← James Reed: all about business
James Reed: all about business
32. What a venture capitalist is REALLY looking for when deciding to invest in your business | Sasha Kaletsky
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- [00:00]
James Reed
Welcome to All About Business with me, James Reed, the podcast that covers everything about business management and leadership. What should you do if you have a brilliant business idea but don't have the funds to bring it to life? In today's episode of All About Business, venture capitalist Sasha Kalecky reveals all. Sascha Kalecki is the co founder of investment firm Creative Ventures, which he started with his cousin Casper Lee. They've injected millions of dollars into digital tech companies in just six short years. Sasha explains how to craft the perfect pitch, how social media is shaping our economy and how you can use simple AI tools to scale your business quickly. Well, today on All About Business, I'm really delighted to welcome Sasha Kalecki who's traveled to talk to us today from New York. So thank you for making the journey. Sasha, you have a really interesting business that I only sort of partially understand, which I know is growing fast and is making waves. So I'm really looking forward to talking to you to find out more about what you're doing and to get a better understanding of where the future may be headed. I think you're doing a lot in the tech, social media, AI space and that's of great interest to me and I know many of our listeners. So your company is called Creative Ventures. You, you were the co founder of Creative Ventures with your cousin Casper Lee. You started out in London and now you're based in New York. You began with a fund I believe of 20 million. Explain what you do, please.
- [01:39]
Sasha Kalecky
So first of all, it's great to be here. We've known each other a very long time, more than 20 years now. So yeah, it's great to be, it's great to be here on the show. Yeah, I mean Creative Ventures, we're an early stage venture capital fund. We invest usually in the first round of companies, sometimes in the second round in consumer businesses. So those are companies that app based businesses, consumer AI. Sometimes we do physical consumer product but generally we're focused on consumer technology. And yeah, we try to lead or co lead rounds. We offer a fund one of $20 million. We recently announced a fund two of $45 million. Yeah, we just, we love what we do and we're going to keep doing it.
- [02:13]
James Reed
So it's going great guns. I mean obviously your second fund is twice as large. You started out in London. I mean I've been looking at some of the things that you've invested in some of these companies. I mean they're fabulous. I mean there's Bird Buddy for instance. Yeah, explain what Bird Buddy does think it creates a picture that is very helpful for people listening.
- [02:31]
Sasha Kalecky
Bird Buddy is an AI bird feeder. If you can believe that that's a thing.
- [02:36]
James Reed
Well, I found it hard to believe that's a thing.
- [02:38]
Sasha Kalecky
So how does an AI bird feeder work?
- [02:40]
James Reed
I mean, who thought of this and what's it do?
- [02:42]
Sasha Kalecky
It's a bird feeder that kind of has a nice looking birdhouse you can put in your garden. But buried in the birdhouse, which a bird would not be able to tell is there is a camera. And attached to the camera is an app and there's some AI happening in the background such that the camera can recognize when a bird comes to feed at the station and takes a video of it. So you on your app can see all the birds that have come to your bird feeder and you can collect.
- [03:11]
James Reed
Birds or you can just watch them on your phone.
- [03:13]
Sasha Kalecky
You can watch them on your phone. So you get a notification when. If a new species comes or if you want to get notifications every 10 minutes, you can.
- [03:20]
James Reed
I've become a bit of a bird of myself, you see. So you can see the goldfinch, you know, just going.
- [03:24]
Sasha Kalecky
Exactly. And then you collect for the different birds. The only problem, the biggest issue for the business is squirrels because the squirrels come and also sometimes set off the AI. So you have to. I got my mother one and she's filtered out squirrels.
- [03:36]
James Reed
Doesn't like squirrels.
- [03:37]
Sasha Kalecky
She doesn't. Well, you know, the squirrels. It's annoying, but it's really close up images with a kind of fisheye wide angle lens of like a squirrel's face really kind of zoomed in. So you don't necessarily want that when having breakfast. But, but, but, yeah, the business is actually surprisingly going incredibly well.
- [03:54]
James Reed
I'm not surprised at all. I want one of these because I watch the birds from afar and I think it's a really. And you can then look at them on your phone when you're on the tube going to work or whatever.
- [04:03]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah. And it's like a classic example in a, you know, venture capital you have, you have to sometimes invest in companies that don't even sound like that's a real category. If you ask what's the, what's the market size of AI bird feeders? You know, before this company was zero. There was basically no market for AI bird feeders. But if you think about the number of people who are interested in birding, which actually is surprisingly a lot, millions.
- [04:25]
James Reed
Around the world say surprisingly. I'm not surprised.
- [04:27]
Sasha Kalecky
It's a fantastic thing to do. Yeah. Pretty much a lot of people over the age of 50. Surprisingly, if you're under the age of 50, that's true.
- [04:32]
James Reed
The older I've got, the more interested I've been.
- [04:34]
Sasha Kalecky
That's what I've heard.
- [04:34]
James Reed
So for young people, this is incredible. But for all the people, it's perfectly.
- [04:38]
Sasha Kalecky
And then if you multiply the number of people, the millions of people in the world that are interested in birding by, you know, $300, which is the price they end up paying for this bird feeder, and you can generate a lot of revenue. You generate very, very big business.
- [04:50]
James Reed
Yeah, so. So did you find the entrepreneur who'd set this up or how did you meet, how did that, how did that become a business journey?
- [04:56]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah, it's an amazing team. Oh yeah. One ex SNAP engineer and one marketing guy, as well as a hard consumer hardware person. So it's a perfect blend. This is what we really like to see is they combined the marketing, the engineering and the hardware all into one business of founding team. They're actually based in Slovenia, between Slovenia and the eastern United States. And yeah, they were just a perfect team for this and they've executed superbly.
- [05:23]
James Reed
This is a business that's only become possible really recently in terms of its connectivity and technology.
- [05:30]
Sasha Kalecky
That's something you really want to see in companies. Like. That's a question that's almost become like a truism or something really obvious within. It was almost overstated sometimes within venture capital. But this is why now? Question, which is like, what's the reason why now is the moment for there to be a billion dollar company build? If something's been possible to do for already 30 years and there's no billion dollar companies doing it already, it's probably not a very good idea.
- [05:52]
James Reed
Not for you. I can see the logic of that. So there's another one that I looked on your website. This is on the Creator Ventures site, if anyone's interested, which was just called Feels. And I clicked on that and it was made very clear to me that this was only for people under 30. And it looked like a dating site. And it reminded me years ago when I worked in advertising, I worked on Club 18 to 30 holidays, which is all this audience in. And it had the brilliant, it had the brilliant insight on Feels, your business site, that you only had 628 weeks of your life between 18 and 30. And I say I wish I thought of that line. Back in the 1980s, we were trying to get people to go on 18 to 30 holidays. But it seems to be Catering for exactly the same audience in. In a new contemporary way. What does feels do?
- [06:39]
Sasha Kalecky
Well, first of all, I'm happily. I'm happily engaged. I may be married by the time this goes out, so I definitely will not be.
- [06:45]
James Reed
Congratulations.
- [06:45]
Sasha Kalecky
But I'm actually not a customer of Fields.
- [06:47]
James Reed
You're an invest.
- [06:48]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah, exactly. So not a customer. And I'm too old. Anyway, that's the other thing. But basically, you know, then the number one Gen Z dating app in France and Germany and they're starting to expand elsewhere around the world. They've built a pretty. Pretty good business out of it. But basically, yes. That idea of when you make something exclusive or you make some people feel like only a certain number of people are able to join it can help with the marketing and make them go viral on TikTok. And it can help. It becomes more emotive when you almost restrict it. But I think what's really good about their business is that again, the team have done an incredible job making the product fun to use. So it's all video. If as a.
- [07:23]
James Reed
Because dating apps are not new, are they?
- [07:25]
Sasha Kalecky
No, dating.
- [07:25]
James Reed
Apple's got something different about it which is all. It's all video. So it's like.
- [07:30]
Sasha Kalecky
Exactly, it's TikTok. You scroll through and it's kind of fun. You. You have people not just for themselves, you know, doing the peace sign in front of the Eiffel Tower or whatever people put on Tinder. Yeah, exactly, that's. And so people are more doing themselves doing, you know, like windsurfing in some really impressive way or bungee jumping or just things that you would kind of send your friends on Snapchat. That's what they've done is it's really. It's really working well.
- [07:51]
James Reed
So the third business I'm going to ask before we get into the how all this works from your point of view on your site was called Lottie, which is the other end of life.
- [07:59]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah. Yeah.
- [08:00]
James Reed
It's all about care homes I saw and how to choose a care home. That looked pretty interesting because, you know, I think lots of people, you know, with older parents would be thinking how do I go about that? And it seemed to be delivering that offer in a new way. Again, explain what Lottie is and does.
- [08:16]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah. It's funny that the companies people decide to people's eyes are drawn to within the website and so clearly you like the pink. I think that's probably what drew you to it. They've built both a marketplace to find a care home for your loved ones. They're mostly targeting actually the children of the old people because the old people don't usually.
- [08:36]
James Reed
No, they don't want to go to care homes.
- [08:38]
Sasha Kalecky
They don't want to go to care homes and they also don't want to search on Google to find the best one. But it's basically a marketplace to help you find the best one for your parents. And they also have. That's how they started. They've now built a software as a service platform for the care homes to manage their operations internally and to manage billing and all this kind of stuff. But again, it's a great, it's a great team of people who've. And they've raised now, I think we did their seed round. They've now raised about $35 million or something like that since.
- [09:06]
James Reed
Is it an advertising business model or a subscription business model, do you know?
- [09:09]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah, it's a cross between the two. They have basically an affiliate, effectively what is structured. It's actually been more complicated for regulatory and legal in health care reasons and stuff. But basically it's an affiliate model on the one side which is a marketplace where they get effectively they've managed to monetize some of the leads that they send to care homes and then they also have a product for the care homes where they charge a subscription monthly for use of their, you know, care software.
- [09:34]
James Reed
It looked really easy to, you know, see where these places were, what they were like and importantly what they cost per week, per month or whatever. And I thought that was really helpful. Yeah, I really enjoyed going for a browse around your.
- [09:45]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah, well that's the good thing about consumer is that every, it's very much.
- [09:48]
James Reed
Everyone feels, yeah, I might try this.
- [09:50]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah. Whereas if you're a kind of infrastructure tools, you know, developer tools, AI company, you probably would and you wouldn't, you know, you wouldn't necessarily understand the words on the website and what they. Or you might, but others, others wouldn't.
- [10:01]
James Reed
That's kind of you to say that. Maybe not but I think what, what's great is you can, you can see these businesses. So why did you decide to go into this space? How, how did your business journey begin?
- [10:11]
Sasha Kalecky
So we started as an investment club.
- [10:14]
James Reed
We used to.
- [10:15]
Sasha Kalecky
So Creative Ventures started an investment club. So in 2019 I was working at a job in private equity doing consumer and tech investments at a firm called Bridgepoint and I previously worked very big firm. It's 60 billion AUM. It's, it's a great, great place and they've had, you know, great, great Track record in like a.
- [10:33]
James Reed
You mean assets under management, they've invested 60 billion?
- [10:36]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah, yeah, they manage 60 billion. So it's a huge firm. So yeah, I was doing consumer and technology investing there but I had, you know, previously worked in startups and had that kind of early stage passion. So I was actually doing as many people who work in finance and other jobs. I was doing some angel investing on the side but the way I was doing it was with my co founder and now co founder at the time. Just investment buddy. Yeah, his name's Casper Lee, who's my cousin. He was originally a YouTuber.
- [11:04]
James Reed
He was quite a successful YouTuber.
- [11:05]
Sasha Kalecky
Very successful YouTuber and he's. But he's also great entrepreneur. He co founded a company called influencer.com which is, which is a big business now. I mean they've got about 150 employees.
- [11:16]
James Reed
Right.
- [11:17]
Sasha Kalecky
Tens of millions of dollars in revenue. Very profitable. It's a, it's a big.
- [11:20]
James Reed
So they help people become influencers.
- [11:22]
Sasha Kalecky
They actually, they've helped big enterprise brands find influencers, find influencers and pay them.
- [11:27]
James Reed
So they're like an agency thing?
- [11:28]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah, this is a tech enabled agency basically. So he had the founder thing, he had the creative thing and we get on really well and so we started investing together in startups and we, we created an Investment Club in 2019 where other people could invest with us as well. A lot of people respect Casper and thought he has a lot of friends who are also creators and they want to, they respected the business journey he's been on and so they wanted to get exposure to some of the companies he was investing in with me and yeah, we started investing in startups.
- [11:54]
James Reed
So is he older or younger than you?
- [11:56]
Sasha Kalecky
He's two years younger than me.
- [11:57]
James Reed
So I notice you're the general manager or was that right?
- [12:01]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well he's. No, he's got lots of different other things as well. So he's got influence.
- [12:05]
James Reed
You're full time on this and I'.
- [12:07]
Sasha Kalecky
Full time on this. He has, he has, he has other things as well. Exactly. Which actually works really well for us because he's right on the pulse with what's happening in the influencer world. He also has a management company called MVE which is co owned by WME Big Agency Group. So he's got, and he's got lots of different things going on. So that can often help our founders with what's like on the pulse with marketing. Exactly. It keeps us. So we started that in 2019, did that for three years, luckily got Some good results in there. And one of our couple of our companies sold, and things have gone well with that. And so that allowed us to raise our fund. One which we raised at the end of 21. We actually started investing in close at the beginning of 2022. So we raised our fund one at a time when there was an incredible surge of excitement to invest in venture capital. We raised our fund. I don't know, likely unconnected, but then the whole market completed.
- [12:54]
James Reed
There was a bit of a change in the mood.
- [12:56]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah, there was a real change in the mood. It wasn't our fault, but they just happened to coincide.
- [13:00]
James Reed
Nothing to do with you, Sashi. No, I accept that.
- [13:02]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah. Yeah.
- [13:03]
James Reed
So then what happened?
- [13:04]
Sasha Kalecky
So then we started investing when it was much more of a tr. So we got very lucky with the timing. We've invested in some amazing companies, companies you mentioned, but also a company called Beehive, another company which has done very well. Another company called eleven Labs and Practica and various others that have really kind of done. Done super well and raised lots of money and stuff. And so that, you know, we were showing that we kind of could sustainably create returns. We had a couple of exits, and so that was the track record. We used to raise our fund, too, which is a $45 million fund. So that's kind of like where we're at in the journey so far.
- [13:35]
James Reed
So I have to ask you this. You said we've known each other a while. I know that because you grew up in our neighborhood, but now you've moved to America. Your first fund, you raised here. Your second one, it sounds like you moved to America. I mean, this is what we call the brain drain, isn't it? In England, I mean. So why did you go to America? What was it? What were you not getting here that made you think I want to go there?
- [13:55]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah. So I have a. I have a joke that pretty much all of my friends who are about my age are either in London are either moving to New York or having a baby. And I haven't had a baby yet, so I guess I had to do. I had to do the New York move. But no, the brain drain thing is, I think there is something happening. A lot of people have talked about the tax stuff and the non stuff, and that. That's. That's all happening. I'm sure of it. It's not. It's not something that I'm an expert in, obviously. I think that's more of what's happening for the more older people who've already made lots of money, so I really, I don't, I don't know much about that, but I understand that is also happening for my generation of people who, you know, aren't nom noms and don't have to worry too much about their tax bills yet. Most people sort of under the age of 40. I do think a lot of people are moving to the us, especially entrepreneurs, because in many cases there is a greater entrepreneurial energy in the United States. There's often more talent. You can hire talent more easily who have worked in great startups before. There is a great scene in London, but maybe there's not quite the same depth of talent who've kind of seen the journey before. I think that obviously investment is often easier to, to get in the US and you're kind of just surrounded by people all the time who are like, you know, more ambitious and driven and I don't want to make it an anti UK thing.
- [15:06]
James Reed
No, no, I'm trying to. I was hoping by sharing some of your thoughts you might help us in the UK become, you know, more attractive. Yeah, I don't feel you're beating up on the UK at all, but these are the things you're looking for as a, an entrepreneur with a dynamic startup.
- [15:19]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah, and I.
- [15:20]
James Reed
We can have more off here.
- [15:21]
Sasha Kalecky
I agree. And I do think that tone has shifted too far against the UK and too far against Europe. I mean, if you go to, in America, the Europe is treated like it's kind of like a museum or something, which is obviously not at all the case. So people have taken it way too far. But I do think there are things the UK needs to be doing a bit better to keep up with the US on the entrepreneurship stuff.
- [15:39]
James Reed
Yeah, well, that's, that's interesting to hear.
- [15:41]
Sasha Kalecky
Well, and the other thing is for the UK is people, the kind of trodden path is to start in the uk, raise your seed round in the uk, then move to the us and then as soon as you get hit by a massive tax bill because you sold your company, you're long in the US by then. So the UK is almost in this trap where it's getting these companies funded, these amazing entrepreneurs and educating them and all this kind of stuff. By the time the tax bill hits 90%, how are we paying it in the UK? Exactly.
- [16:07]
James Reed
So we need to be stickier as a country for entrepreneurs so that we get the benefits of their great success as well in tax terms. Yeah, you've set up, set up in, in the States now, but just as A thought. If you, if you want to go as a British person to the States, if you're starting a business, you have to employ people, don't you, to be able to move there and become a sort of resident. Is that how it works?
- [16:30]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah. Well, there's various different types of visas. I mean, if you have, if you have $5 million, you can get the new Golden Visa. You have $5 million, that's all. Only the $5 million.
- [16:38]
James Reed
What do you have to do with the $5 million? Invest it in the U.S. no.
- [16:41]
Sasha Kalecky
So this new gold. Well, this new gold introduced, this new gold can give $5 million basically to the US government and you get the right to live in the US and not get taxed on your overseas income, which is pretty incredible. I mean, it's pretty crazy that they've done it.
- [16:54]
James Reed
Really?
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Sasha Kalecky
Yeah, yeah. It's like kind of inspired by these Middle Eastern countries. This is a new policy. But in any case, that's not causing.
- [17:00]
James Reed
This is a Trump era policy.
- [17:01]
Sasha Kalecky
That's a Trump ERA policy.
- [17:02]
James Reed
Pay $5 million in tax and then you can live there.
- [17:05]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah, you can live there all the way troubled if that's the right way. Exactly. And apparently it's had a huge inflow. But no, I think that's not how the entrepreneurs and investors.
- [17:12]
James Reed
Well, that wouldn't draw them necessarily.
- [17:14]
Sasha Kalecky
So I think there's various ways you can, where, you know, you can either sponsor yourself, you can apply for various kind of merit based visas. There are also investor visas. There's various, there's various ways you can do it.
- [17:26]
James Reed
But they are actively encouraging entrepreneurs to come and set up in the States.
- [17:29]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah, I mean they have been do that. Yeah, they have been. I don't know what the Update is on 2025. I, you know, I moved before the current administration, but I'm not sure what the latest. Yeah, I think, I think even the Republican Party is a little bit divided on that policy.
- [17:41]
James Reed
So you have, in your business sort of approach, you have this idea that CEOs can become creators or you're interested. Can you explain what you mean? I mean, what sort of opportunities are you looking for in this space?
- [17:52]
Sasha Kalecky
Well, I mean, I'm doing a podcast here.
- [17:55]
James Reed
Yeah, but this is, but that really.
- [17:58]
Sasha Kalecky
Is actually, this is actually what it, what it is is CEOs doing podcasts and talking about their business. I mean, you've done, you've been doing it before the social media age. Things like being in the ads and personalizing the brand. I think as humans we do, we do like to, to Personalize things. I mean, Reed is a good example of a company that's got the name on the door. And I think that' the reason people have been doing that for, you know, hundreds of years, calling their companies after themselves because it, it's, it's. It engages people's minds to think about a human and to personalize it.
- [18:30]
James Reed
This is a person.
- [18:31]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah. And I think this is the next. The CEO side is the next. The next layer of this. I mean, what people have started to do is building in public. So, you know, people will be on Twitter and talk about, you know, the revenue this month and why they were behind and almost treat the social media world almost like it's a board that they're informing about how their business is going. And it works incredibly well when the business is going great.
- [18:51]
James Reed
Yeah, no, I think I've been around long enough to know it's not always going great. It can be quite painful.
- [18:56]
Sasha Kalecky
Usually as soon as the numbers go down, they decelerate, but I can imagine that. But yes, I do think that the stuff like the podcasting and things like that, it just, it does help with recruiting, which obviously is your line of work, but it also helps with, you know, investment and all the different bits of running business. It can help.
- [19:11]
James Reed
I mean, because it's interesting. You're saying personalize, you know, someone's name being above the door. That's a long way from sort of AI or it feels a long way from AI, but you're in a way combining or looking for ways to combine the two. Is that. Is that right?
- [19:26]
Sasha Kalecky
Absolutely. Yeah.
- [19:27]
James Reed
So how does that. How can we exploit that?
- [19:31]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah. So, I mean, I do. I think, you know, there's a huge opportunity to build companies using AI, both in the product you're selling, but also, you know, in terms of your internal operations and stuff. But I don't think that takes away from how important. Connecting with the leadership team and, you know, personalizing the company and stuff. You can definitely have both. And if anything, some of these AI companies, you almost need that human trust. More people really care who people care about the daily workings of Sam Altman and all this. People are addicted almost to here. And, you know, the CEO of Perplexity and Anthropic and all these come, the big enterprise customers are daily tracking what these guys are doing.
- [20:09]
James Reed
So I think they're living their life entirely in the open. Are they? When you say they're tracking what they're doing, I mean. Well, I mean, sort of find my friend.
- [20:18]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah.
- [20:18]
James Reed
What's going on? Yeah.
- [20:19]
Sasha Kalecky
Well, yeah, explain. Well, I mean, yeah, they're all constantly posting on, on Twitter and LinkedIn and everything like that. The CEOs of those companies, often those posts are model updates or saying, okay, we've built this new product and often it's kind of shipping updates to show all the amazing things they've built. But some of them will blend into personal as well.
- [20:39]
James Reed
Right.
- [20:39]
Sasha Kalecky
So, yeah, tech companies are much more, much more forward about the CEOs being creators.
- [20:46]
James Reed
But that's an always on sort of approach that puts a lot of emphasis on the leader, doesn't it? Yeah, they've got to really sort of be on it. They can't have a down day, can they?
- [20:56]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah, no, absolutely not. Yeah, it's hard. And yeah, like I said, when the numbers start to look, move against you, it becomes even more depressing than it otherwise would be because everybody knows your revenue was X and when it goes to, you know, X divided by two, that's doesn't feel good.
- [21:11]
James Reed
No. And it might have sort of wider ramifications if you got investors going on here.
- [21:17]
Sasha Kalecky
Incidentally, podcasts are the best, best thing to. Best medium for this, for this point, because nobody actually knows how many views you're put. This is a very underrated point about podcasts. Nobody knows how many views you get. It's one of the only forms of social media where it's not. There's no way to track it. So it's, there's no, there's much less shame, which is why people feel more comfortable just starting because it's not embarrassing because your friend got more than you or anything like that.
- [21:41]
James Reed
I'm very pleased to say we get quite a good audience.
- [21:43]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah, yeah.
- [21:44]
James Reed
But, yeah, I'd like it to be larger, so.
- [21:46]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah, yeah.
- [21:46]
James Reed
But I think podcasts are very interesting because it, I enjoy them personally because I'm always learning. I'm learning from every conversation I have.
- [21:54]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah.
- [21:55]
James Reed
And, and you get to sit with someone for an hour and talk to people you wouldn't necessarily get to sit with and talk to for an hour.
- [22:01]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah.
- [22:01]
James Reed
And it's a different kind of conversation. You know, I've done media for years and if you get interviewed on the radio, you get three or four questions, if you're lucky.
- [22:08]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah.
- [22:08]
James Reed
And you've got to make sure you nail your answers to make your point or whatever. This is a more exploratory and I think, therefore more interesting medium. So you, you, you know a lot about media. I mean, you just talked because that's where you invest what's going on in that landscape, you know, at the moment that people should be paying attention to in particular.
- [22:29]
Sasha Kalecky
I mean there's so much, it's, it's, it's really blending into the, the rest of the world. It's really becoming the same. I mean you can see how even just everything, everything from politics and the tariffs being announced on social media one day and then the next day it's changed and it's all happening live on social media. Everything. It's become almost like a form of theater. But from a business perspective. Yeah, I mean there's just, there's new stuff every day. There's. TikTok's gonna be banned, it's gonna be unbanned and now it's gonna be maybe banned again because of the Chinese.
- [22:59]
James Reed
All.
- [22:59]
Sasha Kalecky
You know, this is in the us But I'm sure there'd be global ramifications too. There's Elon Musk renaming Twitter to X and all that stuff.
- [23:06]
James Reed
Do you see any news, sort of channels emerging that you think, well, big for the future, as Tick Tock did most recently? I suppose.
- [23:14]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah. And definitely. Yes. I mean if Tick Tock is banned in the US it is going to cause an incredible new emergence of social media companies. If you went, if you in, in India, Tick Tock was banned in India in 2020 and you know, a good chunk of those users just went to Snapchat and Instagram and Facebook and all other places, but a good chunk didn't. And so that made this incredible unlocking of basically screen time for new apps to dominate the gaming version of Tick Tock content live streaming Indian companies. And it's just like the, the, the social media landscape is much more distributed in India than anywhere else because of this. So the same thing will definitely happen in the restaurant.
- [23:59]
James Reed
I didn't know. So why did they ban it in India those five years ago?
- [24:02]
Sasha Kalecky
It was because the same reason it was tensions between India and China.
- [24:07]
James Reed
Oh, they had that incident in the Himalayas, I remember.
- [24:09]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so they, and that was the cause that was why they banned it was because, yeah, they didn't Chinese owned social media app in their country.
- [24:16]
James Reed
Right. And it created a whole new landscape.
- [24:19]
Sasha Kalecky
It created a whole new landscape. Yeah.
- [24:20]
James Reed
So you could see that happening.
- [24:22]
Sasha Kalecky
Oh this, that will definitely happen.
- [24:23]
James Reed
But there is a sense though, isn't there, that these really dominant social media apps, brands have crowded out everything else. You know, they're big beasts, aren't they? Instagram and Facebook, you know, X. So is that what we're going to. Is that unless the Governments get involved and ban things or smash things up. Is that how the landscape looks set, do you think? Or do you think it will change?
- [24:48]
Sasha Kalecky
I think I agree with what you just said. I think the landscape is becoming more and more apart from TikTok's band, which will cause a brief resetting, maybe a decade or so. Generally the theme is towards more and more concentration in bigger and bigger apps. Just because there are network effects.
- [25:07]
James Reed
Yes.
- [25:07]
Sasha Kalecky
And especially in this TikTok world and the Instagram Reels world and where social media is moving to a feed based system that's algorithmic as opposed. So you don't get content from people you follow. Instead you could get content from anyone in the whole world. AI basically routes you the right content. There's a huge incumbent advantage from having an extra.
- [25:28]
James Reed
AI knows that I like watching Goldfinches and will send me more fees from birders. Is that what.
- [25:35]
Sasha Kalecky
And that's a good example because it is so niche. And so if you try to start a new social media app and yeah, you've got lots about F1 and you know you are interested in football, but you've got F1 and coffee and whatever, which you're not interested in and there's nothing about Goldfinches, you're going to end up getting more addicted to the one that has your long tail of content about goldfishes.
- [25:53]
James Reed
You use the word addicted. I mean, that's what's going on here, isn't it? It's getting us all hooked.
- [25:57]
Sasha Kalecky
They are getting us hooked. And like the old form of social media was, they would, you know, you would be addicted to, in an old YouTube, OG YouTube, you would be very addicted to seeing your favorite YouTube. And every, you know, Thursday, whenever they uploaded, you get a notification, you would be addicted to that creator. Whereas in this new form of social media, you actually get addicted to the feed itself. You're not actually addicted to a specific creator.
- [26:17]
James Reed
No, you just look at Instagram, whatever. Because you want to see more videos.
- [26:21]
Sasha Kalecky
Exactly. So it's more. The feed itself is the addictive part versus the following relationship.
- [26:26]
James Reed
Hence why it's more concentrated.
- [26:27]
Sasha Kalecky
Yes. And it's also bad for creators because you'd much rather have an actual loyal audience of your own versus just appear in a feed next to 100 other people. Because the problem with appearing in a feed is as soon as you become less relevant or as soon as you stop being quite as good at making addictive algorithmic content, you just drop off and no one even notices.
- [26:47]
James Reed
Yes. So that's a tough environment for Creators.
- [26:52]
Sasha Kalecky
It is. Yeah. It's a very tough environment for creators.
- [26:54]
James Reed
So. So does that mean that they should become CEOs?
- [26:57]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah.
- [26:58]
James Reed
What's the story here?
- [26:59]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah, so that's the other way. Is this.
- [27:01]
James Reed
Yeah, that's what I'm thinking.
- [27:03]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah. And that can.
- [27:03]
James Reed
I should go back to my day job.
- [27:07]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah. So the creators to CEO path can be a really good one. I mean, often it's best when a creator does. And we don't invest in that many companies founded by creators. We invest in a lot of companies where the CEO becomes a creator. Our name Creator Ventures, actually, just because we're really interested in social media and we think we can help a lot with that. And the creator world is kind of tangential to what we do, but it's not like we invest in companies founded by creators or anything like that. But to the extent that creators do found companies, often it's not necessarily always best for them to be the CEO itself. Sometimes they would be a co founder that focuses on the growth and marketing and you'll have somebody who's like a technologist or somebody who's got a ton of experience building companies before to be the CEO usually.
- [27:50]
James Reed
So again, that's about creating a good team. Is that. Yeah, where people play to their different strengths. Now, I happen to know that you worked on establishing Uber quite a long time ago. I think it was in Stoke on Trend.
- [28:04]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah, it was.
- [28:05]
James Reed
That's right. That's right, isn't it, Sasha? And I remember thinking how interesting this was because you went to Stoke on Trent, I think, as a relatively young employee. Was it Bridgepoint or Uber directly?
- [28:15]
Sasha Kalecky
It was, it was. Uber was first. Uber was very young. Uber joined his bottom of the hierarch.
- [28:21]
James Reed
Yeah. So you were sort of foot soldier at Uber and they sent you to Stoke on Trent and said, get us going there, please. Which is a good entrepreneurial training. What did you do? What do you have to do? So I want you to share this story. I think it's really interesting.
- [28:33]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah. So I started at Uber as an operations coordinator in 2015, which is the bottom of the bottom of the hierarchy. And Sokotran was not my first city because I wasn't trusted at the time to launch a new city. I actually moved to Birmingham. So I had two choices. Basically when I joined Uber, they say you can either work in the operations team in London and manage a process. You know, for example, drivers onboarding, driving license checks, something like that.
- [29:02]
James Reed
We all know what Uber is now, right?
- [29:04]
Sasha Kalecky
People didn't then I says, yeah, exactly. Well, that was option one or option two was move to Birmingham and help them launch the city. And so I chose, and I'd not spent much time outside of London and the areas around it, but I decided to move to Birmingham and I got really excited by this idea of launching cities. And at the time, after Birmingham, obviously there were lots more cities to launch. Birmingham is the second biggest city in the uk and then the final one to launch was Stoke. And the reason I got so passionate about Stoke is because I actually moved there. It was the city I launched myself, hired the team there and everything like that. But also because it was the last city. Pretty much it was the last city to launch in the whole uk because at the point that we launched Stoke, Stoke's population is not one of the. It's not a huge city, it's 500,000 or something like that.
- [29:48]
James Reed
Yeah, it was one of the smaller places.
- [29:50]
Sasha Kalecky
It was quite a symbolic moment when you launched Stoke. Okay, now, now we've dominated the uk.
- [29:54]
James Reed
We'Re not going to go stoked to keep. For some pride reasons.
- [29:59]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah, exactly.
- [29:59]
James Reed
But the, the interesting thing, you, you use the phrase network effect, as I recall, you had to sort of get what were then mini cab drivers and taxi drivers to join Uber. And then you had to get people who would normally ring a minicab firm to use Uber. I mean, they're both networks you have to build. How did you do that? What was the way, what was, what was the strategy? Because anyone starting out in a new venture has that challenge.
- [30:25]
Sasha Kalecky
Absolutely. So the, the supply side is, is the most important for reasons I'll say in a second. But this, the supplies, it's all about getting supply. So that's the, that's the drivers.
- [30:36]
James Reed
Yeah.
- [30:37]
Sasha Kalecky
So you've got a, a lot of it is real kind of hustle. You've got to, you know, you do something that the old CEO Travis Kalanick used to call slanging, which was like kind of, you know, almost drug dealer talk for kind of unknown for minicab drivers. Yeah, exactly.
- [30:51]
James Reed
So you had to go to a mini cab rank in Stoke.
- [30:53]
Sasha Kalecky
Exactly.
- [30:54]
James Reed
Or do some slanging.
- [30:55]
Sasha Kalecky
Slanging.
- [30:55]
James Reed
So what did you say?
- [30:56]
Sasha Kalecky
So, slanging, how did you get away with that? Yeah, it was a kind of dark arts. It was basically to go into cabs and take cabs places. I mean, obviously you need to take a lot of cabs when you're living in a city, you don't have a car, so you naturally find yourself taking a lot of cabs and you're pitching the driver to Join Uber while you're in the minicab.
- [31:13]
James Reed
Right.
- [31:14]
Sasha Kalecky
That's one, that's one form. Or you can just go to the minicab rank.
- [31:16]
James Reed
Oh, so you're traveling around. So and so what was the pitch?
- [31:19]
Sasha Kalecky
It's because of your point about network effects, it's very hard to convince somebody to join because they're not, there's not going to be demand yet.
- [31:25]
James Reed
Well, no one else is in it.
- [31:26]
Sasha Kalecky
Nobody else is in it. So. So the way Uber fixed that, and this is why the launcher job was so interesting is you had to give people additional drivers, additional incentives to drive. So you could either give them a trip based incentive which is they get additional money for every trip. But the real beginning, they're probably not going to be hatred. And so you have to, you basically pay them by the hour, but you.
- [31:46]
James Reed
Have to, you have to pay them by the hour, but you have to be available for you.
- [31:50]
Sasha Kalecky
But yes, but you have to be really careful because there are some times when it's really busy, for example Friday, Saturday night. And there are some times when nobody wants to work, nobody wants to hail a cab, like for example Thursday afternoon. Problem is all the drivers want to work Thursday afternoons. If you ask the driver where would you rather work Thursday afternoon or Friday night, they're going to tell you Thursday afternoon, but all the business on Friday night. So you have to really carefully create this incentive structure for drivers to want to drive at the times when it's going to be busy.
- [32:16]
James Reed
You stress supply side because, because on.
- [32:19]
Sasha Kalecky
The demand side you, you know, this is the good thing about being a kind of somewhat well known brand. The demand side was much easier because you could just get the engineers to look at everybody who's opened the app within that geofence in the last five years or basically since it started, and email them all on launch day.
- [32:37]
James Reed
Right.
- [32:37]
Sasha Kalecky
And they'll look at, they'll all open the app. Problem is there'll be no cars. So they'll probably be disappointed because then you don't have that network effect liquidity in the system yet.
- [32:46]
James Reed
We used to give people vouchers and things like that.
- [32:48]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah, yeah, they still do a little bit of that.
- [32:51]
James Reed
I don't use Uber. I get something sort of trying to encourage me to switch it on again even now.
- [32:55]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah. But yeah, I'm very proud of the.
- [32:58]
James Reed
Fact that I've got a five star rating as a passenger.
- [33:00]
Sasha Kalecky
No, you don't.
- [33:01]
James Reed
I do.
- [33:01]
Sasha Kalecky
5.0.
- [33:02]
James Reed
Yeah.
- [33:02]
Sasha Kalecky
Seriously, I have.
- [33:03]
James Reed
I think that's quite rare.
- [33:04]
Sasha Kalecky
Okay, so I'll tell You this I'm.
- [33:07]
James Reed
Showing off now, but I'm quite pleased with that.
- [33:08]
Sasha Kalecky
This is a fact that many people that not many people know actually I don't think it's been talked about much publicly. I actually did this analysis myself when I was working there. The number one reason for people to get low ratings as passengers. As passengers.
- [33:21]
James Reed
Yeah.
- [33:21]
Sasha Kalecky
Is actually is not being rude or. Although if you are rude or unpleasant you will get a bad rating. So that you've proven that you're not rude or unpleasant. But the main thing is actually being punctual and not making them wait.
- [33:33]
James Reed
Right.
- [33:34]
Sasha Kalecky
That is what guarantees a low rating because that's actually their time that you're wasting.
- [33:38]
James Reed
No one likes to have their time waste.
- [33:40]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah. So you clearly are my life.
- [33:42]
James Reed
Yes, I try to be. I like other people to be as well. It's good practice in business.
- [33:46]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [33:47]
James Reed
So that's interesting. I didn't know that. Thank you for sharing that. Now the other thing you did is obviously raise these funds. I guess you also had to raise some funds to finance your business as a startup. I'm interested in what I might call the pitch question. What makes a good pitch? You know, when you go out and present your plans to investors or people who might come into the fund. I mean I'm just thinking for other entrepreneurs who might want to get some support from others, whether it's friends or family round or whether it's series A investment, what do you think is really important to get right?
- [34:18]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah. So it's like, I mean there's pitching a venture capital fund and there's also pitching a startup to a fund.
- [34:23]
James Reed
Yeah. Which one would you like to start with?
- [34:25]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah, maybe I'll start with the fund, get the fund over with quickly because that's probably a smaller audience of people who are interested in that. But I'll do that quickly. I mean it really depends on, on a lot of stuff. It's very, it's quite technical. You've got to make sure you've got your strategy and your fund size matches your, what you, who you are and your background and stuff. It's also very depends on some getting anchor investors early and then other investors, maybe family office people that will more follow the more institutional investors who lead it and things like that. But you know, it's, it's, it's, it's not completely different. I think on and in our Fund 1 we was, our Fund 1 investors were much less, less professional. We're more kind of high net worth and family office type people. Our Fund 2 investors are much more institutional, very professional, mostly American investors in terms of raising from vcs. It's a, you know, obviously it's a question I get asked a lot around like, what's the best way to pitch VCs? And it's, it's hard. It's a bit like, it's a bit like asking how to have a good conversation or how to, you know, how to make a friend. It really just depends so much on the context. But I think people can over complicate it a lot. I think VCs really just want it. And most investors in companies just want to understand two things. One of them is how credible are you as a founder? Do you have the skills it takes? Do you have the determination, the drive? Do you, can you bring on people on board, all that kind of stuff? And that's number one. And number two is how attractive is the market that you're, you're trying to build in? Have there been multiple companies that are the large in it? Is it really, is there some reason why now is the moment it's going to take off? And I think just building it around.
- [35:58]
James Reed
So the founder and the market, those are the two things. Those are the two things first.
- [36:02]
Sasha Kalecky
Yes, exactly. I mean, so what do you look.
- [36:04]
James Reed
For when you say how credible you are as a founder? What gives the founder credibility in your view?
- [36:09]
Sasha Kalecky
Also we have a saying which is like we like to invest in companies where the founder is. Seems like he was or he or she was rock chiseled by it or an almighty power to do exactly that startup. So what we really like is where there's somebody who just has an incredibly clear reason why they are the best person in the entire world to do that.
- [36:31]
James Reed
Chiseled.
- [36:32]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah, yeah. As if like God has determined this is the. Determined that destiny. Exactly.
- [36:38]
James Reed
They're gonna go and do it. That's what you look for.
- [36:40]
Sasha Kalecky
Exactly. So like, there's some reason.
- [36:42]
James Reed
How do you decide they're rock chiseled?
- [36:44]
Sasha Kalecky
I mean, so it's basically how does.
- [36:46]
James Reed
One present as rock chiseled? Oh, I've heard this expression, I want to know how to do it.
- [36:50]
Sasha Kalecky
So some examples, it's like for example, one of our companies, Beehive, is a newsletter company, an email newsletter company. And the entire team had previously built the tech stack behind a company called Morning Brew, which made email software. But they were just one customer. They basically built the tech stack for Morning Brew, but shared it with everybody else, and that was Beehive. And so they knew exactly what they needed to do. On day one, they could come out the gate with a lot of it ready. And this is true of many of our companies is people who've come and done something very similar already and know exactly what the plan is. Doesn't have to. That doesn't always have to be the case. Sometimes you could be a kind of much younger person or a college dropout, something like that, who has incredible. But then in that case you need to have 10 out of 10 determination or exceptional intelligence or you need to be a kind of.
- [37:40]
James Reed
And we've spoken to people on the podcast, entrepreneurs who've come out of school with few qualifications sort of work their way up and they've shown themselves to be. Be.
- [37:47]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah, yeah.
- [37:48]
James Reed
Have those sort of qualities.
- [37:49]
Sasha Kalecky
And usually they will. I'm sure you probably get out of them in. When you. When you get to know them. But usually there's remarkable. And by the way, usually they've. Even if they. They're dropouts from school university, which obviously many of the best founders in history are usually they have done something in the past where even if it's competitive video games or selling magic cards on the weekend or whatever it is, usually they'll have done something entrepreneurial in the past.
- [38:11]
James Reed
Often a series of things I've. I've found. But the other point, the market, I mean, we just discussed so AI bird feeders. And there was a zero market. You said yourself.
- [38:21]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah.
- [38:21]
James Reed
So I mean. But you still went invested in it.
- [38:24]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah.
- [38:24]
James Reed
So. But how do you ascertain this is a market of the future? Yes, potentially. As opposed to a market that exists now? Because in a way they're more interesting, aren't they?
- [38:32]
Sasha Kalecky
Yes. So the market of the future is the. Is what. Is exactly what you want. And you know, it's that analysis of working out not what the current. You know, if you ask it a management consultant or investment bank, what the current market size, they'll give you a number which is the amount of people who last year spent money on this thing. What you want is to find out the people who in 10 years will be spending money on this thing, which is much better calculated by just the number of people that would benefit from this thing and the amount of money they would each be able to pay for it, not the amount of people who are currently buying it or using it, if you see what I mean.
- [39:05]
James Reed
Right, I do, but I mean, that's quite speculative.
- [39:08]
Sasha Kalecky
That's very speculative. Yeah. That's the game.
- [39:10]
James Reed
That's the risk. That's the risk you take. Yeah, but. And you've got to try and gauge that. And I suppose the more of this you do and the more experience you gain, the better you'll be.
- [39:20]
Sasha Kalecky
Well, that's a really funny part of it.
- [39:22]
James Reed
Or is that not the case?
- [39:23]
Sasha Kalecky
Well, I don't know. I mean, too soon to say. It's actually, it's really on. It seems to be really uncorrelated how long you do venture capital for and your return, you know, so there's a lot of confounding variables, but it's actually really funny how little correlation there seems to be between how long you do VC and how well you do you.
- [39:42]
James Reed
So what's that tell us?
- [39:43]
Sasha Kalecky
I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. Nothing. Nothing good.
- [39:47]
James Reed
I don't know. Yeah, so it tells us that everyone can have a go in a way that's true. So is there anything else that someone pitching for venture capital funds should think about? I mean, in terms of the pit, I mean, what do you do you get people to give you formal presentations? If so, how long do they last? What do you expect them to leave behind? That sort of thing?
- [40:04]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah, I mean we usually. I usually schedule a 30 minute call with somebody first just because I don't want to waste their time. But then often we'll go over if it's, if it's something that's, you know.
- [40:15]
James Reed
So what, so what would you ask them?
- [40:18]
Sasha Kalecky
I don't have a set question. Some people have set questions, you know, that they ask and I don't do that at all. The only question I always ask is just like to ask them the story of the business, like how they start a bit like what you asked me actually the story of how they, how they started it. Usually I don't need to ask it because that's the natural thing.
- [40:32]
James Reed
They usually want to tell you that.
- [40:35]
Sasha Kalecky
So I don't really have any set questions at all. But it's really just understanding how they got going and why the team, the capabilities. That's the way we spent the majority of the call.
- [40:46]
James Reed
So you have 30 and then after that you and your partner might chat about it and then you decide what you might go and visit them after that or what's the next step.
- [40:53]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah, we'll often meet them in person before, but we don't need to because part of our advantage of being such a small team is we can make decisions extremely quickly, which is obviously much better than a much more institutional firm that takes long to decide and founders really appreciate early commitments. Almost to the point where it's the Most important factor is how quickly you can decide.
- [41:15]
James Reed
How quickly would you decide on average.
- [41:17]
Sasha Kalecky
Then it can be anything.
- [41:18]
James Reed
That's a competitive advantage you've got.
- [41:20]
Sasha Kalecky
Yes, it is, Yeah. I mean, it can, you know, the longest summers will know founders for years before we actually invest in their company. But in other cases it will be in the matter of days, you know, or a weekend where we can just cram it all in.
- [41:31]
James Reed
So what do you do next in terms of due diligence then?
- [41:34]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah, so it would be getting to know them in the first call. Usually that the first call lasts more than 30 minutes if we're really digging, unless somebody has a hard stop or something, usually it'll go on and then it'll be looking at their backgrounds, trying to do references, you know, on the back door with them, but also looking at their numbers, seeing if there's having any early signs of product market fit it as well. And, yeah, just getting to know them better.
- [41:59]
James Reed
But these are businesses that already have customers, typically.
- [42:01]
Sasha Kalecky
It really depends. It really depends. We can do pre all customers or we can do, you know, we can do after customers. It just depends.
- [42:08]
James Reed
So someone's got an exciting business that they want to pitch to. How do they find you? Sasha?
- [42:12]
Sasha Kalecky
I guess LinkedIn. I have my LinkedIn and Twitter DMS.
- [42:15]
James Reed
Are open and we'll put your details in the show notes.
- [42:18]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah, yeah, perfect.
- [42:19]
James Reed
So you're obviously looking, looking. We've got this new fund which is fantastic. Who's going to be looking for. Looking for opportunities to invest.
- [42:25]
Sasha Kalecky
That's absolutely right, yeah.
- [42:26]
James Reed
And we want to encourage entrepreneurs, so that's. That's brilliant. You work with your cousin Casper. Is that. Is it. Is the fact that he's a cousin important? I mean, quite interested in sort of family dynamics here because we've had siblings on the podcast and I've had someone who works with their brother. And is that a good model, do you think?
- [42:45]
Sasha Kalecky
I think it's fantastic. You, I mean, you know about family business, so you've seen this firsthand, but there's a certain level of trust that you can't screw each other. That just makes decisions so much quicker to make because you're not worried about the other person. Not worrying about not having to have your guard up can just make your entire life so much smoother and easier. And I think that's why family business can be so successful. Yeah, I think at the beginning it was really important because we created this investment club with other creators in Casper's orbit and so. But I was running it basically, and so they could tell that I was trustworthy by the fact that I was related to Casper and he trusted me. So that helped them to. Those were basically our first, you know, people investing alongside us. So they almost trusted me because they trusted Casper.
- [43:35]
James Reed
So trust is so important in business in all sorts of ways. But you just said something. It speeds things up, up, which I find very interesting because that's my experience as well. I mean, if you don't have to put everything through a team of lawyers.
- [43:48]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah.
- [43:49]
James Reed
It happens more quickly.
- [43:50]
Sasha Kalecky
It's incredible.
- [43:51]
James Reed
Yeah. So finding people you trust. So how are you going to do that as you grow, you've got a bigger business, it's going to become bigger again, I'm. I'm sure. What are you, what are you going to. How are you going to make sure you find colleagues that you trust?
- [44:03]
Sasha Kalecky
Well, I think we'll definitely remain lean. I don't know. We'll remain exactly as lean. But yeah, I mean, we have $65 million under management and with, you know, it's me full time, Casper's part time and we have an assistant who's. Who's great.
- [44:17]
James Reed
But how ambitious are you for the mount under management?
- [44:20]
Sasha Kalecky
Well, the amazing part, the reason I mentioned that is because it's. There actually is very little to no correlation between how much money you actually manage and how many people you need in the team. And we could scale a lot with our team size, as it happens, we shouldn't scale a lot.
- [44:36]
James Reed
But you're putting into bigger, bigger investments. I suppose Bridgepoint must employ quite a few people.
- [44:41]
Sasha Kalecky
Well, so. Yes.
- [44:42]
James Reed
Other end of the spectrum. Yeah.
- [44:44]
Sasha Kalecky
So. So private equity, you do need more people because you need bodies to, like me, to execute the actual due diligence on the company.
- [44:52]
James Reed
Right.
- [44:52]
Sasha Kalecky
Whereas my philosophy for venture capital is it's very important for it to be the same person doing the due diligence as making the investment decision. So you, you know, you, you. I'm sure you have, I mean, how many layers does Reed have? How many, like, how many layers is it? That.
- [45:09]
James Reed
That's a good question. Six, eight.
- [45:10]
Sasha Kalecky
Six, eight. Okay. So every layer of those. Six, eight. You know, the information fidelity. Yeah. Very slightly reduces. And so you probably want to, you know, it's a massive company, so you need to have enough layers. But the fewer you can have, obviously, the better you can make decisions at the top.
- [45:24]
James Reed
Yes.
- [45:25]
Sasha Kalecky
And so we have, you know, we've taken that to an extreme where we have zero layers. We just have the people making the decision being the people themselves looking at the company.
- [45:34]
James Reed
So that's, that's a limiting factor in a sense. But it might be your, your usp. It is secret sauce in a way.
- [45:42]
Sasha Kalecky
It definitely is.
- [45:43]
James Reed
Because it means you found that so far.
- [45:45]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah, for sure.
- [45:45]
James Reed
And that's part of your own diligence. If you're going to make an investment, it's your sort of.
- [45:49]
Sasha Kalecky
You have to do your intelligence. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Because otherwise what are the things that.
- [45:55]
James Reed
You look for that would put you off? You know, when you're looking under the.
- [45:58]
Sasha Kalecky
Bonnet, I think probably the biggest one is like getting the feeling you can't trust somebody back to trust.
- [46:03]
James Reed
Yes.
- [46:04]
Sasha Kalecky
But you know, it's like if you feel like somebody's maybe be exaggerating when it's okay to be a bit sales sales like that's often good Founders are. But if you get the sense that.
- [46:14]
James Reed
Enthusiasm goes to too much exaggeration.
- [46:16]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
- [46:17]
James Reed
That could be a bit off putting.
- [46:18]
Sasha Kalecky
Because you know they are long term relationships and you can't, if you can't really feel like you can truly trust somebody. That's definitely the probably the biggest red flag. I think there's, you know, it's, it's so case dependent but you know, in terms of like a lot of people, one red flag that founders should be careful not to do is, is they'll throw in like buzzwords that don't necessarily actually relate to their business. So that's tactical point. But actually you'd be shocked by how many people.
- [46:43]
James Reed
Why do they do that?
- [46:44]
Sasha Kalecky
Because they want to be the AI. You know, for example, right now companies that aren't really that much AI, they'll describe themselves AI powered or they'll change their URL to AI. And it's got nothing to do with AI. Which that sounds like a detailed point but you'd be shocked by incredible number of people that do that. And it's just a bit of a.
- [47:01]
James Reed
Well when they're not actually in it. Because one of your business practica is a language as is AI.
- [47:06]
Sasha Kalecky
That is AI.
- [47:07]
James Reed
So that is AI driven language learning.
- [47:09]
Sasha Kalecky
I mean you're, you're, you're getting taught English by an avatar.
- [47:12]
James Reed
Right.
- [47:13]
Sasha Kalecky
So you learn English with AI.
- [47:15]
James Reed
So that makes sense when it's AI to flag it as such. But you're saying don't put AI on if it's just your regular business that.
- [47:23]
Sasha Kalecky
People, people started that goes back to trust again.
- [47:25]
James Reed
I mean it's because it's not AI.
- [47:26]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah, that's right. It's misdescribing something and that's Just a silly example, but there's like people used to do that with, you know, crypto and creators. People just find the thing today.
- [47:37]
James Reed
Yeah.
- [47:37]
Sasha Kalecky
That will help them change.
- [47:38]
James Reed
Was a big deal, wasn't it? Exactly about that at one point.
- [47:41]
Sasha Kalecky
Yes. And so they'll just jump onto the, you know, the current thing and position it as. That's what they're interested in. And that's big red flag.
- [47:48]
James Reed
Right. So you've got to be real.
- [47:50]
Sasha Kalecky
You want to be real, you've got.
- [47:52]
James Reed
To be real, you've got to be. So I mean, just to sort of probe a little further into AI, because it is, it seems to be this year's big deal deal 2025. Everyone seems to be talking about it. You know, how. How can companies make better use of AI from what you have seen? I mean, because obviously you've seen all these interesting examples. Is there any sort of more general advice you might give businesses who are thinking about, I better do something with AI, what should I do? What should they be looking at?
- [48:21]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah. So more and more companies have started writing these memos to their employees about we're an AI first company.
- [48:27]
James Reed
Company.
- [48:28]
Sasha Kalecky
First one to do it was Toby from CEO of Shopify, wrote an entire memo to his entire company saying, we are now AI First. Any job. All job offerings will be reviewed, but to see if they can be replaced by AI and then to hire somebody who can be the AI, who can use the AI. And then the CEO of Duolingo came out with the same thing. And more and more CEOs saying.
- [48:55]
James Reed
So they're just saying to their team, prioritize AI in every way.
- [48:59]
Sasha Kalecky
Exactly. Prioritize. See what the maximum you can do with. With AI. And you know, how's that going?
- [49:07]
James Reed
It seems the result of that.
- [49:09]
Sasha Kalecky
Well, yeah, we'll see. But it is, it is. I do think a lot of it is just about agency and just having. Being trying to think about what you can use AI for. Because sometimes you'd be surprised by how much you actually can get done, even just with ChatGPT.
- [49:20]
James Reed
So where does it leave jobs?
- [49:21]
Sasha Kalecky
Well, so I actually have a. I have a view that you're. And it's. I'm not just saying this because I'm talking to you do. But I, I believe that this is good for employment. I really do. I genuinely believe that.
- [49:31]
James Reed
And you're not saying that just because you're talking to me.
- [49:32]
Sasha Kalecky
I promise you I'm not.
- [49:36]
James Reed
Using my ears. Why do you think?
- [49:37]
Sasha Kalecky
No, I, I do think that because.
- [49:39]
James Reed
I think jobs are important.
- [49:40]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah. Jobs, yeah, jobs are definitely important, especially for you. But no, I think it will actually be good for the job market because I think what people sometimes forget is that the job market is not a static system, it's a dynamic system them. So if one company has AI and can get more leverage out of their employees, then they're going to start doing more with that leverage and building more stuff and, and becoming more competitive. Their competitor is going to need to do the same thing. So they're going to need to hire more people to actually. So it's like the market for, for example, web designers. It's become 100 times easier to design a website in the last 20 years and the market for web designs is 20 times what it's ever been. It's been making financial models has become quite literally a thousand times easier than it was and more complicated. But what did that lead to? They made the investment banks just make more complicated financial models and have their own.
- [50:31]
James Reed
Interesting.
- [50:32]
Sasha Kalecky
And so I believe that the leverage that AI gives actually will just make more output per employee. So what do you do? You hire more employees, it's more output. And so I just, I don't believe people who. And there will be some reshuffling of people all and, But I think the actual number of raw people hired will not drop at all.
- [50:50]
James Reed
Well, that's been the history of technology up until now. Yeah, it seems to have created more jobs.
- [50:54]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah.
- [50:56]
James Reed
But I mean I think work is important for all sorts of reasons, but particularly our personal well being actually. So that's, that's, that's, that's good to hear. And we had a guest on the podcast, we talk about the, the philosopher, British philosopher Bertrand Russell had a negative view of a factory where new technology was introduced. And he thought they'd either, you know, they'd half the workforce or make half the people work twice as long. I said no they won't, they'll just double output. Yeah, yeah. Quite surprised you didn't think of this. But that's exactly what you've just said, is that it will make us produce more and become more productive, hopefully.
- [51:28]
Sasha Kalecky
And actually that is my biggest fear with it. Of all the fears, I mean people, some people worry about catastrophe and AI taking over. My biggest fear is it's going to result in people working too hard. Too much work.
- [51:37]
James Reed
Well, I think some of those CEOs are always on, yes. Where does it go?
- [51:41]
Sasha Kalecky
Yes.
- [51:42]
James Reed
Is that what you mean?
- [51:43]
Sasha Kalecky
Yes. And even as a CEO or as somebody who's ambitious and pushing hard, there's actually no Excuse not to be hacking on some AI thing or working or using AI to somehow improve yourself or get smarter or do your job better. Because now it's work from home as well. So there's no reason why if you're ambitious, you shouldn't just be permanently working. And that's what leads to a very sad culture where it's six day week, seven day weeks, just grinding all the time just to keep up with everybody else. Else. So that's actually my biggest.
- [52:11]
James Reed
So that's. You think that's a danger? That's interesting.
- [52:13]
Sasha Kalecky
I think that's the world we're starting to move towards.
- [52:15]
James Reed
If you look, you see that in America.
- [52:17]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah, yeah.
- [52:18]
James Reed
More Silicon Valley obvious to me here. Yeah. So that might be coming.
- [52:22]
Sasha Kalecky
It's interesting.
- [52:23]
James Reed
No, but maybe it's different.
- [52:24]
Sasha Kalecky
I mean, you've heard of, have you heard of 996 in China?
- [52:26]
James Reed
Yes.
- [52:27]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah. 9am to 9pm Six days a week, that type of culture. There's some Silicon Valley companies that are doing six day weeks, usually AI companies.
- [52:35]
James Reed
We had a guest who runs a business in Turkey, so they work six days a week in Turkey week. I mean people here are talking about a four day week.
- [52:42]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah, yeah.
- [52:42]
James Reed
But you're saying some AI companies in America have moved back to a six.
- [52:45]
Sasha Kalecky
Day, six day week.
- [52:46]
James Reed
Yeah, because. Interesting. My father started this company on 7 May 1960, which was a Saturday.
- [52:52]
Sasha Kalecky
Okay.
- [52:53]
James Reed
We used to work on Saturdays. Yeah. So that's interesting. It was a six a day or a five and a half day week in the early 1960s. So it's not a given, is it, as a five day week or a four day week. Could be a six day week.
- [53:04]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah.
- [53:05]
James Reed
And that's, that's your concern? I think that would be. I wouldn't want to go to that Chinese system either.
- [53:10]
Sasha Kalecky
No, we need leisure.
- [53:11]
James Reed
Yeah. No, I think it's important when we need to have a, you know, a fulfilled life which includes a lot of different activities.
- [53:18]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah.
- [53:19]
James Reed
Some of them work and others related to or beyond it. So thanks for coming and talk to me. Sasha, is there anything else you want to say about Creative Ventures before I ask you my two concluding questions?
- [53:31]
Sasha Kalecky
No, it's been. No, it's been great to chat. I think we've covered a lot, lot and. Yeah, thanks.
- [53:35]
James Reed
I think it's really exciting what you're doing and, and I would urge our listeners to have a look at some of those businesses on your site because they're really interesting. So my first question of the last two is, is there's a Clue on the wall is, is what gets you up on a Monday morning.
- [53:49]
Sasha Kalecky
So you'll know this because again we've known each other for a long time but I am, I'm not a morning person. So I start you know, I, I generally well some you don't get out.
- [53:57]
James Reed
On a Monday afternoon, do you?
- [53:58]
Sasha Kalecky
Well so I. This will bring you New York. I get up predictably about five minutes before my first meeting because I usually have a zoom meeting, you know 9am and so it's a mad dash 8:55am to get to the zoom meeting on time. So actually my like if you are, if I give you a literal answer to the question it's a complete disaster. Every Monday morning I'm completely feel terrible.
- [54:24]
James Reed
Well that's very reassuring. You can do well and still be in bed at 8:30, 50. Yeah, so that's good.
- [54:30]
Sasha Kalecky
So yeah that's the real answer. That's the, that's the literal answer. But this spiritual answer is that I, yeah I really, I really love what I do and it is really important once you've you know, had the first 9am call you've had a cup of coffee to really look forward to your, to your week. So, so yeah I'm definitely follow up.
- [54:46]
James Reed
Questions that mean you go to bed really late. I mean you do you work at night.
- [54:49]
Sasha Kalecky
So I'm one of those biologically disadvantaged people and I can tell you're the opposite of this but I actually need sleep unfortunately and it's a real disadvantage and by way the way there's no, there seem to be no evolutionary advantages to compensate for it. Anyone can be able to tell it's.
- [55:02]
James Reed
Going to be good for your brain.
- [55:03]
Sasha Kalecky
I, I don't know. I don't know. Nothing's been proven so, so yeah it's just I need, I need, you know I really struggle without getting eight hours of sleep which means I still can go to bed at you know, midnight or so and it's still tough.
- [55:15]
James Reed
Yeah, well people are encouraged to, to sleep healthily which is eight hours. So that's good. So my last question, and it's a question from my interview book why you is where do you see yourself in five years time. Time.
- [55:27]
Sasha Kalecky
Yeah. So doing the same thing, you know we'll. Our business is a very long term business. You know these funds have a life of 10 years. So when you, when you know we started the, when we started the fund in 2022, beginning of 2022 we were making a 10 year promise to our investors. So that's that fund one was a 10 year promise to end in 2032. We've just, you know, we've just closed fund two and that's going to end in 2035. You know, by five years time we'll probably have a next fund that will have another 10 year life on it. So. So you're making these incredibly long term commitments to both your investors and the founders that you're investing in and obviously your co founder and everything like that. So my answer is definitely doing the same thing and I'll be very, I'll be very happy as long as I'm allowed to do it.
- [56:07]
James Reed
So you're in this for the long haul?
- [56:08]
Sasha Kalecky
Very much so, yeah.
- [56:09]
James Reed
I wish you every success and I hope you'll come back and talk to me again and we can see how some of these ideas have developed. That'd be fascinating. Thanks, Sasha.
- [56:16]
Sasha Kalecky
It's really interesting to talk to you. Yes, thanks for having me.
- [56:18]
James Reed
All the way from New York. Thanks a lot.
- [56:20]
Sasha Kalecky
Thanks. Bye.
- [56:22]
James Reed
Thank you, Sasha, for joining me on All About Business. I'm your host, James Reid, chairman and CEO of Reid, a family run recruitment and philanthropy company. If you'd like to find out more about Reid, Sasha or Creative Ventures, all the links are in the show notes. See you next time.