The a16z Show - a16z Podcast: Scaling Ideas and Startups in the U.K. and Europe

Episode Date: December 4, 2015

Our final segment from the road in the U.K. features two well-known investors and entrepreneurs in the London tech world: Seedcamp co-founder Reshma Sahoni and Shakil Khan (known to all simply as Shak), the founder of CoinDesk and an early investor in Spotify where he also headed up special projects. Reshma and Shak break down the venture scene in London, and describe the particular way the best companies scale in Europe ... it's not what you are probably thinking. Finally, they brag about some European startups we should all be paying attention to. The views expressed here are those of the individual AH Capital Management, L.L.C. (“a16z”) personnel quoted and are not the views of a16z or its affiliates. Certain information contained in here has been obtained from third-party sources, including from portfolio companies of funds managed by a16z. While taken from sources believed to be reliable, a16z has not independently verified such information and makes no representations about the enduring accuracy of the information or its appropriateness for a given situation. This content is provided for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should consult your own advisers as to those matters. References to any securities or digital assets are for illustrative purposes only, and do not constitute an investment recommendation or offer to provide investment advisory services. Furthermore, this content is not directed at nor intended for use by any investors or prospective investors, and may not under any circumstances be relied upon when making a decision to invest in any fund managed by a16z. (An offering to invest in an a16z fund will be made only by the private placement memorandum, subscription agreement, and other relevant documentation of any such fund and should be read in their entirety.) Any investments or portfolio companies mentioned, referred to, or described are not representative of all investments in vehicles managed by a16z, and there can be no assurance that the investments will be profitable or that other investments made in the future will have similar characteristics or results. A list of investments made by funds managed by Andreessen Horowitz (excluding investments and certain publicly traded cryptocurrencies/ digital assets for which the issuer has not provided permission for a16z to disclose publicly) is available at https://a16z.com/investments/. Charts and graphs provided within are for informational purposes solely and should not be relied upon when making any investment decision. Past performance is not indicative of future results. The content speaks only as of the date indicated. Any projections, estimates, forecasts, targets, prospects, and/or opinions expressed in these materials are subject to change without notice and may differ or be contrary to opinions expressed by others. Please see https://a16z.com/disclosures for additional important information. Stay Updated:Find a16z on YouTube: YouTubeFind a16z on XFind a16z on LinkedInListen to the a16z Show on SpotifyListen to the a16z Show on Apple PodcastsFollow our host: https://twitter.com/eriktorenberg Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The content here is for informational purposes only, should not be taken as legal business tax or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any A16Z fund. For more details, please see A16Z.com slash disclosures. Welcome to the A16Z podcast. I'm Michael Copeland. And we are still in London and we are lucky to have with us two of London's most interesting and dynamic entrepreneurs and investors. Reishma Sahoni founding partner of Seed Camp. You guys are the fund for first-time founders of choice, or that's what you want to do.

I can't even say it. Close. We're aiming to be kind of the choice of European founders as their first round fund in, you know, cross. So we're extremely aggressive for Europe. We're doing about 40 investments a year. So that puts us in quite the very active kind of investor role here. Extremely aggressive.

And you will note from Reishma's accent that, She is also from the US, but has been here for 14 years and is drinking tea, so maybe she is British after all. And we have with us also a man who is known by one name here in the London investing in community, Shaq, who is a long-time entrepreneur and investor, and was the man at Spotify for Daniel Eck who sort of got everything done. Shack, welcome. Thank you for having me.

We've had a lot of discussion about London as a tech center. What pieces are in place and, you know, what can London become that's unique to itself? as opposed to trying to emulate Silicon Valley? Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, last five years, and we've been around sort of eight years, is a lot of the fundamentals are there. So you've got everything from beginnings of policy to encourage investment, talent, with visas, and so forth,

to the universities that breed that incredible sort of talent, emerging kind of powerhouses around artificial intelligence, et cetera, to the accelerators, seed funds, more and more sort of Series A, growth investors, American capital, Chinese capital, sort of coming in. So all of those pieces are there. They've been building some pretty interesting companies. We use a lot, a term around sort of derivative companies, which are great sort of, you know, standalone businesses as such and can be quite valuable. But we haven't quite hit that sort of massive platform business yet.

Right. Something original that grew up here. And, well, I think Nodal, kind of central to the ecosystem that everything else feeds through, like a Google or Facebook or Amazon and Apple. Shaq, what else is missing? I think Rehshma's final point there is very, very relevant to encourage entrepreneurs that seed capital has to come from somewhere. And at the moment, when I look around, a lot of it seems to come from some family offices

who seem to think tech is the cool thing to be doing, or it's coming from the savings of executives that media companies or tech companies. We haven't had those, major hit after hit of multi-billion dollar exits, whether in the private market or the public markets, such as the Googles or the Facebook. So that trickle-down effect hasn't happened, and it'll be a while till it happens. I'll give you a quick example. One of the biggest, biggest success stories that ever came out of the UK in the last 15 years was a company called Money Supermarket. It was

a financial comparison service. At one stage it was worth or close to a billion pounds, or one and a half billion dollars, I have never heard of Simon Nixon since, apart from last week when I came across a boutique website advertising five different villas in the countryside, and apparently there are Simon Nixon's homes, which he rents out to make some supplementary income. That's the only time I've heard of him in the last 12th to 15 years. Right. And he was one of the best entrepreneurs who created an exceptional company,

which, if I recall correctly, without any VC financing. So if you don't have those kind of generational repeat entrepreneurs, then how do you build that kind of flywheel that Silicon Valley, or do you, that Silicon Valley can lean on, you know, whether that's in terms of angel investors or just people with it experience? I mean, I think it's a little harsh, actually, I am hearing of Simon Nixon more and more. But I would say we're probably a decade or 15 years behind in that sense. So, you know, you do have the Skype founders who've all of. obviously done an incredible amount with Atomico and then some, but you have Tavit who left Skype and started TransferWise, which is... Portfolal company of buyers. Absolutely.

And, you know, I would say has a huge chance of being one of those sort of platform businesses if they'd get the next five years, right? But people have left TransferWise, and Tavit is an active angel investor. So, I mean, you know, you're getting... And that's not even just one example. I mean, there's multiple coming out of the Google's Yahoo here and so on. So King.com just exited obviously as well. I think they're setting up a fund.

So you're getting that, but we're just sort of a decade behind, right? We're a generation or so behind. I mean, I have to say it's not, you know, London is the world's largest financial center kind of bounces back and forth between London and New York. And just speaking of New York, then, it's sort of the same dynamic. I mean, Wall Street and the financial center here have such a huge, you know, center of gravity. Is that part of the reason? I mean, are you still having, you know, kind of the best and the brightest head off to banking?

Or is there a sense here now that technology is the place to be? I think one way of looking at the difference between the U.S. investment banks and the U.K. investment banks. I don't actually know anyone who's like, I need to get into Goldman Sachs London. They're like, I want to become an investment banker and I'll move to the States. What is interesting is if you look at, you have London, and then you're going to, you have the British population, and then you have all the imports of people, you know, who were brought up in a different country, but then came to London. I think that is getting bigger and bigger, Reshma being one of them,

and my parents being first-generation immigrants and Nicholas and Tavit. So you're getting a lot of exceptional talent from around Europe coming to London. But that's had its own issues in regards to visas, over the years in regards to living costs. So there's a lot of those social type of factors which has hindered people from coming over. I think the London Financial Center versus tech are two separate things apart from where fintech is involved. They seem like two very different industries, unlike Wall Street where a lot of investment bankers are active in investing in tech startups. We talk about at the firm, Software Eating the World, and as software and tech goes into every industry, whether it be health care, or fintech or agriculture, for that matter.

Is there an advantage in the sense of, like, you have people from all over the world, you have different approaches. And in some ways, there's kind of, if tech hasn't seeped into all of Europe, is there a different perspective that entrepreneurs in England bring to solving problems that might play out better in the rest of the world and in other industries? Yeah, I mean, I think so. I think you do get such different perspectives and different systems of sort of finance or government or otherwise across the board across Europe. So I think you do get entrepreneurs that are able to

sort of, you know, able to navigate that and build solutions that are more scalable. I think they're still sort of hindered by those geographic barriers and and also kind of funding barriers as well. I mean, venture capital, I think, continues to be so regional. I mean, it's a tail. terrible thing. It just doesn't sort of unify across, you know, across Europe. And so scalability is limited there for, you know, to a big reason because of that. And then talent, I mean, it's starting to move across much more easily, but you're still getting, you know, kind of a more populous rise of kind of anti-immigration and all of that. So it's still got a long ways to go. But inherently, I agree. I think, you know, there is that, there is that sort of

sense of being able to solve kind of variety of problems and dealing with those problems. Are problems solved differently here and or regionally for that matter? Do you see a company that's coming out of Berlin saying like, oh yeah, that's a Berlin company because I can tell from these characteristics

or that's a UK company? But are problems solved differently than, say, in San Francisco or Silicon Valley? So a great question. And easy way to answer is US is a huge individual market. And there's enough room for American companies a lot of the time just to win the USA, because one, it's called population, but two, the revenue per user that you can get.

Whereas you take a market like Sweden, the reason why Spotify partly has been successful was from day one, the product was built to go global. The same thing with Skype, transfer-wise, a building for a global audience, because the local population is far too small to be a venture-back company, to have a revenue of billions and billions and billions. So you have this international mindset from day one, which companies in the States didn't necessarily have. They're now starting to think more international.

So we have that advantage because we're all exposed to far more cultural inputs than a company than the states would be. UK has probably been the last in that, because out of European countries, Germany and UK are pretty big populations in their own. And I go back to a lot of the companies that were built here in the last 15 years, were just market leaders in the UK. Some of our biggest online real estate companies are just UK-only, right move and Zupla. Two huge companies have never really ventured outside the UK.

You couldn't do that if you're from Estonia or if you're from Finland or if you're from Sweden. You have to go international from that way. What's the natural path? And if you're a successful company startup in the UK, do you hit the rest of Western Europe first because it's close? Do you go to Asia? Do you go to the United States? What I mean, what I'm seeing a lot is,

and it's a big generational shift. So I think if we looked at entrepreneurs from again about five years ago or more, there was this sense of, well, if I start in London or I start in Manchester, let me go across the rest of the UK. And then, as you said, maybe France or Germany, we're seeing a completely different, completely kind of change of perspective there. Our founders are saying, let me launch immediately in London, Berlin, maybe even in New York, actually. So they're really going after urban spread rather than any kind of geographical bias.

So if they're starting in English, which mainly happens to be, it's a what are the main cities we can dominate? So, I mean, those are long-term trends around population sort of centralizing and, you know, in urban areas and the massive urban revolution, right? So we're not seeing such biases that we saw a generation ago. Right. And if you see, look at the marketplace businesses, it's actually no longer about countries. Yeah.

It's cities, right? Which cities work and which cities don't work? And, you know, Istanbul is many thousands of miles away from here, and there's an entrepreneur probably go, London, Istanbul, Dubai, Hong Kong. That doesn't mean they're looking at all of Europe or all at Asia. they're picking those cities going aggressively in there to tackle them. That we're far better position to do than the states.

Because if you start in San Francisco, the natural thing is San Francisco, New York, Boston, Miami, Chicago, L.A., San Diego. Right. Before you come international. So there's this different startup operational cities challenge that happens. And then it's just having sufficient capital to have a playbook to be able to replicate that city by city very quickly. And are the cities, you know, Rescham, what you're describing, I mean, I get the U.S., but when you go from big city, Istanbul, Hong Kong, London, etc., are the users kind of of a same type? Is it the city that's the defining characteristic and the density and kind of urban lifestyle as opposed to the region? I would think so. I mean, when our companies are doing that kind of market research, that's a lot of what they're finding. I mean, you still have to do a lot of segmentation within those sorts of cohorts.

But, you know, I think a person in Shanghai feels a lot closer to the person culturally, kind of what their day-to-day needs are to a person in New York or San Francisco or London or Berlin versus kind of maybe even the rest of China or rest of India or so forth. Right. On the flip side, U.S. companies that come to Europe, what are they up against these days? I mean, we've been walking around here near the hotel and Google's down the street and Airbnb. somewhere nearby or relatively nearby, et cetera. But what are they up against now when they come to town and what do you see? So, you know, having seen this many times over what happens is U.S. companies,

like, hey, we need to go into Europe. We need to go international. So let's put our office in London and let's send Peter or Lucy who went to Stanford and did a semester in Paris because they aren't lived there and you can go run Europe. And, you know, that person is more familiar with Europe than most people. And sometimes what ends up happening is coming to London is actually a huge disservice because you feel like, well, if in London, we can just run Paris out of there, we can run in Germany, US is far similar to UK than France will ever be.

So those challenges of accepting that just by being in London, you won't be able to tackle the whole of Europe. And so now what you're seeing is people going, okay, if we're going international, we need to open up in Paris, we need to open up in London, we need to open up in Munich or Berlin, straight away because the three are completely different when you're approaching it, whether it's labor laws, whether it's real estate. For us, it's what we do every day and we don't have those worries. It's equivalent to somebody from San Francisco going to Chicago. There aren't that many nuances. But when you come from the states, go, hey, I don't even stand the company set up in, why do I have to work with a union in Paris where you don't have to do that in the UK,

which is two and a half hours on the train? So it's a completely different ecosystem at a smaller a level in different cities. Right. I think it's also, I mean, it's early days, but I think the last years of exits have taught both entrepreneurs and VCs here that, you know, you're capped. If you don't, if you don't have the expansion fast enough, you don't deliver that fast enough, you're capped. And I think if you see examples of Halo, which is a brilliant service, I use it all the time,

but my taxi. Halo is a version of what? Wow, it's a transportation thing. I know that. It's for black calves, I guess. But I mean, they branched out a bit more. But, you know, yeah, you won't know it, right, if you're listening to this podcast outside of... It's like Uber, but it's not Uber.

But it, no, because it's, it was focused solely on black caps to begin with, right? And it never, again, it never expanded fast enough. And my taxi got funded by a different cohort of investors, and that never expanded fast enough, right? And then Uber just sprawled completely in record pace, obviously, as we all know. So, I mean, I think having seen some of the limitations of trying to go at it the traditional way in Europe, I think entrepreneurs and investors are waking up to the fact that, you know, we need to spread faster. It needs much more capital. And so I think it's early days, whether that's successful yet or not.

There's just naturally a desire also if you're a British entrepreneur, a European entrepreneur, to go and win USA. And from what Roshma was saying, I'd actually say the reverse. And, you know, I used a halo on the way here, right? Because Google was 14 minutes away. They were going to get stuck in traffic, and they can't use the bus lanes. whereas the license taxi got me here in eight minutes and knew the back road, but Halo only use it here and they've shut down in most cities they were in.

Instead of them going, hey, we've done London, let's go tackle USA. I would have done Paris, Munich, Berlin, Copenhagen, Sweden. You suddenly have a huge network. You have a huge brand and you have a solid company. Halo is basically a London niche company funded by VCs who, if they could get an exit, would take their exit tomorrow and get out of the business because Uber has won in that space. Absolutely. Right.

Reshma, your fund has been around for eight years. Shack, you've been reluctantly an investor you were saying. I'm the accidental investor who never wanted to be an investor that ended up meeting Daniel Eck when he was 22 years old with an idea of Spotify and I put half of my net worth into the company before there was a product. So what, well, what were you thinking? Exactly.

As your mother might say. If I look back to it, what was I thinking? I only put half of my net worth in there. I should have put all of my net worth in there? And secondly, I shouldn't have ever done another investment after that because I'll always go back to them. It won't be as good as that. No, so for me, I'm not a big music fan for a start.

But, you know, I got to know Daniel, and it was his sheer passion and the fact that he wasn't willing to take no for an answer. So this is 2007, 2008. CD sales are still there. Download business is huge. is a young individual who walks into the record labels going, hey, I have a solution for your declining revenue.

And they said, give all the music away free of charge. And I remember when he'd get physically thrown out of these buildings, and I'd go so, and he's going, well, I'll go back there tomorrow. Because eventually they will come around to thinking the way I'm thinking. And I'd like to think, you know, we've now proven that streaming is the future. But all that came later. For me, it was an individual who I realized had such passion that he was either going to win or he was going to die.

It was very binary. And when I wrote the check and it was just over $500,000, it was, okay, I may never see this again. And I didn't look at it. What is my I-I-R-R-R or what my liquidation? I didn't even know any of these words. Like, hey, it seems like a cool guy way smarter than I am. So, okay, why not do it?

And so really, I'm the accidental investor. I had zero desire to be in the investment world. Wow. In Mexico, we call that Kajunas. So I want to sort of describe what the entrepreneur that you guys work with is like. And so, Reshma, you work with early stage entrepreneurs. Are they sort of the Peter Thiel ideal where they dropped out of college and, you know, they're driven by X, Y, or Z? And what do entrepreneurs, what are their characteristics here?

And is it any different, honestly, than Silicon Valley? And how is entrepreneurship kind of embraced culturally or not? not? Good question. I think, again, it's a evolving journey, and so our journey with entrepreneurs has been that over the last kind of near, you know, near decade. I would say when we started, there was a real lack, and I think I can say that sort of confidently being American, is a lack of commercial sense and sort of how do you get these products out to market and focus around product and usability and, you know, kind of thinking, being the customer champion, and how do you commercialize it, how do you monetize it? So I think,

there was a real kind of lack of that. It's changed dramatically for the founders we're backing today. I mean, just so much more astute. Everyone's reading the same thing. You're exposed to podcasts like this and a lot of knowledge and content like this. Also role models. So again, there's serial entrepreneurs and investors you're used to, you know, a lot more kind of, a lot more access, a lot more people to access.

So I think that's been a dramatic change. Whether, whether they are, you know, dropouts as such, I mean, I don't think we kind of look at it that way. I think there is a much more kind of that zero to one thinking and thinking very, very big and being incredibly ambitious and having the toolkit to also execute on that ambition. So not a pure kind of let's be dreamers, but how do we execute against that? And Shaq, it's okay to be an entrepreneur. I mean, you were an entrepreneur.

I was an entrepreneur because I dropped out of high school before my 16th birthday without finishing my exams. I had another option, no other option to do this. And I realized growing up in the projects in an environment where poverty was the norm, the only way I would really be able to help myself and help my family members get out was to accumulate some sort of wealth, which I wasn't going to get in the traditional career path, whatever that would have been, whether it had been in traditional banking or whatever. Who knows what would have happened.

But the country has never been as entrepreneurial as the USA has. a number of social reasons and governmental reasons. One, we've got, even though people may complain, we have a pretty amazing welfare system here and a pretty amazing healthcare system here. When you know your roof is above your head and the welfare will give you sufficient funds to feed your family and clothe yourself and you've got a healthcare system, you've got education system, you don't have the same challenges an individual in many countries, including America, where if you get made redundant, your health insurance is the first thing that goes and everything else. goes with it. I know there is a welfare system, but the delta between the two is huge. And secondly,

failure in Britain, and even until now, it's getting better and better is not encouraged. And I can honestly recall being in a coffee shop, or in a like cafeteria many, many years ago, with my father who turned around to me and said, see that gentleman sitting over there, he's bankrupt. It was like it was a mass murderer or a, you know, high-level criminal. And now I look back at it, I would have loved to go over and had a chat with this gentleman going, hey, what was it like? What went wrong? And are you going to start your next company? And I was like, oh, wow, bankrupt. And Reshma, you've been here long enough to, I think, realize there is that stigma about failure. And I think maybe actually the challenge, it's a really good point.

I think the challenges we're seeing across continental Europe, you know, with those support systems falling apart, is actually engendering a move towards entrepreneurship. So we see that in Portugal. UniPalcis just has been, you know, has had a great round of funding recently. Spain as well, Italy a little bit also, is as those systems crumble. As economic pressure kind of ratchets up. Exactly. The only road to turn to is entrepreneurship and striking out and trying to, you know, and trying to rise above that, right? Wow, that's interesting. So, I mean, in a lot of ways, policy has a huge role to play either positively or negatively. I don't know. know, do you have a view on what can be done from a policy side or what should be left well alone?

Well, the safety net that everyone assumed was there has a few cracks in it. I think as has become visible and whether it was in the 2008 financial crisis, people putting money in the banks or what happened in Cyprus, hey, your money is safe and you know, you encourage trust the banks, trust the government, they'll take care of you. And suddenly, oh, well, 10% or 20% of your holdings are now being wiped out to pay for silly mistakes that were, done by institutions, et cetera, et cetera. So is it policy that needs changing? And I think it's a combination of everything. Hey, it's just time, right?

The world changes. And yesterday, everyone wants to be nostalgic, but tomorrow is going to come and yesterday has gone past. And how do we move forward? How do we think what's going to happen in 20 years' time? And are we prepared for it in every shape, form? Infrastructure. Is there sufficient capital?

Is there sufficient educated individuals? to fulfill the roles that are required, are individuals even going to be required because of machines that are going to be doing certain things. It's just a journey that everyone's on and nobody's figured it out. If they have, I'd love to meet them. And I invest in them.

Right. Rushmond, we were talking with Martha Lane Fox, and she was bemoaning the lack of women entrepreneurs and the women in technology. And certainly Silicon Valley has no answer for that as of yet. But do you have a point of view on that and are you seeing any movement one way or another? I'm not seeing a movement probably fast enough, I would say. I don't talk about this topic that much. I guess it's funny. I think

I read an interview with Eileen. I think she and I were, when we were young, we were just worried about being Chinese-American for her, Indian-American for me, so I didn't worry about being a woman, right? And it's an issue I've been thinking more about. But I mean, again, I think it's just like entrepreneurship, female entrepreneurship, is an ecosystem thing. So we don't have enough female VCs who, you know, do look at things differently and we'll look at individuals differently. We don't have enough female entrepreneurs, female coders, all of that. I think, again, it's changing. I think as you have in the U.S., you're seeing Twitter product managers who've left, and there's a few women who've started, you know, fund of their own. I think as you start to see talent leave here,

hopefully exit, have a bit of wealth, they will start to create funds and they will become angel investors and so forth. So I think that'll help. I think, you know, role models, again, I'm a new mom, and it's hard for me to get out. I mean, literally. But I still, you know, I go out there. I have a supportive husband, and I think you need those role models.

So Martha, you know, Sherry, Eileen, me, we need to play that part. Sometimes it's difficult to do so, but you've got to keep going out there and showing what you're capable of. So I agree with her that it's just, it's not enough still. But, I mean, even in our own portfolio, it's a tiny percentage that are female-led companies. And, Shaq, I don't want to, you know, just because you're a man, you should, doesn't mean you don't have an opinion on this. No, you know, it's a great question on his more and more about.

And I'd answer it in one way similar to what, Reshma, you know, growing up, whether it's male, female, et cetera, putting that to the side, it was, hey, I'm not, white in a white country and unless you're non-white you will never understand that and secondly to answer your question I think you can answer it better we're sitting in a lovely venue in London and you've got an American Indian in London and a Pakistani heritage male sitting here so you know is there diversity there's obviously diversity in this room should there be more female entrepreneurs yet but then you need more female investors which we're starting to get now. And that trickle-down effect will happen. I think, you know,

we're going through a phase and there's more and more encouragement. And if you look at every sector, there are some exceptional women in leadership positions, Padmasri Warrior, Indian, the individual who is CTO, Cisco now is doing a bunch of board stuff there. There's the Pepsi CEO, I think. Yeah. So is an Indian lady. It's starting to happen. And then, I think we'll see a very rapid shift. When that happens, I don't know, but some of the most exceptional PMs

that I'm meeting in today's environment are not male. Yeah. You know, our infrastructure needs to change as well. So childcare is kind of impossible in the UK market in London, and somehow it doesn't fall on my husband. It somehow falls on me to kind of think about that, right? And that's a pretty big issue.

Working hours, you know, your children go to school at some weird times. I mean, they end at three. What do you do with that? And so a lot of that infrastructure needs to dramatically shift to make things easier. But if you look at Sweden, maternity leave and paternity leave, serious fundamental changes by the government, encouragement of leadership positions. I think there's actually a requirement that the ratio has to be X number of females and X number of non-Sweeds on a border, I believe. So you're starting to see that happen.

I hope it happens in England and Scotland and Wales and Northern Ireland in every country sooner rather than later but that's nothing I can influence because I'm not a woman I can support the women who are there women like Reischma women like Eileen and Sherry and there's a bunch of amazing entrepreneurs Alicia Nibarro Robin Eckston and equivalent to in the States there's exceptional leaders such as Ellen Levi, Julia de Begovnihne there's no shortage but we need more happen sooner or late. I'm going to let you guys brag now, if you want, about companies or people that we should all be paying attention to that maybe we haven't, you know, found out about yet in the U.S. in our own myopic Silicon Valley way. Well, we're really excited. We've been

an incredibly active investor, obviously, in fintech, but property tech as of late as well. And to Shaq's point from before, you know, we do think UK startups in that space have been limited to date. So we have a company called Property Partner, which we're extremely excited about. It's a pretty complex business. They're combining acquisition of properties with funding them through crowdfunding. And so, yeah, exactly. Wait, so what happens to the property? Are we just all group investors in it, or do we all move in together and have a commune or something?

It's pretty phenomenal. So they have a team that actually goes out there and sources properties. So they have a whole team around negotiating these properties. It's in residential space right now. So they're buying either standalone houses or blocks of flats, individual flats. And is it London regionally? Right now, but obviously plans for expansion. And then once they get the property on, they're releasing onto the platform.

And so they just set a world record a couple of days ago. It was a block of four flats, 1.1 million pounds, sold out in two minutes and 19 seconds. So I'm investing in real estate. Is that the idea that on the crowdfunding side, I get to... get a piece of real estate. From a very human point of view, myself included, it's actually the first property I own in London now, so part of it. It's just you cannot get on the property ladder. And again, if you think about it, UK, maybe you don't understand the problem.

But if you're in New York in San Francisco, Hong Kong, you understand that by. Paris. You name any big city in the world, basically. And a lot of people have savings, and you save over years and years. Every time you kind of reach a point where I'm ready to buy, either your desire has gone up or the prices have gone up or buy. both. And so you can never get on. And so in a very human way, this allows you property by property to really spot what you want to get into and be able to come. And there's a secondary market associated with it and all of that as well. So we're extremely excited about where this can go.

That's cool. That's interesting. Yeah, I can see that playing well in San Francisco. Shack. So it's not a portfolio company in mine. It's a company out of Germany, Berlin, a company called Get Your Guide. They've just announced $50 million raised from KKR. You know, companies have had a number of pivots over the last few years. But the execution and the speed that these founders and this team is working on with a very global vision. And anyone who's managed to attract Keith Cullen as a board member

who was the CEO or the founder of booking.com and Fritz Demolopoulopoulos who created Chunar, which is the kayak of China, to their board who are two of the most aggressive, ruthless execution-focused individuals based in Berlin. So we come back to that, you know, are they thinking of building a company just for Berlin? No, this team is thinking of creating a global, global RAND, which is why, you know, investors in Europe, but now KKR, who don't normally do early stage tech have invested $50 million in it.

So that's one to, you know, get your guide. Get your guide.com. And it's about travel. Yeah, it's travel, but it's more, I think, the step after the hotel and the flights of, you know, you're in London, how do you get to the London eye? How do you get, how do you remove the friction, which you manage to do in your flights and your hotels and your lift or your Uber or Halos, but then having to stand 16 minutes in the rain waiting to be told that you're at the wrong counter of X or Y and Madam Two Sorts. So get your guide is obviously high up there. And the other one, you know, I can't sing the praise is high enough. I believe they're a portfolio company of yours.

And I believe they're a seed camp company, right? Transfer-wise. Original. OG seed camp. You know, transfer-wise, I can't sing the praises high enough. And, you know, had I had the chance, and I don't know whether I actually did or not, I probably didn't have any liquidity because all my investments have been my own. And, you know, it's a myth that you always have lots of cash there.

You know, you go through cycles. I didn't have any liquidity at the time. But that aside, love what those guys are doing. Love the fact that, you know, they're non-Britz that made the headquarters in UK and tackling a global problem, which is the remittance, which it's the most needy who get ripped off by the banks. You try and send, I know, 30 bucks to Pakistan or to Philippines. Western Union want I think nine bucks out of that. So it's the people who don't have the money

who are trying to send remittances for their loved ones or their friends, etc., who get charged the most. And transfer-wise is doing an amazing job, and I hope this goes down as one of the biggest companies ever to come out of Europe up there with Spotify and Skype or bigger than even those companies. And I think, and carted to Andreessen, but probably earlier with IA Ventures out of New York,

is having some of that, American DNA on ambition, expansion, how do you fund that expansion? How do you hire talent? It was really crucial from the early days. So, I mean, I do think the trajectory of that business has changed, would be in a very different curve had it not been for some of that American capital that came in very early. Yeah, it's interesting. And it's also an idea that certainly, I mean, it could have come out of the U.S., but probably not, just, you know, for the same reason that SMS came out of Europe too and other things like that. But it's a problem that was solved here. and it's a problem that's global.

And, you know, that counsel's bragging, but I can't brag about it too just because it's in our portfolio. Well, Reshma, Shaq, I want to thank you guys so much. It's been a great conversation. And I have high hopes for all of Europe now. We'll have to keep an eye out. Thank you for having us. Thanks.