20VC: How to Fix the UK Tech Ecosystem | Why We Need to Flood the UK with Venture Capital | What the UK Can Learn From Sequoia, Stripe and Norway | Why Now is the Time to be Bullish on China & Lessons from Jensen Huang with Tom Hulme & Stan Boland

Summary

Summary of Episode: 20VC – How to Fix the UK Tech Ecosystem

Released on April 10, 2025

In this compelling episode of The Twenty Minute VC (20VC), host Harry Stebbings engages in an in-depth discussion with two of the UK’s most influential figures in the venture capital and entrepreneurial landscape: Tom Hume, General Partner at GV leading all of GV's European investments, and Stan Bohlen, a highly successful UK entrepreneur with a track record of selling companies for substantial sums, including sales to Nvidia and Broadcom. The conversation delves into the challenges and solutions necessary to rejuvenate the UK tech ecosystem, emphasizing the critical need for increased venture capital, talent retention, and strategic policy reforms.

The Disparity in Venture Capital Between the US and the UK

Stan Bohlen opens the dialogue by highlighting the significant lag in value creation between the US and the UK. He states:

“$20 trillion of value created in the last 50 years in building decacorns in the US. The UK's created about 170 billion of value in the UK.” (00:00)

This stark contrast underscores the urgent need for the UK to amplify its venture capital investments to match the US's success in fostering high-value tech companies.

Talent Retention and Attraction Challenges

A central theme of the discussion revolves around the UK’s struggle to retain top engineering and founding talent. Tom Hume emphasizes that:

“The biggest rate limiter is the supply of founders and operators.” (07:14)

Both guests agree that while the UK produces substantial engineering talent through prestigious universities like Oxford and Cambridge, the country fails to attract and retain the best minds, leading them to migrate to the US where more robust capital support exists.

Stan elaborates on this by pointing out the global competition for talent:

“Two big exporters of talent in the world, I think one is China, one is India... we need to make the UK the magnet for entrepreneurial talent.” (08:25)

Funding Shortfalls and Capital Allocation

Stan addresses the significant shortfall in venture capital within the UK:

“US raised about $76 billion last year; the UK raised $3.7 billion. We're short about $12 billion in venture capital.” (10:38)

He argues that increasing venture capital is not just about mirroring the US model but about creating a foundational shift where capital availability stimulates the ambition and growth of UK-based companies. Tom adds a nuanced perspective, advocating for concentrated investment in high-potential companies rather than evenly distributing capital across the entire market.

Government Role and Policy Recommendations

The conversation shifts towards the role of government in bolstering the UK’s tech ecosystem. Stan proposes leveraging the British Business Bank (BBB) to significantly increase venture funding:

“BBB is putting like $4 billion a year into fund of funds investments, which is a drop in the ocean compared to the $15.4 billion we ought to be investing.” (29:02)

Both guests caution against direct government investment in startups, suggesting instead that the government should support expert-led venture funds. They discuss innovative structures, such as matching funds and altering fee structures, to incentivize private investment.

Tom highlights the importance of leading indicators over lagging ones, suggesting:

“The government should track what percentage of graduates choose to stay... leading indicators.” (09:36)

Building Global-Scale Companies

A critical barrier identified is the difficulty UK companies face in scaling to global markets. Stan shares an example of a Cambridge-based company that chose to move to San Francisco to achieve substantial growth:

“They went to San Francisco instead. They ended up raising $30 million on a $220 million post.” (14:01)

Both guests agree that fostering an environment where UK companies can scale internationally without needing to relocate is essential for creating billion-dollar enterprises that contribute significantly to the national economy.

Comparisons with US and China

The episode also explores how other regions, particularly China, have successfully built robust tech ecosystems through sustained venture investment and strategic focus on sectors like AI and semiconductors. Stan compares Europe’s current investment landscape unfavorably against the US and China:

“Europe is really missing. So it is kind of US with China sort of chasing its tail.” (65:44)

Tom reflects on the rapid advancements in China, especially in hardware and AI applications, suggesting that Europe needs to pivot towards these high-impact areas to remain competitive.

Future Outlook and Recommendations

Looking ahead, both guests are optimistic yet realistic about the steps needed to transform the UK tech ecosystem. Stan envisions a national goal of creating $4 trillion in wealth through tech over the next two decades, requiring a strategic infusion of capital and policy support:

“Let's set a national goal of creating $4 trillion of wealth in tech.” (40:35)

Tom emphasizes the importance of specialization and leveraging the UK’s unique advantages, such as its world-class universities and multicultural cities like London, to foster innovation hubs.

Notable Quotes

• Stan Bohlen (00:00): “$20 trillion of value created in the last 50 years in building decacorns in the US. The UK's created about 170 billion of value in the UK.”

• Tom Hume (07:14): “The biggest rate limiter is the supply of founders and operators.”

• Stan Bohlen (10:38): “We're short about $12 billion in venture capital.”

• Tom Hume (09:36): “The government should track what percentage of graduates choose to stay... leading indicators.”

• Stan Bohlen (40:35): “Let's set a national goal of creating $4 trillion of wealth in tech.”

Conclusion

This episode of 20VC provides a thorough analysis of the UK's current tech ecosystem's shortcomings and offers strategic solutions to bridge the gap with leading economies like the US and China. By focusing on increasing venture capital, retaining top talent, and implementing supportive government policies, the UK can position itself as a magnet for global entrepreneurial talent and foster the growth of world-class tech companies.

For those interested in the detailed insights shared by Tom Hume and Stan Bohlen, watch the full episode on YouTube by searching for "20VC."

Transcript

[Stan Bohlen]

$20 trillion of value created in the last 50 years in building decacorns in the US. The UK's created two about 170 billion of value in the UK. So the lack of capital crimps the ambition of companies and therefore the best founders go to the States. We need to flood the UK with venture capital. That's what we need. If you graduate in an engineering or computer science or something here, you should have stapled to your graduation Certificate a Tier 2 visa.

[Harry Stebbings]

This is 20 VC with me Harry Stebbings and today is a special show as we sit down with two incre incredibly special people the uk to put it mildly. It's not in great shape and so I wanted to do an episode with two phenomenal minds to clearly analyze the problems that we face and then break down very specific and granular solutions. So joining me in the hot seat we have Tom Hume, general partner at GV where he leads all GV's European investing. Joining Tom is Stan Bohlen, one of the most successful and respected entrepreneurs in the UK. He sold his first company for $640 million and his second to Nvidia for $367 million. Kajaji then went on to work with Jensen Huang. But before we dive in Today, here are two fun facts about our newest brand sponsor, Kajabi. First, their customers just crossed a collective $8 billion in total revenue. Wow. Second, Kajabi's users keep 100% of their earnings with the average Kajabi creator bringing in over $30,000 per year. In case you didn't know, Kajabi is the leading creator commerce platform with an all in one suite of tools including websites, email marketing, digital products, payment processing and analy for as low as $69 per month. Whether you are looking to build a private community, write a paid newsletter or launch a course, Kajabi is the only platform that will enable you to build and grow your online business without taking a cut of your revenue. 20VC listeners can try Kajabi for free for 30 days by going to kajabi.com 20VC that's kajabi.com K A J A B I.com 20VC once you've built your creator empire with Kajabi, take your insights and decision making to the next level with AlphaSense, the ultimate platform for uncovering trusted research and expert perspectives. As an investor, I'm always on the lookout for tools that really transform how I work. Tools that don't just save time, but fundamentally change how I uncover insights. That's exactly what AlphaSense does. With the acquisition of Tagus, AlphaSense is now the ultimate research platform built for professionals who need insights they can trust fast. I've used Teagus before for company deep dives right here at on the podcast. It's been an incredible resource for expert insights, but now with AlphaSense leading the way, it combines those insights with premium content, top broker research and cutting edge generative AI. The result? A platform that works like a supercharged junior analyst, delivering trusted insights and analysis on demand. AlphaSense has completely reimagined fundamental research, helping you uncover opportunities from perspectives you didn't even know how they existed. It's faster, it's smarter, and it's built to give you the edge in every decision you make. To any VC listeners, Don't miss your chance to try AlphaSense for free. Visit AlphaSense.com 20 to unlock your trial. That's AlphaSense.com 20 and once you've got the insights from AlphaSense, you're going to need a bank that actually moves as fast as you do. Well, that's where Mercury comes in. Mercury is changing how businesses think about banking. Just listen to Bryce Ferguson, the founder of turnkey.com which builds secure, flexible and scalable crypto wallet infrastructure and is a 20 VC portfolio company. So he says Mercury's spoiled us. There's no going back to a regular bank account after being with Mercury because everything just feels so easy and intuitive. It saves our team a ton of time from sending wires to paying bills, creating reports. Mercury has simplified our banking no end. Visit mercury.com to see for yourself how a powerful bank account can transform your business operating. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group Column N A and Evolve bank and Trust members of the fdic.

[Tom Hume]

You have now arrived at your dest.

[Unknown]

Guys, I am so excited to make this happen. Two of the smartest people I think in European and UK venture and startups. I want to start with a little bit of context. Stan, if we start with you and then move. Tom, what's the background as to how you got here and just the quick one minute intro on you.

[Stan Bohlen]

Yeah, so I joined a company called Acorn which is a computer company based in cambridge. Back in 1997 it owned this thing called ARM. 40% of this company called ARM. So I helped get ARM public and then figured out what to do with Acorn. Set up a chip company company outside out of Acorn which got venture funded for raised $30 million of capital and sold that company to broadcom for about 640 million. About a year and a half later, this amazing deal, did a second deal in the chip space which I built a company and sold that to Nvidia and did a third deal which was in the AI space. So I've serially founded and ran and then sold companies, raised about $330 million in venture capital and sold them for about 1.3 billion. So that's kind of what I've been doing for the last five years, is doing that.

[Tom Hume]

Well, I'm just to learn from Stan. That's the reason I'm here.

[Unknown]

Tom, what about you, dude?

[Tom Hume]

So, look, I won't give a long bio, just a really quick one. So I helped set up GV in Europe the year you started 20 VC in 2014. We've now done over 50 companies, we've invested in 12 countries. We just broke through half a billion dollars in the UK alone with our investment in Isomorphic last week. And passionate about making the sort of European ecosystem as vibrant as possible. So keen to discuss that.

[Unknown]

So I want to discuss it in the way that we're going to kind of cite the problems and then cite the solutions. I don't want to be Debbie Downer and just do the problems, but I want to be also pretty granular on the solutions. I think for me, the biggest problem is actually talent supply and not being a magnet for the best developers in the world to have as London or the UK anymore, where I think it maybe once was. Do you agree that we have a fundamental talent problem today in the uk?

[Stan Bohlen]

I think we got a bit of a talent problem in the uk, so I don't think we're the magnet that we were or that we could be. I think it's quite interesting, actually. If you look at where talent is being born in AI across Europe and you look at where it lands in terms of where it stays, actually the UK is minting about the same talent it's keeping, but that is a net net, actually. So we're losing talent to the US and we are actually recovering some of that from other parts of Europe. So net net. We're about the same actually, but we could be 10x better. So I think that's the key point, is that, you know, we ought to be making the UK the magnet to set up a company in Europe, actually. And all that talent that is leaving the UK and leaving other parts of Europe to go to the States, we ought to be capturing it and building companies here.

[Unknown]

I think of it in Engineering talent and then I think of it in founding talent. How do you think that differs? As you said that Net net flight, deep AI engineers. I think my worry is actually do we actually have the founder supply that is exceptional, that maybe other countries do? And that's the difference that I think.

[Tom Hume]

About from my perspective. So I completely agree. I think we're rate limited. I think it's the biggest rate limiter actually is supply of found and supply of operators. The great thing about founders is they'll smash through walls to build stuff. So you have Melanie at Canva built that business in Perth, Australia. No right to build a $50 billion business in Perth, but it can be done. If you gave me the choice to have more Nicholas Zenstrom's or Demis Hassabis or Stans, I would absolutely take that. I think, you know, it could only be a good thing. The biggest challenge is for every one good founder you need five or ten world class operators. And I think that's the biggest gap for us. That's the rate. To Stan's point, if I just look at engineering talent, we've got three of the best 10 universities on the planet here. If you look at Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial, they're only graduating between them about 500 computer scientists or roboticists per year. We should 5x that number. There's a huge demand, I don't see why we aren't increasing it. And then to Stan's point, we can do a better job of actually making it appealing to come into the UK for the most entrepreneurial talent and maybe retain the talent that does study here and becomes expert.

[Stan Bohlen]

Two big exporters of talent in the world, I think one is China, one is India and the majority of the graduates there are decided to go and work in the States. Frankly, even if they come to university here, they're typically not staying actually. They come here actually with pretty much no intent of staying. And in fact we're not really welcoming them either, really. So if you graduate in engineering or computer science or something here, you should have stapled to your graduation Certificate a Tier 2 visa and rights to stay and a right to bring your family across as well and just make the UK the place that people want to come actually is what we should be doing.

[Tom Hume]

I love that. Can I build on that? I think you become what you measure and the government are measuring a lot of kind of lagging indicators. I was inspired. We invested in stripe in 2017 and one of the things that struck me is the Collinson brothers were tracking a KPI. They were tracking the number of series A companies that transact online that they actually that are using Stripe and the number was phenomenal. It was like high 80s percent taking stands idea. Our government should be actually looking and seeing at the people that are graduating. What is the percentage that are choosing to stay? That is the leading indicator. Like great founders focus on leading indicators, not lagging.

[Unknown]

You mentioned that attaching the Tier 2 visa to the graduation ceremony ticket. Is there anything else that we could do to make sure we have a high talent retention number for great engineering and founding talent?

[Stan Bohlen]

I think the second big factor is money actually, which I'm sure we're going to go and talk about in a second actually. But money is, there's no structure to this. Yeah, I think money's the great attractor of talent as well. So yeah, part of the reason that people will come to the uk, come to London or the golden triangle is the fact that they can get funded here. They can not just get funded pre seed and seed, but series A, series B, series C growth phase as well and in fact keep the company here. The kind of constraints that come from lack of capital I think is also a factor. So the model in the UK has really been let's build early stage companies, let's get them to a certain point and then let's flip them to America. And I think a lot of founders might be thinking why don't I just skip that first stage and why don't I just jump on a plane and form the company in the US Actually.

[Unknown]

Why do you think we have a lack of capital in the uk? I disagree with you. So I'm intrigued why you think we have a lack of capital.

[Stan Bohlen]

Well, I think you just need to look at the numbers. The numbers say that I think in last year because the model I think to copy is the US. I mean so the US is just so obviously successful in technology. $20 trillion of value created in the last 50 years in building decacorns in the US the UK has created two, about 170 billion of value in the UK. So it is like two orders of magnitude off for the US. So the US I think is a model to copy. And I think if you look at how much venture capital was raised by US VCs last year it was about 76 billion raised in the US pro rata to population the UK should be 15.4 billion. The UK funds raised 3.7 billion last year. So we're short about 12 billion in venture capital.

[Unknown]

I absolutely hear you. But as a day to day venture Investor on the ground trying to find companies and great people to invest in. There is simply not the supply of entrepreneurs. If I were to keep my bar as high as it needs to be to build great companies to deploy that.

[Stan Bohlen]

Money, there is a chicken egg situation here. So traditionally the way to think about this is that you create this momentum of building successful companies. The idea is that capital flows to places, it gets a return. Therefore you create a track record of building companies here and capital will flow to uk. And that's the causality. The causality actually is the other way around. And the causality is that if we put capital in place here, great companies will rise to the occasion and supply of companies will come. And the reason I say that is that there's a country you can look at where this is true and that country is China. And so 20 years ago, China's got pretty much nothing really in technology. And the Chinese studied the US model, put huge amounts of capital in place and now China is clear global number two in terms of technology. You look at the amount that's invested in AI, for instance, I mean there's only two countries really investing in AI, US and China. And the European investments are diddly squat. You almost can't see them, they're that small. And net result being we got a very successful Chinese tech sector. So I actually think that by the lack of capital crimps the ambition of companies and therefore the best founders go to the States and that we end up underachieving. Really.

[Tom Hume]

I think that's fair. I would just maybe make a caveat that I think the goal should be that the best capital gets concentrated in the best companies. Like China's an amazing example. You get concentrations of talent and then concentrations of funding. Taken to an extreme there. I think one of the data points that makes this so difficult is none of us, I would think, think that all companies should get funding. The real challenge is if you ask any founder, and by definition at seed stage, maybe the majority shouldn't get funding when they don't receive the funding. They think it's a funding gap. So I don't think what we should be doing is necessarily just sort of evenly distributing capital across the whole market. I actually think that's damaging for talent concentration as well. Instead we should have sophisticated people that say these are the companies that can win. These are the companies that can actually absorb more capital because the founders are great, they're not going to be over capitalized. They'll then bring in the best people and maybe they can just be more Ambitious.

[Stan Bohlen]

Yeah. I've got a good example of this actually. There's a company I've invested in called wordware. So a good name check for them. But there's two guys studied computer science in Cambridge, could have set up a company here, could have raised probably 5 million on a 20 pre. Could have built a really interesting. It's basically a set of tools for LLM prompt engineering. But they went to San Francisco instead. They ended up raising 30 on a 220 post.

[Unknown]

This is Philippe Kazira, this is Philip.

[Stan Bohlen]

Yeah, yeah. So those investors are expecting them to build a business worth 2 to 3 billion. So 10x that stratospheric raising of expectations is part of the US playbook.

[Unknown]

I think those investors are expecting him to build a 10 billion business or.

[Stan Bohlen]

Maybe a 10 billion business.

[Unknown]

Yeah. On a 10% ownership you need a billion dollars.

[Stan Bohlen]

Yeah, okay. Yeah. So even better. But the fact is they've got the capital to do it it really as well. So this cranking up of expectations and the provision of capital behind founders with energy and enthusiasm I think does work. I mean it's part of the US playbook. And I completely agree Tom, that it's concentration that really matters really. And the ability to put a large amount of money at the right point behind founders that have the energy and intellect and the pivotability and the coachability I think is absolutely critical really. And it's the bit that is sort of missing I think in the UK and in Europe as a whole.

[Unknown]

I don't think we need more money. I'm seeing every day the most inflated prices and it's just because you see this concentration of capital to obviously good people. Like your word Wes, where you can get a 5 on 35 and then lightspeed and general catalysts come in and suddenly it's six on 80 and it just goes nuts. I see now complete removal of LIQ prefs and it's because we don't have the supply. The capital concentrates and just inflates in a way that's much more so than the us. So I think we have this fundamental talent problem and then we have a narrative problem which is based around behavior of venture investors in Europe is if you speak to Philippe Philippe he'll tell you that like it was super fast in the US they totally got me. They gave me a great experience. And in Europe it takes weeks, the partners aren't here and they're slower. We have a very bad customer experience for founders in Europe which I think makes it a less attractive funding product than the us.

[Stan Bohlen]

I think that's certainly true. But my solution for that would be let's increase the amount of capital here and the best founders will seek out the best VCs. The best VCs will generate outsized returns and they'll be able to raise the next round of the next capital, basically. So you will gradually, hopefully quickly ratchet up the performance essentially of venture in Europe.

[Tom Hume]

Actually, the thing that has scared me historically when people have talked about, for example, government investing in startups is I think it's an incredibly difficult thing to do. I think VCs take. I don't know if I'm any good at it still, because the feedback, that loop is probably a decade. It's like the worst learning loop ever. And so the important thing is to make sure that if there is more capital in the system, it's deployed by the experts and they can sort of really see that compound conflict.

[Stan Bohlen]

Agree. It'd be absolute disaster for government to be making direct investments in companies. I think there's. There's no way they can do it. I think.

[Unknown]

Yeah, I mean, I mean, if we want to get really spicy, then. Tom seen my Twitter and I give not many shits anymore.

[Stan Bohlen]

I.

[Unknown]

Most of the BBB's portfolio is just dire.

[Harry Stebbings]

You mean they're direct?

[Unknown]

Yeah, no, they're funder funds investing. I mean, these funds should not be in existence. The question is, do you have a right to win? Do you have a right to find companies, pick them, win them, help better? And the majority are honestly dire and they will not do well. Government money will be wasted. And I think I get both of what you're saying, but I think then if you're like, well, I want this to go to truly gifted individuals who will invest it wisely, well, then we should see real concentration of capital to three to five players in the uk, because honestly, I think that's only the amount that's very good.

[Tom Hume]

Probably a couple of quick reactions. Firstly, I don't think it needs to just be to players in the uk. It can be global funds. I think you have some of the best. And the second thing is the best funds have proven themselves for multiple vintages. Now they're oversubscribed, but I would hope that the uk, UK PLC could get into those funds.

[Unknown]

But there's no way. Well, that's question calling a spade a spade. There's no way they could get into Excel Index or any of the brand names.

[Tom Hume]

That's the question.

[Stan Bohlen]

Yeah, I would say that there's firstly, no large Fund of funds has ever lost money from a investment perspective, government ought to be willing to take a much bigger risk on fund of funds investments here in the UK I think BBB puts something like $424 million a year into fund of funds investments, which is a drop in the ocean compared to the 15.4 billion that we ought to be investing. So that number needs to be like 10x in my view. And then secondly, I think there is a venture talent pool that can be energized. I think below partner level. In a lot of these firms there are a bunch of people who are principal level who could be interested and willing to run a new fund and would do a bloody good job at it actually. And I also think that we're at a time when US partners would consider coming to Europe if the capital was available. Because here there is talent in Europe, valuations are lower. If you could put the money in place, then I think not only would we have some homegrown talent we can release from venture firms, but I think we could also imagine some of the leading partners in US firms coming to London or UK to basically basically get this economy really moving.

[Unknown]

Actually sometimes in my head I think how many friends do I want to lose in one single show? My question to you, I mean I don't agree that prices are better here, honestly, like for the best companies, for your word wise, if they were to stay, they're just super high. They're so inflated.

[Tom Hume]

I think just a quick thought on. No, no, I. So if I look at where we sit today, some of the best deals are overpriced. I think it's often because they're the ones with the traction and they're therefore somewhat de risked. And I think there's two things that make this a really difficult thing to answer. We talked about lagging indicators. The first is we're basically trading against or we're working against sources of capital that were raised in the past. Like these are not brand new funds. Often and often they were raised in the cost of capital has gone through the roof. Like given the current interest rate environment, I think that's going to get worse. If anything, the fact that a lot of these funds are giving out so many stock grants, you basically need to hit 20% IRR to break even. These numbers are really high. So that's the first thing. I actually think there's probably going to be less money in the market for venture in two years than there is today. It's kind of a question for us. And then the second Thing is classic machine learning. I think we're overfitting to history. I don't think we know what the biggest companies look like going forward. And so it's very difficult for me to say that actually the sort of returns profile that funds got from investments 10 years ago are going to be the ones they look like before. My belief is that AI is creating a real power law far more than we've ever seen before. And so the job to be done is going to be be in those handful of global champions. If you look at Israel is an interesting example for us at the moment. Amazing story recently the Wiz acquisition, 32 billion, that's like 7% of Israel's GDP. A lot of that is actually flowing back to Israel and it will create this multiplier effect. That business was basically built in five years. It was assembled without actual clear sort of problem identified. They just got a world class team and they really well capitalized the business on day one. I think the businesses we want to build look more like Wiz and so concentrate capital into the best founders. Can that be done from the UK or Europe? Hell yes. What we do often at the moment is we say be close to your customer, we say go to the US because the market size is roughly an order of magnitude bigger than it is in the uk. We're not saying give up the US market absolutely, go to the market, but build a global business on day one.

[Stan Bohlen]

One. Yeah, I think that's right. Yeah. I think it's almost pointless building sort of number three or number four in the marketplace today. So if we're going to under capitalize businesses and build businesses that are number three and number four, it's not what we need because those businesses have got no choice but to be sold to US companies. We're never going to create companies here that stand up on their own two feet and generate the jobs, growth and the diffusion of wealth that the country desperately needs really. So I think we've got to concentrate on companies that could be global number one or global number two which, which does require big checks to be written to those companies at the right point.

[Tom Hume]

Can I give another example of this where I think actually because we asked in a way we've got a problem that we're subscale in the way we've described it at the moment. I agree with that. The other place we could sort of that I think our relative size hurts us is the subscale pension funds. For example, you've got 90 local pension funds. Actually a policy that I was really excited about the Chancellor I think mentioned last year is this idea that they should be aggregated so that they can have a, a world class investment office so they can do something like Yale. Like when I do LP calls for emerging talent.

[Unknown]

Thanks, dude.

[Tom Hume]

You're very welcome. Tom.

[Unknown]

Had to do like 10.

[Tom Hume]

I think it was more than literally. I just told you about the ted. No, I did do a few. And the thing that's stunning about the US firms and then the really, I think more sophisticated ones here like Wellcome Trust, just phenomenal investors is they understand the power law, they understand they got to build relationships for the long term and they can actually have world class analysts inside those firms and you can't expect a tiny fund to do that. So this idea that we might aggregate 90 local pension funds in the UK to enable them to think more like Yale rather than just replicating the asset split, I'd be really excited about.

[Unknown]

I thought it was so interesting you said that it doesn't make sense to build these three or four tier players in a market because I've been in venture for 10 years now, a lot of the job has been like oh well, it's like HR platform X, but in Europe, it's Y for Europe and actually you can build billion, $2billion or $3billion companies on the back of that. Where can the UK and Europe then be a number one market leader and beat the US and China?

[Stan Bohlen]

Well, I think if you think of it as a stack from like semiconductors and hardware up to sort of applications layer, then I think it's easier for Europe to think about building at the bottom of the stack or at the top of the stack. Actually I think it's quite hard for Europe to sort of build in the middle of the st. Think AI application companies that are solving a particular problem, particularly if there's a sort of defensive moat that exists in Europe, are obviously a good place to sort of start. And then I think at the bottom of the stack, I think something that's attached to the metal. So semiconductors that are solving a particular problem happen to be somewhere where we have the expertise to do that. And it happens to be a B2B sale where we get paid for the value of the architecture that we put down and the utility it delivers. It's easier to think top and bottom of the stack as places that we can build those companies actually. So it's not necessarily where we're focused on, but it is kind of where we should be focused. Whereas I think if you're building Some middleware layer or some tools layer. I think it's a little bit easier to imagine doing that in the States, I think, than doing that here.

[Tom Hume]

I think the interesting thing with Stan's argument, I really agree with it. I like the idea of focus and specialization. One of the things that concerns me is just this idea that we can be experts at everything. Instead I think we have to say actually let's understand our unfair advantages. If for example, and I agree with it, the bottom of the stack, the infrastructure layer is somewhere we can be world class, we've certainly got the technical talent, then I think we have to build the whole ecosystem and structure it and say actually in this one location we're going to be effective. We then have to do second order things like we have probably the highest electricity or energy costs in the whole of the western world in the uk. That just does not enable you to do a great job of this. It doesn't even enable you to do a great job of training foundation models. Like if the blend cost of training a large language model is 20% energy, we're already kind of losing. So the important thing is to say actually what are we going to be world class at and where are we going to be? And we have some advantages. Like one of the things that's interesting, we've done it in this conversation. It's easier to sort of aggregate everything at the national or continental level. In truth, we should be honest that London is incredibly different, for example from the rest of the uk. Building a startup in Europe is doing it on ultra hard money mode. We've talked about it before, but actually if you do it in London, it's slightly easier mode at the moment because of the talent, because it's where the investors are. So we have to start to just acknowledge that, lean into it and actually have this pockets of specialization, I think.

[Stan Bohlen]

Yeah, I mean I wasn't so much thinking by the way of building lots and lots of data centers on expensive. That would be nuts right now obviously I was more thinking about the chip design layers or not even chip fabrication but, but chip design, which is where 75% of the value in the semiconductor space is. What Nvidia is, what Qualcomm is, what Broadcom is all basically semiconductor design companies that basically sell chips, that they get them fabbed by TSMC or whoever. That's the model that we ought to be playing in. We have something like 2% of that global market in Europe. It's insane, honestly, in the fabless space. So we must be building successful Fabless companies, I think. And Europe has got the. In fact, the UK in Bristol, as it turns out, happens to have this full custom microprocessor design capability that stems 20, 30 years ago from the creation of Inmos, which is kind of unique actually. There's only probably two places in Europe you could do that and Bristol happens to be one of them. I think it's plausible to build companies in this space that are global winners. And yet you're right that we do need to put much larger checks into those companies. But that's the reason why we need more versus venture money here is to be able to write those checks.

[Unknown]

It's interesting you said about the cost of energy. I was speaking to the CEO of one of the largest data providers in the world or data center providers in the world and he said, Harry, in the US, my energy costs 4% in UK. If I set up today, it's going to be 17% in total. And I was like, I get it. That I did not know. I was pushing, pushing, pushing. He said that. I'm like, all right, fine, you do you. My question to you then is when we look at that and we look at the money that's needed to fund that, where does that money come from? I understand your argument around the scale and the scale of cash needing to change. How do we fund the 450 million that BBB does invest to whatever we want to call it. 2 billion, 3 billion, 4 billion. Yeah.

[Stan Bohlen]

Well, firstly, I think, I think the money, Europe has a lot of money actually, so that's the first thing to say. So Europe's got a lot of money in obviously in pensions, we talk a lot about pensions. So it's got a lot of money in family offices that are sort of locked up all over the place actually. So Europe actually is not capital short, it's just not investing in this particular asset class. So the job I think of BBC is to create that asset class at speed and to play an enabling role in doing that, essentially. So my suggestion would be that we get the government to increase the amount that British business bank and we may need to upgrade the quality and talent in BBB to be able to do this. But BBB puts like 4 billion a year in and would require like a 50, 50 funding ratio. So the GPs have to raise matching money, otherwise BBB doesn't participate. But it can be 50%. So if I want to create a billion dollar fund, I know I'm going to get half a billion from BBB and I've got to raise the other half a billion essentially. So raising the funding ratio to 50, 50 would be a good start. And then I think we've got to be creative, which again is another call to action for BBB about how we split the fees and split the carry between the different LPs in the fund. So at the moment there's a lot of hand wringing and anguish about the fact pension funds won't pay a 2% fee. And I would say fine, let's do it on a half percent fee then. But instead the carrier that the partners have is higher and quid pro quo is the BBB might pay a 3% fee and the carry for the partners is lower, but net net we're still at 2 plus 20. So let's be creative about how we do it and let's flex. The job is to bring the capital in and make it mesh with public money to mint these large funds that can write these big checks that allow us to play seriously in some of these sectors that are basically capital intensive and winner takes all. That's kind of what we need to do, I think, to pull ourselves out of the nosedive that the country is currently in.

[Unknown]

I think where would we get that money from?

[Stan Bohlen]

The government has created its own fiscal freedom to do this actually. So the government is able to treat any investment in BBB money as being not borrowing, not public spending. So it forms part of public sector network worth and it doesn't count as current year spending. Because the argument is, and I think this is correct, that what we're doing is building up a financial asset on the government's balance sheet. So if you did this consistently over like 10 years, you'd have 40 billion on the government's balance sheet of fund of fund investments in venture, the worst performing fund of funds generate maybe 6% IRR. The best performing generate mid 20s. So always higher than guilt yield yields. And I would say you could go even further. You could say in 10 years time we've got 40 billion on the public balance sheet. Why don't we make an offer to the public, why don't we offer it to individual pension plans to invest in this stock? So we could create a Thatcher moment really where you privatize. But people in their 20s and 30s should be owning assets in the future of the country, actually they should be owning those assets and it should be recycled into making the country more successful competitively. And technology is the place to put it obviously. So that's kind of what we ought to be doing.

[Tom Hume]

I do see it as investing we're talking about infrastructure projects. We look at Germany's trillion dollars. I think it's incredibly important. I like the idea that we have a kind of intellectual infrastructure investment that you're describing the big thing to design around and it sounds like you've started to think that through is the adverse selection bias. My biggest fear, because there's such a power law of returns, what you don't want to do is just end up with the worst investors making the worst investments. And so, so placing an emphasis on those maybe first, you know, supporting perhaps first time funds solo GPS initially to get going could make sense. But it's incredibly important for the UK taxpayer to get into the best funds. And so I do believe there are, there's got to be incentives that UK PLC can provide so that the best funds that Harry describes actually are excited to take money from that BBB fund of funds.

[Stan Bohlen]

But on Tom, do you think if we put such a system in place and we made it plausible, feasible for GPS to go raise like half a billion or a billion dollar fund here, do you think we'd get partners in US firms with a strong track record to consider coming to London to basically raise a fund here? Because it can be done here and they could build it. And you could also imagine there'd have to be some conditions on those funds if, if BBB is going to fund them like half of the money or whatever's got to be invested in the uk. But you could imagine somebody trying to set up a startup in say Stuttgart or something. The call could be well we'll fund it but you got to move to London. Yeah, and we'll fund it.

[Tom Hume]

So I think the answer is yes, but again it sort of speaks to specialization. The question for me would be in what areas would you get the best people saying it's worth me doing that. And it's not going to be, it wouldn't be necessarily, necessarily in digital health where the UK has one major customer, none else. It would be in places like fintech where we have a good track record because we're in a great position sort of globally at this point. That's why we've done disproportionate number of FinTech investments. Defense I think is an interesting area at the moment where you know, we're going to have to look more to 3% of GDP spend in defense. So there'll be areas where I think actually very smart rational people would make that call. But there's others where it would be a harder stretch like consumers. Consumer where it doesn't really make sense to be outside one of the biggest markets.

[Stan Bohlen]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

Why do you think defense is different to health? I think in defense you still have one primary buyer here really, which is obviously the mod, and then you have very splintered and fractured buyers, which is the rest of Europe, and each wants to have their own dominant domestic provider.

[Stan Bohlen]

So.

[Tom Hume]

Disclaimer. I'm a reservist, as you know, so this is something I'm really passionate about and I'd say there's three things happening at the moment that make it significantly more interesting than it has been in the past. The first is very smart people are interested in doing it because they think it's right. There are people like our peers that are interested in doing defence companies because for the first time they actually think there's existential threat. Second thing is actually, while you do say you're right, there's maybe a single buyer. It's more complicated that in the UK we have multiple services, we have multiple regiments within each. Each is a potential customer and they're being forced to innovate at the moment for the final reason, which is to some extent we are on the geopolitically. We are close to a war zone at the moment and we have a point of view in that war. We occasionally have some of our armed servicemen at risk. I think those three things together mean that actually when you look at andrill in the US and they had a recent round, $8 billion over subscribed, it shows you there's an appetite of people and capital to go in there. I think the UK, interesting talent. The UK's playing its part in Ukraine at the moment. It's an amazing place to test new technologies and I think it's an opportunity to build next generation primes here. So as a category, I think defense in Europe is an important one at.

[Stan Bohlen]

The moment and there's probably what, 2 to 3 trillion going to be spent over the next five to eight years in Europe in defense actually. And all layers, not just final product but like components. And there's lots of layers here, I.

[Tom Hume]

Think degree and then I do think it's that will forge some dual use technologies. If you look out there at the sort of the biggest defense companies, you could argue that DJI is one of them at the moment. And actually I think you'll see the same thing in reverse. Some of the technologies, whether it be cyber or maybe it will be UAVs, drones, I think you'll start to see they'll have other applications outside military to.

[Unknown]

What Extent is it? When we think about kind of amazing companies you mentioned, Andrew, we've mentioned some other amazing ones. In the US there is a market for them to go public. There is a liquidity market that is much more vibrant. In the UK we have the London Stock Exchange where a lot of people throw a lot of criticism and people choose to not list on the London Stock Exchange. To what extent do we need local domestic liquidity markets or are we in a global world where you can just go to nasdaq?

[Stan Bohlen]

Yeah, I've thought about this a bit actually. I think it's a supply problem again, the lack of, of like tech companies in London. There's only one London listed tech company worth more than 10 billion and that is Sage. And Sage is like a 30 year old ERP company. It's a very nice company. But as an output of the 20 billion a year that we pump into tech in the UK, to have one company worth $10 billion on the stock exchange is not a great outturn really. So once the US has minted 20.5 trillion of value in its tech companies, we've minted about hundred billion over that period of time. So firstly, let's accept it's not good. But I think the problem is supply actually is that companies grow to a certain size, they're stunted for all sorts of reasons. It could be quite early on, the cap table's broken, they hired the wrong people, the wrong product market focus. But it could also be lack of swing over the fences, lack of money to swing for the fences. Actually a net result being companies just have to be sold to typically US buyers. So they never, never get to the point where they're into growth and they're capable of being ipo. So there's not a big pipeline of companies coming through that could be ipo. There's a handful in Fintech maybe, but apart from that, not very many. So I think it's a supply problem actually and I think that's why it's really important. I think that we grow the amount of capital here and it's UK capital that is patient and will put the money in and we can fund the companies all the way through to eventually going public. And then I think it will be natural to listen them where there's a market for them. And I think that could be London, it could be nasdaq, it could be wherever is suitable for the company.

[Tom Hume]

Agree, definitely. Supply problem doesn't help. If we had much, many more much bigger companies, we wouldn't see it. I give two Other reasons. So the first is a sentiment problem. I have not spoken to anyone for months that is positive about LSE or listing and whether it be valuation or it be perceptions about, for example, the product itself because of the stamp duty driving down liquidity. And I'm afraid these stories are kind of like SEO for our minds. We hear the story, we remember them, and there's just a negative sentiment about it. So most good companies are getting a more kind of open to the US and they're getting courted very effectively. They have the red carpet rolled out for them. That's the first one. Sentiment problem needs to be turned around. I mean, you interviewed Julia Hoggett, don't know your point of view, but the sentiment isn't great. The other one I just point out is I think it's an easy thing to measure. That doesn't mean it's the best thing to measure. Actually, if I'm completely honest, given the choice between picking where a company's HQ is or where the bulk of the employees are or where the IP is generated or where it's listed, I'm taking the first three. They're way more valuable. I know that they're kind of interlinked. But the most important thing is where is the sort of economic driver and where are the employees and that value creation. And so, you know, if we do have a period where the very best UK and European companies end up listing in the us, I think that's okay as long as we have a great kind of platform of big value generation here.

[Stan Bohlen]

And I think it'd be okay if the ownership of those companies when they go public is predominantly here in the uk. Uk, because I really think we've got to set a national goal here for wealth creation. I mean, the uk really, it's clear. You just look around and the country's getting poorer, really and we can't afford all the services that we want.

[Unknown]

What do you mean a national goal for wealth?

[Stan Bohlen]

Firstly, I think tech and innovation is really the engine of economic growth here. There's no other engine that we can rely on, so it's that. And if you look at the US's credit created this 20 trillion of value over the last 20, 30 years in new tech companies. UK, 0.1 trillion Pro Rato we should be about 4 trillion. We should have created and we've created 0.1 trillion. So we're about 4 trillion short of where we should be. So I think we could set a goal to say, look, what if in 20 years we set a national goal of creating 4 trillion of wealth in tech. That's a sort of escalating growth of value. So let's say at year 10 the goal is half a trillion and thereafter we grow from that point. So growing half a trillion is already quite a big goal for us, given that We've only created 100 billion right now. But it also sets the mindset for saying, what are we going to have to invest to do that? What these companies look like, how much capital are they going to need? They're going to need about 100 billion of capital to do that, really realistically. And you think, okay, well, that 100 billion, where's it going to come from? Well, it's going to be something like 10 billion a year is what we've got to put in additional to what we're currently doing. And that's roughly the gap in our venture. So I think if you could find a way of putting more capital to work, we can end up growing the half a trillion in 10 years and 4 trillion over 20 and fill the hole.

[Unknown]

In terms of putting more capital to work and encouraging that seis, EIS has been very effective in terms of encouraging more direct investing from individuals. When I look at my cap table today or LP list today, 85% of dollars, maybe 90% of dollars are from the U.S. for me, I'm so thrilled and honored to have them. But it is slightly not alarming. But I think about it that, you know, I think we'll do very well and I think our funds will make a lot of money and all of that will go straight to the US that doesn't thrill me. For my grandparents who have pensions and my mother who's got pensions and everything around us in the uk, is there anything that could be done to unlock the huge amount of family office, corporate pension fund money to invest directly into funds, whether it's an SEIS for funds, the EIS for funds, because otherwise they're not fricking moving.

[Stan Bohlen]

I think, I think the, the BBB role I spoke about earlier, I think is critical to this actually is if you look at where the money came from in the us you look at the distribution of where that money came from, it's pretty evenly spread across endowments and family offices and pension funds, insurance companies. So it's not just pension funds, actually. There are other sources of capital that we need to energize and create. But yeah, we don't have, we don't.

[Unknown]

Have the endowment fund pool which is developing.

[Stan Bohlen]

That's true. But we do have more Family offices. I think there's, there's a lot of old money here.

[Unknown]

There's 1100 family offices in London.

[Stan Bohlen]

Blimey. Yeah, yeah, it's a lot.

[Unknown]

Yeah, I met every one of them.

[Stan Bohlen]

Which is why I think we need an energized BBB actually, which is creative about the structuring of deals to bring those people in, to structure them in a way that makes it easy for them to participate in this illiquid 15 year asset class, really, where the fee structure and the carriage structure works for them and works for BBB. So you'd end up up with LPs that are 50% the national balance sheet and 50% UK based pension endowment, family offices and insurance companies. So I think that is the job actually of BBB is to do that.

[Unknown]

Spending more and more time with politicians. Now they're all just terrified of getting fired and they're all just terrified of headline risk. And when I listen to you, I'm like, great, great. I see all this, but then I see the Daily Mail head headline, which is about how your taxpayer dollars are going to fund Tom or Sarah's venture fund, where they have a Porsche and a nice house in Hampstead and the concentration of wealth on your taxpayer dollars. Do you think we're actually being reasonable by thinking we can do that? And do share my concern around that headline risk.

[Stan Bohlen]

It is definitely a challenge, I think so. I definitely see the challenge. But I actually think we've got to make the case really for why the UK needs to change, really. I mean, yeah, I mean, clearly we're not really fulfilling our potential right now. Clearly we got a lot more to achieve actually. And it's about raising everybody's sights to build this country to be the best it can be, really, is let's build this value that is kind of missing in, in tech because it's not in any way coordinated right now. This 20, 30 billion a year that we pump in at the front end per annum in tech. So like 150 billion over a parliament in university funding for science and tech, in suis, in EIS, in VCTS, in R& D, tax credits and patent box and so on, all those things, you add them up and what's coming out the pipe pipeline is nothing really. People are making some wealth along the way, but that's not what we want. We're not achieving a national goal, really. So I think if we say let's do this together as a country, let's build this value and let's energize people, it's clear to me that active money is the way to go, passive money is not the way to go. And active money means when things are going well, investors double. Double down. When things are not going well, they kill it. So, yeah, and we've got to be courageous enough to do that, really. And that does require. I mean, VCs require OPEX cover, don't they? So you've got to basically fund them, really.

[Tom Hume]

I think two ideas that Stan's thoughts remind me of. So the first is one of the things I admire about Sequoia is that their meeting rooms, I think, are named after their LPs. I think that's a really interesting thing to remind everyone who they're in the service of. And I think of the challenges we have in the UK is we perhaps don't celebrate entrepreneurs as much as we might. If we were able to say to those entrepreneurs, they can tell the story about the wealth they've given back, whether it be through BBB or another vehicle, I actually think the public would see more of the value they're creating. The second story I think about is the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund. Extraordinary business. If you look at their sort of ownership of at the moment, it's mind blowing. But the other thing they do is they effectively have a stock ticker so that everyone can see in real time what that sort of national wealth is.

[Unknown]

They have a literal stock. I interviewed him and he's literally like, you know, the happiness of the country does go up and down depending on the ticker.

[Tom Hume]

Exactly. So this is all about just reminding society that actually some of these great entrepreneurs are building business in society service. I think that's what we've lost sight of, actually.

[Stan Bohlen]

We, if we. If we have this like, 4 trillion gold, it'd be a great idea, have a national ticker as we climb our way towards it, wouldn't it?

[Tom Hume]

And I think it would glue culture and society a bit more than perhaps you have at the moment, where it's perceived to be haves or have nots.

[Unknown]

You mentioned Norway there. Norway innovated in their tax system and they seem to misunderstand that kind of models are variable and that when you change a certain tax rate, you will see people leave. We've seen the removal of non doms every single day. I have friends saying, hey, I'm leaving, I'm leaving. Why are you staying? To what extent is the removal of non doms a massive problem impacting the future of the uk?

[Tom Hume]

Look, I think this is one of those classic cases of whether you want a Sort of principled approach or a pragmatic approach. I'm a pragmatist. I do see the brain drain, I recognize it and I do see that many of the people I know well that have chosen to leave have left. They were also incredible angel investors. They employed a bunch of people. And so do I think everyone should, should pay equal tax? Yes, in principle, but practically speaking, I would rather that talent was in the uk. I mean, I am seeing some exceptions to that. I heard about a billionaire VC who, you know, I think has moved to the UK recently. You do get some movement back in the other direction. But I would take seriously again, leading and adding lagging indicators. I would take seriously the leading indicator of some of the non doms leaving.

[Stan Bohlen]

Yeah, and it looks honestly like one of the challenges with the UK is this tug of war between principles on the one side and practicality on the other. The principles have been remove non dom status, change inheritance tax rules, change capital gain tax, put fees on private schools and then assume that everybody's going to be happy to stay. Really. I mean, I just think that's too much actually and the impulse on the system is too, too much and that we are shooting ourselves in the foot, really. So I agree with Tom that in principle, as a sort of UK taxpayer, I'd like everybody to pay the same taxes, but I recognize not everybody's in the same starting point and people do come to the country with existing wealth, really, and it can't be fully right to then seek to tax that. So therefore there has to be some provision for that. I think that makes it possible for people to stay here and so on. And I think it's also, also part of this thing. Look, if we're serious about building the country to be a country that clearly wants to win, then we better fix this as well, actually.

[Unknown]

Well, this is where for me, pandering Trump's pragmatism, which is the Labour government's desire to pander to traditional left wing policies, is destroying a pragmatic approach to wealth creation and wealth sustenance. Because all of the things that you said, inheritance tax, cap gains, schools, is bluntly pandering to traditional left wing policy.

[Stan Bohlen]

And probably don't even make economic sense.

[Unknown]

Absolutely zero economic sense. I mean, listen, I interviewed, can't say it live on that, but afterwards one of the most famous politicians in the country the other day, and they said we have to get rid of the treasury because they do not have variable models. And so they literally have static models which say if you increase the Tax rate to X, you will get Y. Oh, wow. They do not have any variability to what happens with import and export of anything.

[Stan Bohlen]

God.

[Unknown]

And that is why their numbers say we should do this.

[Stan Bohlen]

God, that's not good.

[Unknown]

It's terrifying. Do you believe the multiplier effect? Because I always get the pushback whenever I'm on social. I'm like, listen, it is great having non doms. They spend in restaurants, they hire people, they buy homes, they spend in shops. Do you buy it? Or do you think that actually trickle down economics is a lie, that we continuously.

[Stan Bohlen]

There's boundaries in trickle down economics, but there is also this need for fairness as well. And I think it is just a balance that we've got to strike between the two people that don't enjoy a privileged tax status and pay full taxes sitting in the same restaurant as people that do enjoy privileged status. That's also not right. So, yeah, so we got to find a balance between the two is how to, how to sort of make it feasible for people to stay here and not be penalized, but at the same time try to be as fair as possible as a country as a whole. Because we kind of need to hold hands together on this actually as a nation. So we need both people that have come from outside the UK and people inside the UK to feel we're on a shared mission together really. And so it's got to be somewhat fair at the same time. And I just think the balance right now is probably swung too far in the opposite direction and that we're, we're actually making it much harder to do that.

[Tom Hume]

I'm a strong believer in a sort of Keynesian multiplier effect. And just in our small world of tech, the only bit, only sort of part of the economy I know much about, I see it on a daily basis like angel investing in Go Cardless. If I look at some of the other angel investors in that business, they were non doms, they were actually Europeans, some Americans. The founders of that business built an important company for London employing hundreds of people. One of the founders left and built Monzo. Another founder has left and is a VC at another firm in London. If you look at the number of senior talent in GoCardless that has gone on to create other business, amazing alumni there. It's an incredible multiplier effect. And so that's what we're saying actually. You've got to have those initial pockets of innovation and growth. And then I do think you get this real multiplier. And the good news is businesses are growing faster than they ever have before. So I think those cycles will happen quicker. Quicker. Previous it might be five or 10 years that you start to see the best senior operators come out and build a company. Now it might be 18 months, 24 months.

[Unknown]

Is there anything you change with SEIs and EIS?

[Stan Bohlen]

Yeah, I think a lot of these EIS funds are not very effective effective and VCT funds are not very effective.

[Unknown]

Why is that? I agree with you, but I don't know why.

[Stan Bohlen]

Because the quality of investment managers is quite low and because they feel they've done a good job if they get anywhere close to just returning capital. So instead of saying, here's an investment, go swing for the fences, is that, you know, for God's sake, don't lose it. Take the low risk return and flip the company as quickly as you can and get, If I get 80 cents on the dollar back, I'm happy. And in fact, all the returns are somewhere between 80 cents and $1.20 on the dollar. I mean, it's ridiculous. So I think those funds are a freaking disaster, really.

[Unknown]

Would you get rid of them?

[Stan Bohlen]

I'd get rid of them, yeah. And I think there's a lot wrong, actually with the UK tax system that is maintaining too many zombies, I think, in the uk.

[Unknown]

Like what? What?

[Stan Bohlen]

Well, the most obvious is R and D tax credits, which is deeply unpopular for me to say.

[Unknown]

Go on.

[Stan Bohlen]

As a founder and a CEO, I would never say this, by the way, but as somebody who's not currently a VC and who's not currently running a company, I can free to say what I think is true, which is that we're currently investing about 7 and a half billion dollars a year in R and D tax credits for SMEs in 55,000 companies per annum. In the UK, there is no quality check, if you like, on the value that's been created there. All you have to do is prove that you spent the money on something you can loosely classify as R and D and you get a check from the government. So this is classic helicopter money. Passive money goes to good and bad. And I think if you're going to be brutal, you'd say that it either goes to companies that don't need it or it goes to companies who shouldn't have it. But in my view, it would be much, much, much better to take that same amount of money and put it into funder funds and put it into active venture. And that way when things are going well, you double down. If things are not going well, you kill it. Really. So we do end up tying up national talent and national treasure in companies that are never going to be successful globally that limp on from year to year living on R and D tax credits. So I'd much rather see it in venture. I'd much rather see valuations go up, actually, which I know as a VC you're probably not very keen on hearing, but I'd much rather see that because we end up with the same dilutive effect as we get this free money from the government every year. So by being actively managed, we get to recycle our limited amount of talent and our limited amount of capital into companies that are really going to make a difference, really. That is one thing we can do.

[Tom Hume]

Unsurprisingly, I think tax credits are pretty important. What I hadn't thought about, because I have a sort of biased view of just higher growth companies at the early stage of their life, where you're investing in the future, I like, in the same way as I like your point about EIS and escis, because I just think about angel investors.

[Stan Bohlen]

When I think about angel investors, I think it makes sense.

[Tom Hume]

But like, to your point, actually just on the R and D tax credit, what I don't see is these kind of zombie companies that have been claiming it for a decade and actually aren't necessarily building for the future. So maybe we should start to take into account time like they do in the US with capital gains tax and start to actually maybe taper off R and D tax credits to avoid what you're doing describing.

[Stan Bohlen]

Yeah, we're running at roughly 2x the rate of the US. So I think if you look at four big differences between the US and the UK. One is the attention to talent and the need to sort of keep people in the country. The second is the quality of mentoring. Very early stage needs to be ratcheted up a lot higher here and it can be. I think it just needs more coordination. The third is the excess of props in the UK for. For companies that are not making it that limp on forever. And the fourth is the massive shortfall, which, again, I don't feel I've got quite the agreement expected. A massive shortfall in capital that I think we just need here, actually. We need to really. We need to flood the UK with venture capital. That's what we need.

[Unknown]

My takeaway from this show is that we just need to put Stan in for the BBB lead and just let him run it. I mean, not sure about that. I think you do a brilliant job.

[Tom Hume]

You'Re qualified, you're hired.

[Unknown]

You mentioned the mentoring there and you said there are ways that we could do it. How do you think we could do it and increase that level of mentoring? I agree with you.

[Tom Hume]

And one of the things we do is just whenever I think we're making an investment, we will bring in often other founders from our network, people that we've worked with before. And the value add from those people, partly because they've got experience, partly because they're paying it forward, is unbelievable.

[Unknown]

So I totally agree. I always say to founders, like, never have a minimum check size for amazing angels. There's some who can only do 5k or I mean, some are 1k and you can do that with Angelo Syndicates like that is just as valuable and often they'll give more because it means more to them. And so I really always push on that. Obviously we have Project Europe now and I spend a lot of time with Kitty, the CEO.

[Tom Hume]

Congrats.

[Harry Stebbings]

Thank you.

[Stan Bohlen]

We love it.

[Unknown]

That is very kind. I'm so pleased that you're in it, Stan. You're not allowed.

[Stan Bohlen]

Tom can't be in it.

[Unknown]

No, he's not.

[Tom Hume]

It's not stopped him asking me about it for a year.

[Unknown]

Yeah, yeah, Tom's had it all.

[Harry Stebbings]

My question too is Kitty always tells.

[Unknown]

Me that the biggest enemy of talent in the UK is quant funds. And I was like. And she goes, yep, quant funds, they go to the universities. Maybe. Maybe this is a private conversation and Kitty's gonna kill me, but let's roll with it. Quant funds go to universities, they source the bat best talent and they throw 250k at them straight away. So the best engineering talent is just going straight to quant funds. And quant funds are much better recruiters than anyone else.

[Stan Bohlen]

How many people work in quant funds, though? Is it a big number? A member of our family works at a quant fund, actually, and who's paid a lot of money, I think, to do something very similar. But there can't be that many people, so it can't be the biggest drain on talent.

[Unknown]

Maybe not, but probably a , which is two years of full computer science and robotics graduates, which is quite a lot. I mean, 1,000 more in the ecosystem would probably be a pretty significant mover.

[Tom Hume]

There's definitely competition from that, from the smartest quants. I think one of our jobs is to make startups even more appealing, celebrate the successes, actually show the alternative. I think eia, like the sort of entrepreneur relief, is a wonderful example of something that can maybe tip that balance because often the economics from a quant fund are income tax. So I think things can be done.

[Unknown]

What would you do? Entrepreneur Relief to make championing entrepreneurship better?

[Tom Hume]

I'd expand.

[Stan Bohlen]

It's limited to like a million quid or something.

[Tom Hume]

Yeah. From it was taken as down. Exactly. Which to me, given the amount of time and effort that people are spending, I understand that for those that don't.

[Unknown]

Know Entrepreneur relief is what. And what does it mean?

[Tom Hume]

Entrepreneur relief is the ability for you to get preferable tax treatment if you've grown a company. And I actually think the idea of making Making for entrepreneurs capital gains exempt would maybe tip that balance when you're comparing against quant funds, if that's the competition.

[Unknown]

I do just want to touch on the wider world around us in two ways. One is the US and the other is China. Again, this wonderful politician that I interviewed the other day said, ah, you know what, we were an afterthought for the U.S. and now we're not even that in a wider world perspective, what does not even being an afterthought mean for us and what we need to do?

[Stan Bohlen]

We do actually have, as Tom was saying, universities that are global grade universities. I mean, Cambridge is not that different to Stanford. It may be a little bit smaller, maybe a bit less funded, but the quality of research that we're doing here is as good. So there is raw talent here. I do think London is a really great city, probably the best city this side of the Atlantic and arguably the best city in the world, world actually to do this. So. So, So I think it's a great place.

[Unknown]

Do you not think London's got worse? Everyone says the crime, the lack of public services or the poor quality of public services. I think London will revert back to London in the 70s, which is grim, it's gloomy, it's no growth.

[Stan Bohlen]

Well, it could if we let it. But yeah, I think it's. It's possibly not as shiny and smart as it was, but I actually still think it's a pretty good city, actually. And there's lots of good things to like about.

[Unknown]

Are you concerned that Labour will let it get to that deplorable state in the next four years?

[Stan Bohlen]

I don't think they will, but I would like to see them move more quickly on policy changes and action than they're currently doing. That's certainly true, but I think they will listen and change actually. So I'm optimistic about our ability to get change.

[Tom Hume]

I think London's a special place and I feel lucky if I compare living Here to other places, just it's the sort of multiculturalism, the diversity, but actually just it's an interesting place to live. The fact that I can jump on a lime bike, come over to do this in the afternoon, I could have a meeting at number 10. Shortly thereafter I could go to the European headquarters of a big brand. I could do that all on a lime bike. It would take five hour flights to do it between those stakeholders in the us so actually that proximity effect I think adds a real richness to life. So does it have its challenges? Yes, but there's incredible pool of talent. So I think the kind of petri dish for continued growth is there.

[Unknown]

My word. If that's a standard afternoon, you're a very important person, aren't you?

[Tom Hume]

Jesus Christ.

[Unknown]

I just popped down to number 10. I popped down to like a global CEO, only sightseeing.

[Stan Bohlen]

Wow.

[Unknown]

That's.

[Tom Hume]

I was mainly sightseeing.

[Unknown]

I just barely managed to get through the emails.

[Tom Hume]

Well, linebikes is actually a portfolio company so I'm just driving up the revenue, just constantly cycling, cycling around on it. Yeah, exactly. I'm going to expense it to your show.

[Unknown]

Thank you so much. I'm going to get Brad to sponsor it. That's amazing. Final one before a quick fire. China is changing faster than ever. Tom, you said before when we were walking around the block that China is the thing that you've changed your mind on.

[Tom Hume]

Yeah, I've changed my mind on China a lot. So I think strategically they're in an amazing position for the obvious reason which I think actually more countries are more open minded to working, working with them given what's happening in the world. But I think there's a less obvious reason and that is partly as a result of deep seat. But more broadly we've learned a lesson in the last 12 months and that is that actually foundation models can be distilled relatively quickly. When I was on your show last time, I talked about how foundation models were sort of going to be the fastest depreciating assets in human history. Like weeks, it's almost days now. And so if you live in a world where, where the foundation models commoditizing really quickly, then you say where does the value accrue? And I think the value accrues at the application layer. So we're investing in companies like Synthesia in London or Harvey in the US at the application layer and then I actually think it accrues to in hardware as well. And if I look at hardware, China is so much better than the rest of the world at manufacturing and hardware and value add. And I think those devices are actually going to be the conduit for commoditized AI. So in that world, I've probably gone from thinking, being excited about the US dominance on foundation models to some extent, to thinking actually maybe the value is going to accrue also in the hardware layer. And that's somewhere that I think we're playing catch up.

[Stan Bohlen]

Yeah, and I think, I completely agree with that, actually. I think actually the hardware layer is just sitting just above the semiconductor layer. And actually I think the one that we can play in is the semiconductor layer. But I do agree with you. I think China is in a really good position partly because it has done this, like, very significant continuous investment in startups and in venture over the last, like 20 years. And as a result, if you look at a, if you look at a blob chart, if you like, of what investments going into AI, and you color code it for us, you color code it for China, you color code over Europe. It's basically US and China and these tiny little dots of Europe actually. So, I mean, Europe is really missing. So it is kind of US with China sort of chasing its tail, actually. And. But I also think the sort of geopolitics of America trying to dislocate itself from the rest of the world will put China in a much better position actually as well, geopolitically. So I think Europeans are going to be much more open to working with Chinese companies and doing business in China than they were even a year ago, actually. So I do think things are changing and it's probably not good for the US actually, but that's what I think is happening.

[Unknown]

Do you think we should be open to doing business with them?

[Stan Bohlen]

I do, actually, yeah. I mean, I've sold the company to Huawei, actually. So I spent about, I only spent about a month working for them, I have to say, because they didn't give me authority to buy a box of pencils after they bought the company. So it was, it was interesting.

[Unknown]

This is a country that doesn't allow our companies in there. They put their companies in ours. They acquire data on all of our consumers. We don't know where it goes. Every single piece of data that a Chinese company has, the Chinese government has authority to acquire at will.

[Stan Bohlen]

Yeah, all that's probably true, but. But also they are commercial as well, so you can do business in China. So when I ran this chip company, icira, actually our biggest customers were in China, so our biggest customers were Huawei and ZTE and yeah. And it was easier to get them to do a deal with you to sell product to them that it was kind of US company or a European company because you had to negotiate pretty hard on price and stuff. But nevertheless they were willing to engage and we built some really good relationships with them. At a personal level, I think people are actually pretty decent people and I think that you can do business with them. The Chinese state is something. Something different obviously be wary of. But I think there's a lot of scope actually for us to do a lot more business in China than we're currently doing.

[Unknown]

Do you agree?

[Tom Hume]

If I look at the talent, the areas that they have decided to focus on, they're all important battery technology. BYD is a force to be reckoned with. DJI is a force to be reckoned with. If I look at Deepseek and the you mentioned byd.

[Unknown]

Do you not worry about the Chinese subsidization of their car industry and what it's doing to the European car markets? I mean the German car market is being destroyed by BYD and Chinese cars and it's because the Chinese government is subsidizing between 20 and 30% of their car production. Feels a little bit unfair.

[Stan Bohlen]

It's certainly cornered the market in some of the rare materials necessary for batteries and so on. And I think it's got scale and it's got ability to compete really. So. So in that sense. But I mean the German car industry has got other challenges. So one of the other businesses I sold was to to Bosch actually. And so I'm sort of vaguely aware of what it's like working in a large German company and yeah, they have their own challenges and did you buy.

[Tom Hume]

Your own pencils though?

[Stan Bohlen]

Not really.

[Unknown]

The fourth Aguirre so he can buy a rubber.

[Stan Bohlen]

I love stationery.

[Unknown]

Listen guys, I want to move into a quick fire. So I say a short statement. You give me your immediate thoughts. That sound okay?

[Tom Hume]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

Stan, what do you believe that most around you disbelieve things like R and.

[Stan Bohlen]

D tax credits ought to be curtailed and we should put the money into a lot more venture is a really unpopular thought actually. But I still think it's right.

[Tom Hume]

Mine would be. I think I keep hearing people talking about the first one person billion dollar business is already created. I think that's absolutely ridiculous. On the one hand companies are growing faster and more efficiently than ever. Like bolt new $40 million revenue run rate in three months. They're going to grow incredibly quickly. But I think we've seen distillation of foundation models. We're going to start to see distillation of business models businesses and so I these really successful businesses to get copied ridiculously quickly. So I think this idea that you're going to have a sort of moat that enables one person to deliver billion dollars of revenue a year is a myth.

[Unknown]

What is the distribution of value in the foundational model landscape in five years?

[Tom Hume]

My big one here is that I've changed my mind. I thought OpenAI was a foundation model company. I now think it's a consumer company, it's at a $12 billion run rate or something. So my thought here would be it's going to aggregate to the application layer and brand is really important. They signed up a million ChatGPT users in an hour last week it was announced. Brand is incredibly important, the application layer is important. And then I think hardware as I mentioned is important. This is one of the things reasons we invested in nothing. We believe they've got 7 million devices out there that are potentially conduits for their AI.

[Stan Bohlen]

Yeah, I think that might be right Tom, that the value is going to be balanced up at the application layer but I also think the hardware and semiconductor layer below it's sort of plausible because LLMs are not the end of the story here in AI. So there are some, obviously some big limitations on what LLMs are going to be able to do. So there's more innovation to come and that's going to change models, change the math that we got to do and so on. But some of the things that are going to be concept, we're still going to be doing very large matrix vector multipliers at high speed need in silicon and I think that's the sort of thing I think we can build competitive long term advantage in here. So I think there would be value accruing even more value accruing to competitors to say Nvidia I think will be big and I think at the application layer exactly as you say, I think there'll be value accruing there.

[Tom Hume]

And how about inference at the edge as well? I mean that's something you understand better than me. But they're lighter these models. More and more could happen on device.

[Stan Bohlen]

Yeah, that's true. But with that is coming a lot more sort of chain of thought reasoning, a lot more testing time compute. So the, the token generation is still going up actually. So I still think there's going to be a large amount of silicon required to be able to do sort of high performance inference even at the edge actually. So, so There's a lot of scope. I think inference, I think the investment in inference has grown like 57 times in the last year. That that rate will probably continue for a while.

[Unknown]

You know what I just can't get? I can't get how if we all appreciate the shift in focus from training to inf inference, how Jensen and Nvidia are just sitting there going, ah, well, we're going to get screwed. Because actually our architecture means that we're not optimized for inference. That is not happening. Jensen is not just saying, oh fine, we'll just enjoy the training era while it lasts. Help me understand why am I missing this?

[Stan Bohlen]

They are making a bunch of architectural changes to GPUs to make them better and better inference. So there is a lot of architectural change going on there. It's obviously not a big surprise to see if we saw Jensen starting to to adopt and reinvent himself as a in memory compute company. I mean that wouldn't really surprise me actually that he'll be working on that. So whether he does that organically, internally or he does it through some sort of acquisition, it remains to be seen really. But I think it's certainly likely that he's got the resource and he's got the cash to be able to sort of move the organization or build an organization in pretty much any area he wants. And one thing about Jensen is I spent about a year and a half working for him is he's definitely paying attention to and listening to the market and he's got very big ears and tracks what's happening with enormous study. So I do think we've got to expect them to be tracking in the direction towards being more efficient at inference.

[Unknown]

What's your biggest takeaway from working with Janssen?

[Stan Bohlen]

Well, firstly, he's a good human, so that's good. I think that we got one of the world's richest people is actually, I think, a good person. He is however, a bit of a control freak. Many would be the time we're just about to give a sort of presentation to a major customer and Jensen wants to go through the deck and we'll change product name, schedule, pricing and resources and everything on the fly like with 10 minutes to spare before the meeting. So he's quite hard to work for in terms of his desire to have command of detail and to be in control of the most important variables in the company. But in a way, as a sort of founder, I do sort of respect that actually. So within Nvidia we used to have a gents at the Top we had a layer of people whose job was to buffer everybody else in the company, actually. And so this buffer layer would deal with Jensen, which is great.

[Tom Hume]

Human shield.

[Stan Bohlen]

A human shield. And there's the people below that can actually get on with stuff, actually. But obviously I like the guy and he's an incredible communicator.

[Unknown]

We always hear of his. I don't have direct reports, I have so many of like 50 or 60. And it sounds great when you hear him, him say it for the 50 or 60. We never hear from them. Is it good for them?

[Stan Bohlen]

Well, I mean, it's a. I mean it is a sort of. It's a brutal culture, I'd say. Yeah, it is, yeah. But in a way that is not malevolent. So if it's possible to imagine. So, yeah. So he will tear people apart in public on stuff that they've not got command of or he thinks that wrong about, and he will like rip them to shreds and leave them whimpering in the corner to lick their wounds. But I think he. I think he, he then sort of forgets it and hopes that the exercise will have resulted in some improvement in the way the person thinks and acts. And so, so, so that, yeah, so that it's not, it's not for everybody, that, that style of management. But I honestly, you've got to admit, it's worked. So he has done an amazing job.

[Unknown]

Would you buy OpenAI at 300 billion?

[Tom Hume]

Yes.

[Stan Bohlen]

No.

[Unknown]

Why? Yes? Why No?

[Tom Hume]

I think if you look at it as a consumer business, it has extraordinary momentum and it's only just started integrating moats. So historically there's been no switching cost, one of the most important powers of a business, but now people have started using it. I actually think the memory is helping people stick. So if I just look anecdotally at my kids at school, for them, LLMs are chat GPT, so they're very well placed. Now, do I think that?

[Unknown]

And for my mother on the other end of the age spectrum, same thing.

[Tom Hume]

Yeah. They own brand, so it's incredibly powerful. It doesn't mean I think it's the best gen AI investment, but if I was sitting independently, do I think it's a good investment now when your downside is somewhat protected and they're at a $12 billion run rate, let's say it's a 20 times forward multiple. I think it's a reasonable place to put money.

[Stan Bohlen]

Yeah. And I think a lot of the demand on these foundation models is going to be through APIs by application software. That are basically sort of those APIs are going to be driven by latency performance of the model and so on. And things like Claude are as good if not better than OpenAI's models. And that given this demand for agents that are basically calling APIs will be driving a lot of demand here. It's not obvious to me that the consumer chat interface is the winning interface really. It seems to me that the API interface and the application calling agent calling might be a bigger interface. So I'd probably put the money elsewhere.

[Unknown]

Both good answers.

[Tom Hume]

Would you?

[Unknown]

I would. I always love businesses where everyone thinks it's kind of reaching the top and then actually it's just actually reaching escape velocity. I think the same with actually Revolut right now Whereas people think 45 billion or 60 billion new round is pricey. I would buy the shit out of Revolute right now. But I totally agree with you in terms of just introducing the moats and the memory I think is so important you go back to where they remember what you did past. I'm always doing past searches and actually I do. It's so funny for every single show I put the prompt in to grok perplexity. OpenAI, you can buy and hold one public stock for 10 years. Which one do you think?

[Tom Hume]

I mean I'm so concentrated in tech I'll avoid tech stocks and say uranium etf.

[Unknown]

I have concerns, I've never had that before.

[Tom Hume]

I have concerns about costs of energy for productivity. I think climate change is real. I think the best source of energy going forward is nuclear fusion and potentially fission and SMRs are going to be important. I think it's the predictable cleanest energy source we have. I not betting on one individual company that's difficult to do. So I think if I take an ETF in uranium I might enjoy the upside of the market because it'll be needed.

[Unknown]

What's your Stan?

[Stan Bohlen]

Yeah, I probably would avoid tech as well actually. Same reason probably Rolls Royce actually because I do think defense is going to be a big kicker in terms of demand. So the aero engine business and I mean it's actually gone like a rocket this year anyway that stock, I mean it's gone like 3x this year but I actually think we're at the beginning of a journey and I think it could be much bigger because as a European aeroengine vendor I think it's going to see high demand actually.

[Unknown]

You can snap your fingers and change one thing about the UK tech ecosystem.

[Stan Bohlen]

What we you change, flood it with venture capital. I mean seriously I think that's the thing that will. The one lever that we can pull that will make a big difference is that everything else will take time and stuff. But I do think a lot flows from capital availability.

[Tom Hume]

I love that, I would say sentiment at the moment. I think this question is being asked so much it becomes a drag.

[Unknown]

What's the most underinvested but exciting areas today?

[Stan Bohlen]

Yeah, Tom, you did this for a living.

[Tom Hume]

I'll go hardware. I think if you take a hardware company out to market, the people, investors immediate response is, oh, that's really hard. But the paradox about venture capital is you need it to be difficult to be valuable, you need to be contrarian and right. And I think hardware is a place you can do that at the moment. A huge amount of value will accrue there.

[Stan Bohlen]

I've got the level below semis, I think semiconductors that fit into the hardware that Tom's talking about.

[Unknown]

Which politician do you most respect and admire and why?

[Tom Hume]

Lee Kuan Yew Specialization.

[Stan Bohlen]

Yeah. So I'm going to stick to the uk. So at the moment I'd say none of the current government really fill me with enormous enthusiasm. I think Patrick Valance is a useful guy who's trying his best to sort of make an impact on the uk, so I think. But he's not really a politician. I do think in the current government, Darren Jones I think has got the potential to be great.

[Unknown]

Final one, guys, 10 years time, where is the UK one and how many $10 billion companies will we have on the LSE then?

[Stan Bohlen]

I think we will get the UK pointing in the right direction. I think it will require some government embracing of the challenge and a lot more communication, education by government on what we're going to do and how we're going to do it. I think we're approaching a point. We're about a year into this current government, four years to go to the next election. Things have not gone well and I think we're approaching a point when they've got to recognize a change and make some changes and I think we are going to see some changes that will be positive. And assuming that happens, I think in 10 years time, I think. I think we will have achieved this $500 billion valuation in tech and the UK will be seen as the magnet in Europe in which people come to kind of build these companies. So that's what I think we're going to achieve.

[Tom Hume]

So I'm an optimist. I think sometimes the best companies grow from adversity partly because of the concentration of talent, they'll just aggregate more than they have. So I don't know, 1999 was its salesforce course. And then you have Airbnb and Uber in 2008. I think we'll look back and the companies that are most impactful in the decade will have grown in the uk and they won't be names we know today because these companies are growing faster than ever. So they'll be AI native, incredibly fast growing businesses. And it's not clear to me they'll list at all. If you look at the trend direction there, we spent a lot of time assuming listing makes sense, but some of our best portfolio companies like Stripe aren't listing anytime soon and they're finding ways to deliver liquidity. So I wonder whether we'll even be talking about whether they did or didn't list in the uk.

[Unknown]

God, that's opening up a can of worms. I mean, spend another two hours on that. But I cannot thank you both enough for joining me. It's been such a fantastic discussion. Honestly, there were two people that I most wanted being YouTube because I think it's such a different perspective you both bring. So thank you so much for doing it.

[Stan Bohlen]

Thanks for inviting us. We enjoyed it.

[Tom Hume]

Loved it, really fun.

[Stan Bohlen]

Thanks a lot.

[Harry Stebbings]

I mean that was such a special show for me to do. If you want to watch the episode, you can find it on YouTube by searching for 20VC. I also want your feedback. Let me know what you think of having three together in the studio. I really want to do more of them and so if you like them, let me know and we'll make sure they happen. But before we leave you Today, here are two fun facts about our newest brand sponsor, Kajabi. First, their customers just crossed a collective $8 billion in total total revenue. Wow. Second, Kajabi's users keep 100% of their earnings with the average Kajabi creator bringing in over $30,000 per year. In case you didn't know, Kajabi is the leading creator commerce platform with an all in one suite of tools including websites, email marketing, digital products, payment processing and analytics for as low as $69 per month. Whether you are looking to build a private community, write a paid not newsletter or launch a course, Kajabi is the only platform that will enable you to build and grow your online business without taking a cut of your revenue. 20VC listeners can try Kajabi for free for 30 days by going to kajabi.com 20VC that's kajabi.com K A J A B I.com 20VC once you've built your creator empire with Kajabi, take your insights and decision making to the next level with AlphaSense, the ultimate platform for uncovering trusted research and expert perspectives. As an investor, I'm always on the lookout for tools that really transform how I work. Tools that don't just save time, but fundamentally change how I uncover insights. That's exactly what AlphaSense does. With the acquisition of Tagus, AlphaSense is now the ultimate research platform built for professionals who need insights they can trust fast. I've used Teagus before for company deep dives right here on the podcast. It's been an incredible resource for expert insights, but now, with AlphaSense leading the way, it combines those insights with premium content, top broker research and cutting edge generative AI. The result? A platform that works like a supercharged junior analyst, delivering trusted insights and analysis on demand. AlphaSense has completely reimagined fundamental research, helping you uncover opportunities from perspectives you didn't even know how they existed. It's faster, it's smarter, and it's built to give you the edge in every decision you make. To any VC listeners, don't miss your chance to try AlphaSense for free. Visit AlphaSense.com 20 to unlock your trial. That's AlphaSense.com 20 and once you've got the insights from AlphaSense, you're going to need a bank that actually moves as fast as you do. Well, that's where Mercury comes in. Mercury is changing how businesses think about banking. Just listen to Bryce Ferguson, the founder of Turnkey, which builds secure, flexible and scalable crypto wallet infrastructure and is a 20 VC portfolio company. So he says Mercury spoiled us. There's no going back to a regular bank account after being with Mercury because everything just feels so easy and intuitive. It saves our team a ton of time from sending wires to paying bills, creating reports. Mercury has simplified our banking no end. Visit mercury.com to see for yourself how a powerful bank account can transform your business operating Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group, Column N A and Evolve bank and Trust members of the FDIC.