20VC: Figma, Scale, Wiz: Inside Index's Decacorn Factory | Decision-Making, Investment Process, Biggest Lessons, Biggest Misses | Why Gross Margin is a Fallacy at Seed | Never Turn Down a Deal on Price with Martin Mignot, Partner @ Index Ventures

Martin Mignot is a Partner at Index Ventures, the best-performing fund in the world right now. In the last three months, they have sold Wiz for $ 32 billion, sold Scale for $14.9 billion, and IPO'd Figma as the largest investor. In addition to this, they are the largest or second-largest shareholders in Roblox, Revolut, Adyen and Datadog. Agenda for Today: 00:00 – Why Gross Margin is the Biggest Sin in the Early Days 04:50 – Why Most People Shouldn’t Become VCs 07:40 – Why it is BS to Suggest the Future of VC is Boutique vs Mega Fund 09:10 – Do Multi-Stage Funds Really Give a S*** About Seed 13:50 – The Founder Trait That Trumps Market Size Every Time 18:45 – How Spotify Still Haunts Index Ventures & What They Learn From It? 28:50 – The Brutal Truth About European vs. U. S. Founders 34:20 – The Case for a European AI Giant (and Who Might Build It) 40:50 – The Return of the 7-Day Founder Work Week 52:10 – Biggest Lessons from Leading Revolut’s Series A 56:40 – Betting Against Nick Storonsky? Don’t. 1:03:10 – The One Competitor Index Ventures Admires

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Beware of gross margin in the early days. And I think that's a mistake we've made a couple of times. You have a lot of businesses that in the early days have really bad gross margin. All the L L M providers were, you know, very clear examples of that. I think if that's the only thing that's holding you up, in most cases, I would totally ignore it. We never pass and we never lose a deal or pass on a deal because of price in the early stage. So we've been around for 30 years. We invested, I think, eleven and a half billion dollars. We've returned, I think, about close to 30 and we still have, you know, 20 plus in, you know, in holdings. Most of that is concentrated in eight, nine companies. Uh, we've invested in close to 400 companies over the years.

• 0:42Harry Stebbings?

  You are listening to 20 V C with me, Harry Stebbings. Now, I first met this guest nine years ago. Their fund has been flying for the last six to 12 months. I mean, oh, my God, they sold Wiz for 32 billion. They sold Scale for 14.9 billion. They IPOed Figma as the largest investor. Can you guess the fund? You got it. It's Index Ventures, one of the best performing funds on the planet. I'm so thrilled to welcome Martin Minio, partner at Index Ventures. And in addition to the crazy success names that I mentioned, they're also the largest or second largest shareholders in, check this out, Revolut, Roblox, Adyen, Datadog.

• 1:25Harry Stebbings?

  List goes on. Such an incredible conversation here and so much fun to have Martin back on the show after nine years. But before we dive into the show today, I love seeing the team come together to make this show happen. What I don't love is trying to keep track of all the information, the data and the projects that we're working on across dozens of platforms, products and tools. That's why we use Coda, the all-in-one collaborative workspace that's helped 50,000 teams all over the world get on the same page. Offering the flexibility of docs with the structure of spreadsheets, Coda facilitates deeper teamwork and quicker creativity. And their turnkey AI solution, the intelligence of Coda Brain, is a game changer. Powered by Grammarly, Coda is entering a new phase of innovation and expansion, aiming to

• 2:10Harry Stebbings?

  redefine productivity for the AI era. Whether you're a startup looking to organise the chaos while staying nimble, or an enterprise organisation looking for better alignment, Coda matches your working style. Its seamless workspace connects to hundreds of your favourite tools, including Salesforce, Jira, Asana and Figma, helping your teams transform their rituals and do more faster. Head over to coda.io/20vc right now and get six months off the team plan for startups for free. That's coda, C O D A, dot I O, slash two zero V C and get six months off the team plan for free. Coda.io slash two zero V C. And while Coda keeps our team aligned,

• 2:55Harry Stebbings?

  Acuity Scheduling ensures our time stays on track. This show is brought to you by Acuity Scheduling, the flexible scheduling software that helps you focus on what matters most. Growing your business with Acuity, you can manage your calendar, you can accept secure payments, offer clients a seamless booking experience that reflects your brand. I've been using my complimentary subscription and it's been a game changer for staying organised and saving time. I especially love online booking. Clients can book, reschedule or cancel anytime and the booking page looks fully branded with my logo and colours. The calendar management tools let me set buffer times and sync with other calendars, so I never feel overbooked. And with secure payments, I can collect deposits or full payments upfront through Stripe or PayPal,

• 3:39Harry Stebbings?

  making the process smooth and professional. Head over to acuity scheduling dot com forward slash two zero V C for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use the offer code twenty V C twenty to save twenty percent off your first Acuity Scheduling subscription. And speaking of incredible companies, don't forget what really keeps those customers coming back. Trust is the ultimate currency in business and today customers expect it faster than ever. And that's why over 10,000 global companies trust Vanta. Vanta automates up to ninety percent of the work for in-demand compliance standards like SOC two, ISO twenty seven thousand and one, and more, using smart AI to centralise workflows.

• 4:20Harry Stebbings?

  Risk and get you audit ready in weeks, not months. So you can stop chasing paperwork and start closing deals. And a new IDC report found that Vanta customers achieved $535,000 per year in benefits. That's insane. And the platform pays for itself in three months. I had no idea about these. Whether you're growing fast or just getting started, Vanta connects you with trusted auditors and experts. Support to help you build trust with customers. Get $1,000 off your first year at vanta.com/20vc. That's vanta.com/20vc.

• 4:58Harry Stebbings?

  You have now arrived at your destination.

• 5:01Harry Stebbings?

  Martin, it's been eight years since our last show. We last did it on Skype. A lot's changed, man. You still look just as young, but thank you so much for joining me, dude.

• 5:10Speaker 00

  Thanks for having me.

• 5:11Harry Stebbings?

  I want to start with a statement that you said before, and you said it actually in a Kaufman Fellows event. You said venture is about playing the right game. And I loved this statement and I wanted to turn it back on you and say, what is the right game then for you?

• 5:25Speaker 00

  The way I put it for this particular statement was, you know, very much playing the long game. The fact that if you are to get into this industry and this job, you've got to commit for 10, 15 years at least. And focus on, not on the outside reward and not on the external, progressing as a career, but very much more on the internal and doing it for the right reasons, which is investing in great companies, supporting great founders. That was what I really meant by that.

• 5:53Harry Stebbings?

  I think in the last cycle, we added a wave of tourist VCs who like the events, who like the idea of being a VC. Do you agree that we have this wave of tourist VCs and has it cleared?

• 6:03Speaker 00

  I don't know if I would say tourist VC, but I would say it's the asset class as institutionalized. You know, funds have become larger, there's more people in general by and large. And so you bring people who may sometimes want to have a career, choose it as a career more than as a calling. Me personally, I think I said, I see this job as a calling.

• 6:24Harry Stebbings?

  Do you agree, Doug Leoni said on the show that we've moved from a high margin boutique community to a low margin commoditized industry. Do you agree with that statement?

• 6:34Speaker 00

  Not entirely, no. I know there is a meme which is the industry is diverging into two camps. You either have the mega funds, the asset gatherers, or you have the tiny boutique shops. And I don't truly believe in that. I think there is a third way, and you know, Index is in that third way, where you need enough scale to help support the founders. And we think always from the founder's point of view, what is, how can we best serve them? And you need a minimum size to really help them to kind of invest across stages, support them from inception to IPO. You need a minimum size, but I also don't think you need a giga size to really support them.

• 7:14Speaker 00

  I think this push towards larger asset gathering is very, is very good for VCs who do it. You know, it can make a lot of sense financially, it can make a lot of sense for them. I'm not sure it makes so much sense for the entrepreneurs themselves. So I do believe there is a, there's a third way.

• 7:29Harry Stebbings?

  What do you think that minimum size is then?

• 7:31Speaker 00

  Exactly where we are.

• 7:32Harry Stebbings?

  How big are the latest funds?

• 7:34Speaker 00

  We have a $300 million seed fund, 800 million venture fund, and one and a half billion growth fund. That's the latest.

• 7:41Harry Stebbings?

  And that is the minimum for what you need? Perfect.

• 7:44Speaker 00

  I wouldn't say that's, that's the minimum. I, we see it as the right size to both support entrepreneurs with the right amount of capital and then, you know, have enough to pay for the infrastructure that we have.

• 7:55Harry Stebbings?

  So my mind has changed on this. I thought that the mega AUM gatherers would see denigration of returns and actually bluntly just fee accumulators. And actually now, when you see the expansion of outcome sizes and more trillion dollar companies than ever, and a very few number of people being able to write a billion dollar cheque, I think actually they will do incredibly well investing in your OpenAI's at 300 million and your Anthropic's at 60 billion and see venture-like returns at scale in a way that I really changed my mind on. Do you think I'm wrong to have changed my mind in that way?

• 8:27Speaker 00

  I'm not sure you're gonna have venture-like returns at 300 billion. I think you can have amazing returns, you know, can you have 15, 70x?

• 8:34Harry Stebbings?

  You could find that's a billion dollar check.

• 8:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely. The math makes sense. Do you need dedicated funds to do that? Or can you do it in a more ad hoc way? You know, I think that's a question. That is on the later stage set of things. Obviously, we, you know, on the early stage, you know, either seed or early venture or early growth, I don't think you need, you know, those mega assets. And I think they distract you and they tend to pull you towards the later stage. And if you have so much capital to deploy, obviously, you will tend to focus more on the later stage, on the very big checks. And I think if you want to help and support at the earlier stage, you know, it can be an impediment.

• 9:12Harry Stebbings?

  For the AUM gatherers, is seed simply an entry ticket to the real product which is moving 100 to 500 million at the CED?

• 9:21Speaker 00

  That is not our model, so I don't want to comment on their strategy.

• 9:25Harry Stebbings?

  That is such a cop out. I totally think it is. I think I would admit it if I was them as well. I always, I walk around London with my mother and I always say the same thing, which is like, I have to give analogies. And I'm like, you know, when you went clubbing and you have to pay the entry fee at the door? That's like seed for the AUM gatherers and the table is the C and the D.

• 9:42Speaker 00

  This is not how we see seed at all. Every check is high conviction. We don't make as many as a result, but you know, we have high conviction checks and we work closely with responders, even at the seed stage. It's the same as if you were a series A. Our goal is very simple. You know, we want to be as early as possible, become the largest shareholder and become the most valued and most referenced investors in those companies.

• 10:04Harry Stebbings?

  I chatted to Danny before the show and he said that Martin didn't always have this perspective on where funds would win and this kind of third path being the middle and being your path today. What did you believe and what caused you to change your mind?

• 10:18Speaker 00

  What I've changed my mind on is if you start from the founder and if you really think through, how can you best help them? You know, what is the most helpful way that you can interact with them at the early stage especially? How does that help them that you have 10 different products? You know, that you do LBO, you do credit. How is that helpful? To an early stage founder, it's not. And so if you really think from that first principle of what are the resources you need to be really helpful in those early stages? And again, in the service for us of building both the biggest ownership and the best reference from those founders. It's not this super large scale multi-product. It's you need enough again to support them.

• 10:58Speaker 00

  But you also need to be small enough to kind of keep that interpersonal relationship and that close support where they know they can call 10 people at Index. You know, get help on anything that that may happen to them. And you don't necessarily have that in such a personal and trusted way. In a much larger company where people move around a lot more, a lot of our people have been around for 10 years plus, even in our strategist team. And that creates a level of trust and competency that it's really hard to replicate in much larger, on much larger organizations.

• 11:28Harry Stebbings?

  I love you, but dude, team turnover has been high. There's a lot of team turnover. Like surely it's not that. Like we don't have much consistency in the index team, do you? You've got short all you, Jan.

• 11:40Speaker 00

  Yeah. And if you look at the principal rank, you know, we have a lot of people who've been around for a long time. If you look at the strategist rank, we have a lot of people who've been here for a long time. So there has been turnover in the industry, you know, at large.

• 11:51Harry Stebbings?

  Interesting question. Do you think consistency of team correlates to venture returns?

• 11:55Speaker 00

  I was chatting with, you know, with Iliad Quantum Light about it the other day, and they said the number one factor that they that they noticed was a good predictor of future returns. Was whether a partner was on the on the Midas list, an early stage investor in the company was on the Midas list, which kind of tend to show that there is a persistence of returns in terms of proven investors.

• 12:16Harry Stebbings?

  Do you buy the Midas list? Again, you're like, Jesus, Harry, I thought this was an easy interview. But I took it the Midas list and none of the people on that did the deals that they said they did. I'm like, guys, come on.

• 12:29Speaker 00

  Two things. One is I didn't investigate, I think, as much as you did, but my view on the Midas list is it's a really good list for who was a great investor 10 years ago. That's kind of how I would describe it, because if you look at a lot of these companies, there were deals that were made, you know, 10 years ago. And so I think it's really accurate to show you, you know, who made great investment 10 years. Is it very accurate to see who is a great investor today or in the future? I think there is some persistence of returns and there's a lot of studies that have shown that. But it's not definitely there are a lot of great investors today who are not yet on the list, but will be in the future that should be on it.

• 13:02Harry Stebbings?

  Yeah, I'm going to leave some names out. Someone I look at and I'm like, really? That's interesting. We have different memories on that one. You mentioned about service and help a lot. Keith, your boy said on the show before, the best founders don't need your help as an investor. Do you think the best founders need your help?

• 13:16Speaker 00

  They don't necessarily need your help. The best founders I've seen are very good at reaching out to investors and people around them on very specific topics when these people, it's leveraging the right people at the right time, being very specific about that versus going to, I think that's a little bit the, a lot of the approach that we see in the market is like it's a one stop shop for everything. I don't think the best founders use their investor or their supporters that way.

• 13:42Harry Stebbings?

  Okay, so when we think about like new deals, yeah, there's two types of founders. There's ones that come to an industry fresh and with the joys of naivety and open eyes. And then there's ones that come to it as an industry insider. How do you think about which founder type you prefer and lessons from them?

• 14:01Speaker 00

  I don't prefer any of those types. The way I think about it is slightly different. You know, the, what I love in founders is unique insights. And that unique insight can come, so the unique insight can come from two places. Is one experience and knowledge of an industry. The other one is just sheer intelligence and ability to break down complex problem into very simple ones. And you know, if you think about all the best founders, you know, I've worked with and you know, you have worked with, I think that they tend to have this one similarity, which is they can come up with a very simple insight, something that sounds very simple, but actually incredibly deep and profound and defensible. And they typically come at it from first principle thinking.

• 14:45Speaker 00

  I mean, I think first principle thinking gets thrown out a lot, but the very best founders, they have that. And so if you take, you know, Nick Atreblot, you know, as an example of that, a lot of his decisions and a lot of his co-insights were just linked to that first principle. Thinking. So you thought about FX, for example, FX for large corridor where you have a lot of volume of of transfer costs nothing. So it should be given for free, you know, to the market. And then, once you have that, that's a really good hook. And then you can build something else. And if you think about most of the the great companies, they have one simple insight, but that is very deeply original. That's the core of what I look for in founders is I want to sit there and then they will teach me something that they have come up with.

• 15:26Speaker 00

  Either thanks to their experience and but more, you know, usually from that deep thinking that they've done and where they've solved this problem. Look at, you know, Willa Delivery, for example, his insight was very much the product is the delivery, which sounds obvious, but it's not the digital experience. It's the speed and quality of the the delivery. And if it has to come below 20 minutes, that's the, if you can get that consistently, that is the product. Everything else is a is a distraction. That's the core product. And that's what we should entirely focus on.

• 15:56Harry Stebbings?

  It's funny, I had Misha, the founder of Fiverr on the show recently. And he said a fascinating thing, which is like the most important thing that's changed is time to copy. How long it takes for someone else to copy your product? When you see a dramatically reduced time to copy, does the value of unique insight go down? You could have a great idea, but I see it and bluntly with tools that we have available, I can copy it super fast. And I'm better at branding and marketing than you, so I'm going to crush you. Does the value of unique insight go down?

• 16:22Speaker 00

  I think it goes down without great execution that comes with it. I think that on its own is not enough. I still think it gives you, it gives you an advantage, but then I agree. I think it's all about execution.

• 16:32Harry Stebbings?

  When you think about like market timing risk, it's something where I've got burnt before. How willing are you to take market timing risk when you think about unique insights?

• 16:40Speaker 00

  What do you mean by market timing?

• 16:41Harry Stebbings?

  Hey, I believe this. I don't know how long it's going to take for the market to see what I believe. Versus, hey, I have a product that's super fucking great right now and it's going to fly off the shelf.

• 16:51Speaker 00

  That's a typical, you know, that's a very common way of of making mistakes and.

• 16:56Harry Stebbings?

  So you could look at like Cowboy and say like, hey, actually, in a world today, everyone appreciates the importance of like innovation on transportation.

• 17:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:05Harry Stebbings?

  Uh, the benefits of cycling in cities.

• 17:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:07Harry Stebbings?

  Well, it would be very different five or six years ago.

• 17:09Speaker 00

  So I think look, market timing i- is a real thing, you know, you you can be right, but it can be that. Again, if you look at food delivery, it's interesting. People tried to do delivery five or six years ago. It was a French company, I forgot the name. That was, it was doing delivery, but what the, what they didn't have was they didn't have smartphone penetration. So they had to call people, I mean, they had to call drivers to tell them where to go and where to deliver. And and obviously that didn't scale and and you know, the, there was no efficiency and they would take fifty minutes, it would be very expensive. And so you needed to have not only the invention of the smartphone, but you need to have everyone, including drivers, having smartphones for something like delivery to exist. So clearly here it's a true, you know, the, the concept was there, but the technology just didn't follow.

• 17:55Speaker 00

  I think in the case of of Cowboy and micro mobility in general, I think the timing was was absolutely correct. The challenge here in this industry is that if you're selling the hardware, it's a hard, you know, it's mostly a hardware product and hardware is is really hard. If you don't sell software on top, you rely on on a very complex supply chain, has been, which has suffered a lot over the past years, obviously. It's a volume game, you need to have distribution, you need to have relationships. So so you it, you need to raise a lot of money to build all of those assets. And the return on that capital is not as good as on pure software businesses. If you're selling a service, so you know, Lime and Bird and those, I think you can have a large scale, but it is so operationally complex.

• 18:39Speaker 00

  And you're also competing with a lot of subsidized transportation. So you're charging full price for a service that is, you know, offered at a discount by a lot of municipal services and and you're fighting against a lot of regulation, a lot of, you know, a lot of changes. I still think that some companies will do well, actually, in that space. I think Lime is is doing well. I think DOD is doing pretty well. I think they will, they will be. Okay at the end, but it's clearly, you know, it's been a really, really difficult space.

• 19:05Harry Stebbings?

  Okay, I had the CEO of Limon and he said that at one point they had a thirty-three percent break rate every month. One in three break like every month like destroyed. I mean, a hard fucking business. We mentioned Cowboy, it's it's a hard deal being direct.

• 19:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:20Harry Stebbings?

  How do you prevent hard deals or losses impact future decision making? So many deals, I've met so many great fintech investors who never did Stripe. Cause they're like, I thought it would be commoditized. I thought it was a race to the bottom. They let the past dictate the future.

• 19:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:36Harry Stebbings?

  How do you not do that?

• 19:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's that's probably the hardest, the hardest one. And actually, you know, it's funny, it doesn't only, it's only the bad investments or the mediocre, so a- any investment gives you some form of bias. You know, if it's a great investment, then everything else may look, you know, not so great in comparison and, you know, I I've suffered certainly from that, you know, on the fintech side, for example, where, you know, I was lucky enough to be early in Revolut and then I looked at a lot of other fintech investments, we're like, well, Revolut can do this, or Revolut does it better, or, you know, so so I think it goes, it goes both ways.

• 20:07Harry Stebbings?

  And you've missed out because of that.

• 20:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly.

• 20:09Harry Stebbings?

  What did you miss out on because you thought Revolut was great?

• 20:12Speaker 00

  We could have invested in any, you know, in a lot of other neo-banks, Konto would be a really good example of that. A lot of, you know, remittance and certain corridors and so there's a lot of.

• 20:21Harry Stebbings?

  In the nicest way, do you actually regret, I I don't mean this horribly or to single out any players, I'm not a dick journalist, but it's just like, I just think so much that value accrues to the number one.

• 20:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:31Harry Stebbings?

  In all, in most markets. I get it, but you're in the number one, who gives a fuck? I didn't mean it that bluntly, but it's like so demonstrably different in terms of value accretion.

• 20:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, that that's that's our, you know, that's absolutely our position. There are still some really good companies that we could have invested in. I would say, so going back to your original question, this idea of keeping a beginner's mindset is absolutely essential for any investor, it and it's really hard to do. The what, the example we always use at index is Spotify. And to your point, it wasn't because of a bad investment, it was because of a mediocre investment, which is different. You know, we had just invested in Last FM, a totally reasonable outcome, because we saw how the sausage gets made in that industry and the. Of the labels and we're like, gosh, this is impossible to make money. And we really love Daniel and we saw that the product was phenomenal and there was some early traction. But we had this bias of, oh, the music industry is so hard, you know, it's never gonna happen.

• 21:23Speaker 00

  And that's why we passed multiple time and when we wants to come back, it was it was too late. And so I I think.

• 21:29Harry Stebbings?

  It was not too late.

• 21:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly.

• 21:32Harry Stebbings?

  I love Danny, I love Danny and I love Daniel and Daniel wanted Danny every fricking round.

• 21:38Speaker 00

  Exactly. But, you know, so so I think the learning here is when you have, again, it goes back to the founder, when you have, and we knew because, you know, Daniel was working at at one of our companies. So we we knew the guy was was incredible. And so when you have such a unique founder that again does have a unique insight about about their industry and has the ability to execute on it. And also in this case, you see real signs of execution. Don't overthinking, I think that's a that's a problem that we have and I'm chatting with a lot of VC who say, you know, it's kind of pretty widespread in the industry. Like you think you're, you know, you want to be very smart, you want to be very diligent, you want to, and so there is a tendency to overthink. And, you know, when something has a fantastic founder and has real movement, then sometimes you just need, even if it's an industry like, oh, my God, I've been burnt in the past.

• 22:23Speaker 00

  Don't overthink it.

• 22:24Harry Stebbings?

  I'm early stage seed now, if I have a world-class founder, I don't give a shit what they're doing. I genuinely do not, I there's this like brilliant curve, I don't know if you've seen it, where you start your career and you think it's all about team. You then go three, five years in where you're like, oh, I'm smart, I should analyze markets and then 10 years in, you're like just team again.

• 22:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, I remember, I think Matt Tuck showed that that meme at some point and I I I'm getting there too, I'm I'm back on the on the other side of the curve.

• 22:50Harry Stebbings?

  Okay, you have team, you have trash and you have market, one through three, most important.

• 22:55Speaker 00

  Team, team, team and team, I would say that's that's that's, you know, I I'm back to that as as the number one. But, you know, I would say, you know, I I probably used to think, you know, market, team and traction, now I'm kind of probably the other around, so kind of team, traction and market.

• 23:09Harry Stebbings?

  Given revenue scalings being so unparalleled today for so many companies, does revenue mean less? Does traction mean less, given zero to 10 million barrels kind of commoditized now as? As awful and tried as that sounds, does it mean less?

• 23:24Speaker 00

  I don't think it means less. Um. Finding product market fit is the hardest thing in in any business and and tons of founders walk around in the desert for years without ever finding it. So I think we shouldn't minimize or trivialize, you know, finding real traction and having real revenue traction. I think this is this is remarkable and it should be celebrated. Obviously, if you are talking about AI, auditing the quality of that revenue is critical. That's what we spend a lot of our time doing is, you know, is that is that revenue long lasting? Is it sticky? The more cohorts you have, the more you can see the numbers. If you don't have that, then it's going to be, you know, talking to customers. And also really trying to understand their use case. If it's it's something that's more like project based and then they want to use it once and then, you know, they will switch to something else potentially.

• 24:06Speaker 00

  Or is something that, especially if it's inserted inside their workflow, you know, cursor is a good example, you know, we we've made a bunch of those type of investments. Then, in all likelihood, even if the numbers don't show it yet, in all likelihood, the stickiness of that product is going to be a lot higher.

• 24:21Harry Stebbings?

  Can I ask you, we said about kind of keeping that pure mindset. Partnerships can help in terms of preventing mistakes on, oh, I've done it before and it's lost money, which is a very dangerous heuristic, obviously. When you think about decision making internally, how does decision making look on net new deals and how does that differ on size of check?

• 24:37Speaker 00

  We have a a different size of quorum depending on the size of the check. So who needs to be there? They always folks from each office. That's very important, you know, because we work as as one team across offices. And then we we vote, we vote one to 10, you can't vote five and six. So you have to be, you know, four against and then it's kind of a, so it's a qualified majority essentially. So if if the average is above six, you know, the the deal is the deal is approved. And so that that mechanism, you know, i- is the same. And then there's also some latitude if you if you have, you know, very high conviction on deal at the early stage. I think we have a bias for, you know, to action. And again, going back to having a beginner's mindset.

• 25:16Speaker 00

  The person who spends a lot more time with a certain team is obviously better placed to make a judgment call on that team. And so there is, you know, this kind of collective trust into the partner's judgment.

• 25:26Harry Stebbings?

  But if you want to write a $5 million check on the spot, you can do it.

• 25:29Speaker 00

  Not exactly on the spot, but but you can definitely, you know, make the deal happen.

• 25:33Harry Stebbings?

  What was the most controversial deal that got through?

• 25:37Speaker 00

  I'd say Revolut was pretty controversial, actually, of all the deals. Yeah, it's funny, it's, it's, it sounds, you know, in retrospect, it sounds bizarre, but it ended up being one of the most successful, or maybe the most successful, but it was definitely one of the most controversial. The reason for that was that, and it was quite a few fold. The first one is, it was a very European product, you know, and I think the product made a lot of sense for the European audience, didn't make as much sense in the US context, where FX frankly is not a big topic. So I think there was, that was one element where, you know, I think US-based folks were less familiar with the product and, you know, it didn't resonate as well. The other issue we had is it was, especially in the early stages, it was a kind of negative gross margin business. I mean, they were basically giving away FX, weren't charging for anything else. You had a little bit of interchange, but not that much.

• 26:22Speaker 00

  And so you had a very low gross margin business, and obviously that wasn't that attractive, you know, and the more they scaled, and they scaled very fast, all organic and word of mouth, the more, you know, they were burning capital. So it wasn't an obvious one, and I think also, you know, Nick at the time wasn't a natural, you know, kind of storyteller and fundraiser. So I think for all those reasons, it wasn't, it wasn't, you know, it wasn't an obvious, an obvious deal. Which, by the way, I think that's, that's one of the learning is beware of gross margin in the early days, and I think that's a mistake we made a couple of times, and I think Snowflake was a similar story. What do you mean by that? Well, it means that, you know, you have a lot of businesses that in the early days have really bad gross margins, very low gross margins, so, you know, Revolut is an example, Snowflake was an example. Delivery is an example. Delivery was an example.

• 27:07Speaker 00

  All the LLM providers were, you know, very clear examples of that. And I think a lot of the LLM, you know, or a lot of the AI apps have similar characteristics. I think if that's the only thing that's holding you up, in most cases, I would totally ignore it, because the reality is, you know, when you're getting started, you know, optimizing for your, for high gross margin is the last thing you should be doing. You're entirely focused on, on growth and building the product. But in most cases, you know, especially in pure software businesses, you will find ways to optimize your gross margins and the cost, whether it's the underlying cost of the technology you're using is going down, I mean, you know, the, the AI apps is, is a good example of that, where the, the cost of the price per token keeps on going. Or you can just optimize your infrastructure a lot better when you have a lot more volume.

• 27:51Speaker 00

  And that's what happened with with Revolut.

• 27:53Harry Stebbings?

  It's so funny how you say statements a year ago and you look back now and you're like, what was I saying? And the speed of the industry transition is so significant when we look at like cost of tokens. Where it was 18 months ago, it's like 99% cheaper. And that was even in conversation.

• 28:07Speaker 00

  So if you judge your, you know, if you made your judgment based on gross margin at that time, on the price of token at the time, you would have missed on, you know, really great companies and great investments.

• 28:16Harry Stebbings?

  Honestly, that was my take on Liverpool's gross margin, which is like what it is today, not what it will be in the future. European stack rank was what I wrote down here, which is like, if I was in the Europe team, I would honestly be a little bit perturbed by the dual structure of having US people on my decision making. Because I'm stacked ranked against the growth of Silicon Valley companies. I'm never going to get a deal done. I'm not saying they're worse, but they grow slower. Their execution speeds are often slower. If you stack rank them, it makes it harder for European teams to get deals done.

• 28:48Speaker 00

  It may, it's not really what we see, you know, we consistently invest about half in Europe and half in the US. And we have a global one global bar. And I think that's the way we see the world and we don't, we're not fighting for local maximum. We're fighting for a global maximum, you know, we want to be in the very best businesses globally and be the, you know, the reference investors in those.

• 29:10Harry Stebbings?

  Is there a culture challenge in presentation? And what I mean by that is like, Americans are brilliant at marketing and storytelling. And I mean that nicely, not badly, but respectfully to your fellow countrymen, French people, you know, I'll meet them and I'm like, you know, they're like, yeah, we're doing 50 million in ARR. And I'm like, wow, that's amazing. Yeah, it's okay. And I'm like, if this was American, it'd be great. And so my question is, is there a culture chasm that doesn't carry with European founders to your American partners?

• 29:39Speaker 00

  Yes, I think the answer is yes by and large. So if there's one team that is aware of those differences, I would say it's index. We are very well aware of it and we take it into account when we vote on deals. And that's also why we leave a lot of latitude, especially when you have data. It's different because data can speak for itself. But I think when at the earlier stage, to your point, the presentation matters a lot more. And that's where leaving more latitude to the partner or the investor with closer to the founder and spend more time with them is super important because yeah, I mean, we've had that in the past for sure.

• 30:16Harry Stebbings?

  Peter Fanton said on the show that price is a mental trap. Interesting statement.

• 30:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:21Harry Stebbings?

  How do you think about your own price sensitivity today?

• 30:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think he's absolutely right. You shouldn't lose, you shouldn't lose a deal on price, especially, I think it's especially true in the early stage. We never pass and we never lose a deal or pass on a deal because of price in the early stage. I think that is absolutely correct. You know, where does it stop?

• 30:42Harry Stebbings?

  Is that not the price that's too high? I will ask, are we being paid for the risk that we're taking?

• 30:47Speaker 00

  That's not really how we think, to be honest. You know, this kind of risk reward profile, you don't know, right? Because you don't really have a good sense for the size of the reward. And I think in general, by and large, we've been, you know, the industry has even kind of underestimated the size of the outcome. And you mentioned the scale of the revenue growth, the scale of the of the market caps of these businesses. We didn't think that that would be the case, you know, even 10 years ago. So at the early stage, if you had known at the time that the outcomes could be so large, well, then maybe, you know, it was a very fair reward for the risk you were taking. So I think in the early stage, I think he's absolutely right. The only question is how far does it extend, you know, in valuation? You know, when you're at, you know, you mentioned Panera at 200 billion.

• 31:32Speaker 00

  Is 1 trillion still, you know, a mental trap or is it, I don't know. So there must be some moment where you get into a slightly different realm and where the distribution of outcomes becomes narrower and the likelihood of, you know, and so you have a better understanding of where the company The closer you get to IPO, the closer you should have a sense for what is the valuation. And so you have a better sense for that risk reward profile that you that you are mentioning. In the early stage, this is so far out, you don't really know. So I think, again, if you go back to the first principle of if you have this extraordinary founder and there is real traction, then, you know, don't overthink it.

• 32:10Harry Stebbings?

  Have you done deals at high prices that in hindsight they were too high priced and it negatively impacted the company?

• 32:16Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, for sure. Definitely.

• 32:20Harry Stebbings?

  And so there is a too high price?

• 32:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, there is. There is a price, there is the amount raised, and there is the maturity of the business. Well, we've all seen these companies that, you know, raised tons of capital at a very high price before they had proper, you know, product market fit. They thought they had it, but a lot of it was subsidized by investments. And then when they stopped investing because they realized, well, you know, it's not customers we're acquiring are not profitable. So we need to stop it. It doesn't really make sense. Then they realized that having all this money and all this team, you know, they had to spend, especially in Europe where it takes a long time. They had to spend a year or two reducing the size of the team, going back to the basics. And so trying to find product market fit after you've grown so much and had so much capital and at such a high valuation makes it really, really tricky. Do you not find that the fault of? That is dangerous.

• 33:06Harry Stebbings?

  I find that the fault of investors, as it were, like A is so competitive. I mean, someone on our team joked yesterday, said, how soon after doing the seed is it okay to preempt the A? Like, is the next day okay? Because it's so competitive at A, I have to stuff you with cash as soon as possible. And like, fuck it, I'll take the risk on you getting PMF because if you have it, it's too late.

• 33:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, we've done it in some occasions, you know, again, when we found, you know, extraordinary founder with revenue traction or open source traction, we've done that in a couple of open source companies. Then it can totally make sense and you can really, you know, you can get amazing rewards for that.

• 33:39Harry Stebbings?

  When you think about ownership, how do you think about ownership internally? Is it kind of the age old 15%? Has times changed around ownership percentages?

• 33:47Speaker 00

  I mean, the times have changed for sure. You know, I started 15 years ago and we were, you know, all aiming for 20% was kind of the minimum bar. This is, you know, you can still, we still have some 20% ownership, but it is obviously getting, getting a lot harder. For us, the goal is to get double digit ownership at exit. You know, that is typically where we, if we look at the, the performance of the fund, most of our returns have been generated by companies where we own close to or more than double digit ownership at exit. And so that's what we're trying to aim for.

• 34:16Harry Stebbings?

  Do you have more elasticity on ownership because you're able to do multi-stage investing?

• 34:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, in the earlier stage, for sure. I mean, I think for us, especially at seed stage, our approach to seed is, is much more collaborative. You know, the idea is we don't want to compete with, with people like you and, and, you know, and other, other seed funds and angels. You know, we want to bring them along. We want to work together. It's conviction investing and we're going to pull our weight and be super involved. But this is not the stage where we want to maximize ownership and, you know, so we're not going to have sharp elbows at that, at that stage. Later on, you know, especially at, you know, Series N and Bs, that's where we really want to, you know, because of the time we're going to spend helping these companies and, and, you know, spend time on the board and be, you know, hopefully the reference investor. That's where, you know, we need a minimum ownership.

• 35:01Harry Stebbings?

  Do you have investments in any of the LLM providers?

• 35:05Speaker 00

  We do.

• 35:05Harry Stebbings?

  Which one?

• 35:06Speaker 00

  Coher and in, and we have a seed investments in Mr.

• 35:09Harry Stebbings?

  Do you think about dilution sensitivity down the road? You know, we mentioned delivery. That's kind of V1 of dilution sensitivity, if you want, and LLMs is, I guess, the latest version. There's a fundamental question of like, is it actually a good venture product? Because the dilutive nature of the business is so high.

• 35:25Speaker 00

  We'll see at the end of the, we'll see at the end of the journey. I think it's the pure venture multiple will likely be lower than some of the other categories in the past. I think that is, that is clear. The difference is that the size of the outcome and the speed, very importantly, the speed at which the size is going to get reached means that you can have, especially if you can deploy a lot of capital, you will still be able to generate a lot of absolute returns. So in terms of performance, will still be very high. In terms of pure multiple on early stage investments, it may be, maybe slightly lower because of dilution.

• 35:56Harry Stebbings?

  Do you worry about the distribution of value in the LLM market? When you think about, you know, the two tailways, obviously being OpenAI and Anthropic and what we said earlier about the importance of being number one, how much value accrual actually goes to the long tail with other providers? I really question. Do you worry about that?

• 36:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, of course, of course, I worry about that.

• 36:14Harry Stebbings?

  Like, does Europe need an L L M provider?

• 36:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think it does.

• 36:18Harry Stebbings?

  Can you paint that case for me? I I'm not asking as a journalist, I'm asking as a student. Why?

• 36:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, the notion of sovereignty and tech sovereignty is is a real notion. I think it's important. You have to recognize that there's a big part of the economy that has to think that way, where, you know, you have geopolitical realities that matter. And so if you're a government entity, if you are a quasi-government company, you may want and or even have to use, you know, local providers eventually, you know, at some point. So I do think there is a large part of the market that needs and want local providers, especially, you know, assuming that they are close to the frontier or at the frontier. And so so I think there is a real, there is a real market case for that. There's also a lot of, I think, you know, localization, customization that can and and need to happen.

• 37:07Speaker 00

  And so I think there's going to be a great enterprise market for for those those providers. So, yeah, I think there is a market. Is it going to be smaller than OpenAI? Yes, for sure.

• 37:16Harry Stebbings?

  Do you think we need government intervention in AI? I I I spoke to Danny, obviously, before the show. He said, he was the only one who says, actually, he said, you should ask him about China. Do you think we need government intervention in AI, pushing you to use one model over another, shutting off access to certain providers?

• 37:30Speaker 00

  I do believe that having, you know, government entities or quasi-government entities support local innovation is important. I I think the way to do it is not necessarily to, I think, it it they should be customers. I think they they should buy those products and and and and they should, you know, they should help them as as customer rather than, you know, as investor necessarily.

• 37:51Harry Stebbings?

  Do you think TikTok should be allowed there, for example?

• 37:53Speaker 00

  I think it should be allowed, but there should be a a bigger conversation about social networks and about the openness of algorithms, which then not only apply to to TikTok, but applies to X, applies to Facebook. I think those algorithms should be public, should be able to be audited by by anyone, but also included independent auditors. They are not regular companies. They are utilities. They are critical infrastructure for the economy and for a political system. And as such, I think they require treatment that is different from any random startup.

• 38:29Harry Stebbings?

  When we look at the different players today, we're seeing this kind of real concentration of value, almost like never before. You mentioned like, oh, like OpenAI are going to be bigger. But your OpenAI is your anthropics, your curses, and there's probably five to 10 in this kind of ilk. The concentration of value within startup seems to be more prescient or dominant than ever before. Do you worry about this concentration of value and bluntly, the platform player that comes from that, meaning it is just much more concentrated and makes it more difficult for us investing in smaller players?

• 38:59Speaker 00

  I don't think it's that different from before. If I look at Index, you know, I was looking at the numbers. So we've been around for 30 years. We invested, I think, 11 and a half billion dollars. We've returned, I think, about close to 30 and we still have 20 plus in holdings. Most of that is basically concentrated in eight, nine companies. And we've invested in close to 400 companies over the years. So the power law and the concentration of returns in a small number of names. I mean, we've experienced it ourselves at our level. And so I don't think it's that different than it was before. I mean, I don't see anything that indicates that it's going to be that different.

• 39:42Speaker 00

  And that's why making sure you are in those category leaders early enough to have big enough ownership and also earning the reference from the founder, being the reference investor is the most powerful. It's the only thing that really matters.

• 39:56Harry Stebbings?

  What did you miss at the early stage that you were like, oh, fuck it, we just have to be in this? And then came in later?

• 40:01Speaker 00

  That was just before I started, but we did that with Zendesk, for example, where we passed on the CD and on the AI especially. If you look at the memo and the valuation at the time, it's quite funny. I don't remember exactly what it was, but very different from where it is today, as you can imagine. And we came in later with our growth fund.

• 40:20Harry Stebbings?

  Do you worry for your companies about the concentration of talent? You know, we are in a war for talent, say, like we've never seen before. And the compensation packages truly are like we've never, ever seen before. I speak to so many of my companies and like, what competing is matter and open. AI like what do you expect? Do you worry about that for your companies?

• 40:35Speaker 00

  For sure. I mean, you know, you have to worry. I mean, having said that, a big part of the compensation for these early stage companies is around options. That's the only way for startups to really compete with these large established players, whether it's OpenAI or whether it's, you know, even Google and Microsoft and, and, and, you know, the established publicly listed large tech companies. So I think with that, you know, if you can tell a good enough story about this future value creation, there is no amount of package and can compete with that.

• 41:06Harry Stebbings?

  Talking of kind of European founders competing, I obviously posted about the importance of working seven days a week in an increased intensity world where we are competing against China and the US. And that being the new normal, you know, I think very rightly said the same. And then I got all the blowback and you avoided it all. My question to you is, why do you think that we are in a new world of work intensity? And that a new caliber of work is required to build a $10 billion business?

• 41:38Speaker 00

  I'm not sure it's changed so much. If you look at the most incredible companies in the past, you know, you look at Revolut, you look at Deliveroo, all of these companies, the amount of work that these founders and these early teams put in was tremendous. I mean, it was seven days a week, you know, it was nights and weekends. I mean, that's what it was. And I think that's why it takes when you're going into those hyper growth mode. And you go for the venture backed route, that is, you know, that is part of the journey. That is kind of, you know, in many ways, what you're saying for. In, you need to have two things. One is you need to make a lot of experimentation, a lot of iteration. And so that typically means, you know, the longer you work, the more things you can try.

• 42:21Speaker 00

  And then you need to have a very high kind of growth curve and be able to learn very quickly from those experimentations. I think the main change to me is how open people are. And I think it's good because then there is no mismatch of expectation. You're not joining a company and they're like, shit, you know, they're working so hard that this is, I can't do this, this is not for me. There's real alignment between, you know, what you're saying and what What you're doing and I think that's that's actually positive.

• 42:44Harry Stebbings?

  When you think about the word liquidity, what are your biggest lessons on when's the right time to sell?

• 42:49Speaker 00

  You know, you talked about market timing and we don't try to time the market at entry and we don't try to time it at exit either. We were not public market investors. We tend to have a very standard liquidity program when a company goes public where we sell, you know, every quarter over three years in a very recurring, regular preset way in many ways. We obviously have, you know, we have a, we set up exit committee with a, where you have four people on, including the partner who led the deal and another partner who didn't lead the deal and is not as close. So we always have kind of healthy debates and we can have, we can adjust at the margin. But by and large, our view is don't try to be too smart. And then so it's always the same.

• 43:31Speaker 00

  Then when things go really well and you've sold to a little shit, you know, but then you also have the, you know, the opposite where if you hadn't done that very systematic approach, you would, you know, you wouldn't have realized a lot of liquidity.

• 43:42Harry Stebbings?

  So all in all. What did you sell too early in your most oh shit about?

• 43:46Speaker 00

  I mean, you know, we were a very large investor in Robin Hood. We sold quite a bit at a lower price than where it is today. You know, we still have a large stake, but um, there's always, there's always going to be counter examples. That's the clear one, given the, you talked about their, their recent uh, price, price action.

• 44:02Harry Stebbings?

  Do you think it is the right strategy to do that, to sell in these quarterly increments when they go public? Given, given all the information that you have, are you not in a place of asymmetric information where you are better placed? And I actually look at like a Shopify of the world.

• 44:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:17Harry Stebbings?

  Where shit, you would have lost ninety eight percent of the value.

• 44:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, you know, they're all counter examples for sure. When we ran the analysis and we did run the analysis, obviously, we didn't, you know, come up with it randomly. It came out that.

• 44:27Harry Stebbings?

  For billions of dollars decision, we did that. Oh, fuck it, it works.

• 44:31Speaker 00

  And obviously, you know, it's hard to do the counter factual because you can never sell only at the top. I mean, that, you know, I wish we could, but that, that's just not going to happen. So. But if we, if we looked at, if we had taken different schedules, we would have been worse off. And so we felt that overall, if you look across a basket, a portfolio, and again, it's a portfolio approach. So you may be wrong on one or two. If you take a portfolio approach and you do it for long enough and consistently enough, then we, you know, we realized that that was, that was the best outcome.

• 44:59Harry Stebbings?

  Does the extension of private markets change that perspective? You know, when you look at, say, Revolut of the world now, I think it's like seventy five billion dollars in private markets, whatever it is. But that's just an example.

• 45:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:13Harry Stebbings?

  The extension means that actually secondaries are so much more real, you have the chance so much earlier. And actually, that public profile is delayed a lot longer. Do you engage in proactive selling in secondary markets?

• 45:23Speaker 00

  We may, again, you know, we may over time in certain situations, you know, like Revolut, we've been in for, for ten years. So you're kind of getting to the end of, of a fund cycle. So, yeah, we're not anti that.

• 45:35Harry Stebbings?

  Would you, did you sell secondary in Revolut?

• 45:38Speaker 00

  We, we didn't share that, but we're definitely not opposed to it in general. I think in.

• 45:42Harry Stebbings?

  I wish I could have bought it.

• 45:43Speaker 00

  By, by, by and large, we tend to hold pretty much everything until IPO. We.

• 45:50Harry Stebbings?

  Do you think that will change?

• 45:52Speaker 00

  It may, you know, we, we don't have any, we don't have any taboo. We may have funds that are just, you know, at the end of their lives, life cycle. And we want to realize some level of liquidity. I don't think we'll ever sell a lot. And again, it goes back to my first point about the returns being so concentrated in a, in a small number of names. When you're fortunate enough to be a big owner in one of those names, you want to, you know, I think you want to ride it to, you know, for as long as, as you can. And also, you know, get the best price discovery is on the public market. And so you want to get access to that, that price discovery. By and large, we will, we will keep until, until IPO and after.

• 46:31Harry Stebbings?

  When we think about like ownership accumulation across around, the thing that I find hard is, Figma is a great example of an incredible business that wasn't maybe obvious for quite a few years, actually. It took a while for Dylan to actually come out with any product.

• 46:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:45Harry Stebbings?

  And it just wasn't as, it wasn't up and to the right from day one. Let's put it that way.

• 46:49Speaker 00

  Well, he was nowhere for many years because he was just building the product.

• 46:53Harry Stebbings?

  Okay, so there we go. But my point being, I do not believe your winners are instantly obvious, which means that I think you will often misallocate. Your reserves and your ownership concentration desires. Do you agree?

• 47:06Speaker 00

  Yes, it's inevitable.

• 47:08Harry Stebbings?

  So we are not able to accurately predict our winners?

• 47:11Speaker 00

  No, definitely not.

• 47:12Harry Stebbings?

  So then we should just do the same.

• 47:13Speaker 00

  It's funny, you know, like Figma is a, is a, is a, is a great example of that. I mean, you picked a really good one. Where, you know, Dylan, I always tell his anecdote where he would, you know, we have his CEO retreat every year. And he would come on and he would keep on coming back, you know, year one, year two, year three, year four, and he would still not launch. So like, why are we still inviting him? Like, what, what, you know? And Danny, you know, to his absolute credit, Danny's level of conviction behind Dylan at Figma is unparalleled. I don't think there are many examples in the business of, of an investor that has had that level of conviction for so long, within years. It was like, no, I really believe in, you know, I think this, this founder is really special.

• 47:54Speaker 00

  I think the product, the, the fact that actually he's not launching, that he wants to build all those, you know, the right feature for the good reasons. Not that he doesn't want to launch, that he can't launch, is that he knows that he needs to have that minimum level of, of feature set to be competitive and, and, and for it to work. And, and then he was, you know, was always a massive supporter, even in that long period where there was just, you know, not even a product out there.

• 48:19Harry Stebbings?

  With respect then, why let Greylock lead the A?

• 48:22Speaker 00

  It's the same with, with every company. Like you, you don't invest in every single round on every single one of your companies. So I don't think it's any different, but we invested in, you know, every round.

• 48:30Harry Stebbings?

  Is there one way you really backed up the truck where with the benefit of hindsight, you go, wow, I got a bit ahead of my skis there?

• 48:37Speaker 00

  No, we, we never felt that way. No. Cause the, you know, as soon as the product was launched, the traction was, was undeniable.

• 48:43Harry Stebbings?

  Across the whole portfolio?

• 48:45Speaker 00

  Oh, you mean, okay. I thought you meant about Figma.

• 48:47Harry Stebbings?

  Oh, no, not Figma, yeah.

• 48:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, fuck no. Okay, yeah. No, no, across the portfolio. Yeah, of course. Yeah, we've, we've made that, we've made that mistake before. But again, you know, I think it evens itself out.

• 48:57Harry Stebbings?

  What did you not see that you wish you'd seen? You don't need to say the company, but.

• 49:00Speaker 00

  I think there were times, and I think especially in, you know, high valuation frothy time, you have moments where you doubt yourself, where you run your analysis, your own analysis, and you come up with a valuation and a potential for the business. And then someone comes on and says, well, I'm going to pay two X the price. And I'm going to put, you know, two X the money that that we thought we would put. And with this incredibly high level of conviction and speed and you're like, fuck, like, did I, you know, do they know something I don't like, did I miss something? Also, you know, I think we have a, there is a tendency where the sometimes you talk about, you know, asymmetry of information, but it goes both ways, where sometimes you're so close to a business, you really see how the sausage

• 49:45Speaker 00

  gets made. And you can, you can end up being more negative or more focused on the negative than the positive. And so having external validation of people who are new to the business, just look at the data, look at the team and say, it's worth X, and that X is two X what you think it's worth. So, you know, sometimes you may think, well, maybe I'm being too negative because I see some things. But actually, if I were a new investor, I may be willing to pay two X, two X the price. And so there are some moments where I say, well, let's do a parada and be part of it because maybe we're missing something. It's clearly, it's a different trajectory. And sometimes that was the wrong call.

• 50:21Harry Stebbings?

  Do you do outcome scenario plans? I mean, the biggest mistakes in venture and when we underestimate the size of our winners, which is so common. Do you do outcome scenario plans? And is it worthwhile as an activity?

• 50:32Speaker 00

  We don't waste cycles going incredibly detailed into those. I think we focus more on, you know, sensitivity analysis. So we focus on what are the few levers that really matter for this business? And where do we think they're going to go? But we focus much more on the founder, the founder dynamic, the talent that they bring to the team, much more than than doing number crunching.

• 50:57Harry Stebbings?

  We've mentioned Ravelry quite a few times.

• 50:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:00Harry Stebbings?

  I do have to ask about just, I don't actually know the story. How did you first meet Nick? Can you just take me to the site? Who introduced you? Where did you meet him? Just tell me the story.

• 51:10Speaker 00

  Then pitch at sitcamp at the, you know, one of the dimo day. You know, I think that's one interesting thing is typically when you have exceptional companies. One of the indicator is that you will have multiple touchpoints about that company over a very short amount of time. So you will, I will see them at sitcamp, but someone will, you know, I will see an ad or I will download the app. And someone will mention it to me, a friend, and then another. So in general, you, you have three or four touchpoints and, and for me, that's a big signal. Oh, there is something happening here. If I hear a lot about something in a very short amount of time, like they've, they've caught, you know, they're all in the tight guys. They've, they've really hit a nerve. I think that's what happened with Revolut where I saw them at sitcamp, but somebody has mentioned them to me and I was using the app and one of my partners.

• 51:53Speaker 00

  So I think it was a multiple, uh, it was, it was a multiple signals, but I think the, the sitcamp one was the, was the first one.

• 52:00Harry Stebbings?

  And so then you ping Nick and ask for a meeting?

• 52:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think I, I don't exactly remember how, how I got introduced. I think I may just have gone to him after, after the pitch. And also I think we were also, we had been introduced through another source. And I think one of my partners had also been introduced. And again, I think typically there are multiple touchpoints when some of these companies. But the reasons why I had a lot of conviction was I came in with a prepared mind. Meaning that I had been looking at the space for a little while, had looked at a company in the U S called Simple. You probably weren't born then, but uh, you know, it was the first real neo bank.

• 52:34Harry Stebbings?

  It sold to BBVA.

• 52:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

• 52:36Harry Stebbings?

  Dude.

• 52:37Speaker 00

  There you go.

• 52:37Harry Stebbings?

  I'm a student of this business.

• 52:38Speaker 00

  I know, I know. But yeah, so, so you know, simple had been around and you know, again, interestingly, going back to beginner's mindset. A lot of people who had backed simple were like, well, it doesn't work. Like it can't work. Look at this, you know, you get bought at best case scenario, you get bought by an incumbent and you know, it will never work because people don't. And the main reasons was people don't want to switch bank accounts. It's a pain. Like, why would you switch bank accounts? And it's like, oh, it's going to be on, on mobile, but like, well, my bank has a mobile app. Why do I care? And so I had met, you know, I looked at simple, uh, I had met Monzo as well, actually. I, I was looking for a trigger, like what would convince people to switch? Switch bank accounts, which is such a pain.

• 53:22Speaker 00

  And what I really love with Revolut was a simple trigger with FX. You know, like you don't, you know, they didn't sell people, oh, you're going to switch bank accounts. They sold, oh, you're a Brit traveling to Portugal for a stag weekend. You know, you're going to get fleeced by your bank. Why don't you get a Revolut card? And I thought that was such a clever insertion point. And then from that point, Nick's view was from the beginning was that he wanted to be the global money app, offer every product. But the insertion point, I thought was really effective. And that's how they managed to grow so, so quickly and organically for the longest time. That because they had this very clear value proposition, that was a lot easier than saying, oh, you need to sign up with a new bank, which no one wants to do.

• 54:03Harry Stebbings?

  I remember chatting to Antoine Lannella and he was like, you know, we, we won in many respects because we, we offer snacks to start. So don't try and convince you for the main meal, just have a little snack and you come back for some more and more. And then suddenly you want the main meal.

• 54:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:16Harry Stebbings?

  Totally agree with you there. Okay. And so you saw that. Do you think Revolut won in large part because of the lack of banking license that allowed them to move so much quicker?

• 54:26Speaker 00

  You know, if you ask Nick, I think he will say, he will say the opposite, which is if you were to do it again, he would probably go for banking license earlier.

• 54:34Harry Stebbings?

  No.

• 54:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:35Harry Stebbings?

  À la pubel. No. Seriously?

• 54:39Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, I heard it said at a, a, a couple of times because, and you see today, it's a lot easier to get a banking license when you were, before you have scale and then after you have scale.

• 54:49Harry Stebbings?

  But he would have been a bit from most of his product expansions.

• 54:52Speaker 00

  Yeah. So exactly. I think that we don't know the, we don't know the counterfactuals. So it, it may have been the case. Look, I think the reality, I think they had the right strategy. It's hard to argue with the, I mean, if you look at the outcome and you compare with all of the other players in the space. They clearly had the best strategy based, based on, based on the outcome. But it is true that it's harder to get a banking license later when you have a, when you have a very large scale. I think what was really interesting with Revolut though, and which I think is more, more important than the banking license, is the global approach to, to the business. And, and I think again, that's something that was very contrarian at the time. And again, it came from his first principal thinking. The conventional wisdom at the time was banking is highly local, massive regulation.

• 55:36Speaker 00

  And so you have to go very deep in one market. Then, once you've won that market, then maybe you'll expand to a second market or a third market. But that was the conventional wisdom at the time. And his view was the opposite, was like, look, banking is a digital service, meaning a single unified platform can deliver the exact same experience across every market in the world. There is no different product that is required in Indonesia versus in Poland or in Estonia. And the same app can do it all. The regulation, the compliance, the front end, which products you can offer to whom. And so all of that varies. But the underlying principles of storing money, lending money, transferring money, all of that, this is just a software and a data play, which is the same.

• 56:21Speaker 00

  So you can have a single piece of code that works across the globe. So that was his vision. And so from the get go, he started multi, multi-country as well as multi-product. We really started multi-country. One of the decisive factors in Revolut's success is the ability to passport across the European Union. And having a license in Lithuania that you can then export and serve the entire European Union without having to go market by market. I mean, they had to go market by market eventually to give local I bands and go deeper. But they could start offering the basic product across Europe with just that one license. That's what really gave them the scale and the geographical expansion to keep growing and growing faster and compound over time.

• 57:05Speaker 00

  And I think that's why, why is it important? I think it shows that when you give European founders one unified market to compete on, they can be as big, if not bigger than anyone in the world. And I think Revolut is probably one of, if not the best neo-bank in the market in many ways. It's, I think, better than anything in the US, for example.

• 57:25Harry Stebbings?

  Which is the thing I always find quite funny, which is like the US always bunting laughs at the size of our companies. And I'm like, well, banking, one of the biggest industries in the world, we shit on your neo-banks.

• 57:32Speaker 00

  The European Union should look and really study that example. Okay, what are the ways we could replicate that and really have a union? Market and obviously we're very involved with with EU Inc, which is this initiative to have one kind of si- single unified status. And a super simple way for companies to expand across Europe. And I think that could be an absolute game changer.

• 57:55Harry Stebbings?

  Do you think Revolut will win the US? I think the pathway to 500 billion will be largely dictated by US expansion. Do you think they will win the US?

• 58:03Speaker 00

  I don't know what winning the US means.

• 58:05Harry Stebbings?

  Gain meaningful market penetration in a way that others haven't in the past.

• 58:09Speaker 00

  I think they will.

• 58:10Harry Stebbings?

  My bet is never bet against Nick.

• 58:13Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 58:15Harry Stebbings?

  Nick and Elon are two that I'm just like, but I'm so.

• 58:17Speaker 00

  That's the other way to put it.

• 58:18Harry Stebbings?

  What do you think makes him so special? I've interviewed him several times in a few years, not nearly as well as you have done. So I don't mind. Why do you think he is?

• 58:26Speaker 00

  And I will say it again, it's the first principle of thinking. It's the fact that he he never takes anything for granted. Like he ne- he never listened to conventional wisdom. You should tell him, oh, that's how it's done. He will challenge that. What, why? And then he will think about it himself. Really break it down into small pieces, solve that problem, and then he will come up with his own answer. He will use experts to kind of inform his his thinking. But he will never just take things at face value. And the result of that is that he then comes up with very original ideas and original ways of of working. I mean, he does have some inspiration. I mean, you know, Red Ailio is is obviously one, and the way he runs Revolut is has a lot of similarity with with Bridgewater.

• 59:09Speaker 00

  But I think that's that's what's made him so special. And then you add that to an incredible, you know, intensity. And ability to maintain that intensity over time, over a very long period of time, in very difficult situations. That's what, you know, really, you know, sets him apart. And then the scale of the ambition, you know, I think that's something that a lot of founders. They want to win something small and he doesn't. He he never, there is nothing that is too big or too complex. Like, you know, eventually he thinks, he's convinced there is, there will be one global money app and that he can be that one global money app that could be better, you know, bigger than. When we first met, he wanted to be.

• 59:50Speaker 00

  bigger than JP Morgan. There's still some way to go for sure, but that's how big he thought from the get go. It wasn't something that came over time. That was because he thinks about it rationally. He's like, why wouldn't it? There is no reason, there's no law of physics that says that it can't be as big.

• 1:00:09Harry Stebbings?

  Final one before we do a quick fire. When you think about your investor self, what tool in the investor armoury do you not have? Or do you feel weak on that you would like to have or be better on?

• 1:00:21Speaker 00

  That's a, that's a, that's a great question.

• 1:00:23Harry Stebbings?

  I think about it a lot for myself and for, and for us as a firm, like, why did we hire JC? Cause our customers are founders and some founders want people who've scaled products to millions of people and thousands in team members. We didn't have that as a fit in the team before, and he brought a very different customer product that we didn't have.

• 1:00:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, I'm a generalist in terms of sector focus, but if you're, you know, going very deep on a specific sector's nuance, that's not my, my, my strengths. And also, you know, I haven't been an operator and a founder, so I, I won't try to, you know, I will never be on a board, at a board meeting and, and kind of go super deep on your product. I will try to, again, go to the level that is generalizable and help share what I've seen in other places. Instead of just going super deep and owning that one thing.

• 1:01:11Harry Stebbings?

  When has not being deep hurt you?

• 1:01:14Speaker 00

  I think there are some certain investment decisions that had I known more about a certain industry, I probably, you know, wouldn't have, you know, made the investment. Yeah, Africa's been tough.

• 1:01:24Harry Stebbings?

  Yeah, no one got their money out of Africa, except leaders of nations.

• 1:01:29Speaker 00

  Not yet.

• 1:01:30Harry Stebbings?

  Uh, not yet. Uh, listen, I want to do a quick fire round. So I say a short statement, you give me your immediate thoughts. That sound okay?

• 1:01:35Speaker 00

  Let's do it.

• 1:01:36Harry Stebbings?

  So what one thing do you believe about venture that other people will think is crazy or strange?

• 1:01:41Speaker 00

  I don't think people should want to have a career in venture. I think that's the wrong motivation. I don't think it is like an investment bank or like a consulting firm where you join and you can move up the ranks. And that's kind of a well established thing. I think there is a part of.

• 1:01:57Harry Stebbings?

  Do you think I was wrong then? And I don't mean that badly, but like, you know, I watched the social network when I was 13, saw this intersection of finance and technology that I loved and thought that is something that I have to be a part of.

• 1:02:08Speaker 00

  No, I think that's exactly the right reason to do it. What I'm saying is not that. What I'm saying is people shouldn't join venture for the status that it brings. That's what I mean by that. You didn't do it for the status. You did it because you thought you were extremely excited by the technology, by working with founders. To your point, being part of it. And whether, which title and which fund and which didn't matter to you. And what mattered to you was working with the founders and being part of that movement. Because you couldn't think of anything else to do in your life. That's the right motivation to do it.

• 1:02:41Harry Stebbings?

  Dude, 11 years ago in Europe, it was not like a status game being in venture.

• 1:02:44Speaker 00

  Exactly, exactly. It was the same for me 15 years ago.

• 1:02:47Harry Stebbings?

  I totally agree. Okay, you can choose one partner who is the best picking partner in index. Who is it?

• 1:02:55Speaker 00

  I don't want to hurt anyone's feeling.

• 1:02:58Harry Stebbings?

  You won't hurt anyone's feelings.

• 1:02:59Speaker 00

  No, I think I'd say Yan is probably the strongest. Yeah, I mean, if you look at, if you look at his track record, you know, the consistency and some of the incredible winners that he has. I think he's a, I think he's a great picker.

• 1:03:13Harry Stebbings?

  Which competitor do you most respect and why them? So like for me, it would be point nine was Kristoff. I think the, the discipline, the focus, how incredibly articulate they are around what is and isn't that type of deal.

• 1:03:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, you know, historically I've always admired USB. Fred Wilson's blog is the reason why I joined venture, to be honest. You know, I think what he did there in terms of educating people. Explaining how venture works, explaining how entrepreneurship works, his level of sophistication in understanding and explaining business models, in picking the right themes early. So I think historically, I would say Fred and USV, they were huge inspirations and, you know, I spent time with them now that I'm in New York and the way they operate, very unique way, very collegial, the way that they've decided to stay small against the grain and of the industry, always being against the current. I really admire them. Um, yeah.

• 1:04:08Harry Stebbings?

  You can invest in one seed fund. Which seed fund you invest in?

• 1:04:11Speaker 00

  I like, I like Nico at Ajacent a lot. I invested personally and I think he's a, I think he's a very unique, um, I think he's a very unique investor.

• 1:04:19Harry Stebbings?

  I totally agree. I love Nico. What's the single most memorable first founder meeting and why?

• 1:04:23Speaker 00

  I still remember meeting, uh, Hano at Perzonio, that first meeting. I think it's actually the case with most investments where it's, it's a yes immediately. Like you meet the person, you hear them talk for five minutes, you're like, yeah, we should do the deal. You know, if I had done that with every investment, I would probably, you know, done a lot better than I have and not overthink it. But yeah, you know, like the, the clarity of the vision.

• 1:04:47Harry Stebbings?

  Sorry, I'm interrupting you. You know, my biggest lesson is I didn't meet many companies. And so if I had said yes to every company I invested in, I would have made more money because I would have done the deal pre-seed, the Vanta pre-seed and the Flasport pre-seed.

• 1:04:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. I mean, and we, we had the same and that we ran the same analysis where if you had said yes to every single company that had come to present the partnership, we'd have done a lot better than, than we have, simply because it goes back to the parallel. Like you miss one, you know, and we missed a few, I mean, like, just imagine just Spotify, you know, that's it.

• 1:05:15Harry Stebbings?

  Is that the one in the firm that everyone goes, ah, that's the one?

• 1:05:18Speaker 00

  Of course. Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:05:20Harry Stebbings?

  Listen dude, it's only a hundred and forty-eight billion. So, you know, you missed out on a double digit ownership. It's fine dude.

• 1:05:25Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 1:05:26Harry Stebbings?

  But you know what? You would have sold in quarters incrementally. So if not a hundred and forty-eight billion, what's one book that you really fricking loved? And you just say, everyone should read this.

• 1:05:36Speaker 00

  Well, I would say a recent one, I finished Gambling Man about Massa from SoftBank.

• 1:05:42Harry Stebbings?

  Oh, this was, um, what's his face from the FT?

• 1:05:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, I forgot the name of the.

• 1:05:47Harry Stebbings?

  Yeah, Lionel.

• 1:05:48Speaker 00

  Barber, no?

• 1:05:49Harry Stebbings?

  Yes, Lionel Barber. Yeah, well done. Was it good?

• 1:05:53Speaker 00

  It's amazing. It's such a unique, I mean, it's bigger than, it's bigger than fiction.

• 1:05:57Harry Stebbings?

  Underground golf course.

• 1:05:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, like, everything is, it's a life that is bigger than fiction. But then what's, what's amazing with him is this ability to, again, talking about ambition. He could have been the king of Japan and, you know, just run a very successful company there. But no, he thought global from day one. It was nothing that was too big for him. He went out to raise 10 billion and then on the, on the go, he decided to raise 100 billion and become the biggest and most successful, that was the target, to be the biggest and most successful investor, you know, in the world. So he had no limits. He took very, you know, and he keeps on taking, you know, extremely big bets and he, he lost it all multiple times, but never stopped and just went back at it.

• 1:06:42Speaker 00

  And I think when you read these kind of stories, it shows you that a lot of the limits, they're on your own, like you make your own limits. You know, you could say, oh, if you fail, like, oh my God, I'm bad, you know, it's never gonna work. He never thought that way, but okay, like, you know, let's get back on and move on to the next one. And then let's focus on, let's launch the next business and, and make it all, you know, make it all back. And it came from, from not much and it's like, just the story is incredible. Such a lesson in, in the power of ambition and hard work and thinking big. Uh, I thought it was really, I thought it was really inspiring and a fascinating story.

• 1:07:17Harry Stebbings?

  Everyone told me about your marriage and your weddings, weddings, not to different women, to be clear, to the same woman, but multiple events. To be very clear, that sounds terrible. Um, what's your biggest advice?

• 1:07:31Speaker 00

  It's not terrible. I would, I wouldn't judge, but.

• 1:07:33Harry Stebbings?

  Well, I mean, having several, like a portfolio approach in a short period of time might be challenging, but, um, what's your biggest advice on marriage and having a great marriage?

• 1:07:43Speaker 00

  When I met my wife, I was anti-wedding. I wasn't sure I wanted kids. So it took me a long time. We only got married, I think, eleven or twelve years in. So, so, you know, it took me a little while and we already had kids. Dude, I could IPO sooner than that. Yeah, so it it took me a little while. I absolutely love it and recommend it. I think it brings a level of commitment that is that is amazing. It kind of grounds you. A level of commitment that you don't have with not being married. Yeah, exactly. Uh, I'm obviously, you know, having kids is part of, you know, like really helps with that. And you start thinking as a family instead of as an individual. And I think that that is so powerful, you know, changes your relationship with your parents. You know, the spotlight is not on you anymore. You know, you started to start to think

• 1:08:24Speaker 00

  in a longitudinal way, like you start thinking in generation, which is very much more long term, which I think is incredibly powerful. In terms of getting married, we are very, very different, very different. We come from very different culture, very different family. You know, I'm an only child. She has three brothers and sisters. You know, she comes from Congo originally, so it's very communal, there's always a lot of people. Mine is, you know, very different. And so at first, I was pretty judgmental. And I was like, oh, you know, it's different from what I know. And it's, you know, I have the truth and that's how things should be. And, and, you know, and she, it was so different. So French. Yeah, totally French. And I, and I, and I didn't fully appreciate it. And then

• 1:09:06Speaker 00

  now, you know, I've learned to appreciate and value those differences, you know, a lot. I think she's right on most things. And I think we're trying to bring and build a culture in our family that is kind of a mixture of, of both of our, you know, our respective cultures. Yeah, I think that that lessons of appreciating people's differences and how they make you, how they make you better and they challenge your set minds, I think is, is great. And that's what I love with this job, you know, in some ways. What did she challenge about you that was maybe uncomfortable for you to appreciate? The importance of family is a, you know, is a big one, you know, the importance of the beauty of having large family, the beauty of having kids. I mean, I was, I was close to my, to my parents, but I'd never thought of as, as a, you know,

• 1:09:50Speaker 00

  in such a communal way.

• 1:09:52Harry Stebbings?

  I worry about kids that I will be less on it and like obsessed by what we do. How did having kids change how you are as an investor?

• 1:10:00Speaker 00

  It is true that it has an impact. I think, I think you shouldn't, you know, we shouldn't lie. I mean, I mean, you, you, you're, you're obviously more focused. And again, you're more long-term thinkers in, in many ways, but it is true that, you know, you don't have as much time. You have to limit what you do and really, really, you know, prioritize. It makes you, well, I think the, the first thing that's amazing is that it means that whenever you come home, you have this unlimited amount of love and purity. And so no matter, so it makes you, you become a lot more relativist versus what's happening at work, you know, where you come home and you know that there is these people who don't care about any investment, like it's so, especially when you talk to young kids and you try to explain what you do as a job.

• 1:10:43Speaker 00

  Like my oldest is eight, is going to turn eight soon and she still doesn't fully understand what I'm doing. So for 10 years, they won't understand. Then you realize if you can't explain it to your child and they don't fully get it, then it's, it's quite abstract. And it's not really, you know, it's not the true reality, you know, it's, it's, it doesn't really impact people's life so much on a concrete basis. So it makes you just a lot more, I think it's easier to distance yourself, you know, in, in, in, in many ways.

• 1:11:10Harry Stebbings?

  I was talking to a hundred billion dollar founder the other day and he said, you know, the thing I love about kids is like, you know, in my day job, I'm a hundred billion dollar founder.

• 1:11:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:11:17Harry Stebbings?

  When I come home, one, my baby does not care. And two, my baby shits on me.

• 1:11:22Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 1:11:24Speaker 00

  So it is, it is very humbling. You don't, yeah, you don't waste time, you know, you have, you have even, I know you're very good at prioritizing and managing your time, but I think having kids makes you even less tolerant of wasting time because any moment you spend on the road, at a conference, at an event that you shouldn't be on, it's time you're not spending with, you know, with the most important people in your life.

• 1:11:45Harry Stebbings?

  Final one for you, dude. It's kind of a horrible one in some ways because it's just like obvious and shit, but we spoke about kind of people's ambition, Nick's ambition. What's your actual ambition? Like, do you want to run index when Danny hands over the mantle?

• 1:12:00Speaker 00

  Well, first of all, there is no one running Index and Danny didn't have a mentor. Purely equal partnership. If you look at, I was looking at the data, so we.

• 1:12:08Harry Stebbings?

  Is it an equal partnership?

• 1:12:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's a very equal partnership and even in terms of performance. So I mentioned there's like eight companies that represent the largest share of return. There has been involvement from seven partners for these eight companies. The performance is totally spread across the partnership and responsibilities are totally spread across the partnership as well. We don't have a CEO, we don't have a managing partner. So we do make, you know, collegial decisions. So I have no ambition of becoming Index CEO because there is no Index CEO. For me.

• 1:12:39Harry Stebbings?

  When you look at the eight to nine, sorry, you've got Ravelut, Figma, Wiz, Scale, and either.

• 1:12:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, Adyen, Data Dog, Roblox.

• 1:12:47Harry Stebbings?

  It's pretty, it's pretty nuts. Well done.

• 1:12:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, I don't think that's eight, but that's, I think that there should be.

• 1:12:54Harry Stebbings?

  You know, in thirty years' time, I so hope that we can have a portfolio like.

• 1:12:59Speaker 00

  But yeah, they're all, you know, all from, you know, from seven different, and from five different locations too. You know, they are not all in the valley like that. That was always kind of the key focus at Index, as I was saying, is, you know,

• 1:13:09Harry Stebbings?

  That is astounding.

• 1:13:10Speaker 00

  Can't come from anywhere. There is Amsterdam, there is London.

• 1:13:13Harry Stebbings?

  But the distribution of value across the partnership is really rare. Indeed, we know the concentration of value. That's nuts.

• 1:13:19Speaker 00

  So that's not my, that's definitely not my ambition. I will keep doing this job.

• 1:13:24Harry Stebbings?

  Who did Roblox?

• 1:13:25Speaker 00

  Neil, yeah. I will keep doing it as long as, and for as long as I, as I can, to be honest, because I, I, I love it for two main reasons. One is the people. I mean, and again, you know, Index is all about the people and people is both the founders I work with. I mean, it's obviously pretty incredible to see them, seeing Nick at Seed versus Nick now, you know, Will at Seed and Will now, like they're totally, it's, it's just, I love seeing them becoming so successful and wealthy and established and transformed as leader. It's, it's just incredible to, to witness and I, I, you know, I learned so much from them and I'm so grateful to, to be part of that. But it's also the people at Index and the good thing when you've been around for a long time is that pretty much everyone who works at Index have had a part in, you know, in hiring at some point.

• 1:14:09Speaker 00

  So it's only people I really enjoy being with. And it's also just people in the ecosystem. I think what's very special about venture and that there's a lot of beef on Twitter and so on and so forth. But if you compare with any other industry, it's nothing. And most of our relationships are very cordial and they are very cooperative. Because we're creating value, there's so much value creation that happens that you don't have to. Of course, you compete to win a deal, but then you can still go on at the next round and it's it's okay. You can still make a really good return and you and you will end up working closely with so many different people. And I enjoy most of the people in the in the industry that I work with. And then the second thing is more philosophical.

• 1:14:48Speaker 00

  You know, I'm kind of a techno humanist in in many ways where I think, well, I don't think, I think it's a fact that technology is so critical to alleviate human suffering and pain and disease. Imagine a life without technology, how exposed you are to wild animals, to the elements, to. You know, we forget about that, but but our life was shit, you know, we would get sick, we would get eaten alive, we would get. And everything that we've done is to extract ourselves and escape that condition. And to me, that's still what we're doing today. We just want, you know, we we are building the tools. And in our case, as investors, we are helping founders build the tools that will make our lives less painful, longer, happier.

• 1:15:33Speaker 00

  You know, more meaningful and every technology will come with its downsides. But then you have more technology to solve the downsides and then keep that wheel going. And I think that's an incredible human adventure and I love being, you know, a very small part of it.

• 1:15:47Harry Stebbings?

  Dude, I I cannot thank you enough for being a friend for many years. I so appreciate you. I so appreciate Index paving the way for firms, hopefully like mine and like Nico's. And so just so grateful to you and thank you for doing this, man.

• 1:16:00Speaker 00

  No, thanks. I really appreciate it.

• 1:16:04Harry Stebbings?

  I have to say, that show is a real symbol of why I love what I do so much. You can find the full show on YouTube by searching for 20VC, that's 20VC on YouTube. But before we leave you today, I love seeing the team come together to make this show happen. What I don't love is trying to keep track of all the information, the data and the projects that we're working on across dozens of platforms, products and tools. That's why we use Coda, the all-in-one collaborative workspace that's helped 50,000 teams all over the world get on the same page. Offering the flexibility of docs with the structure of spreadsheets, Coda facilitates deeper teamwork and quicker creativity. And their turnkey AI solution, the intelligence of Coda Brain, is a game changer.

• 1:16:46Harry Stebbings?

  Powered by Grammarly, Coda is entering a new phase of innovation and expansion, aiming to redefine productivity for the AI era. Whether you're a startup looking to organise the chaos while staying nimble, or an enterprise organisation looking for better alignment, Coda matches your working style. Its seamless workspace connects to hundreds of your favourite tools, including Salesforce, Jira, Asana and Figma, helping your teams transform their rituals and do more faster. Head over to coda.io/20vc right now and get six months off the team plan for startups for free. That's coda, C-O-D-A dot I-O slash 20VC and get six months off the team plan for free.

• 1:17:31Harry Stebbings?

  Coda.io/20vc. And while Coda keeps our team aligned, Acuity Scheduling ensures our time stays on track. This show is brought to you by Acuity Scheduling, the flexible scheduling software that helps you focus on what matters most. Growing your business with Acuity, you can manage your calendar, you can accept secure payments, offer clients a seamless booking experience that reflects your brand. I've been using my complimentary subscription and it's been a game changer for staying organised and saving time. I especially love online booking. Clients can book, reschedule or cancel anytime and the booking page looks fully branded with my logo and colours. The calendar management tools let me set buffer times and sync with Other calendars, so I never feel overbooked.

• 1:18:15Harry Stebbings?

  And with secure payments, I can collect deposits or full payments upfront through Stripe or PayPal, making the process smooth and professional. Head over to acuity scheduling dot com forward slash two zero V C for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use the offer code twenty V C twenty to save twenty percent off your first Acuity Scheduling subscription. And speaking of incredible companies, don't forget what really keeps those customers coming back. Trust is the ultimate currency in business and today customers expect it faster than ever. And that's why over 10,000 global companies trust Vanta. Vanta automates up to 90% of the work for in-demand compliance standards like SOC two,

• 1:18:55Harry Stebbings?

  ISO twenty seven thousand and one and more, using smart AI to centralize workflows, manage risk and get you audit ready in weeks, not months. So you can stop chasing paperwork and start closing deals. And a new IDC report found that Vanta customers achieved $535,000 per year in benefits. That's insane and the platform pays for itself in three months. I had no idea about these. Whether you're growing fast or just getting started, Vanta connects you with trusted auditors and experts, support to help you build trust with customers. Get a thousand dollars off your first year at vanta dot com forward slash two zero V C. That's vanta dot com forward slash two zero V C.

• 1:19:39Harry Stebbings?

  As always, I so appreciate your support and stay tuned for a fantastic panel coming on Thursday with Rory O'Driscoll and Jason Lampkin shooting the shit about the biggest news in tech.