Where Innovation Happens

Transcript

[Music] welcome to web 3 with A6 and Z I'm sonal Chuy and today's episode is all about Innovation around the world at both a systems and at a People level so we discuss not only what does and doesn't work in making certain places become hubs of innovation and economic growth but also discuss what makes entrepreneurial Talent the nature of ambition and helping people find their path and more broadly navigating risk reward and dynamism in different regions including London and Europe my special guest is Matt Clifford who's played an important role in the London entrepreneurial ecosystem I actually had Matt on the OG A6 andz podcast back in 2015 so we also discuss what's changed since then to now as well as new ways of

funding breakthrough R&D Tech trends of interest and more for more context Matt is the chair of entrepreneur first which he co-founded with Alice bentin over a decade ago he's also the chair of the UK's Advanced research and invention agency or Arya and before this episode is recorded Matt was also the prime minister's representative for the AI safety Summit which he helped organize at Bletchley Park the historic home of computing in the UK and then after this episode was recorded Matt was appointed by the UK Secretary of science to deliver an AI opportunities action plan to the UK government this was just announced a few days ago anyway it's all fitting and exciting because we recorded this episode Live From andrees horowitz's First International office in London which we opened late last year

for more on our effort and other content from and about there go to a6z crypto.com sluk as a reminder none of the following should be taken as investment legal business or tax advice please see A6 ny.com disclosures for more important information including a link to a list of our investments now on to the episode Matt welcome it's great to be here was great to be back we were just saying yes I was about to say you we did a podcast together you were on this podcast on our last runon Road Show which was 2015 yeah and you were one of that was the very first time we met in person it was it was I mean we've been going a while now and we'll probably talk about

is how the London ecosystem has grown but our initial thesis which were you know remain very dedicated to is that the world's missing out on some of its best Founders you know in Silicon Valley if you're ambitious and smart it's the most obvious thing in the world to start a company right in Europe that's still not true if you go around Oxford or Cambridge or Imperial College any of these universities and you say like you know what are the smartest most ambitious people want to do yeah more and more it's on the agenda but it's still probably banking Consulting you know big companies I don't know how you describe EF or entrepreneur first as an or we we call ourselves the thing we've lighted on after a long lot of iteration is we're a talent investor we invest in people before they have companies and

help them go through that like zero to one Journey we're taking people who purely on the basis of who they are we we want to make a bet on I like that you're saying that you're a talent investor I mean VCS and other any actually creatives anyone would say that's their job is investing in talent and that's an art not a science yeah yeah well I know that Mark and B have taken a lot of inspiration in building your firm from talent agencies you know CA that was inspired by Michael oit he was an adviser early on and and you know we we we have a sort of similar view that almost like the world's most talented ambitious people need agents I mean like that's not quite how we frame it it's really fascinating because you said you're not an agent neither are we because actually the model obviously was

Talent focused but it was more about a network and network of networks which is how we used to think a little bit I mean I don't know if that was ever formally how it was described but at least from my perspective I used to think of A6 and C when I joined in the early days which was now a decade ago czy as a network of networks and that was where the Ovitz model came in which is how do you sort of you know kind of give back like continue cultivating Talent so that in that way growing people even before they want the thing or even helping them so it's not transactional exact and a lot of what we talk about is our team's job is to go out and find extraordinary people who are still figuring out what to do with their lives my co-founder

Alice and I you know we we started our career as management Consultants we were McKenzie and in many ways it was a really great experience but like if you say like why did you end up there it wasn't because at six years old I was running around the kitchen being like Mommy Mommy I want to be a Management Consultant you know it's just like it was the path it was what people did in whatever it was 2008 when I graduated and so you know our view was if you if if you really want to move the needle on like increasing the supply of great Founders you can't wait for them to figure out that like that's the obvious path you have to create a path and that's what that's what entrepreneur ver has been about from the beginning one of the things that we think about a lot is

like the nature of ambition and how it's very culturally determined oh let's talk about that well what I mean by that is like you know it's not like all ambitious people have the same like vision of how to realize their ambition you know that's absolutely true and so it would be craziest thing in the world to like try and force people to be entrepreneurs you know we have quite a big team now around the world and they go out and they find people who are clearly extraordinarily talented but at the very start their Journey we typically focus on people early in their career sometimes like you know while they're at University or or equivalent and you know their job yes obviously is to help them think about startups and you know if they want to be able to startop bring them into our community and help them do that but their job is

not to push where it's not right is to genuinely be almost like a career counselor like like an actual like someone whose interest is shared with the with the person and so you know one of the things that we believe like you know if you like our theory of change is that if you can like actually intervene at a point where people are trying to figure out like how do I have this Talent how I maximize my impact in the world and you can show them this path of Entrepreneurship and show what's possible then actually that will increase the supply of great Founders and then great companies in the world so I do want to pick up a little bit on two threads one about this what you said about the nature of ambition something you think about a lot but also what you said about this culturally determined

aspect of it and that to me suggests some of the structural context the surrounding context that supports entrepreneurship beyond the individual so let's split it up into the people and then the surrounding kind of context and ecosystem so on the surrounding context and ecosystem one kind of obvious thing this is something we talked about a lot in the early day in the A6 podcast I recorded a lot of episodes with like Iranian entrepreneurs and various people around the world and it was really fascinating how the risk tolerance is very different culturally in different regions yeah and one thing that I think is it's so cliche but it is true for a reason is unique about Silicon Valley is there is a tremendous tolerance I don't want to say the word failure because I hate veering into failure porn I think

that's the wrong way to it's like actually failure sucks always oh my god well I hate when people are like failure Friday and failure this like yes of course normalize talking about it recovering repairing but don't like glorify failure for God's sake everyone wants to succeed but what's really interesting about it is that there is like this forgiveness and recovery and resilience that whereas in certain cultural regions and areas there's almost like a punishment or a feeling of self-hatred if you don't succeed this is even Beyond individual level I'm talking about like culturally yeah totally so I think there's two things one is attitudes to failure but I think it's also like what is valued like what is esteemed and you know I think the really

special thing about Silicon Valley is this um this idea that if you tell if you're in Silicon Valley and you tell someone you're a Founder that immediately has a set of connotations that are almost exclusively positive is very legible people know what you mean people can read that as a sign that you are ambitious that's right when we saw entrepreneur there was this slight sense that if you said you were a Founder that was a euphemism for you were unemployed and so actually I I think the cultural meaning of Entrepreneurship is one of the biggest sources of Labor you have just like making it like this is a thing that smart capable ambitious people do and it's a vehicle for changing the world it's it's such a powerful idea and

you know to give you a really concrete example because I think like you know in the UK in the US like you know similar enough systems that it that it really resonates but you know the first International office we opened was in Singapore and in Singapore the number one career path for the smartest most ambitious people is to go be a civil servant as a result government Singapore is probably one of the most effective and efficient that's so interesting I didn't know that because it's actually the opposite in so many other places I've just been serving in government actually the people have been amazing so but but but I would say like as a result the cultural value of Entrepreneurship in Singapore it's just it's just been very I think it's been harder that to sort of like create this sense that like if you say you're a Founder you're doing

something that's as like legitimate as prestigious as your friends that have gone off to be you know yes you know it's we should talk for a second about why entrepreneurship for a minute because it seems like an obvious thing like what are we talking about this is a show the startup Focus we're both startup Focus cultures but actually it's not obvious OB I mean if I were telling a policy maker I think they know this but like the reality is like startups represent Innovation they're an engine of growth they create jobs they create they're generative they're not extractive they're not just taking the stable what you already have that's established they set you up for the future I mean there's so many there's layers and layers why this matters so just to kind of hit on that but to your point so I have to ask you this then I

don't want to be stereotypical but of course there's going to be some generalizations just to kind of understand this but my impression of London I'm born in raised the United States but my grandparents settled in London this is in the 70s before I was born and the impression I got from culturally is that there's kind of like I don't to say classes but very much a credentialist society like you you care very much about what school you went to and I think that could be true in some ways the Silicon Valley but people kind of don't really care what school you went to or what you did would you say that is true today do you think that's evolving and I'm bringing this up because you mentioned this point about what value yeah that certain words and and these Concepts signal so I'm curious for your perspective there you know I

one of the essays that I wrote when we were early on in yaf that was trying to talk to this I called don't be a badge collector I think I probably wrote that around the time I was first on the podcast but I think it's it's held up pretty well and you know what I was saying is like I think there is a cultural Temptation let's call it in the UK to be like I'm going to work really hard to get into the best university I can so I can get the best graduate job I can so I can one of the biggest risks for smart people I think is that you get into a mode where success is measured by whether you make your boss look good and their success is measured by whether they make their boss look good and see like all the way up what you're actually

doing to your point about you know you mentioned like stops are a positive some game there's a risk in a lot of career tracks that I'm not saying you're not creating value but like your actual goal is to win the like upward political battle within whatever bureaucratic structure you're in right and that's I when I say political I mean small P I mean this can be in big corporates they going be you know whatever I think what's beautiful about startups and the reason I you know spent more or less my entire career helping people build them is that they're ultimately all about what you can do for other people that's fantastic way of framing it you you only succeed if you build something that is so valuable that someone else will pay

for it yes you cannot win in any other way there is no boss to look good to make look good there is no like grading scheme that some teacher is going to tell you got an Aon it's like comes down to this very St thing did you do something for someone else that they thought was so great they wrote you a check that's right and it is not people pleasing because often you're going against established convention you're often butting your head or punching through an industry that is not accepting a new way of doing things I'm just thinking of my my former partner Martin cassado and the Enterprise team when he was doing software defined networking he was punching against very established old school methods for what networking looked like that was very hardword based and so it's like you have

to literally punch like you're completely going against all conventions so high to actually prove that that value is and you know I do think I sometimes think you know one of the challenges we face today is that if you are smart and ambitious it's now so easy in some senses to find a comfortable path that is about making your boss look good all the way through a career and acquiring like money and influence and Prestige but actually maybe never really doing something that creates enormous amount of value you know I mean it seems now that you say it it seems so obvious but it's really not like just a on the idea when you're

doing a startup you're building something that other people want and need that's a really profound idea on that note it's also very fascinating because of the economics of startups because usually if you're working for a company you were talking about you and Alice being at McKenzie Consulting people think they're making good money you you know but you're really captive to your salary you're not actually the wealth is not generative and one thing that I find really powerful about startups is that startups are the ones that innovated on the idea that employees can have a share of the Returns on the work they do so even though you might be building a product for customers and consumers that people want if you succeed you know it can also be go to nothing obviously that's a very

real risk but if you succeed there can be very real gains for the people who put things in especially for those that took a risk early on I don't know how the options and the economics work in UK startups but that is I think a defining feature of silic Valley in the early days and so I just wanted to point that out because it's resonant to what you said about not only pleasing people and being captive but you're also helping other people and then actually creating value that for the employees too they're always increasing the size of the pie for everyone in some form so I mean not to be a cliche but that's very true you know in a way I think there's like there's a really important sort of ethical Point here which is that Founders yeah they can make a lot of

money but they only get to capture value that they create that's right and you know I think that that is actually a really important idea and I I find you know again we we focus mly on people early in their career when we you know when we're working with Founders and you know I just think that idea really resonates with people that you know they yeah they of course they would like to be successful but they want to do it within a framework where they feel they like created something of course I mean it's like otherwise it's just gambling or extraction extraction exactly it's like it's like value ad versus value extraction exactly you know it's funny because it's also you know I want to get like polit at all political but just like in terms of capitalism stakeholders people having a voice and and and

empowerment I I saw this list it periodically makes this round on Twitter of like people like the most wealthy families in Europe and that list of the top five has not changed over centuries yeah which is crazy because that just means it's generational wealth passing along whereas the United States that list is I mean granted it's a younger country but at the same time like it's like the list is changing constantly like the top 10 wealthy people the top five wealthy people and again it's not about the money I don't want to make that the focus but just pointing out that when you think of this dynamism yeah this this thing that a culture can change be Advanced add new value startups can be generative it's just really interesting to me because a lot

of those people are startup made like most of those people are not access to old money right and and you know I think again not no wanting to be political but you know actually the thing that I think is nonpartisan and everyone can agree on is that actually the the thing we need is positive some games you know the thing you know like different people have different views on you know like how we tax wealth and you know but the bid that everyone can agree on is if people what we want to reward in society is people that are creating valuable things we don't want to reward extraction and you know one of the beautiful things about stops is they can't extract they' got to create and I think there's just something very valuable about that and very powerful that actually I see people across the

political Spectrum sort of you know kind of get in behind yes I agree on this note though we're talking about about the structural context right now before we move to the individual so let's add a little rigor to like what does an ecosystem need because I know that can be very buzz word I've studied entrepreneurial ecosystems for a very long time covered them for a very long time as you know and you know including like interviewing all these different people throughout the world who are experts in this like what an ecosystem means and a couple of themes emerge one you obviously need talent you need really strong universities and research ecosystem you also need for the people that hate to admit this government support so the other thing is there's a really important balance between top down and bottom up and on the bottom up

side you obviously need communities of entrepreneurs because they have been as you know many experiments including plan cities plan Innovations like where people are trying to these centrally planned top down Innovation initiatives they never work ever there have been many many many over the years and not one has worked some argue Singapore that's a different unique complex case and I don't know if it's as quote entrepreneurial it's a successful nation state right but that's a separate thing so that's one aspect secondly on the top down side you obviously need enabling conditions like respect for property like in the US we talk about respect for property rights it can include respect for intellectual property it can include support such as funding like DARPA in the United States which funded the internet things like that supportive

pro-innovation policies to the bottom up side is the community the top down and then the obviously the talent that comes in the form of universities because universities are drivers of research and and Innovation so now on your point about this Science and Technology side talk to me about what you think is happening uniquely in London because we're sitting here yeah yeah I mean so you you mentioned Dara you know my my sort of side hustle outside entrepreneur first is I'm the non-executive chair of Arya which is a new government backed uh well government funded R&D funding agencies based on Dara basically what does stands for the advanced research and invention agency I know what you're talking about okay so it's been given um I guess in US terms was about a billion

dollars to basically fund breakthrough R&D that might otherwise not get funded so really trying to take some of what worked at Dara in particular this idea of like this program manager LE model of empowering brilliant scientists with visions to just go out and build the networks and coalitions of researchers to realize that Vision that's right in a way that's like all about actually a lot of things we've already been talking about it's about ambition it's about incentives it's about align all all these things and you know one of the things that's been really striking to me in the S of roughly year that that we've been um up and running is one just the depth of the scientific Talent across the whole UK so not not just London or

not just oord and Cambridge but but you know truly across the whole country two they like it's almost like too strong a word but like the yearning for something like this well when you look at you know like why does Arya need to exist you know we we do a ton of great science in the UK and and and actually you know I'm lucky to have been involved in a lot of the science funding organizations that that exist but I think one of the challenges is that with scale comes you know a sort of more bureaucratic approach right and so if you're trying to run science funding for a whole country of course you need to like show value for money for taxpayers and you know you need to sort of have a lot of process but the consequence that this is

not a UK thing this is a global thing and you know you know people like Patrick Carlson and others have written about like the challenge of where science has got to I think of it as a career ambition and incentive problem so if you go talk to like incredible post dos across the UK across the US and you say like what's your most ambitious idea and they tell you and then you say cool and so you working on that they're like no you're like why not like you know if they're and you're like well because I need to get this next publication which needs to get this many citations cuz then I'll be able to get my next Grand and if I do that then one day I'll be able in years to my own la and then you're like wow this is crazy we have

some of the greatest minds of their generation playing a bit like the making your boss good game this is the making the gr makers Happy game that's exactly the same thing I'm so glad you brought that up because this is important so I want to break down a little bit more about what you're saying because you know a lot of people have tried different forms of like how to fund R&D and do it in a way at an industrial R&D is what you're talking about and in a way that's efficient and a lot of the Lessons Learned here which I think are fascinating so one you mentioned the concept of a program manager yeah for those I don't know like DARPA had these famous model where they had program managers and it's quite fascinating because like one example is Regina George you know and she went to Google

later on but I remember being at Xerox Park when her group funded and this is public Advanced manufacturing initiative and like reconfiguring manufacturing and all these different things and there's so many different interesting things about it because one there's first of all many of these initiatives can be very multi-disciplinary which universities are not well set up to do where people are very Silo in their departments and so having these grants can sometimes be like kind of these umbrellas for different disciplines to come together including across multiple universities yeah I was going to say multiple universities and sometimes even different sectors so like universities and startups and nonprofits whatever no totally like one example was we back in the day we did like content Centric networking like it was like you know various types of things so that's one

interesting thing the second thing this is a very little known fact that people don't know about this model is and I remember being fascinated by this when I was working with my colleagues like helping them out with some stuff at SRI who are thinking about this which is Stanford research international and they're very they're very famous for getting lots of research grants and different things it's fascinating because most people when they think of government funding and program managers they think of it as being as a one-way model where government gives money program manager allocates it someone has a strong point of view and it goes a b c d it's actually much more nonlinear and interactive than that where you actually have Smart scientists informing the program managers for what proposals they want to the see because actually the

word in the grant making business is if you're bidding on an RFP request for proposal by the time it comes out you're too late you should be shaping what proposals are coming out in the first place and that is a two-way dialogue between government and univers and that's a big part of how arer is is working and planning to work is is that uh but but hopefully in an extremely transparent way which is say here is an area that we're excited about where we think there is a thesis before we like make GRS before we do an RSP we want to like Workshop this with people that have like a really broad range of views on it that's right so that we know like you know what are the things we should be looking out for you know I mean it's again there's a risk of a cliche but you

know so much of the challenge of this stuff is you don't know what you don't know and particularly across into you know like disciplinary boundaries there's a lot of academic literature that suggest that surprise is the key to scientific breakthrough surprise comes when you have a different a knowledge based perspective Z Park jsb who's John cely Brown you used to manage it back in the day used to always say it's at the intials like at the edges and like these kind of in between um Industries I mean I do think that surprise or Serendipity is very important but I want to be careful that we don't glorify like Innovation as like this aha Eureka moment when it's many little things that can come together incrementally and I actually think but tell me if I'm wrong

when you say surprise you also mean this emergent quality that you don't know what you said what you don't know what you don't know and it can actually come up bottom up because you're not top down saying like you can say we know this is an interesting area you may even have a loose hypothesis thesis but you don't have it so opinionated and targeted that you're literally veering into Central planning which is where I would say places like China fail to when I'm talking about surprise I'm talking about almost exclusively a bottomup phenomena like what happens when yes the biologist talks to the computer scientist about a problem that has a rough with the ponors and they never realized before the biologist you know and then you're like oh and like that can be an incredibly productive thing that I well I you

apprecia of the choir because whenever I used to give tours that wasn't my job but because I was ahead of editorial at at Park I did give like these muy mucks like the tours every now and then and it was funny because one of the messages it's so true because they'd always ask like how did this one place not just one not a one hit wonder repeatedly create one Innovation and these we're talking world changing Innovations absolutely you know like I can't even say the gooey like there was endless lists of things that they did lasers like and it the big part of it had to do with this multidisiplinary thing and putting them in the same thing but here's the other thing that people don't know and this ties what we're talking about it wasn't just you put a bunch of smart people from different disciplines in one

building and go hey collaborate the founder of Xerox Park gave them a mission and the mission was to build the office of the future it's a very simple Mission broad enough to enable a all kinds of innovation yet specific enough to provide a funnel so it's not like crazy town where people are like oh I want to build a sneaker that like rolls down the hallways and I can skate through the you know blah blah blah you know yeah yeah totally 100% I think that idea of mission I mean that that's the other bit that you know Elan our CEO Arya has I think one of the reasons I'm so happy he's doing that job is that just the sense of mission he has about what we're trying to do is just so

palpable powerful how did Arya come about like so did the government approach you guys did you guys approach the government how did this come about yeah the government created this by Act of parliament early in 2022 and then ran an open process to hire a CEO and a chair and you know I had been partly because of my because of well mainly because of the work I've been on at EF I'd been very interested in this idea of like how do you do institutional Innovation cuz it's not the same as VC it's not it's not so you know I've always been interested in this like how do you do institutional innovation to increase the supply of of things that you want yeah and in a way you EF is like trying to increase the supply of great Founders AR is trying to increase the supply of you know scientific

breakthroughs through this in sort of institutional Innovation and so I you know I was uh I I just applied and um slightly to my surprise I got the job I'm not surprised I mean Alan was in based over uh near a home for you who's in Berkeley and he was running this incredible thing called the activate f ship which like deep sort of deep Tech entrepreneurs out of Academia what I think is very fascinating about you being involved is the other part of having these when you said their goal was to increase the number of scientific breakthroughs the other part half of it is how do you then actually take those breakthroughs and make something of them because as you know there's no shortage of brilliant ideas and things coming out

but there has to be like a system that can absorb and help support and nurture it and so I think it's fascinating that you're involved because then it's also like wait you don't only have to start go through like this classic linear model of University funding X you may also be able to do a startup you may collaborate with a big company you could go here you could the a big company can acquire the patent there's such a variety yeah it's interesting that you landed on that because I would say like probably the most important structural strategic question we've had to answer bararia so far is who's the customer so you know if you think about Dara right the D is defense and it's pretty important like I mean every I mean they've done a good job of

doing the sort of like bottom up side of it but there is a big like down they they are building things that the Department of Defense ultimately mean the internet was originally invented to be resilient in the case of of a disaster right of course it became something else but as as is the case but yeah yeah and we you know we are not Daria we are ARA we don't have a big customer you and that was a big important decision not to be you know we are of government but we're very independ dep of it what we call in the UK a non- departmental public body which basically means we're outside government and so like you know the question that Elan rightly asked right at the beginning is we're not going to have a customer so like what is the exit path like we find something great what do we

do with it and the answer probably not surprising given that they appointed an entrepreneur as CEO and an entrepreneur as as as chair is we think the answer is scientific entrepreneurship and elan's answer to this is we need to make sure that the interface between Arya and the ecosystem the entrepreneurial ecosystem is really porous in both directions I agree both directions is a key word I love that you guys say scientific entrepreneurship because our tagline I've said this publicly in talks our two-word phrase at Xerox Park was entrepreneurial scientists right so scientists who are entrepreneurial but are not actually starting startups yes and they have this kind of entrepreneurial mindset there's a reason they're not in Academia there's a reason

they're not in Industry they're in between they're really unique interface so I think that's fascinating we don't have to talk about this right now but just one other quick quick note is you know there's also important to make sure process doesn't get in the way because one piece I did edit was Patrick Sue and Tyler Cohen on the fast grants and one key Insight this obviously came out of the pandemic is that sometimes you also have to deploy Capital quickly yeah and sometimes in government process and not for it's there's a good reason for it can get in the way of doing that from allocating funding I mean that's that's has being like core to how we think about this like how do we get out of the way and you know like one of the reasons I think Dar has succeeded is like there's very few veto points yeah you

know it's not like you have to get like 12 people to say yes and we've done something very similar Arya you know you the program directors have to convince Elan basically yeah and you know my job as the chair of the board is to like scrutinize the whole but not get into the weeds not be another V that's fantastic I'm glad you guys are aware of that so now let's shift back to the individual we about the structural you said something incredibly fascinating earlier which is how you're obsessed with ambition and this question of ambition you also said another really beautiful profound powerful word which is yearning this idea that people have this yearning and the reason that struck me is because when you talk about how you guys are actually trying to support people early in the pipeline to become

entrepreneurs and know that's a path for them what really struck me is it's fascinating that you even have to do that that we should even have to do that culturally and societally because if you really think about it children are born creative and are born entrepreneurial you know X Y andz or let's trade on the school thing let's trade lunches I'll give you two pretzels for one KitKat whatever it is it's Commerce sometimes it's about building things together on the playground so I think there's something kind of sad that people lose that impetus and one question I have for you from your unique Fantage point at entrepreneur first is when you say you try to get people early what is a sweet spot that when you say like at earlier in their career like is it right as they in their High School College like we're

in London we have two tracks and actually same in same in Paris so we operate in in in London in Paris in in Bangalore and in New York and the two tracks we have is we have a track for people as they graduate from University yeah and then we have a track for people in we don't put a hard limit on it but you know the first five years of their career so you they' got a little bit of work experience I think like those two moments are quite special moments like the as well as as yearning and ambition another word we think about a lot is becoming oh because you I love it as I'm very influenced by my colleague Anor shank who's brilliant guy who runs a program for he's on that chat group with us yeah he is exactly and you know and salon and

some others yeah yeah he and he you know he he's really convinced me of this that like ambitious people have a sense of who they want to become but often less of a sense of how ah so they know who but not how and and so like a big part of es role is to try and help people become the person they want to be that's so interesting so Mark used to always say in the early days when he people would ask him like there are three pools for a startup it's product it's Market it's people and he would always say that people is the one you bet on the most because product can change Market can change and that can actually sometimes be a lagging versus a leading indicator but people are where you can really find that sort of you know true nor the the sort of cutting

forward which the differential that you're looking for in that kind of a business that's really interesting so what I like about what you're saying cuz my question you've answered it is very precise which is at what point do you kind of intervene so to speak and what you're saying is by doing it in college and the early five years of their care like their first job that is the how they have a sense of what cuz my argument was going to be like why not do it sooner like in crypto for instance we're actually seeing high schoolers they're obsessed like they want to learn and it's not for financial reasons it's building it's creativity it's like expr we the same we we we're we want to engage with people early and you know the thing that keeps it very grounded is

that it's really about like what is the community what is the infrastructure that you can provide to people that helps them figure this out for themselves you we're not a cult we're not trying to tell them who to become but you know it's like how can we you know how can we sort of provide a peer group that makes people say actually the way I don't want to be a banker I don't want to go be work in a 100,000 person big tech company and now I've found my people I found the people that are that not only validate that that sense but but actually can help me get there you also need like support if you're struggling with trying to figure something out because you're not alone and it's the feeling that your choices are are valid I mean it sounds so basic

there's so much to figure out right right because you don't have the structure of like a classic top down company bottom up thing the other quick thing is that this reminds me again of childhood development because there's a body of work that says that it's not the parents it's nature nurture debates but it's actually the peer group that defines your development the most this is a very controversial and very important body of work from Judith Harris in like the As and it was a very um important movement in child psychology and development so just on this note so as you do this work and we were talking about how hard it is to have this like you know this this when to hardness people's ambition are there any icons you think that people need cuz in the US The Social Network movie was a moment

differ right like the Zuck and cu the other thing is this Capital Gap early on where people can get Angel funding but not like the next phase I would argue that's a similar thing I'm a talent game for building a company where you can find like the early employees but not the people who can scale it I think that's still the Gap that's still a gap I think that and I think I think it's closing but it's closing more slowly because it just takes longer because you need those companies to to have matured and exist but you know I think this is also why this like idea of ambition should be Global from day one like yes we wanted to be a great ecosystem in London but we're not nationalists that's a great point you know when I think about ef's best companies the ones that

scaling fast they're the ones that have embraced having to be us companies as well as British companies yes I totally agree so going back to the structural contuct before we go more into people because I do want to drill with you on the the talent side more but on the more structural ecosystem context so you know we talked like again over seven years ago very exciting you've come a very long way very proud of the work that you and Alice and your team have done at entrepreneur first but like you also have a unique Vantage Point given your work into the London ecosystem and the tech ecosystem so what are your views on what's working what's not working at a high level and then what's really changed I mean you think about it it's kind of fun that we're doing this again after seven years well you it's so funny

because um and I think this this is a thing that a lot of entrepreneurs wrestle with I remember when we started we were so convinced we were too late we left our jobs in 2011 I it took a little bit of iteration for f to become what is now but you know I remember in 2011 like maybe we just you know maybe maybe this ecosystem is saturated look back now I'm like I think there was like one organization describing itself as a seed fund when we do demo days today you know you get like 2,000 people or you know it's so so the ecosystem has grown massively yeah and you know I think I think that's true at like every layer of the stack if you like you know I think the tal we already talked a little bit about how attitude as of what Young

Talent has changed but also the proliferation of Angel Investors see funds and then the bid that I'm excited about more recently and I I guess this is sort of a sort of you guys coming here and opening an office is a good example is that for a long long time people talked about like the the capital Gap in the UK ecosystem that yeah you could raise a seed round maybe a series a but you know series B was really and you know like there's a way to go but both in terms of like local firms growing up and you know kind of building reputations and and track records but also you know the the sort of most famous and storied American firms coming here I think that's a huge net positive for the ecosystem yes so that's more a

difference of degree though than kind like in terms of you're saying there's more investors more Capital available more people doing things more entrepreneurs would you say there's any differences in kind I think the difference in kind I would most point to and it's going to seem like I'm obsessed with this theme but it's just about ambition I love it I like that Obsession I'm on board with that theme I remember when we got started in 2011 one of the things we heard there was some really ambitious stops you know back then you know in fact I remember that when we recorded our podcast seven years ago or whenever it was years ago who knows at this point one of my fellow guests on that was um Michelle U who was one of the fans of sck yeah now that was that was one of the first like real first

generation London startups and was super ambitious but they were unusual you know like most 2011 London startups arguably were sort of like trying to get bought that's right that was their exit strategy was to be quied not really grow big and at massive scale yeah no and that's not a criticism with those Founders I think it's a lot about like what what sort of ambition will an ecosystem support that's right and so the difference of kind I would point out is that I think we now have people who are truly trying to build the global category winner from London from the UK now we're not there yet you know like you know we're still it's amazing what you know Daniel has done at Spotify and you know know in general we're Stillen you know like there are some really

extraordinary European success stories but you know I think they still we're still sort of pointing to things that that uh happened a little while ago but I do get the sense that you know maybe you know crypto is an area where this might happen where you know you I do think that 10 years from now we'll look back and say you know the early 2020s was actually a pretty special time to build globally ambitious companies from Europe so glad you brought up crypto because when I think of crypto this goes back to the earlier point about the positive sum game and the incentives it's really about incentive mechanisms and incentive alignment and that's actually the beautiful thing about crypto is it bakes these things in structurally so there's a lot of ways to align different parties of people

together to build things so I kind of agree with you that this could be a very unique time well I think one of the exciting things about crypto from a geographic perspective is that is it is sort of like natively Global it's not one of those things where you look to a domestic Market and then expand you and you know when I think about two of the crypto companies that we've invested in together Andre har an entrepreneur first Jensen and and and Aztec and then what you see is like these are people trying to build infrastructure for a different world but they're not building it for London or the UK or for Europe like it is inherently you know Global we had um MC later COO of uniswap on and she was saying um how this is a really unique type of product launch because you're

instantly Global when you like most other times used to have like you're saying these regions you would land and expand in this market then that market grow in this market it does not go that way I think it also applies to London's strength in a lot of ways in that the other thing that I observe now you know we we've been investing in crypto companies yeah for a long time I think we started the like London Bitcoin meet up in like 2014 or something with with Imperial College but you know we one of the things and I'm sure you have seen this you know with a with with probably a better Vantage Point than almost anyone but you know when you go through these like hype cycles and then Winters it's easy to get discouraged but you know one thing that I find so like

exciting moving from a talent investor point of view is when I look at like what are the Investments we've made in Founders that build in this space that have worked they're actually all all the ones that were just trying to fundamentally build real technology you know like as opposed to well what I mean is like you know I think the height of a boom you do get a lot of Thro and I have to say like some of that felt pretty extractive you know of course it did but you know I look at Jensen I look at Aztec and I'm like these are like engineering lead companies you know like they're building incredibly hard products and that's what gives them the right to win yes and and I do think like Europe's not that good or hasn't been that good at the hype frankly and so in

some categories hype helps a lot but what I'm really excited about is like I think one one of the things that we all really good at in London in the UK is like science and technology you like actually doing hard engineering tasks and I think that for me when I think about the future of crypto I think like we just still need a lot of fundamental new technology to make this work this is why I'm in the space this is actually a big reason why I came to the crypto team full-time because of our R&D and like research and development side it's so technological the depth the expertise like for those inside it's phenomenally engineering focused and I love that kind of building and I agree with you like and there is as you said there's always a frothiness in every cycle and that's that's okay because sometimes that

creates the buzz that then brings the people that crowns in Talent CRS the few people stay through every cycle and more and more people build and we're in a phase right now where the building and the product that things that are happening are phenomenal so my last question for you is what would you say given that this is an art not a science but I'm going to make it a little scientific for a moment are the qualities that you see that make someone a good entrepreneur or what what kind of in your talent game like what is the quote formula or filter that you use I don't think there is a Formula but I think that being exceptional is more of a habit than sometimes we admit and what I look for when I'm in if I'm

interviewing like a 21y old who's like never worked anywhere never yeah I'm I'm what I'm always asking is what have they done however unrel Rel to starting a start up that they had to do on their own Val without anyone telling them yes where they went above and beyond Y and something happened like that idea of agency in the world I think is probably the single most important thing I think that's a fantastic note to end on it's ambition yearning becoming and I love the line you said about ambition is global cuz we're here in the UK I'm from Silicon Valley but we're talking about a Global phenomenon thank you so much for

joining us so great to have you back it's great to be here [Music] w [Music] [Music]