YouSaid · the spoken record
Daniel Korski
- lines on the record
- 46
- first
- 2015-12-01
- most recent
- 2015-12-01
- sittings or episodes
- 1
- sources
- podcast
Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections
“Think themes that we've been talking about there's extraordinary talent here. I think there's kind of access to a very broad range of industries, kind of outside tech that are kind of crying out for tech to common play a role there. And I think you have the emergence of an ecosystem that does have a different flavor and is some actually exciting things bobbling up.”
2015-12-01 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Building Tech Startups in a Place Where Tech Isn’t Everything · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One of the biggest things I've benefited from being in London is in having a less inward looking kind of point of view, I think in America, I can say it because I'm American, it's really easy to just think that America is all there is because it's dominant force. It's where a lot of dominant force in culture and technology and it's easy to just think about the US. But when you're in London, you're forced to think about the rest of Europe as a first step and then the rest of the world. And I think that comes more naturally to people in a place like London.”
2015-12-01 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Building Tech Startups in a Place Where Tech Isn’t Everything · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think it absolutely depends on the kind of advice that you need. So, one of my advisors is actually friends with Nick, Mike Bartlett, who worked at Skype as well, and I sought him out as an advisor when he was still at Skype, but he's now gone on to start his own company. And at that time, I needed to learn about how to run a product team, how to effectively ship products and he could help me with that. But I think a lot of the problems you face as a startup are inherent to the nature of starting a company and learning how to grow business. I think the kind of advice you might get from somebody who comes from a big company might not be relevant to you. So that's kind of why that flywheel and that kind of cohort of people who've done it successfully is probably the most valuable place for that advice.”
2015-12-01 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Building Tech Startups in a Place Where Tech Isn’t Everything · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We have a lot of inbound interest from large corporates and very often the challenges that the reason they're approaching us is they've got to some sort of realization of we need to be more innovative. We're not quite sure what that means in a patronizing way, it's a hugely difficult question to answer. We're not sure how to do it. We think stops might be part of the answer. Can you help? And I think we've found with some partners, very large organizations, we actually can help and we can do some things that are real win-wins actually interestingly media companies we found it easier to work with than some others. But I think the stage it feels like we're at here in London is that there's a realization that more must be done and figuring out what the it is is still the kind of open question.”
2015-12-01 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Building Tech Startups in a Place Where Tech Isn’t Everything · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think there's also an emerging trend in media for equity deals. Big media companies based here that have huge reach but feel maybe they're not playing a part in innovation and in some of the new ways that information is being spread and using some of their reach to get equity in startups, but more importantly, glean learnings from startups, how they work and how they interact with customers.”
2015-12-01 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Building Tech Startups in a Place Where Tech Isn’t Everything · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Maybe not in terms of massive companies, but because we do ticketing and we get supply from artists directly through artist pre-sales as well as promoters, there's a lot of kind of a cultural divide that you have to bridge around how tech company works, why we can't do certain things, how we can help in learning to speak the same language as an old industry like the music industry. So that's the kind of bigger gap that I see.”
2015-12-01 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Building Tech Startups in a Place Where Tech Isn’t Everything · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A few funds of their own to invest in startups at early stage. In general, large companies do not partner well, especially with small companies. But I think big advertising agencies in London have proven that wrong. We're starting to see a trend where larger companies are doing a better job of partnering with startups. And there's certain things driving that. One is you don't want to be left behind, which is maybe the case for Canon, right? Or Google buying DeepMind. Google's a separate thing. But I also think that there's an understanding that if you need to partner with startups, you need to sort of change your way of billing of setting up contracts, however that may be. Are you guys seeing any evidence of that, that the ICE is cracking a little bit in terms of willingness to bring you guys into the fold from a corporate perspective?”
2015-12-01 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Building Tech Startups in a Place Where Tech Isn’t Everything · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, one of the first tech jobs that I had was at a large corporate US-based technology company. And I think the view of startups, they were kind of an annoyance. You might take an occasional meaning from one, you might glean some ideas, but in general, you tried to avoid interacting with them. We were recently acquired by the imaging company Canon, and I think that they're particularly excited about London as a potential hub for innovation and a lot of the scene that's happening here and being able to connect with those startups. I think what's also interesting is if you look at advertising, London is definitely the undoubted advertising centre for Europe. And there's so much innovation that happens around advertising. And I think they embrace startups wholeheartedly and do really interesting trials and work with startups. They've started”
2015-12-01 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Building Tech Startups in a Place Where Tech Isn’t Everything · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Do you think as well the exciting thing is as that's happened, the academics themselves have become more engaged in that process? So I would say four years ago, maybe a reflection on us rather than them, but we're very good at engagement from academia itself, whereas this year we found we had so much engagement from really top computer science professors that we ended up building an academic advisory board to help us both think about how do we help our startups, but also how do we help some of their PhD students think about startups. And I think if you go to Cambridge, you go to Imperial, you go to UCL. We're talking about not just regional but global kind of leaders in machine learning, in artificial intelligence, in virtual reality, in cryptocurrencies. These are very exciting areas of cutting-edge research. And those professors now want to be involved in startups.”
2015-12-01 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Building Tech Startups in a Place Where Tech Isn’t Everything · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There is a deep history of technology and engineering kind of excellence in the UK for sure. I mean, Cambridge is a great place for that. And SwiftKeek, I think, is another example of PhDs who are doing research in machine learning, and they decided to apply their learnings and their academic background to a consumer product. And I think that shift in thinking, I can do more with the research that I'm doing, or I can have a different application is happening now. And I think that's kind of similar to the shift we're seeing in general of engineers and tech talent looking to startups as a place to apply their skills. So our CTO, for example, got his PhD from Leeds in Artificial Intelligence, worked at Google, worked at Apple, worked in the Valley, and he's now involved in the university in kind of changing the computer science program to have it be more commercially focused or training the students to be able to work as engineers rather than thinking about going on higher education or whatever other paths he might have.”
2015-12-01 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Building Tech Startups in a Place Where Tech Isn’t Everything · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it's a deep miners, a company started here in London by PhDs in computer science focusing on general artificial intelligence. I think they made some pretty exciting progress on the research side, although they never actually released a product into the market as such. And it was acquired by Google for, I think, $400 million, something in that region maybe a year ago. Now, I think that's had a number of interesting effects. The most important for us that entrepreneur first has been that suddenly every PhD in computer science in the country is saying, interesting. I wonder whether there's something I can do. And actually, as a cultural shift, it's a very small number of people. Maybe talking a thousand people, but those thousand people have the capacity to actually do something quite special.”
2015-12-01 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Building Tech Startups in a Place Where Tech Isn’t Everything · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is extraordinary talent in London, and well, really the broader UK and Europe, and I think very often because that talent hasn't been thinking about startups or even really technology, I mean, it's not just about startups. You have this effect where actually suddenly it's exciting and you see a flow kind of into the ecosystem. I think the big change that we've seen is that increasingly it's people with includes people with deep technology talent who actually, you know, the deep mind story actually, I think, is an important story for London as an ecosystem because I think maybe not for the first time, but for”
2015-12-01 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Building Tech Startups in a Place Where Tech Isn’t Everything · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Do universities fit in this? Because again, a big quality, we've talked about government, we've talked about entrepreneurs in the communities, and then you have universities, which are huge hubs of talent, they're sources of talent for you directly, Matt, and for you, Michelle, in hiring.”
2015-12-01 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Building Tech Startups in a Place Where Tech Isn’t Everything · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I didn't think it's at that level, rightly or wrongly. I think really it's probably more on the kind of supply side, on the capital side. I mean, I think Nicholas was referring to some of the tax breaks for angel investors, which undoubtedly have had a huge impact on both who and how much is investing in the UK. But arguably that just feeds the housing bubble and there is rezoning.”
2015-12-01 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Building Tech Startups in a Place Where Tech Isn’t Everything · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Into the tech scene, and I think government has a strong role to play to make sure that we don't crush what's made London so vibrant, which is that we have such a mix of people coming here to start companies and to be part of companies and also controlling and making sure that if San Francisco is in some ways, in some respects a cautionary tale, make sure that we also don't become an environment where small entrepreneurs and startups get priced out and go to other cities because they can't stay here.”
2015-12-01 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Building Tech Startups in a Place Where Tech Isn’t Everything · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think in bringing public attention and public spotlight onto what's happening in London in the startup ecosystem here, it's probably had knock-on effects. I think when we first started, Silicon Roundabout wasn't a term, there wasn't a startup cluster, and now it's a well-understood thing. People talk about Tech City. You read it in the broadsheets. I think that's been hugely influential in terms of the cultural awareness of startups, but I don't know about specific policies or kind of tax codes that have helped.”
2015-12-01 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Building Tech Startups in a Place Where Tech Isn’t Everything · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I'm sure you've experienced this very strongly. I mean, I think the government, the current government, the last government, both really paid attention to startups, perhaps to a degree that was hard to fathom as a very young startup, being invited to meetings at Bocketham Palace and 10 Downing Street. And is that a useful thing? Obviously not in the scheme of things, but in terms of being the drum, I think it is useful.”
2015-12-01 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Building Tech Startups in a Place Where Tech Isn’t Everything · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Some of the things that the government here has done are getting out of the way things and some of them that they've done are quite active things. And I think there's a lot of criticism of the government probably four years ago that it was cheerleading and hype and there was nothing there. And probably that was true. But at the same time, I think it was a self-fulfilling prophecy that was probably quite useful because I do think ecosystems have to be magnets for capital and for talent. And it's obviously not nothing there. But as in the criticism was always these aren't real companies. Sunkick being an obvious exception. But as in the criticism used to be, you know, these are all agencies and women bands and is that fair or not? I think what has been quite helpful is being enough of a drum that actually a very smart people and pools of capital start to look at it and that's undoubtedly been helpful.”
2015-12-01 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Building Tech Startups in a Place Where Tech Isn’t Everything · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One thing that I think is interesting is that there's never been a really successful case of a top-down government mandated or government-created eco-cluster, nor has there been a completely purely successful bottoms-up community where it's just a startup set of entrepreneurs who are very entrepreneurial and trying to build an innovation cluster. So there seems to be a happy middle where you got to meet in the middle. What factors do you think need to sort of balance or what have you guys observed here that sort of enables you to do what you need to do or that you wish people would help get out of your way in building whatever you've built or are building?”
2015-12-01 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Building Tech Startups in a Place Where Tech Isn’t Everything · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One maybe smaller thing that surprised me when I talked to entrepreneurs from the US or from France or other places that government is either seen as irrelevant at best or the enemy at worst. And I think there's a different sense of harmony here. I think government is actually quite innovative in how they help angel investors in the UK, how they help startups directly, and also how they're helping to build the scene. When you're a very small startup and you have questions about things like tax, you actually can pick up the phone and talk to somebody and get a real answer. And I think with the IRS in the US, maybe people don't pick up the phone. And in France, I think it's a similar situation. The government doesn't have to be the enemy for a small business, for an entrepreneur. It can actually be the opposite.”
2015-12-01 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Building Tech Startups in a Place Where Tech Isn’t Everything · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But what can we learn from From you guys and from sort of what you're describing. There's this huge ambition in Silicon Valley. There's this ability to scale, but clearly there's something that you guys have going on here in London in particular in Europe in general that we can learn from. And what are some of those things that if you're a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, you might do well to pay attention”
2015-12-01 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Building Tech Startups in a Place Where Tech Isn’t Everything · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It feels to me when I look at our kind of portfolio companies as they develop, that the valley is still very much the kind of probably global hub of people who know how to scale from 100 million to a billion, say, or maybe even below that to above that. And that's not here yet. And so I would say looking outside, we say it looks like it's probably the best world to best place in the world to scale a company. It may not any longer be the only place in the world to build the company. I think the other thing we're increasingly seeing very strongly with our companies is that the cost of engineering talent in the valley relative to here means that there is actually an arbitrage play available of raising US money on US terms and hiring UK engineers on UK salaries because what you could cost you to get a Stanford grad straight out of a four-year CS degree, you can get, you know,”
2015-12-01 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Building Tech Startups in a Place Where Tech Isn’t Everything · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Going to a museum or being able to see that film that just came out or having more variety in my social life than just technology. So I find that to be a reprieve when I'm not there. I think the other thing that is a benefit of being away from the valley is that you kind of aren't distracted by the echo chamber. I think it's really easy to get caught up in competitiveness or feeling like you're missing out or you're not doing.”
2015-12-01 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Building Tech Startups in a Place Where Tech Isn’t Everything · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, exactly. And because people are operating at such a high level, you learn a lot when you're there and you kind of realize how much more you'd be learning more quickly if you were just around and living there and informally in conversations. So anytime we want to figure out a new problem to solve or some issue we're facing, we always look to see if there's anyone in the valley that we can seek advice from. I think the flip side of that is it is like I personally find it to be a cultural wasteland anytime I go over there after I'm there for two weeks I'm craving”
2015-12-01 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Building Tech Startups in a Place Where Tech Isn’t Everything · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I think the valley definitely establishes the benchmark for ambition. Like, anytime I go there, whether it's to meet investors or for whatever partners or whatever reason you kind of always get, I feel like I get my ass kicked from the level ambition there. And that can sometimes be lacking in London. Like, you know, being very bullshy about thinking big and saying you're going to be the next whatever billion dollar company that just doesn't come naturally to British people, I think, being that kind of”
2015-12-01 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Building Tech Startups in a Place Where Tech Isn’t Everything · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think if you're a geek, you feel like you're coming home if you go to San Francisco. I mean, these billboards with these in jokes about technology and the guy at the rental car place who starts talking about his startup. I mean, in that way, it's really exciting. Sometimes it does feel like it's a town that's so dominated by technology that you wonder if any ideas really get shouted down. Whereas I think in a city like London, you can get your ideas shouted down by lots of people pretty quickly, people that don't really care about technology. And I think that's a refreshing thing to have as an entrepreneur. So that's what you need. You need to be tested and you need to have people that aren't from the technology world and aren't necessarily excited about technology, understand what the benefit you're bringing is.”
2015-12-01 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Building Tech Startups in a Place Where Tech Isn’t Everything · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Startup is the right way to solve this problem, but increasingly, I think as tech, as you say, seeps globally, that is a lens that people are using, but they're looking at a much wider set of problems, you know, fashion, music, finance, industry than perhaps they would if everything was about tech in the environment.”
2015-12-01 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Building Tech Startups in a Place Where Tech Isn’t Everything · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think for me, it's really a question about what is the nature of ambition and what markets do people in a community, in an ecosystem? Who do people aspire to serve? Certainly the impression outside in about Silicon Valley is sometimes that it's somewhat inward-looking and wants to solve its own problems and there's nothing wrong with that. Whereas I think you can't do that here. There isn't a big enough tech ecosystem that you can serve that community alone. I mean, we often think of it when we compare graduates coming out of Cambridge University or Imperial here to people maybe coming out of Stanford, we always say the difference is how obvious is it to them that tech is the prism through which all these things will be solved? I mean our joke is that Stanford has the luxury of attracting megalaniacs and turning them into computer scientists and we have to start with computer scientists and turn them into megalomaniacs. Oh, that's so funny. But I really mean that and I think we kind of get people coming out and say well it's not obvious to me that starting a”
2015-12-01 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Building Tech Startups in a Place Where Tech Isn’t Everything · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It seems that the phase of technology that we're in there, we were describing, I was talking to some folks the other day at how there's things that come to Europe and the UK and they're like, oh, that seems like that would make great sense in San Francisco, but honestly, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense here. But as technology, and it's already gone global, but as it kind of seeps into every industry and every part of our lives, I wonder if the advantage shifts to this part of the world or other parts of the world because of that diversity. So the United States is this island sort of and Silicon Valley in particular is this island. So do those outside influences lend themselves to building technology that really scales more broadly around the world?”
2015-12-01 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Building Tech Startups in a Place Where Tech Isn’t Everything · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So getting some more cultural diversity due to the not in the most generic way of like, oh, immigrants coming from everywhere, but you're actually describing the way that they've been raised and their cultural backgrounds really influencing and shaping that technology.”
2015-12-01 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Building Tech Startups in a Place Where Tech Isn’t Everything · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and I think that's to bear fruit when you start to look at different topics. So privacy is super important for our startup. You can imagine that somebody who grew up in a megapolis in a country of one billion people Has a different view of privacy from someone who grew up in a former Soviet republic of two million people. And I think that helps with chemistry within a startup.”
2015-12-01 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Building Tech Startups in a Place Where Tech Isn’t Everything · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, if you go into the East End, well, where Michelle is, there's a whole bunch of entrepreneurs, but they're not necessarily technology entrepreneurs. There's a lot of fashion entrepreneurship. There's a lot of music. And I think that's just as much a part of the scene as the technology. And I think that makes it richer ground. I think what's also interesting about you're asking about what might be different about startups in London or Europe, I think inside the startup, there's a different profile culturally. I think London is such a mixing pot as a city, and I think that the startups that happen here are also mixing pot. I mean, the first four hires we made were from the Ukraine, Estonia, India, and Hungary. And even after we acquired the next four were from Spain, Turkey, Greece, and Spain again.”
2015-12-01 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Building Tech Startups in a Place Where Tech Isn’t Everything · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It sounds like what you're saying is you end up solving a problem that's specific to your location. So the issues that entrepreneurs face or maybe that they don't even know to face because they don't know their entrepreneurs, which is very specific to London. If you grew up in the valley, everyone does a startup, you do one by the time you're 12. It's like a known thing, whereas there's a lot more to fight up against. And similarly, I think the reason why there's so many culture-related startups in London is because that's a very London thing about fashion and media and music as well. I think there's a lot more startups in London focusing on those problems as opposed to the valley.”
2015-12-01 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Building Tech Startups in a Place Where Tech Isn’t Everything · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, the comparison, the way we would always differentiate is we think Y combinator in particular is done, a truly phenomenal job and huge fans of what they've achieved. And the way, and actually we don't want to compete with any of these guys head on because I think usually if you've got a team and an idea and a product, you should go to iCombin, you should go to Textiles, whatever. So what we're trying to say is how do you get the guy who otherwise would go to Goldman Sachs to even think about it at all? Well, if you tell him, cool, well, there's this funding available if you have a team and an idea. And, well, he's just going to go to Goldman Sachs. So what we do is we say, if you are exceptional technically and incredibly ambitious, we will spend six months with you actually building from pre-company to company, which I think even why Common Aid doesn't really want to do, understandably, we can actually do that in a very systematic way. And so for us, it's not a regional flavor so much as it's a response to what is the kind of market for talent here and how does it work.”
2015-12-01 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Building Tech Startups in a Place Where Tech Isn’t Everything · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, for example, one of the bits that I think when we start an entrepreneur first that was deeply controversial when we tried to raise money was you're talking about building teams from scratch. Everyone knows that's impossible. This is crazy. We've been doing this for 40 years and it doesn't work. And basically because people didn't know that it didn't work here, we were able to try and now we've built 50 companies through that model and they seem to be able to kind of raise on the same trajectory, develop products on the same trajectory, kind of get to revenue on the same trajectory as teams that kind of form organically in an environment like Silicon Valley. And I actually think we would have never got off the ground in Silicon Valley because people would have just said you just can't do that. We know this”
2015-12-01 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Building Tech Startups in a Place Where Tech Isn’t Everything · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My view is that great entrepreneurs are great entrepreneurs, and I think there's no, there probably is some flavoring, but you don't say, I think in a way, one of the most interesting things from our perspective is that being in an ecosystem that's not as developed allows you to challenge some of the conventional wisdom about how companies are built.”
2015-12-01 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Building Tech Startups in a Place Where Tech Isn’t Everything · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And just to build on that question, one of the theses that we've put forth in the past is this notion of regulatory arbitrage that different cities can actually use, relax certain rules and policies in order to optimize their, like so London is actually doing this actively right now at FinTech in order to really, because they both been the heart, the city's always been the heart of the financial services industry, so really staying relevant in the future by getting ahead of it. And is that something that you guys see playing out as well?”
2015-12-01 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Building Tech Startups in a Place Where Tech Isn’t Everything · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think it's got better as well as that the recycling of info. I think in the last year or two, it's become much more open entrepreneurs sharing learnings with each other. I remember when we tried to do our raise it one round and we had to go to a partner meeting. I had no idea what that was and I had to Google it because nobody, there didn't seem to be any.”
2015-12-01 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Building Tech Startups in a Place Where Tech Isn’t Everything · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think in the last even what 18 months I'm starting to see a lot more entrepreneurs from the last, from the Sunkit generation become angel investors and the Skype Mafia, I think, now is actually pretty active as investors and entrepreneurs. And that recycling of talent and capital is starting to happen.”
2015-12-01 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Building Tech Startups in a Place Where Tech Isn’t Everything · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I think the list is pretty long of Spotify and Skype. There's a whole bunch of success stories. I think what probably hasn't happened yet is you don't have the mafias that have followed those yet.”
2015-12-01 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Building Tech Startups in a Place Where Tech Isn’t Everything · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I'm going to say something kind of obnoxious, and Nick, you probably should correct me about this. One of the things that I hear a lot of US people say is no company of significance has been started in Europe and London, including London, obviously. And I don't mean that in disparaging way, but it begs two questions. One, do you need local role models to nurture a local entrepreneurial ecosystem? And two, What will it take to make that next huge hit come out of Europe? And am I wrong? Correct me if so.”
2015-12-01 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Building Tech Startups in a Place Where Tech Isn’t Everything · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think a few things that we see changed. I mean, one is a kind of obvious global effect, which is the cost of starting a tech company, at least in the very early stage, to keep falling. And you reduce the cost of something, you tend to increase demand for it. But I think also on the other side, I think we start to have some role models and some success stories. I mean, I think Sunkick's a great example of that. Maybe the first British company to take funding from Sakaia and kind of people increasingly look around and they do see the just eats and the kings and the Skypes and the things that happened in London. suddenly there's a legitimacy that just wasn't there maybe certainly five years ago I think”
2015-12-01 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Building Tech Startups in a Place Where Tech Isn’t Everything · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We started Silicon Milk Roundabout. Which we've now spun out as a separate company entirely That was basically to help startups hire, and it was a recruitment jobs for, and now that's grown and exploded.”
2015-12-01 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Building Tech Startups in a Place Where Tech Isn’t Everything · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And they say that the gap, the delta is very much driven by tech, by startups, and a little bit, I'm pleased to say by us, I think we're now one of the biggest recruiters out of that university. But that whole, we seem to kind of focus ambition for these people at the very start of their career is changing, very much in favor of tech.”
2015-12-01 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Building Tech Startups in a Place Where Tech Isn’t Everything · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, I think we look at these things through the lens of what do the most ambitious people in a society want to do with their lives? And I think the answer to that question actually has profound consequences for what a society and economy looks like. And clearly in Silicon Valley, the most ambitious people want to start companies. And I think historically in London, the most ambitious people have wanted to be bankers. And that's had a huge impact on the startup scene on the technology scene because of a lot of people who might be founders aren't. And what we're trying to do at Entrepreneur First is change that. And I think it is changing very quickly. So four years ago when we started entrepreneur first, I know this from a recent conversation with a dean of engineering at one of the top technical institutions in the world that's very close to here, they said 65% of their computer science grads went to become bankers, went into finance.”
2015-12-01 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Building Tech Startups in a Place Where Tech Isn’t Everything · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think what's actually interesting about London is that technology is probably the technology hub for Europe and for the startup scene, but it's the regional hub for a bunch of other industries, especially industries that are being changed by technology advertising, finance. The list is long. And I actually think that's an interesting difference about London is that technology doesn't dominate everything. And there are a lot of people when you walk out of this office who won't really care about technology for technology's sake. They really want to know what it does. And I think that's actually a healthy thing for an ecosystem to have. A lot of other industries that are also powerful and important.”
2015-12-01 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Building Tech Startups in a Place Where Tech Isn’t Everything · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source