, work like that. 889 00:37:43,760 --> 00:37:45,520 So a lot of what we're seeing today is, you know, it's a 890 00:37:45,520 --> 00:37:47,840 similar trend on the one hand of trying to reduce the marginal 891 00:37:47,840 --> 00:37:50,120 cost to serve a customer that really matters in insurance and 892 00:37:50,120 --> 00:37:52,680 your wealth management. Or it's the fact that a lot of 893 00:37:52,680 --> 00:37:55,120 work that people do inside of banks is basically human API 894 00:37:55,120 --> 00:37:56,840 work, right? If you're a compliance person, 895 00:37:57,120 --> 00:37:59,520 you get some alert, you read some document, you compare it 896 00:37:59,520 --> 00:38:01,880 against some rule, and then you just, you know, make the 897 00:38:01,880 --> 00:38:04,360 plumbing work yourself as a human being in tomorrow's world, 898 00:38:04,360 --> 00:38:05,400 you obviously won't need to do that. 899 00:38:05,960 --> 00:38:08,160 I would say now is the time really to be quite bold and 900 00:38:08,160 --> 00:38:10,680 really look at the structure of the revenue and the cost base, 901 00:38:10,880 --> 00:38:14,040 choose a line item you like in that and then build a technology 902 00:38:14,040 --> 00:38:15,560 product to automate that process. 903 00:38:15,720 --> 00:38:18,400 And that is a very Safeway to think about having a very well 904 00:38:18,400 --> 00:38:22,880 defined Tam for your business. We didn't speak about the 905 00:38:22,880 --> 00:38:27,080 Sequoia arc part. Should people think of this as a 906 00:38:27,080 --> 00:38:30,800 competitor to a combinator? Or how should we be thinking 907 00:38:30,800 --> 00:38:31,480 about it? Yeah. 908 00:38:31,480 --> 00:38:34,480 So good question. So we launched a program called 909 00:38:34,480 --> 00:38:36,880 Sequoia ARC probably about three years ago now. 910 00:38:37,600 --> 00:38:40,960 We run basically 2 cohorts a year of companies that are see 911 00:38:41,440 --> 00:38:43,920 precede and see companies. We pull from the US and Europe. 912 00:38:44,360 --> 00:38:46,800 It's a pretty small cohort. It's typically like 10 to 12 913 00:38:46,800 --> 00:38:48,920 companies. It runs for about 8 weeks. 914 00:38:49,560 --> 00:38:51,600 And the way to think about that program is basically every 915 00:38:51,600 --> 00:38:55,040 single seat precede and seat investment we make gets invited 916 00:38:55,040 --> 00:38:57,520 to attend ARC. So we just ran an application 917 00:38:57,520 --> 00:39:01,120 cohort like over the last six weeks and basically the goal is 918 00:39:01,120 --> 00:39:03,440 to firstly, you know, on board you into Sequoia, you get to 919 00:39:03,440 --> 00:39:05,640 know a similar set of founders at a similar stage to you. 920 00:39:05,880 --> 00:39:07,800 You get to meet more of our partnership on day one of the 921 00:39:07,800 --> 00:39:11,160 Business 2 is to really focus on this idea that, you know, 922 00:39:11,160 --> 00:39:13,840 storytelling really is a core competency for you as an early 923 00:39:13,840 --> 00:39:16,440 stage founder. You tell 3 versions of the same 924 00:39:16,440 --> 00:39:19,480 story to your first investors, your first employees and your 925 00:39:19,480 --> 00:39:21,440 first customers. So it's really helping you get 926 00:39:21,440 --> 00:39:23,880 clarity on that and you know how to tell that in the right way. 927 00:39:24,240 --> 00:39:26,000 And then finally, for all of these businesses, it's about 928 00:39:26,000 --> 00:39:28,760 building connectivity into our wider Sequoia network. 929 00:39:28,920 --> 00:39:31,320 That might be applying customers in the US etcetera, etcetera. 930 00:39:31,720 --> 00:39:33,720 So basically, yeah, it's like a cool part of our business now. 931 00:39:34,560 --> 00:39:36,280 And yeah, it's something that like any of you, if you're 932 00:39:36,280 --> 00:39:39,080 interested in building companies would be eligible for the next 933 00:39:39,080 --> 00:39:40,520 cohort I think will be later this year. 934 00:39:41,080 --> 00:39:42,880 But yeah, it's something that we really, you know, put a heavy 935 00:39:42,880 --> 00:39:45,000 emphasis on. How is this program around? 936 00:39:45,000 --> 00:39:47,240 Do you have some partners, for example running? 937 00:39:47,240 --> 00:39:49,600 Do you have people running it? Yeah, we run it. 938 00:39:49,600 --> 00:39:52,040 We, we, it's, it's run through. So I was there last week in New 939 00:39:52,040 --> 00:39:54,080 York spending time with a bunch of our cohort. 940 00:39:55,440 --> 00:39:58,360 And yeah, it's a big like team effort for the reason being that 941 00:39:58,360 --> 00:40:00,920 like, you know, between our network at Sequoia, I think we 942 00:40:00,920 --> 00:40:03,320 have quite broad reach. And it's a great chance for you 943 00:40:03,320 --> 00:40:05,280 to be able to meet the whole partnership in a relatively 944 00:40:05,280 --> 00:40:09,880 short space of time. I've I've seen that you're a big 945 00:40:11,200 --> 00:40:15,160 advocate about Europe. I can't debate you forever or 946 00:40:15,160 --> 00:40:19,080 not, but why? Why is Europe the right place? 947 00:40:20,000 --> 00:40:23,040 Or is it the right place? I think what Europe has in 948 00:40:23,040 --> 00:40:26,480 spades is like diversity of thought and culture, right? 949 00:40:26,480 --> 00:40:28,360 We have an incredible density of technical talent. 950 00:40:28,360 --> 00:40:30,800 You know, we have more engineers graduating from universities in 951 00:40:30,800 --> 00:40:33,920 Europe than in the States. We have an incredible history in 952 00:40:33,920 --> 00:40:36,400 different countries of different industries being very, very 953 00:40:36,400 --> 00:40:38,320 large. So you have these very nice 954 00:40:38,320 --> 00:40:40,040 flavours across European ecosystems. 955 00:40:40,360 --> 00:40:42,280 And the reason I like that is depending on what kind of 956 00:40:42,280 --> 00:40:44,480 founder you are, what sectors you're in, there is somewhere in 957 00:40:44,480 --> 00:40:46,880 Europe where you have an unfair advantage to build a company 958 00:40:46,880 --> 00:40:48,880 from there. You have much more flexibility 959 00:40:48,880 --> 00:40:50,400 in how you want to think about building, that you have a 960 00:40:50,400 --> 00:40:53,200 potentially lower cost base for building your talent base. 961 00:40:53,760 --> 00:40:56,240 And we also get this question a lot from seed founders where 962 00:40:56,240 --> 00:40:58,360 they say, hey, you know, should I move to the US, should be my 963 00:40:58,360 --> 00:41:00,360 company from San Francisco. And in some cases, that might 964 00:41:00,360 --> 00:41:01,920 make sense, right? If the market's there or the 965 00:41:01,920 --> 00:41:04,440 customers are there. The reality is if you can build 966 00:41:04,440 --> 00:41:06,880 in Europe with the same intensity you would have in a 967 00:41:06,880 --> 00:41:10,080 San Francisco, you can go further with less, right? 968 00:41:10,080 --> 00:41:12,280 You will face less resistance, less aggressive competition 969 00:41:12,280 --> 00:41:14,240 here. But that is a mindset thing, 970 00:41:14,440 --> 00:41:15,640 right? The reality is if you also build 971 00:41:15,640 --> 00:41:18,040 from Europe and you don't push as hard, you will not move as 972 00:41:18,040 --> 00:41:20,720 quickly, you will probably lose the US market, you will never be 973 00:41:20,720 --> 00:41:22,840 able to raise capital there, etcetera, etcetera. 974 00:41:23,200 --> 00:41:24,360 But it turns out that's up to you. 975 00:41:24,440 --> 00:41:26,040 That's not like a structural feature of Europe. 976 00:41:26,040 --> 00:41:28,320 That's actually on you and your mindset and how you build your 977 00:41:28,320 --> 00:41:29,880 team. So we actually think for the 978 00:41:29,880 --> 00:41:32,040 right companies, coming from here can be a pretty unfair 979 00:41:32,040 --> 00:41:34,320 advantage. It's why when we set up our fund 980 00:41:34,320 --> 00:41:36,960 here, I mean, it's the same fund family, it's the same portfolio 981 00:41:37,200 --> 00:41:39,160 across US and Europe. We don't really care where 982 00:41:39,160 --> 00:41:41,800 founders want to build from. And probably the teams I work 983 00:41:41,800 --> 00:41:44,760 with, it's kind of 5050 whether they ultimately choose to 984 00:41:44,760 --> 00:41:46,960 continue to be here or they choose to move to the US. 985 00:41:47,320 --> 00:41:49,840 The nice thing is we're agnostic, but I would remember 986 00:41:49,840 --> 00:41:52,200 them that in the right cases, you know, you can really unlock 987 00:41:52,200 --> 00:41:53,640 a lot by building from this part of the world. 988 00:41:55,800 --> 00:42:01,120 I think for the last question, I wanted to ask you what it's 989 00:42:01,120 --> 00:42:05,040 Sequoia, It's on that pyramid of all venture and it's on the top 990 00:42:05,040 --> 00:42:08,080 of it. What is Sequoia doing right from 991 00:42:08,080 --> 00:42:09,680 your experience that others don't? 992 00:42:10,640 --> 00:42:14,200 Yeah, I think that's kind of I think so. 993 00:42:14,200 --> 00:42:16,560 We have a pretty small team, as I said, only 20 people. 994 00:42:16,960 --> 00:42:18,680 We make relatively few investments. 995 00:42:18,880 --> 00:42:21,760 So we're basically making about two investments, maybe 2 to 3 996 00:42:21,760 --> 00:42:23,280 investments per partner per year. 997 00:42:23,800 --> 00:42:26,480 So implicitly, when we propose an investment to my colleagues, 998 00:42:26,880 --> 00:42:29,240 they ask me, hey, George, is this one of the 15 decisions you 999 00:42:29,240 --> 00:42:31,240 want to make that's going to define your career, right. 1000 00:42:31,800 --> 00:42:33,200 And oh. That's a nice question. 1001 00:42:33,280 --> 00:42:36,520 Yeah, it's important. And you know, that is obviously 1002 00:42:36,520 --> 00:42:38,120 lower conviction than being a founder, right? 1003 00:42:38,120 --> 00:42:40,800 Because maybe you get one or two or maybe three if you're lucky. 1004 00:42:41,400 --> 00:42:43,160 But in the context of our business, that's pretty high 1005 00:42:43,160 --> 00:42:45,520 conviction because there are lots of funds where you might 1006 00:42:45,520 --> 00:42:48,280 make an investment a month, right, or maybe an investment 1007 00:42:48,280 --> 00:42:50,880 1/4. So when someone asks you that 1008 00:42:50,880 --> 00:42:54,200 question, you force yourself to focus on things that you think 1009 00:42:54,200 --> 00:42:57,520 are truly exceptional and truly interesting in a way that, to be 1010 00:42:57,520 --> 00:42:59,000 honest, is quite unnatural, right? 1011 00:42:59,000 --> 00:43:00,960 There's not many other things in my life that are, you know, that 1012 00:43:00,960 --> 00:43:03,760 important. And that's quite refreshing 1013 00:43:03,760 --> 00:43:06,600 actually, because it turns out we can invest in any sector, any 1014 00:43:06,600 --> 00:43:09,000 geography, any stage, right? That's the problem statement. 1015 00:43:09,000 --> 00:43:10,040 Find a business that will matter. 1016 00:43:10,040 --> 00:43:12,720 So I think there's just something about that focus and 1017 00:43:12,720 --> 00:43:16,240 that consistent focus on exactly that scale, you know, not one 1018 00:43:16,240 --> 00:43:18,760 standard deviation, maybe 2 1/2, three standard deviations from 1019 00:43:18,760 --> 00:43:21,480 the mean. And I think that we hold each 1020 00:43:21,480 --> 00:43:23,800 other accountable to exactly that quality standard. 1021 00:43:24,680 --> 00:43:27,480 Super. I think we have time for for 1022 00:43:27,480 --> 00:43:29,200 some questions. Who has questions? 1023 00:43:29,960 --> 00:43:34,640 We'll have a microphone, by the way, the one here, OK. 1024 00:43:40,160 --> 00:43:43,280 I'll also say maybe a little bit differently for some other fun. 1025 00:43:43,280 --> 00:43:47,240 So my emails on our website, it's just George at Sequoia Cap. 1026 00:43:47,360 --> 00:43:50,560 So anyone we don't get to, you can just send me a message and I 1027 00:43:50,560 --> 00:43:51,760 promise you I respond to everything. 1028 00:43:53,880 --> 00:43:56,480 On that, let me ask you another one, because students always 1029 00:43:56,920 --> 00:44:00,000 bring this up. How should people actually 1030 00:44:00,000 --> 00:44:02,000 approach you? So. 1031 00:44:02,160 --> 00:44:04,800 There is all this I need a warm intro. 1032 00:44:04,800 --> 00:44:07,360 I need this, I need that. One of the best ways. 1033 00:44:07,800 --> 00:44:11,400 So you know, warm intros are great etcetera, but if you can't 1034 00:44:11,400 --> 00:44:16,720 do that, we get a lot of emails where it has a lot of text and 1035 00:44:16,720 --> 00:44:19,280 it doesn't really say anything. And again. 1036 00:44:19,400 --> 00:44:21,720 Here's 100 years of experience in X. 1037 00:44:21,720 --> 00:44:24,800 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, honestly, but the thing 1038 00:44:24,800 --> 00:44:26,920 I would emphasize what I described earlier is like, you 1039 00:44:26,920 --> 00:44:29,480 know, why us, right? Why us as a team? 1040 00:44:29,720 --> 00:44:31,760 Why now, you know, why is this market interesting? 1041 00:44:31,760 --> 00:44:34,360 How is it changing and what is our unique insight? 1042 00:44:34,880 --> 00:44:37,400 And honestly, if you just map, you know, the contents of your 1043 00:44:37,400 --> 00:44:40,320 e-mail and very clearly laying that out, I mean, there's two 1044 00:44:40,320 --> 00:44:42,120 things. One, it makes it easier for us 1045 00:44:42,120 --> 00:44:45,560 to like process the information, but 2 is it kind of shows us 1046 00:44:45,560 --> 00:44:48,040 that you get it, but you understand that these things are 1047 00:44:48,040 --> 00:44:50,000 important and ultimately are what are going to define your 1048 00:44:50,000 --> 00:44:52,000 company. And when we get this big long 1049 00:44:52,000 --> 00:44:53,920 text with all this stuff in it, it doesn't really say anything. 1050 00:44:54,400 --> 00:44:56,280 It's not just that we can't read it, it's actually that it 1051 00:44:56,280 --> 00:44:58,960 doesn't, it doesn't indicate anything about the quality and 1052 00:44:58,960 --> 00:45:01,240 the position of your thought. So just be very precise and very 1053 00:45:01,240 --> 00:45:06,240 direct. Any other question here? 1054 00:45:06,240 --> 00:45:07,680 So I I actually had two questions. 1055 00:45:08,120 --> 00:45:11,160 The first one was in terms of the four dimensions that you 1056 00:45:11,160 --> 00:45:13,920 mentioned. You mentioned about domain 1057 00:45:13,920 --> 00:45:15,720 expertise and functional expertise. 1058 00:45:16,200 --> 00:45:18,920 I was not fully sure of what the terminology is between those 1059 00:45:18,920 --> 00:45:21,200 two, so it'd be great. If yeah, yeah, So absolutely. 1060 00:45:21,200 --> 00:45:24,560 So domain is like the market or, you know, the environment in 1061 00:45:24,560 --> 00:45:27,240 which you're going to build and functional is like the skill 1062 00:45:27,240 --> 00:45:29,440 sets that you have to be able to build in that market. 1063 00:45:29,960 --> 00:45:32,840 And like to give you this extreme case, you know, you 1064 00:45:32,840 --> 00:45:34,960 might want to build a very technical developer focus 1065 00:45:34,960 --> 00:45:37,760 product that sells into software engineers, but you are not a 1066 00:45:37,760 --> 00:45:40,480 technical founder. And, you know, your skill set is 1067 00:45:40,480 --> 00:45:42,920 not tightly correlated with the success of that business. 1068 00:45:43,880 --> 00:45:46,200 So it helps us bridge, you know, the market opportunity and the 1069 00:45:46,280 --> 00:45:51,120 Yu, if you like. Yeah, absolutely. 1070 00:45:51,280 --> 00:45:53,160 No. So domain expertise, functional 1071 00:45:53,160 --> 00:45:56,600 expertise, grit. But really by grit, I just mean 1072 00:45:56,840 --> 00:45:59,080 tell us your story, like give us an insight into your own 1073 00:45:59,080 --> 00:46:01,320 trajectory, your own path where that agency comes from. 1074 00:46:01,840 --> 00:46:05,320 And then the 4th, which we try and assess is more like the luck 1075 00:46:05,400 --> 00:46:07,080 or the circumstance for the business. 1076 00:46:07,440 --> 00:46:10,280 And really what I mean by that is, you know, it's like being in 1077 00:46:10,280 --> 00:46:12,640 the right place at the right time, right? 1078 00:46:12,720 --> 00:46:14,920 And really like a lot of those unlocks might be about the 1079 00:46:14,920 --> 00:46:17,720 technologies that are available day today to enable that company 1080 00:46:17,720 --> 00:46:20,160 or the why now, right? It might be about regulatory 1081 00:46:20,160 --> 00:46:22,360 changes that mean that this is something that's possible today. 1082 00:46:22,640 --> 00:46:25,880 It might be about some consumer trend or some macro insight of 1083 00:46:25,880 --> 00:46:27,280 something that's happening outside the building. 1084 00:46:27,560 --> 00:46:28,840 Could 2 be combined with those first 3? 1085 00:46:28,840 --> 00:46:33,360 Pieces and the the second question is kind of linked to 1086 00:46:33,360 --> 00:46:36,280 the first question. You mentioned something about 1087 00:46:36,280 --> 00:46:39,920 the negative signal with the fifty 5050% equity. 1088 00:46:41,920 --> 00:46:44,400 I kind of disagree with that. I mean, it kind of makes sense 1089 00:46:44,400 --> 00:46:46,280 that it's a very hard conversation to have. 1090 00:46:46,880 --> 00:46:49,880 But from a skill set perspective, yes, it might be 1091 00:46:49,880 --> 00:46:53,560 the case that some individualists has less, less 1092 00:46:53,560 --> 00:46:56,400 experience in that particular industry, but the ability to 1093 00:46:56,400 --> 00:46:59,080 learn might be much faster compared to the other person. 1094 00:46:59,520 --> 00:47:03,680 So I wasn't really sure why it's perceived as a negative signal. 1095 00:47:04,240 --> 00:47:09,120 Because so if we would see 5050, we would always ask why. 1096 00:47:10,320 --> 00:47:13,240 And if it's not 5050, we infer that like that conversation has 1097 00:47:13,240 --> 00:47:15,400 taken place. And that's a very reasonable 1098 00:47:15,400 --> 00:47:17,600 answer to that question, just to be clear, right? 1099 00:47:17,800 --> 00:47:20,360 It depends on the circumstance. What we want to see is people 1100 00:47:20,360 --> 00:47:23,120 are not avoiding conflict. They're like appreciating the 1101 00:47:23,120 --> 00:47:25,960 nuance. Because if that, you know, if 1102 00:47:25,960 --> 00:47:28,480 that is true and that proves to be true over time, you will end 1103 00:47:28,480 --> 00:47:30,840 up sharing responsibility and you maybe end up sharing 1104 00:47:30,840 --> 00:47:34,120 responsibility 5050. But I promise you of the times 1105 00:47:34,120 --> 00:47:37,560 when we see fifty, 5090% of the time is because there's a 1106 00:47:37,560 --> 00:47:39,920 massive imbalance in the team. But they didn't want to have a 1107 00:47:39,920 --> 00:47:42,320 tough conversation. So there are absolutely 1108 00:47:42,320 --> 00:47:45,080 scenarios where it makes sense. In most cases, people have 1109 00:47:45,080 --> 00:47:46,840 chosen not to have the conversation to avoid the 1110 00:47:46,840 --> 00:47:47,360 conflict. OK. 1111 00:47:51,080 --> 00:47:51,640 Yeah. Thank you. 1112 00:47:51,640 --> 00:47:53,360 Yeah. Can we do there? 1113 00:47:53,360 --> 00:47:54,000 Yes, Thank you. Thank you. 1114 00:47:56,160 --> 00:47:59,040 So much I have two questions. So the first one is in regards 1115 00:47:59,040 --> 00:48:02,160 to how you feel about solo founders and especially like 1116 00:48:02,160 --> 00:48:05,760 even solo founders who then may be on board like minority, like 1117 00:48:05,760 --> 00:48:07,520 technical founders later along the line. 1118 00:48:07,920 --> 00:48:11,080 And the second is in regards to the differences in traction 1119 00:48:11,080 --> 00:48:16,240 points you see at precede stage in Europe versus the US, because 1120 00:48:16,240 --> 00:48:19,720 in my experience raising funds, what I feel is that kind of pre 1121 00:48:19,720 --> 00:48:22,760 seed is extinct and EU in especially, I mean in the 1122 00:48:22,760 --> 00:48:25,840 European and UK market, it's a lot about kind of like pre seed 1123 00:48:25,840 --> 00:48:27,760 valuation but with seed traction points. 1124 00:48:28,680 --> 00:48:33,120 So on the so founding point, and it may be true that different 1125 00:48:33,120 --> 00:48:35,280 funds have different attitudes to this, We, we don't have a 1126 00:48:35,280 --> 00:48:38,480 problem with it. We just want it is easier to 1127 00:48:38,480 --> 00:48:40,080 build a business with a Co founder, right? 1128 00:48:40,080 --> 00:48:41,320 Because obviously it's a long journey. 1129 00:48:41,320 --> 00:48:44,440 It can be lonely at times. It's important to have a 1130 00:48:44,440 --> 00:48:46,360 sounding board around you in the team. 1131 00:48:46,720 --> 00:48:49,040 That sounding board may come from another Co founder, it may 1132 00:48:49,040 --> 00:48:50,400 come from those founding employees. 1133 00:48:50,880 --> 00:48:52,800 And by the way, sometimes we will see people, actually plenty 1134 00:48:52,800 --> 00:48:55,680 of times we see people who are currently solo founders, but 1135 00:48:55,680 --> 00:48:58,480 they expect they will either hire the late Co founder or 1136 00:48:58,480 --> 00:48:59,840 they'll hire these Co founding employees. 1137 00:49:00,040 --> 00:49:01,360 So they set it up in the cap table. 1138 00:49:01,400 --> 00:49:03,720 And that's a very strong way to indicate that you like think 1139 00:49:03,720 --> 00:49:06,280 about the world that way and you want to be really explained to 1140 00:49:06,280 --> 00:49:08,320 your investors. These are the kind of people I 1141 00:49:08,320 --> 00:49:11,320 want to bring on at this point in time because in some ways 1142 00:49:11,320 --> 00:49:12,840 what you're just trying to show is that it's a conscious 1143 00:49:12,840 --> 00:49:15,800 decision rather than I don't know who my Co founder is, 1144 00:49:15,960 --> 00:49:18,680 therefore I am a solo founder. That's different to saying I'm a 1145 00:49:18,680 --> 00:49:20,760 solo founder and this is my plan to build a company. 1146 00:49:21,560 --> 00:49:24,080 So that's .1 and then .2 just around, yes. 1147 00:49:24,080 --> 00:49:27,120 So kind of traction points. Again, to be honest, I think 1148 00:49:27,120 --> 00:49:29,320 this is probably a bit little bit firm specific because I 1149 00:49:29,320 --> 00:49:31,600 think it's about risk appetite. And I would really emphasize if 1150 00:49:31,600 --> 00:49:35,160 you are a precede company, you are a solo founder, you should 1151 00:49:35,160 --> 00:49:38,240 be trying to speak only with funds that genuinely do precede. 1152 00:49:38,800 --> 00:49:40,600 And I and I mentioned that as someone who you know was at 1153 00:49:40,600 --> 00:49:42,720 Sequoia for multiple years before, I appreciated the 1154 00:49:42,720 --> 00:49:45,440 difference between pre seed and seed in terms of expectations. 1155 00:49:45,760 --> 00:49:47,680 I think doing pre seed is relatively rare. 1156 00:49:47,800 --> 00:49:49,720 Doing seed is relatively common in Europe. 1157 00:49:49,720 --> 00:49:52,040 So just calling that out. I think the thing I would really 1158 00:49:52,040 --> 00:49:55,360 emphasize again one, what the plan with the team is 2 like a 1159 00:49:55,360 --> 00:49:57,000 pre seed. We don't expect any product, we 1160 00:49:57,000 --> 00:49:58,480 definitely don't expect any revenue. 1161 00:49:58,880 --> 00:50:02,640 We do expect you to have a pretty clear notion of like how 1162 00:50:02,640 --> 00:50:04,880 the market dynamics are playing out, right? 1163 00:50:04,880 --> 00:50:06,880 Like how the structure is going to evolve, what some of the 1164 00:50:06,880 --> 00:50:09,840 trends are, how the budget for your customer, if it's B to B is 1165 00:50:09,840 --> 00:50:12,200 increasing or decreasing, what are the catalysts for that? 1166 00:50:12,680 --> 00:50:15,400 And that will sort of inform your hypothesis of what you 1167 00:50:15,400 --> 00:50:17,760 might want to build over the 1st 12 to 18 months. 1168 00:50:18,040 --> 00:50:20,120 But in our mind, that's all in like square brackets. 1169 00:50:20,120 --> 00:50:22,400 It's all kind of subject to change once you start to speak 1170 00:50:22,400 --> 00:50:25,080 to customers fully, but you want to indicate that you are de 1171 00:50:25,080 --> 00:50:28,440 risking the positive market dynamics because people are very 1172 00:50:28,440 --> 00:50:31,000 comfortable with a soft pivot of the product. 1173 00:50:31,280 --> 00:50:33,480 They are less comfortable in most cases, particularly for 1174 00:50:33,480 --> 00:50:36,280 first time founders with like a true hard pivot of hey, it 1175 00:50:36,280 --> 00:50:37,840 turned out that we were just wrong about the market if I. 1176 00:50:40,480 --> 00:50:42,760 If I can just add a comment to in regards to that, like I, I 1177 00:50:42,760 --> 00:50:46,680 fully agree. Unfortunately for as someone who 1178 00:50:46,680 --> 00:50:50,400 was speaking to most of the PRECEDE funds like out here, 1179 00:50:51,040 --> 00:50:53,520 that's not the case. Like nowadays if you want to 1180 00:50:53,520 --> 00:50:57,480 raise PRECEDE in the UK or in Europe, you need a product and 1181 00:50:57,480 --> 00:51:01,280 you probably need at least an unpaid pilot or a sort of form 1182 00:51:01,280 --> 00:51:04,160 of partnership or some kind of like paying customers. 1183 00:51:04,160 --> 00:51:09,520 So my advice to other founders who find themselves to deal with 1184 00:51:09,520 --> 00:51:13,320 this is try to delay like your fundraising as much as possible 1185 00:51:13,320 --> 00:51:15,680 and just go and raise seed. You shouldn't take a lower 1186 00:51:15,680 --> 00:51:18,160 evaluation when you've done all the like work to be honest. 1187 00:51:18,160 --> 00:51:19,640 So. Yeah, I think if you can get, 1188 00:51:19,640 --> 00:51:23,960 you know, 250K or 500K from angels to get the ball rolling, 1189 00:51:23,960 --> 00:51:25,320 it helps. I think that's right. 1190 00:51:32,280 --> 00:51:33,960 Thanks so much. So firstly, I'm a member of 1191 00:51:33,960 --> 00:51:35,800 Kickstart Global. So thanks so much for setting it 1192 00:51:35,840 --> 00:51:37,520 up. And yeah, first of all, I fully 1193 00:51:37,520 --> 00:51:38,760 agree with that. I was literally about to ask 1194 00:51:38,760 --> 00:51:41,840 that question because I've, I've officially told my team, I've 1195 00:51:41,840 --> 00:51:43,000 done a business for about a year. 1196 00:51:43,000 --> 00:51:46,600 I've already made money, had a shit ton of users and I've 1197 00:51:46,600 --> 00:51:48,560 officially said they are not investing A precede. 1198 00:51:48,560 --> 00:51:52,560 We need to have 100K coming in and then they'll give us 100K. 1199 00:51:52,560 --> 00:51:54,280 So that's what I think at the minute. 1200 00:51:54,280 --> 00:51:56,000 But my question is with prop tech. 1201 00:51:56,000 --> 00:51:58,480 So my business is replacing estate agencies across the UK. 1202 00:51:59,720 --> 00:52:02,720 Investors do not like this industry, they absolutely hate 1203 00:52:02,720 --> 00:52:04,000 it. But my question is, I still 1204 00:52:04,000 --> 00:52:07,680 don't understand why they base their investments on the past 1205 00:52:07,680 --> 00:52:09,120 when clearly everything is changing. 1206 00:52:09,120 --> 00:52:11,360 There's a massive opportunity to replace certain things. 1207 00:52:12,160 --> 00:52:14,200 Yeah. I, I actually worked with a 1208 00:52:14,200 --> 00:52:17,200 company in Paris called Zephyr, which is we, we pivoted from 1209 00:52:17,200 --> 00:52:21,280 like an ibuyer to selling AAI workflow into brokers in France. 1210 00:52:21,640 --> 00:52:24,800 And we have at times faced a similar, you know, issue. 1211 00:52:25,200 --> 00:52:28,160 I think in prop tech, there's kind of like 2 in particular, I 1212 00:52:28,200 --> 00:52:29,480 think there's two things you need to get right. 1213 00:52:29,760 --> 00:52:31,960 One is like, it's always important to tell the acts of 1214 00:52:31,960 --> 00:52:34,200 the business, but the reality is the acts of the business in prop 1215 00:52:34,200 --> 00:52:36,640 tech generally start pretty operational and relatively low 1216 00:52:36,640 --> 00:52:38,720 margin and then have some trajectory to that changing. 1217 00:52:38,960 --> 00:52:41,600 So you need to show firstly, that you understand that and you 1218 00:52:41,600 --> 00:52:44,200 communicate that explicitly, and secondly, that that path is to 1219 00:52:44,200 --> 00:52:46,880 something that is important. Three, though, there's a bunch 1220 00:52:46,880 --> 00:52:48,240 of narrative violations in prop tech. 1221 00:52:48,240 --> 00:52:50,080 If you do the market work, there are a bunch of very high, 1222 00:52:50,080 --> 00:52:52,760 multiple very large companies who generate a ton of free cash 1223 00:52:52,760 --> 00:52:55,920 flow, but most investors have never heard of them because you 1224 00:52:55,920 --> 00:52:58,440 can't expect investors to have full context of every market, 1225 00:52:58,440 --> 00:53:01,280 you know, globally. So you need to like showcase the 1226 00:53:01,280 --> 00:53:04,080 best of your market in a way that you don't need to do if 1227 00:53:04,080 --> 00:53:06,080 you're investing in consumer social or something like that, 1228 00:53:06,080 --> 00:53:08,160 because people kind of get it. So I would just say point to 1229 00:53:08,160 --> 00:53:10,120 that. But if I there's an idea, I was 1230 00:53:10,120 --> 00:53:12,520 just speaking with a guy called Simon Draper. 1231 00:53:12,520 --> 00:53:15,120 And if you don't. But basically I've decided now 1232 00:53:15,120 --> 00:53:17,920 to maybe not even mention I'm proptech until I'm on a call and 1233 00:53:18,000 --> 00:53:19,360 then actually just explain it to them. 1234 00:53:19,360 --> 00:53:21,320 Because the moment I say proptech they literally. 1235 00:53:21,320 --> 00:53:23,200 I wouldn't use the word proptech, Yeah, I would say 1236 00:53:23,480 --> 00:53:25,040 workflow automation software for that. 1237 00:53:25,040 --> 00:53:26,200 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 1238 00:53:28,640 --> 00:53:30,600 So I have a. Question regarding Sequoia ARC, 1239 00:53:30,600 --> 00:53:33,120 what exactly are you looking for in terms of the companies that 1240 00:53:33,120 --> 00:53:36,600 end up getting in? Yeah, I think so they're 1241 00:53:36,600 --> 00:53:40,320 probably skew 5050 precede seeds just to give you a sense of it. 1242 00:53:40,320 --> 00:53:42,120 So it depends a little bit where you are in that in that 1243 00:53:42,120 --> 00:53:45,200 spectrum. But most of it honestly like 1244 00:53:45,200 --> 00:53:48,480 internally most of it is the people, it's probably 70% of the 1245 00:53:48,480 --> 00:53:50,080 people. So it's it's those dimensions I 1246 00:53:50,080 --> 00:53:53,760 mentioned and we run pretty and the way that the application is 1247 00:53:53,760 --> 00:53:57,480 set up is there's a pretty big like the questions are all story 1248 00:53:57,480 --> 00:53:59,800 based questions to be honest about you and your Co founders. 1249 00:54:00,000 --> 00:54:03,760 So like lean heavily into that. And in some of it, if it's 1250 00:54:03,760 --> 00:54:05,640 people that have applied multiple times, we're at a point 1251 00:54:05,640 --> 00:54:08,160 where we've had people that got in that implied two or three 1252 00:54:08,160 --> 00:54:10,960 times to the arc. We want to see like velocity 1253 00:54:11,280 --> 00:54:14,440 between the periods when they've applied because that's, you 1254 00:54:14,560 --> 00:54:16,280 know, being able to draw that line is important. 1255 00:54:28,800 --> 00:54:31,920 Hello. What is deep tech supposed to 1256 00:54:31,920 --> 00:54:34,040 do? Or people who want to develop 1257 00:54:34,040 --> 00:54:36,680 hardware. Right, Because in the UK, we 1258 00:54:36,680 --> 00:54:39,880 don't have as much disposable income as the Americans do. 1259 00:54:39,880 --> 00:54:42,720 We don't have garages to build cool things. 1260 00:54:42,760 --> 00:54:48,960 And when we apply for funding, even from universities, internal 1261 00:54:48,960 --> 00:54:52,720 entrepreneurial funds, the feedback at least I've gotten 1262 00:54:52,720 --> 00:54:55,600 is, oh, you need more validation, you need more 1263 00:54:55,600 --> 00:54:57,320 traction. Cool. 1264 00:54:57,320 --> 00:54:59,720 But I have no money for a prototype. 1265 00:55:00,400 --> 00:55:03,240 And that means the best traction I can get is, oh, that looks 1266 00:55:03,240 --> 00:55:04,600 cool. Come back to us when you have a 1267 00:55:04,600 --> 00:55:05,960 prototype. What? 1268 00:55:05,960 --> 00:55:10,960 What am I meant to do? So I'll make 2 comments. 1269 00:55:10,960 --> 00:55:15,320 I think one particularly for deep tech and for hardware, it 1270 00:55:15,320 --> 00:55:17,120 is easier to raise from US investors. 1271 00:55:17,520 --> 00:55:20,400 I think in that scenario, so like we are extremely it's 1272 00:55:20,840 --> 00:55:24,280 probably like for us about 15% of our investments are deep tech 1273 00:55:24,280 --> 00:55:26,760 or hardware adjacent. So it's something that is like a 1274 00:55:26,760 --> 00:55:28,640 pretty important piece of our business if you think about the 1275 00:55:28,640 --> 00:55:32,240 full expanse of tech. So .1, I think it's like 1276 00:55:32,240 --> 00:55:34,520 important to be realistic and we do see plenty of case studies by 1277 00:55:34,520 --> 00:55:37,320 the way of European founders going straight and raising from 1278 00:55:37,360 --> 00:55:39,400 the US for their seed and then building the company from here. 1279 00:55:39,440 --> 00:55:40,920 So we're not asking destroy your network. 1280 00:55:40,920 --> 00:55:43,040 We're saying like, you know, leverage the fact that there's a 1281 00:55:43,040 --> 00:55:47,200 bit more debt for capital there. Point 1.2 is part of the reason 1282 00:55:47,200 --> 00:55:49,280 for that is what you said of like there are these non linear 1283 00:55:49,280 --> 00:55:51,520 de risking moments in your company when you're building in 1284 00:55:51,520 --> 00:55:54,040 deep tech. You need to show, again, sort of 1285 00:55:54,040 --> 00:55:56,640 virtue signal that you know that you understand what those 1286 00:55:56,640 --> 00:55:58,560 milestones are. You have a sense of the risk 1287 00:55:58,560 --> 00:56:00,280 attached to each of them, potentially the timeline 1288 00:56:00,280 --> 00:56:02,600 attached to each of them, and how that maps to some commercial 1289 00:56:02,600 --> 00:56:04,200 viability of what it is you're going to sell. 1290 00:56:04,800 --> 00:56:07,680 And everyone kind of gets that. Intuitively, that's going to be 1291 00:56:07,680 --> 00:56:10,200 important, but showing that you know it and it's there 1292 00:56:10,200 --> 00:56:12,400 explicitly in your introduction for the business is critical. 1293 00:56:12,720 --> 00:56:16,720 Is there a specific way I mean to illustrate that? 1294 00:56:16,720 --> 00:56:21,040 So for example from my masters university I went and did a 1295 00:56:21,040 --> 00:56:26,080 course in the exact subject area of what I want to build and 1296 00:56:26,160 --> 00:56:29,600 their application process was literally a one pager and that 1297 00:56:29,600 --> 00:56:32,960 was it. And I thought maybe the course 1298 00:56:33,000 --> 00:56:35,440 might be good enough to demonstrate something, but is 1299 00:56:35,600 --> 00:56:39,000 there any particular points to hit or ways to do it? 1300 00:56:39,560 --> 00:56:43,480 I think it's like it. I almost think about it as like 1301 00:56:43,480 --> 00:56:47,760 a time series, like a table with time series and then columns 1302 00:56:47,760 --> 00:56:50,360 that show that you're a row story that show that you think 1303 00:56:50,360 --> 00:56:53,960 about with those dimensions. So like time is the first row, I 1304 00:56:53,960 --> 00:56:57,160 think 2nd row, if you can show like the stage relative to some 1305 00:56:57,160 --> 00:56:59,840 commercially viable product and how far out it is. 1306 00:56:59,840 --> 00:57:02,320 And then obviously the funding gap is required for each of 1307 00:57:02,320 --> 00:57:03,640 those things. And then the performance 1308 00:57:03,640 --> 00:57:06,720 criteria at each stage relative to that commercially viable 1309 00:57:06,720 --> 00:57:09,440 product, it just gives a sense of like how the risk is 1310 00:57:09,440 --> 00:57:13,040 distributed and all the best pitch decks we see like that are 1311 00:57:13,040 --> 00:57:15,880 are exactly that way. So we as potentially non experts 1312 00:57:15,880 --> 00:57:18,120 can now understand cool, we're six months out from something 1313 00:57:18,120 --> 00:57:20,440 that is market leading or beach some benchmark or whatever the 1314 00:57:20,440 --> 00:57:31,480 whatever the threshold is. Last question Vanessa is behind. 1315 00:57:39,640 --> 00:57:42,320 1st, I'll just say thanks a lot for the talk today, Kiakos and 1316 00:57:42,320 --> 00:57:44,560 George, it was very good questions and answers. 1317 00:57:44,560 --> 00:57:49,920 A little bit more specific about building AI especially in the 1318 00:57:49,920 --> 00:57:52,320 financial services space. I know you gave your thoughts 1319 00:57:52,320 --> 00:57:55,080 about you know, wealth management insurance being hard 1320 00:57:55,080 --> 00:57:57,880 areas to penetrate and then investment banking being a 1321 00:57:57,880 --> 00:58:00,400 slightly more ripe for AI renovation. 1322 00:58:00,680 --> 00:58:04,600 What are your thoughts on what about building AI for the PE, 1323 00:58:04,600 --> 00:58:06,600 real estate, PE and family offices space? 1324 00:58:08,080 --> 00:58:11,200 Good question. So there are lots of. 1325 00:58:12,880 --> 00:58:15,080 So there are lots of opportunities to apply 1326 00:58:15,160 --> 00:58:18,720 automation software to and industries that make sense like 1327 00:58:18,720 --> 00:58:20,320 on an atomic unit level they make sense. 1328 00:58:20,320 --> 00:58:21,880 It will make some process more efficient. 1329 00:58:21,920 --> 00:58:23,400 It will save people time and money. 1330 00:58:23,400 --> 00:58:25,760 It will drive their business. I often think about that 1331 00:58:25,760 --> 00:58:27,960 cynically as like your PNL looks like something today. 1332 00:58:27,960 --> 00:58:30,680 How will your PNL be structured differently tomorrow, right? 1333 00:58:31,160 --> 00:58:34,280 It's kind of like in case of PE, it might be taking out cost or 1334 00:58:34,280 --> 00:58:36,360 repurposing cost. But in some cases you can even 1335 00:58:36,360 --> 00:58:38,480 think about it as you're a percentage EBITDA Business 1336 00:58:38,480 --> 00:58:40,840 Today, how will your percentage EBITDA be different tomorrow? 1337 00:58:41,520 --> 00:58:43,480 The problem is that's like an atomic unit of like an 1338 00:58:43,480 --> 00:58:45,880 individual company, right? You don't need to scale that up 1339 00:58:45,880 --> 00:58:47,600 to is this a venture sized opportunity? 1340 00:58:48,320 --> 00:58:50,360 The thing I would really want to do the maths on there is it 1341 00:58:50,360 --> 00:58:52,400 seems very believable, having not thought about it for too 1342 00:58:52,400 --> 00:58:54,720 long, that you can build a business that is 10s of millions 1343 00:58:54,720 --> 00:58:57,560 of ARR and if you crush it, maybe low hundreds of millions 1344 00:58:57,560 --> 00:58:59,080 of ARR. And if you do that, you'll be a 1345 00:58:59,080 --> 00:59:00,760 company that could be pretty valuable, right? 1346 00:59:00,760 --> 00:59:03,320 You could be a 500 to 1 1/2 billion valuation business. 1347 00:59:03,320 --> 00:59:06,600 Fantastic. The challenge is you will make 1348 00:59:06,600 --> 00:59:08,960 money from that. Lots of investors will make 1349 00:59:08,960 --> 00:59:11,560 money from that. If I'm one of, you know, 1015 1350 00:59:11,560 --> 00:59:14,040 decisions that's going to define George's career, it's hard for 1351 00:59:14,040 --> 00:59:16,600 me to propose that, if you see what I mean, Right. 1352 00:59:16,880 --> 00:59:19,840 So that's the nuance where sometimes we will not be in 1353 00:59:19,840 --> 00:59:22,120 business with companies that end up to being pretty successful 1354 00:59:22,320 --> 00:59:25,120 purely on that basis of like, is it a candidate to be on the wall 1355 00:59:25,280 --> 00:59:27,520 in one of our conference rooms or is it going to be a nice 1356 00:59:27,520 --> 00:59:28,840 company that we'd be very proud of? 1357 00:59:28,840 --> 00:59:30,240 And you know, your parents will be delighted. 1358 00:59:31,280 --> 00:59:33,120 And like, that's the thing I would just get right is, is it 1359 00:59:33,120 --> 00:59:34,560 the right scale of opportunity for you? 1360 00:59:34,560 --> 00:59:37,240 And by the way, maybe you decide it isn't a business that can be 1361 00:59:37,240 --> 00:59:39,360 worth 10 billion, but you realize as a result, the 1362 00:59:39,360 --> 00:59:42,440 competition is way less and actually the risk reward is way 1363 00:59:42,440 --> 00:59:43,880 greater. We see plenty of those 1364 00:59:43,880 --> 00:59:46,560 opportunities that exist. I don't know where it is on that 1365 00:59:46,560 --> 00:59:48,400 spectrum, actually. There may be plenty plenty of 1366 00:59:48,400 --> 00:59:50,560 upside, but that's the thing I'd want to validate if I was you. 1367 00:59:51,160 --> 00:59:54,840 Yeah, thanks a lot, Super. George, thank you so much. 1368 00:59:55,360 --> 00:59:56,720 Awesome. Thank you, Team. 1369 00:59:58,840 --> 01:00:02,040 Yeah, I would just reiterate my emails on my website. 1370 01:00:02,040 --> 01:00:04,160 You can say hi if you have things you want to talk. 1371 01:00:04,800 --> 01:00:05,200 About super.