This Week in Startups - Europe’s Startup Future with Harry Stebbings | E2097

Episode Date: March 14, 2025

This Week in Startups is brought to you by…Lemon.io - Get 15% off your first 4 weeks of developer time at https://Lemon.io/twistSquarespace - Use offer code TWIST to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain at https://www.Squarespace.com/TWISTCLA. Get started with CLA's CPAs, consultants, and wealth advisors now at https://claconnect.com/techToday’s show: Jason and Alex break down the biggest tech stories of the moment. OpenAI is pushing to rewrite copyright laws to benefit AI companies while suing others for doing the same—hypocrisy or smart strategy? Meanwhile, European startups are fleeing to the U.S. as overregulation and weak IPO markets make scaling harder. Harry Stebbings joins to discuss whether Project Europe can reverse the trend. Plus, with AI-driven startups staying lean, angel investing is evolving—should investors wait for traction or bet on potential? Jason shares his 2024 playbook. Watch the full episode now!Timestamps:(0:00) Episode Teaser(1:15) OpenAI's recommendations, stance on copyright, and ethics(8:30) Sam Altman's political donations and the media's response(9:41) Lemon.io - Get 15% off your first 4 weeks of developer time at https://Lemon.io/twist(15:48) Introduction of guest Harry Stebbings and his venture capital journey(19:51) Squarespace - Use offer code TWIST to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain at https://www.Squarespace.com/TWIST(22:05) Discussing the human aspect of investing and handling criticism(27:37) Project Europe and its support for EU founders(30:49) CLA. Get started with CLA's CPAs, consultants, and wealth advisors now at https://www.claconnect.com/tech(32:16) Balancing roles as an investor and public figure(33:04) Analyzing the European startup ecosystem(35:48) Addressing Project Europe's age cap and mentorship(38:09) Global talent competition and Europe's stance(42:29) Economic impacts and the future of Project Europe(45:18) Growth and housing in Austin compared to other tech regions(47:36) Startup funding strategies and angel investment advice(55:27) Evolving startup and content creation landscapes(57:37) Founder University announcementSubscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.comCheck out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.comSubscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcpLinks from the show:Check out Project Europe: https://www.projecteurope.co/Check out 20VC: https://www.thetwentyminutevc.com/Check out Stride VC: https://stride.vc/Follow Harry:X: https://x.com/HarryStebbingsLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harrystebbingsFollow Alex:X: https://x.com/alexLinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwilhelmFollow Jason:X: https://twitter.com/JasonLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanisThank you to our partners:(9:41) Lemon.io - Get 15% off your first 4 weeks of developer time at https://Lemon.io/twist(19:51) Squarespace - Use offer code TWIST to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain at https://www.Squarespace.com/TWIST(30:49) CLA. Get started with CLA's CPAs, consultants, and wealth advisors now at https://www.claconnect.com/techGreat TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarlandCheck out Jason’s suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanisFollow TWiST:Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartupsYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekinInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartupsTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartupsSubstack: https://twistartups.substack.comSubscribe to the Founder University Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@founderuniversity1916

And if Europe doesn't want these fine, amazing founders, come to Austin. I'll take you to three different barbecue joints. We'll hang out. Come by the ranch. Entrepreneurs from Europe. Beautiful here. Cost the living's half of any city in Germany. Tons of young people, tons of freedom.

You can get a gun. You can get a ranch. You can get a horse. I've never been invited to this trip. You're going to consider yourself invited. Come anytime. We'll do a cross-over taping. Any time you're ready.

Many time you're ready. I don't know if we're letting people from the UK in the country right now. That's true. We'll let's see. This weekend startups is brought to you by Limon.io. Get access to Lemonhire, a platform with more than 80,000 pre-vetted engineers that you can interview within 48 hours. Get $2,000 off your first hire at lemon.io slash hire today. Squarespace.

Turn your idea into a new website. Go to Squarespace.com slash twist for a free trial. When you're ready to launch, use offer code twist to save 10% off your first purse. of a website or domain. And CLA. Innovation takes balance. CLA, CPAs, consultants, and wealth advisors can help you get from startup to where you want to end up.

Get started now at cLA connect.com slash tech. All right, everybody, welcome back to this week in startups. He's Alex. Welcome on. Jason Callicanus. And Monday, Wednesday, Fridays, typically at noon, Texas time. But today, a little early because I'm heading out with my daughters for ski week. Yeah.

Very excited for ski week, yes. 24 days right now, Alex. I'm going to try to get in nine days. Nine plus 24 is over 30. I think it's in fact 33. So if I get 32 and 33 days, then I am within split-spitting distance of my 41 ski day goal. Now, I don't want to exaggerate, Alex, these are two or three-hour ski days. I'm not out there for eight hours.

I do the executive program on the executive old man program. Well, good, because I'm hoping to do a couple of shows. next week. And if you're out doing 10 hour days on the slopes, it's going to be tough, dad, you call in. Yeah, calling in for the lift. Hopefully this year I don't get trapped on a lift. Last year, I got a full 15, 20 minutes. And I decided I would tweet it. And then, of course, you know, everybody's looking for the drama. So everybody was like, do we need to call, you know, the mountain to rescue you or whatever? And I'm like, no, there's 10,000 people on this, whatever. There's thousands of people on this mountain. They're,

quite aware that this lift is not working and people are doing shots while they wait. Yes, I can see that going one of two ways. I've been on a lot of ski lifts. Sometimes if the weather's nice and then you can see for a distance and it's clear, I mean, I wouldn't mind 50 minutes of sightseeing. I've also been on lifts when it's been driving snow

horizontal and that would be miserable. This was during a beautiful flurry. So it was beautiful, but yeah, when you got two daughters on the lift with you, they're ready to go. So what do we got in the dock? Okay, what do we got? I know we have a great guest today. We do have a great guest. We have about 15 minutes until they are here.

We are dealing with transatlantic time zones. So, Jason, I thought we would start with the thing that you and I are most peevish about today, which is Open AI's amazing pitch for the future of American AI dominance and why that means we must. I would say dissolve domestic copyright protections. Okay. So yeah, I saw this come across my feed, one of the group chats. Open AI has published recommendations to the White House, Office of Science, and technology for a U.S. AI activity. These, I don't want to say something inappropriate here, but this is the most ridiculous

thing I've ever seen. They say here that China won't respect to operate. Yeah, of course, duh, that is like one of our major issues with the country. And they say that's giving them a strategic advantage in the AI game. The fact that Chinese can and do steal American IP gives them an advantage. Yes, this is correct. Also, if you steal gold, if you steal, if you enslave people in your own country, this also gives you a strategic advantage.

You can ask the Uyghurs working in slave labor concentration camps in China today, upwards of a million, according to sources. So yes, the Chinese do have some horrible things. they do that give them an advantage. Maybe you could read for us what they are actually saying in their own words, they being the open AI team. Yes. So as Jason said, Open AI says that, you know, China has an advantage and its ability to benefit from copyright arbitrage. Essentially, they don't have IP protections in the same way that we do, especially about content from outside their borders. And so if there is a regime in the United States, for example, that is a bit

more, I don't know, Jason, economically expensive for AI companies, it could put domestic AI firms at a disadvantage. And the way that Open AI frames this is essentially by saying that this is a matter of, quote, national security. Their words. So it's a big deal. Yeah. And Open AI is just a terrible company. I just got to say it right now. They make a great product, but I don't trust this company. And, you know, I'm friendly with Sam, but, you know, I really think Sam has an ethics problem, obviously flipping the company from a for-profit to a nonprofit, saying I don't have any equity, now I've got $10 billion, $20 billion in equity. I think there might be, you know, I'm reading into this, a reason why his top leaders have all left and started their own companies is because of that

ethics challenge that the firm has. Doing this type of thing, you know, using the Chinese and their illegal, immoral behavior as your model and as your excuse to do that here is really low. It's really low. And it's kind of gross, I have to say. We don't set our morality at what a dictatorship halfway around the world does to their people. They're living in a police state to IP. They're stealing from artists and innovators. Here's an idea.

You took a nonprofit. You got to $10 billion in revenue or so. And it's worth $350 billion. Why don't you do what Spotify does? Why don't you do what Apple does? Which is pay content creators for using their content. Apple could come out and say, gosh, Tim Cook, they don't pay for music over in China.

They steal it. They sell it on street corners, you know, on thumb drives. Every song ever created. There's millions of websites in Russia that will restream all of the live feeds of the MMA fights and sports and stuff like that. Yeah, there's all kinds of ways to steal content. I don't think that means we should do it that way. You should pay. Spotify pays.

So pay us content creators and create a sustainable model. It's ridiculous. And then also creating while this regulation is a way to kill startups. So Sam is playing dirty. I'm not surprised. I'm disappointed, obviously, but I'm not surprised. And I think Sam needs to really think this through a little bit better. I think there's another element in Open AI's pitch here that I think is actually a little bit pernicious.

So one thing they also said, and I'm going to pull this up on screen here, America has so many AI startups, attract so much investment and has made so many research breakthroughs largely because the Fair Use Doctrum promotes AI development. In other markets, it's different. For example, the EU has created, quote, text and data mining exceptions with broadly applicable, quote, opt-outs for any rights holder. This makes things more unpredictable. This sounds to me like not only does OpenAI want to have very, very permissive use of copyright material's rules, but also wants to say that rights holders should not have the ability to opt out of being included in AI data sets. And that's going from saying that your copyright doesn't matter.

It's saying that your copyright doesn't matter and I have a right to. take your stuff without your permission. So it seems slightly more vicious, Jason. It's very simple. You're not wrong. If YouTube wants to take this week in startups, which we host on YouTube, and they want to train their AI on, and I don't have a problem with that. Send me a little message in the interface. Would you like to opt in to Gemini will index? And here are the terms and condition. It's a one year, it's a 10 year. It's an infinite license. It's a hundred year license. And we'll pay you this amount. And just give me a dollar amount. I say yes. I say no. Let's say you get 10% of people. Maybe that's enough to train your API. And I said no. So I got

none of that money and the AI went off to the races. Maybe I say yes. And I'm one of the people who gets there. Maybe if only 1% say yes, they've got to raise the price to, you know, $2 an hour of content, whatever it is. Oh, no. Come up with a number. Yes. And that's called the free market. It's called respecting IP. And you know what? Sam Altman was the first person to complain when Deep Seek stole their model. and did reinforcement learning. So you really, like, talk about hypocritical. Open AI and Sam Maltman's the height of hypocrisy. I know I'm getting myself into a Palmer Lucky situation here

where people are going to clip this and say I'm like dunking on somebody. No, I'm calling balls and strikes. If you don't like it, tune into another program. Balls and Strikes. Sam complained when his content, his IP was stolen. Now he's lobbying. Founders, let's be real.

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but I believe there's a million bucks. I believe he decided he would throw in a million bucks to Trump. I don't know if that was personally. According to this, it was Sam Altman of OpenAI, as opposed to Open AIs Sam Altman. Okay, great. So Sam Waltman paying a million bucks. Here's my note.

I don't know if I know anybody involved in AI in the new Trump administration. Here's what they should do. If there was somebody, like a leader in the administration, like, dare I say a czar of AI. Oh, interesting. I think we have one of those. Yeah.

So if I ever met him, I'd say, don't fall for it. It's a trap. Sam Altman is giving a million dollars to Trump to his inauguration fund to try, to buy his way out of a New York Times lawsuit. That's what's happening here. Yes. They're trying to figure out that, hmm, what's cheaper?

The billion dollar judgment they'll get against them from the New York Times, I think it could be a billion dollar judgment against them. Certainly nine figures. And that's a speeding ticket for a $350 billion company, but it's a precedent. Every single content company that hears my voice. Bob Iger from Disney, General Azla, General Zod from Warner Brothers Discovery. Anybody,

Rupert Murdoch, I'm calling like all the media leaders, the super friends of content, as it were, the Justice League, get together, and then crush Open AI with lawsuits. Crush them with an infinite number of lawsuits. Every single infraction you find,

file a lawsuit on behalf of that content creator. So you don't have to just do a Disney one. And I'm not saying law fair here. I'm saying fair law. You know, they could get together, put a pool of $100 million together and say any creator, any creator who feels that they have their content stolen and has proof of it, please send it to us. And we will file on behalf of them.

You know how Peter Thiel did this like back the lawsuit? With Gawker and Hulk Hogan. You know, this is a new method. of helping people who can't afford, whether you agree with it or not, can't afford, you know, the sustained $10, $20 million you need to protect your copyright or protect your rights. This would be a way to do that. I think the disgruntlement you're describing, I think, matters because people say, okay, Jason and Alex, you guys are clearly, you know, you have a history in media,

you guys are biased here. What about the links? What about the sources? Well, I was reading this morning, the Tollbit, a Twist 500 company, Q4, AI bot executive report. And I found a very interesting stat that I'm going to share with everybody. From the report, they says that despite AI search companies claims, Talbot sees that AI bots on average driving 96% less click-through traffic than trad Google search.

So what we're supposed to do is give away our information, let someone else use it for free, make money off it, and then give us nothing back. And to me, there is no part of the value chain here that is functional for people who make content, make media, make words. And so to me, Sam Malbin's argument is inherently self-defeating. Even if you grant his point, what you're going to do is rip the carpet out from underneath people who make the words he needs next year to train his models. Yeah, it's short-term greed.

It's just greed and it's selfish on behalf of Open AI. They're being selfish and greedy. Yes. If you screw content creators, how are you going to feed the LLM next year, 10 years from now? It's very simple. Be a leader, Sam. Be a leader, Open AI. you're the leader in the space, you're a top 10 website, come up with a plan to pay content

creators. It's not difficult. Put out a shingle. You can work. There's a half dozen companies we have an investment in one that are doing clearing rights. I'm not going to plug any specific one here. But there will be plenty of ways for you to say to an author like myself, hey, the book angels dope. I want to license it.

How do you feel about a three-year-old license? How do you feel about a 10-year? You know what? I will tweet. I will send you. traffic to you, set the precedent that content creators deserve to be paid and respected, because I can tell you, Open AI wants their IP protected. They're the first one's crying foul when the Chinese sold their content.

So I have a name a new, disgracziad.com. Please, Heidi, on my team, for disgratziad.com to this OpenAI document. Thank you. And I'll end my rant here. to the clip of this on the TwistClip channel. Even better. Desgratia.com. We have a guest here.

I really love our next guest. He's a hard worker. He's a salt-of-the-earth guy. All right. So yesterday, oh, sorry, Wednesday. Jason and I were talking about Project Europe. I was very excited by this.

I thought it was very bullish. Jason was a little bit skeptical of the dollar amount and the focus. So what we did is we dragged Harry Stebbings, the founder of Project Europe. You know him from the 20-minute VC, the show, 20-VC, the venture firm. Let's bring Harry up. Harry!

Howdy, guys? There you, there he is. Hey, my guy. How you, Jim and Harry? There we go. It is lovely to see you both. And Alex, I don't think you know this, but Jason gave me the most seminal advice in content eight years ago.

He said, it's a simple game. It's a game of who can survive the longest. Just keep going. And genuinely, it is probably some of the best advice I've ever been given in content, and I continuously think back to it when times are hard. It's never easy, is it? 20-minute VC, great program. And Harry has a great fund, and he invests a whole bunch.

And, you know, it's a lot of people take notes, and then they don't ever, like, give any credit to the people. Maybe they took some notes from them. You've always been, like, a gentleman about that. And I have to do as well, because where I got that piece of advice was when I convinced Peter Rojas to leave Gizmodo. Wow. Because Sam Altman, not Sam Altman, Nick Danjin.

I've got super villains on my mind. other super villain in this J-Cal extended Marvel universe in the J-Cal universe another supervian who I'm friendly with

you know I've always it's kind of like a Batman Joker kind of relationship we have you complete me I need you I don't want you to die J-Cal

that's a very good impression I need you they'll throw you away just like they did me he how do we end up there. Well, because Nick Denton...

Why say serious? That's what I'm waiting for. Why so serious, Alex? It's not an S-1. Sadly. I'm sorry. I would have a real rude last day. I got 57 sleep score.

So he told me, I was like, hey, listen, you got to leave Gizmodo. How much is Denton paying? It's paying me like $12.50 a month. I said, listen, I'll give you equity in weblogs, ink, and gadget. it, you know, Nick promised you equity.

He never delivered. I'll give it to you day one. I'll sign the paper right now if you join me. And I'll give you a raise. And I'll give you this new MacBook Air. I had bought three or four MacBook Airs, and I was using them to recruit blogger because MacBook Air was brand new.

You remember when he did. He said, yeah. So he joined and, you know, became a millionaire. You know, when we sold it, I gave him a pretty sweet deal. In fact, I raised the deal that I originally had. I could have given him less money,

but I was like, he was the key here. He was like the keystone in the in the in the in the portfolio of blogs. He said, uh, I said, what's the secret of blogging? He said, you have to show up every day and then don't stop. Consistency. And then with all in, I said the same thing. I said, listen to the team, you guys got to take this more serious.

Every Thursday has to be sang for saying. Anyway. Yeah. I did not get a thousand plays on a show two years. And at one point, I was doing one a day, so five per week working day. And not a thousand plays for show for two years. I didn't make money for three years. I just loved venture,

which is why it was friendless many years. I always point to you like, I meet young people and they're like, I want to be in venture capital. I'm like, that's a hard place to go. There's not that many seats, right?

It's a small profession. It's a boutique kind of thing. And they say, okay, well, what do I do? Who do I email? Who can you tell to hire me? I'm like, you can tell the world to hire you. Just do what Harry did.

Just start interviewing people, be active on social and say, I want a job in venture. I want to do so adventure. And then Harry's like, I don't need to have a job. I'll just start my own goddamn venture firm. You know how hard it is? And you're on your fourth fund right now, a third.

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I have heart palpitations. I spend most of the time alone in my head. It's not always great. I didn't know we were so similar. Hi. Alex, I always thought we were. Well, you know what? You know, sometimes I have to say some of the people I know in my life who have that, including Alex, they're the most thoughtful, courageous, hardworking people. They just need to understand that certain and things aren't for them, right? And alcohol is not for you. Alcohol is not for Alex. It's not for anybody.

I'll be telling us it's poison. But, you know, you just have to know what you're good at and what you're not and create a little discipline. I was literally just with a founder, though, that I think it's fantastic and I'd love to try and find a way to invest in. I started the conversation with that. And he said, you know, I've spoken to 50 VCs. And they all say, oh, we have a thesis here and we do C day and this is how we add

value. No one's ever started a call with that. I feel like I've got to know you in a way that I haven't got to know anyone in this process. And I think this is it. People want to buy from people. And at the end of the day, everything touches a consumer. And you just have to bluntly be honest and show yourself. Being human is highly underrated. You can see that in social media. I was like training some people in social media. And like, they're talking to me and they're like making great insights. And I'm like, okay, now tweet that. And then they get in front of the tweet box and they're like, I'm going to now

talk like a marketer. And I'm like, what? How can you text me something so insightful? And then when you tweet, you don't. They're like, oh, well, I was trying to write that. I'm like, don't write it. Just say it. Yes. And then whatever you said, put that in the tweet. They're like, oh, that's how it works. Yeah, be a human. I have a genuine question for you. Before we just dive in, I know you want to. Jason, you get a lot of heat now, especially with All In and the fame that you have. How do you create emotional barriers to stop it hurting you? Wow, that's really great. So I grew up in Brooklyn, where you have to survive an onslaught of people telling your mom jokes on the stew and, you know, just absolutely roasting each other. So when I get roasted, you know,

or Palmer Lucky comes and dunks on me or, you know, some people, you know, then his co-investors and his partners try to like dunk on me. I'm just like, oh, these guys are hilarious. Like, who cares? Like, the fact that they're even going after a podcast or angel investor, because I said, you know, whatever I said about him and the news reports I read. Like, Okay, who cares? Like, you want to try to pin me as X, Y, or Z, you know, like, go for it. What's much more important is the work you do in the world, right? And so the work you're doing in the world is what's important.

If somebody's jealous of you, Harry, which a lot of people are, because, hey, most people can't raise funds. It's hard to raise a fund. And you just keep going out there, doing more episodes, raising more funds. That is tweaking to people, especially if an outsider does it, who didn't come, you know, via Harvard Business School, Stanford. that is very, very tweaking for people who are elites to see people come from the bottom up

and then just take their position. So the haters make you greater. The other thing I find what the haters is, you know, in my case, the Jaters. They typically... Good branding. I brand them, right? They're my...

The Jaders are, as I always said from the beginning of the room, the Jaders make me greater. So when Palmer Lockhe's dunk on me, you know what? he did make me greater in a way because now when I do a news story, I'm like, if this is true, I don't assume the news story's true because he's like, you assume the news story's true. It wasn't true. And I'm like, okay, well, maybe you sue them or whatever.

But now I'm like, you know, maybe he's right in that instance. Like maybe this news story isn't true. Maybe he got set up. Maybe it wasn't as bad as they made it out to be because we have seen like some news stories wind up being, you know, whatever, incorrect at a level that maybe is greater. So the haters will make you greater. they typically will say this person's terrible, I hate them. Here's like a really great insight that would make them better, and then I hate them kill yourself.

And you just have to be willing to take those two the beginning and the intro and the intro out and just look for what, maybe they do have a point somewhere in there, in their hatred. And that's almost universal. And a lot of times that insult sandwich that I'll get, the meat of it, they might have like a really good coaching tip. You know, it might actually be like, you know, some NBA player saying like, oh, you're too soft, you know, and like, you should have dunk that. And it's like, okay, next time I'll dunk it. You know, next time I'll say, if this report is true, you know. And that actually then becomes a superpower. That becomes a superpower. And that's what you will do. Like, what's the latest insult you got that hit? Which one's stung? I mean, there's very blunt ones, which I find always humorous where they're just like, you're a bleat. I think when people really criticize my interviewing style, I really care about the quality of the shows. It is an art to me. And when people say that that is bad shit, could be done better or very viciously, obviously, I'm kind of sugar-coating it. That upsets me.

Interesting. What is it about the interview style that they point out? Do they have, like, you interrupt too much? Or you say, these are too long? I interrupt you much. Yeah. I get that too. You know when you're guiding a guest to a particular conversation, you kind of have to shepherd them that way.

Yes. So here's a note for you. This is what I did when people said I was interrupting too much because sometimes the good piece of feedback in there is when they're listening on their headphones, they're starting to get into a moment where the guest is really cooking and then you are kind of steering the guest. But they want the guest to cook a little more. Just next time you do an interview, put a little, stopwatch on the side of your desk and watch it. And then after you finish your question, hit the lap button and just say, I'm not going

to interrupt for a minimum of one minute and then I'm going to let it breathe when they finish for five seconds. And then just see if you like it better. It's your show, but you could actually take that as a tip. I think one of the most important things is actually being comfortable in silence. Often the moment after silence is when greatness happens. There's a brilliant Elon Musk interview where there's silence and then he reflects on that. And what comes next is what is so special.

And I really think about getting comfortable in those awkward at times silences. Yeah. Listen, Europe. That's where the good stuff comes from. But respecting everyone's time, guys, we got to drill this back down. We've got to talk about Europe because this is what I'm a hot trot to talk about. So, Harry, just to be clear, Project Europe, new fund, 10 million euro, going to put 200,000 euros into young EU founders. I think you had 120 people that were going to help provide mentorship to

begin with. You tweeted out that there's now another couple of hundred. Lots of questions from the audience and from us about this. But did I miss anything in the outline of your push to rebuild European dynamism? No, listen, honestly, every day I meet incredible young entrepreneurs in Europe, and I met more and more. And the predominant advice they were getting was you have to leave Europe. It's shit to build businesses here. You have to go to the US. And it's sim-com. not true. We can build amazing businesses here and I wanted to fundamentally change the vibes. You can bluntly denigrate the word vibes a lot, but actually just positive vibes is a lot for an ecosystem and I wanted to change the vibes, let young people know that you can build businesses

here and that they don't have to go and leave their families to build a massive business. And Spotify and Revolut and Ady and all these amazing businesses show that. And that was the genesis. What is the deal? When I heard the concept, I was like, oh, Peter Thiel Fellows in some ways, right? There's 200,000 going to each one. Is it an investment? Or is it like Peter Thiel, like a grant with no expectation of return? What is it?

Yeah, no, so it's an investment. I did the studies on basically how grants are used differently to investments. And basically, grants are held with less accountability and less responsibility, not that they're bad. In certain cases, they can be great. But traditionally, that is how they are viewed. It's like when you give free classes, the participation is lower than if they're paid for. And so I thought that an investment would structure it right.

It would structure the reliability, sorry, the responsibility and the accountability right for the person who gets it. Is it a standard deal? Is it like 200K for 5%, 2% for 100%? Yeah, it's 200K for 6.6%. But there's Alist. So it's Ycombinator, basically. Same standard deal. Yeah, exactly.

But there's elasticity around it. If you've got around that's already happened, that's been preempted, you have to always be willing to move. Elasticity is everything. So that's kind of the archetypal deal, but absolutely we have the flexibility to move with it. What is the condition? You have to stay in Europe.

You have to stay for a certain number of years. Do you have to commit to something, or you just have to be part of the virus? Not at all. You need to be in Europe at the time, but restricting someone's personal freedoms on movement would probably be a restriction on human rights. No, actually, there's somebody doing it in,

there's a couple of people in the United States who say, we'll give you this money, you have to commit to one year in the state. Wasn't that what you did with Alex? You said you just can't leave the home. You've got to stay in that room, lock the door. I love the bookshelf. Stay there. You guys are funny, but literally a story that we're not talking about today is this one from

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And don't forget to mention that your boy, Jake, Alcension. That's cLA connect.com slash tech. Start today. Well, they clearly have stronger views than me on that. And so, yeah, and so kind of that, no, we do not restrict them in that way. But then also, I wanted to make it not a 20VC thing, not a me thing, which is why I really, honestly, I don't like the articles or the pictures about me. I think people also think I like the attention.

I don't. I really don't. I only do the media stuff because I wanted to be an investor and I didn't go to Goldman Sachs and I'm a dropout. I don't actually love being center of attention. Like, really. And so we hired an amazing CEO who was out of entrepreneur first, which is bluntly kind of the European accelerator number one.

And she's ran program there for six years. She is CEO. She runs it day to day. and hopefully we just empower her to be amazing and build incredible programs. I think it's great to plant the flag because there's a reason why entrepreneurs leave. And the reason why entrepreneurs leave

is it is harder to run a business there. And so I guess my question to you is, what's true in that belief system that needs to change in Europe? So one of the things you're changing is the vibes, great, but there's a reason why people come here. There's many more investors.

The investors here are qualitatively, different. You know that. They take more risk. They've had more big wins, so they, you know, they're a little more comfortable with failure. Regulations are different in Europe. And in fact, there's, you know, Europe is, is many different countries with different regulations around employment, etc. So what do you, if there were two or three things that need to change in Europe to make it, make that valid criticism that's easier here, what, what do you need to change? What notes do you take from America? Listen, the number one thing is access to talent that seems scale and success. We do not have the same depth of operators that you have in the US that have seen 100,000, 200 million, 300, 400 million.

We simply do not have that. And so when you hit Series B, C, there is fundamentally a lack of experienced operators who've seen true scale. That takes time. We're seeing more and more, but it is still incredibly prominent as a problem for founders. So I would say absolutely that. Listen, local liquidity markets are completely dead, if we're transparent. You want a statement? There's no exits there.

We have very few here. This is a regulator problem. They want to stop every M&A transaction. It's crazy. And they don't understand what they're doing to innovation. If you don't let the little companies get bought by the medium-sized ones and the medium-sized ones merge and the medium-sized ones merge and the medium-sized ones sometimes, you know, get bought by the big ones. You basically shock the system. You freeze the lake.

They froze the late. Jason, the UK blocked Figma. I mean, it was awful. So ridiculous. What's the vibes over there about that? Like, it's just like, I told the Figma people, why don't you just block everybody in the UK's IP address from using an Adobe product or Figma

and tell them we don't sell the product in your region, therefore you don't have any jurisdiction over it. It's illegal. Our terms of service say English people can't use the product. But also we don't have IPO markets. You know, the London Stock Exchange is not what it used to be. It does not hold the same cachet. have the supply side of cash. The local liquidity markets in other, you know, Germany, France

are not the same. You have, you know, fantastic market to IPO. I mean, such a good IPO market that, I mean, not to, not to toot my own horn about this point, but here's a headline from a week ago, Figma and talks with bankers to explore an IPO this year. This is Jason and I have been talking back and forth by the Figma Adobe deal for a while. I want to go back to age and experience because you said there's not a lot of people in Europe or as many in the United States that have built something to scale and know how to run, you know, post-series C. Fair enough. The mentorship angle of Project Europe makes a lot of sense to me. But the number one question that I've gotten from folks about this project is the age band around who you're looking for.

And I mean, Alex Booker, for example, said that he's interested in the age cap of roughly 18 to 25 that you have. I've seen people call it illegal. What's the thinking there? And can you actually have an age cap under EU regulations? I think you can. I think it's the theme and the thesis, like any firm has. So again, that's the thesis of the firm. And again, it's like a movement and a company that's run by a CEO, but that's the theme and the thesis. So yes.

And then I think it's like you've got to start somewhere. Great companies have an ICP in ideal customer profile. We want to speak to the next generation of builders who will build generational defining businesses. You have to start somewhere. And this is where we start. I think, bluntly, the criticism and the negativity that has come from this, that's not shy away from it, is, bluntly, one of the reasons why the Europe is in the situation where we're in, which is because it is easy to throw peanuts from the side, and not many people actually put their neck on the line and build.

And quite frankly, I can't change policy, Alex. It takes a long time. I'm not smart enough to, I can't change the decline of the German car industry. I can't help French or the British lack of growth, but I'm trying to do all that I can to encourage teenagers who have a dream to build a business and to give them a mentorship from amazing people.

Sorry, Jason. No, what you're saying is dead on and I want to just give you a little bit of fuel. I'm taking the other side. If you're English, you're French or German, I'm waiting for you to come to America. I'll help you get the visa. I, yes, come here.

And so just so Harry knows, he can take this and show it to those peanut gallery people and say, this is what I'm up against. We would love to have you here in America. I literally asked Trump on our program all in, make sure we get green cards for talented people. The administration gets this. To the people of Europe, we want your smartest. We want your best and brightest. We're coming for them. And if you try to stop Harry from what he's doing here, we love it.

We love that you overregulate. We want those talented people. It's a war for talent. This is what the UK government has forgotten, that we are in a global war for talent, and we are fighting against you, and you have a great product. And we are fighting against UAE, which has an even better product by the day. They will pay for a lot of your costs. We have to be very strategic in retaining our best talent and see it as a global war for talent,

not a war against France or Germany for talent. You know, two years ago, I wouldn't have asked this question, but I'm curious what impact patriotism is going to have on this discussion because there's a lot of American pride in America, and I would say that it feels like Europe, given the current tensions between my nation and the bloc, is changing its perspective on the U.S. And so, Harry, I wonder, are people going to be a little bit more,

I was born in Europe, I'm going to build in Europe, just given the swobling, you might say, amongst our various governments. I don't think so. I think people will fundamentally do what's right for them and what feels best for them in the moment. But that's, again, our job to create the environment tells them you can. A doom loop is a very dangerous thing. It's a bit like trust. When it starts, it really goes and it goes fast. And when it gains, it gains fast. And so it can be very good or dangerous. And the doom loop started here and the world suddenly picked up on it. And so for me, it was a case of how. do we try and interject and reverse that so that people do feel a sense of patriotism to build here and realize they can. Okay, then is 10 million euro enough to actually slow the doom loop or perhaps even stop it entirely?

One, I think the biggest problem that we've had over the last years is that we've stuffed too much cash into people too early. And so I think it's hilarious that people are saying we should have had more. Listen, could we have done more? Are you kidding me? I went out for 25 founders. That was the only, I went out for 25 founders who would be mentors. I got 150 in three days since I've had another, I honestly don't know, but at least another double that.

So the money was not the issue. It's about choosing unbelievable talent, not just spraying money around, but choosing unbelievable talent, giving them enough to start to feel like they can build a great business, be mentored by an unbelievably successful founder one to one, the mentors only have one other. This is not like any other program where you have like, oh, 10. This is one to one. Oh my God, if I had the chance to have Jason as a mentor when I was starting 20VC,

there was so many things I would do differently, I'm sure. And so that's very different. And so honestly, the money thing I think is just ridiculous. I mean, it's actually great to start a 10 million because what you can do say here's the cohort. There were 50 of them and all we need is but one to actually get to Series A to make this worth

it because the economic viability of a Series A company, you know, that raises 5, 10, 15 million, it's going to shower, you know, that amount of taxes, economic activity. I know this because this founder university that we do

which is like a pre-accelerators for people before they actually have a product or an idea. Yeah, we have only 40% pull through. But because you're starting so early, you don't need to have 80% pull through like you might want from a seed fund or a Series A fund.

You can have a larger number of experiments. And if you frame it as experiments, then you've got the right framing. What's going to happen? I'll predict the next thing. They're attacking you on the age thing, which you can mitigate and say, we're focused on first-time founders

and we're trying to get them to not go into corporate America for the first job, but to start their entrepreneurial journey early. So that's our focus, our ideal customer. But we're open to a 70-year-old, of course. If they want to do it when in their retirement, we'll take a look, sure. And then you just negate the whole thing.

And then you just do whatever the hell you want. They're going to go after you next for, oh, my God, you know, 45 of these went to zero. And it's like, look at the second companies. How many of those 45 that the experiments didn't work out? How many of those then did a second company? that's insane. Do you know what's insane? It's like, yes, we made a lot of noise with it. Did I know we would? Yes. I get distribution like you guys do. I knew that when we had 150 big names pump this, it would be very, very visible. But what's unbelievable is when we invest in companies, every single one of those partners who's invested is really keen to follow on. It's really keen to keep track of it. As an 18-year-old building a, AI company in Vienna, I now have 150 of the biggest founders in Europe literally following my story,

who will support me and promote my company? That's insane. It's pretty great. All right, listen, keep at it. You're great. You're awesome. Ignore the haters. They make you greater. And congratulations on all the success. And I can't wait to see you soon. And if Europe doesn't want these fine, amazing founders. Come to Austin. I'll take you to three different barbecue joints. We'll hang out. Come by the ranch.

Entrepreneurs from Europe. Beautiful here. Cost the living's half of any city in Germany. Tons of young people, tons of freedom. You can get a gun. You can get a ranch. I've never been invited to this trip.

You're going to consider yourself invited. Come anytime. We'll do a cross-over tap. Anytime you're going to. I don't know if we're letting people from the UK in the country right now. That's true. We'll let you know if we're...

I have to see. I have a friend who wants to go to Europe for the summer, and he's staying for more than two weeks. His visa got turned out. Now there's a European visa in the summer. Is this true? The EU makes you, as an American, fill out a visa to go?

Did you hear my... I don't really leave the studio these days. This is a... Well, we'll address it on a future episode, but yeah, there's a thing where, I guess, because the European cities were getting too crowded in the summers, like Italy and all the, you know,

coastal places. that now you have to file for a visa and they might want to be controlling the stampede of Americans coming to what they consider Epcot Center. It's like a part of Disney. And to see like the old world and maybe too many of us

coming for July 4th weekend. You're awesome. I'll see you soon, H-2. Amazing. Bye. Awesome. He's great. You know? Oh, talk about just like showing up and just doing stuff. Like, I mean, I was going to squeeze in one more before we let him go, but we didn't have time,

but why hasn't anyone done this before? Hearing him talk about it, it just makes so much sense. I mean, in Europe, I mean, listen, there's a million programs here in the U.S. because in the U.S., people can do crazy. You can just do things. This is the most important for people, thing for people to understand. You can just do things. You don't need permission.

Go just do things. If it doesn't work out, who cares? Come to Austin. I'm sorry, for people, it's so funny. Whenever I tell people how great Austin is, they come up to me and they're like, don't say them. Tell them it's too hot. tell them that there's seed of fever.

We have to gatekeep this. There's too many people come here. Listen, Austin's had 3% immigration every year. And they, as J.D. Vance just said, he tweeted, like, how can a place that has like, that's growing, have the rents go down and have housing prices go down two, three, what will be three years in a row?

It's because they keep building supply. They keep building supply. Duh. Having lived in San Francisco for a long time, I have such a deep-seated viewpoint on this. And I wanted to take everyone who's a NIMBY and slowly push them into the ocean. Exactly. Well, I mean, it's even worse.

It's even worse in the Bay Area because rich people buy the lot next to them. Like Zuckerberg famously, you can look it up. You bought so many of the houses around him that Palo Alto was like, what's the plan for those houses? And you're like, I'm renovating them. And it's like, it's your eight of the renovations. Did you file renovations? He's like, no, I'm thinking about it or whatever. Like, he was kind of slow rolling it.

And all he was doing from my understanding, I don't know if this is true, is buying the, every time a house became a value, he buys it. Yeah, so here it is. In 2013, Mark Zuckerberg purchased four homes surrounding his Palo Alto residents spending over $30 million. He paid more than they were worth. And we call this, oh, 30, five, they call this like negative population growth. The density in the Bay Area is going down because rich people are buying the home next to you.

almost did this. And then I kind of checked myself and I'm like, am I just buying the home next to me because I can? And then somebody can't live there and raise their family. And then, you know, listen, I got a couple of homes for sale in, in the Bay Area. And I don't need to sell them. I could sit on them. I could rent them, whatever. And I was like, you know what? I want these homes to be free for other families to have them. And it's selfish for me. It's not like a ski house in a ski town. It's like, Do people want to live in ghost towns? And you know what, New York? A lot of the sky rises and lofts are filled with Russian, Chinese money being parked in Manhattan. And they're ghost towns. And people are like, I have a, I have a deli downstairs. I'm trying to sell bacon and cheese and nobody will buy it.

Let's keep going to the stock. Because I get a plane. And there's a couple of other things going around here that we should talk about. Any good startup news. I need some startup news or maybe any startup lessons. You know, I love a good startup lesson. Well, why don't we do kind of both at the same time here? I want to talk about barbelling, because I think this is the new term of art.

And so starting with a tweet from 2024, Ed Sim from Bold Start put out this tweet. And he said, people are doing one of two things at the seed stage. They're raising less than $2 million as little as possible, or they're raising $10 million plus to go as big as fast as they can. And this tweet, I remember from when it came out. But then recently, YSE just had their demo day. and there's been a lot of commentary from folks about what they're seeing today. And keep in mind, Jason, every YC demo day since time immemorial has involved people complaining about prices and people raising too much. However, things have changed.

So here is Nicole Wiskoff of Wiskoff v.C. talking about the YC demo day that just happened. And she says she's seen barbell round dynamics, either a party round with angels and small feeler checks, or they're going to go out there and raise a crazy round. solo founders with revenue and no plans to hire more people, even with more cash, are also part of the trend. So to me, we are seen small team size, AI efficiency, I allow people to build more faster with less money, and on the other side, people raising boatloads of cash. Your thoughts. Static team size, we've talked about it before in the large companies, and that will be replaced by condensation, condensing. Compressing, yeah, workforce compressions coming.

We've seen the static team size, you know, at places like Uber meta, DoorDash, whatever, you know, just get 30% more efficient every year and have your growth be 30% and keep the team size the same. earnings go through the roof, which is why even if we're in a recession or they're trying to have a recession, I think owning equity is just like, this is the greatest buying opportunity ever because these companies are so dynamic that they're going to be like, okay, what's the game on the field? Oh, 18 price earnings averages, 20 and not 25. That's fine. we'll just increase the amount of earnings we have and we'll get our valuation back. So people are dynamic in that way. And so sure, and it's not that founders are deciding they want to go one way or the other.

In a lot of cases, the market will tell them. So you go out and you say, here's my vision. And there's a small number of VCs. The number of Series A's is incredibly low. These large rounds are incredibly low because it's a lot of startups. And so VCs might, you know, have a really hard time just dealing with a number of,

of companies, so they pick one. So that makes it appear as though that founder chose to raise 10 million. And this other founder chose to just bootstrap it. And this other founder chose to raise, you know, a million and keep it small and dilute five or 10 or 15 percent. The other one decided to go big. The other one decided to raise nothing. It might also be that they got a certain reaction from the market. And the market gives them a reaction. That could be correct. It could be Incorrect. Draymond Green was taken in the second round of the draft. I think Jalen Brunson was taken in the second round of draft,

and he's MVP candidate. You know, there's many all-stars in the NBA who are taking the second round. You know how much money is spent scouting? Who should go? Which 30 players should go in the first round versus the second round? It's insane. Insane amounts of research and time and effort to put into that, and they can't get it right.

Same holds true for VCs. The hand-wringing, you know, You know, it's always been there. In a hot market, things get overvalued. And what I'll tell Angels is, I always get asked, and you can read my book, when you're starting out as an angel investor in an oil stage, if you go to Y Combinator demo day, it's been designed to be a high pressure to get dentists and other folks to make snap decisions, which is fine.

You know, it's a little bit of gamesmanship, which is fine. All's fair. These are rich people. And literally, they build the demo day around. the dentist crowd. And I don't mean that in a derogatory way, but people with a lot of money who are like, hey, I would like to get involved in this game. And they're not exactly the most sophisticated and they put high pressure tactics on them. Rounds closing, rounds closing. Here's a piece of advice to you. Go meet 50 people at Demo Day and then check in with them in six months and then see where

they're at. Much better strategy for a first time investor. Maybe make one investment, see how you do. But what you'll find is, of those 50 companies, 49 out of 50, are still willing to take your money. So don't ever feel pressure as an investor. And then the second thing is, of a thousand founders who say, I'm going to start a company and I'm going to build a product, maybe a hundred of them actually released the product. Of the hundred that released the product,

maybe 10 of them actually get to revenue. So 1,000 to 10, 1%, right? Actually get a customer that pays the money. my best advice for first-year investors is only deal with that 1%. Only give your money if you're going to make 10 bets that on the 10 that get the first customer. Why? You've now eliminated the 90 that never get their product to market, the 90%, and then the next 99% that never get a customer.

If you just do that one thing, your portfolio will be incredibly different, incredibly different. And these overvalued high-cap situations that happen in the pressure cooker, the artificial scarcity that's created in a demo day, that artificial scarcity that's created results in an elevation of valuations that eventually comes back down or stays the same a year later. The round is flat a year later. They're still raising on the same note.

But they've got the one customer or maybe 10 or 20. So you can basically make a more intelligent bet. In poker, Alex, this would be like you get Ace 9 off suit and you're out of position. And you say, you know what? I'm going to fold this. I'll let other people play. I'll take a couple of notes. I'll have a sip of my coffee.

Maybe I'll go use the bathroom real quick in this tournament. And then you come back and you're in position and you've got Ace Queen suited. And just that little tweak, Ace 9 off, Ace Queen suited. It doesn't seem that dramatic. Take out the tables. Look at how those hands play in position, out of position. It's a pretty big gap. And that's what will happen in portfolio management.

Go by the book. Angel, tell me what you think. It's $15. It's a lot of knowledge. I want to... Angel University, April 23rd in New York, if you want to go. Angel.

That university, all proceeds go to chart. I want to say, though, I think that this is... I agree with you on... People are reacting to the market. I agree with you that there's always hand-rigning. But when I read this tweet from Terrence, Rohan, he said seed investor,

I think he put money into Figma. He says, the founder of a top YC company in the current batch on venture capital, and this is a quote, people used to climb Everest and they needed oxygen. Today, people climb it without oxygen. I want to summon Everest and use as little oxygen, venture capital, as possible.

He calls it a vibe shit. Yeah. And I just think that this is going to change a little bit the relationship between, you know, venture investors, angels and the dentist crowd and startups because it does feel like we've had, you know, we had Roy on the other day. And you're like, Roy, I want to bet on you. And he's like, oh, I'm already a millionaire. Like that's a different world than it was five years.

ago, 10 years ago, when you and I were still going to every YZ demo day, you know, like, it's, I don't have the right words yet or phrasing or mental framework around the new model, but I think the combination of AI power tools, cheaper than ever cloud infrared to build, infinite distribution, and people just able to do a lot. The old model of SaaS and building expensive enterprise sales teams just feels archaic in the modern moment. And so things really do feel fresh. And I love that. Yeah, cost structures change. And you know what? we sought, you know, in content. And so we had an all-in content summit here at South by Southwest yesterday.

And this was like one of the big topics. I was talking to a friend of my Chris Williamson, who's a podcaster and Samir and Colin or Colin and Samir. And there are like a content shop where they sell people courses on how to do great content and build businesses. And it turns out most of the talented people are now having 10 person under teams, making millions of dollars like we're doing here or, you know, at all in. And you watch somebody like Meg and Kelly or Tucker Carlson, they can do what they do

with under 10 people and they have complete control and they keep their costs low. And then you look at Fox. Fox has shareholders. So shareholders have to get a dividend, right? So that's going to be some percentage of the overall revenue. Then they have management. Management setting the strategy, they have to get a percentage of the revenue. Then they have a building and then they have people and then they have high price studios. And if you look at the output, Megan Kelly, doing her show on YouTube with a laptop and a regular old camera, a couple of lights,

no, probably no camera operators. Whereas when she was in studio, there were probably 15 people operating the lights, cameras, and in that switching room. All of that gets abstracted away, which means you don't have to make as much money and you can have bigger impact

and you have more optionality. So what we've seen in content were one person or, you know, a team of under 10, three people, 10 people, they can have more impact and it's more lightweight, you have less infrastructure, less overhead. It always starts with startups.

Startups are scrappy and so are content creators because they're entrepreneurs. They try to take a nickel and get a dollar of value and that is the new model. And you're starting to see some of the big companies say, okay, maybe I'm not going to do that, but I'd like to get a dollar out of a dollar. It's as opposed to spending $10 and get our dollar of value

or our government spend $100 to get a dollar of value. The age of accountability is here. If you want to compete as a startup, you've got to be accountable to that bottom line, and then you're more defensible. He's Alex Wilhelm. I'm Jason Callaghanes, and this has been another amazing episode

of this week in startups. We'll see you all on Monday. Have a great restful weekend, or build your startup. And if you are building your startup, go to founder.com. You're going to have our 10th class, some big announcements from Founder University.

And we're going to invest in 10 companies on the way in. either the 25K first check or the 125K more accelerator check. So we're going to try to invest in 10 companies coming in. So make sure you apply, founder.com. Check the box that you want to get funded on the way in. Or you could be one of the 30 companies

that we invest in during the program. We're trying to hit 500 companies in this cohort. We're trying to hit 5,000 applications, just roughly double what we normally do. We're trying to scale the program. We're trying to write more 25K first checks. And we're willing to take that risk. The question is,

Are you willing to get two of your friends or two random people who are, you know, builders? And are you willing to take the risk? Let us know, founder. Universe. Love it. Bye, everybody.