YouSaid · the spoken record

Fede Pirzio-Biroli

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31
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2015-08-12
most recent
2015-08-12
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1
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  1. “The most recent investment we announced is NITIMITIN was a text rows company and we invested because the quality of their IP in terms of the code they've written to program these knitting machines and the absolutely massive global market that they can tap into and the closed nature of that market basically”

    2015-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 062: Shaking Up London's VC Scene with Fede Pirzio-Biroli, Founder @ Playfair Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “I mean, we're quite agnostic. To be fair, I spend quite a lot of time on Angelists because it gives me some interesting insights into foreign deals and who's around them most importantly.”

    2015-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 062: Shaking Up London's VC Scene with Fede Pirzio-Biroli, Founder @ Playfair Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Honestly, and it's not just a plug, but Dojo's newsletter is the funniest thing I read all week. It's fantastic, their tone of voice, and I mean, that's really kind of, yeah, that's my absolute favorite.”

    2015-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 062: Shaking Up London's VC Scene with Fede Pirzio-Biroli, Founder @ Playfair Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “I think I'm, I mean, if I had done anything differently, then we wouldn't be here for the reasons that we are today, which is entirely reactive. And there's something I really like about that. There's something off the cuff and organic and the opposite of meticulously executing a predetermined plan. And I think that I wouldn't actually change anything.”

    2015-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 062: Shaking Up London's VC Scene with Fede Pirzio-Biroli, Founder @ Playfair Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Yes, so absolutely two companies in Nigeria, and we're looking at more and more. I mean, eventually over the next few years, I'm going to be spending, my plan over the next couple of years is to be in East Africa and Southern Africa and indeed Western Africa at least two or three times a year and to really establish a presence, more of a presence there and to try and kind of become kind of a proficient investor in Africa within kind of the London scene.”

    2015-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 062: Shaking Up London's VC Scene with Fede Pirzio-Biroli, Founder @ Playfair Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “A fire outside of a tube station. And basically that is, to me, an admirable example of really creating something with very little, with no money, and embracing kind of the true culture of being a founder in the startup world, of true grit and kind of versatility, despite a lack of resources. And that, to me, is really something important because versatility and demonstrating kind of effectively outreaching to people and converting leads with no money really translates as something positive once funding comes around. Does that make sense?”

    2015-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 062: Shaking Up London's VC Scene with Fede Pirzio-Biroli, Founder @ Playfair Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “These guys literally just showed up in the yard literally just showed up downstairs and after two weeks I was like who are these guys who have been hanging out in the kitchen literally like who are these guys? Yeah, basically and then after another week it was like okay well let's give them some desks and they kind of appeared they arrived and then another week later I looked under the desks and all their clothes were under the desks. I was pretty sure they were living in the yard. And these are guys who were going out and obtaining kind of getting ridiculous conversion out of handing out flyers at a tube station. I mean you know handing out flyers at a tube station has to be the lowest I mean you never get conversion from that kind of a thing but something about their attitude and something about their tone of voice and their personalities really somehow had these guys, had people actually writing comments on Twitter about this lovely person who gave”

    2015-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 062: Shaking Up London's VC Scene with Fede Pirzio-Biroli, Founder @ Playfair Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “This was very much the first company. And I think basically making something out of very few resources is definitely an admirable trait and also kind of a lack of entitlement or expectation. So in Ross's case, appear here came out of him opening a pub during the Queen's Jubilee, right? And strangely enough, printing t-shirts of the Queen's face with the Queen's kind of warhole-like t-shirts with the Queen's face on them, and then getting in trouble with the Buckingham Palace, right? And that's what propelled him into kind of actually going somewhat viral and having some of his friends say, oh, so what about, you know, we want a pop-up shop? And then getting that ball rolling under Forwards Banner. In Dojo's case, I mean,”

    2015-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 062: Shaking Up London's VC Scene with Fede Pirzio-Biroli, Founder @ Playfair Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Well, okay, firstly, I mean, different verticals, whether it's B2B and you're creating a SaaS tool or you have a B2C kind of focus, obviously different kind of skill sets. But I think serial entrepreneurship, so in Due Dill's case, for example, just to look at those three, in Dudle's case, Damien is a serial entrepreneur. He was on his third or fourth company. And I think often kind of us investors, I think it's quite well documented, investors often pay more for serial entrepreneurs, people who have been through kind of ups and downs, hiring, firing, the pains of having to wind a company down. All of those are very, very educational, beneficial retrospectively, right? But not everyone obviously is a multiple farmer. So appear here in Dojo, this was Ross from appear here and Robbie and Dev, that was their...”

    2015-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 062: Shaking Up London's VC Scene with Fede Pirzio-Biroli, Founder @ Playfair Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “In one fell swoop that's coming in kind of cold turkey and starting off. And that just keeps things really stimulating and engaging, I think, just having that variety.”

    2015-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 062: Shaking Up London's VC Scene with Fede Pirzio-Biroli, Founder @ Playfair Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Until you're about 15 people, roughly. And then it becomes kind of then organically it starts making sense economically to move into a space of your own. So what it ends up happening is teams move in. Either they do really well and they outgrow us or they do badly and the opposite happens, unfortunately. But it means that there's always kind of change and there's always a kind of it's not a stagnant environment. It's an ephemeral environment that is always different. And with tech stars in the building that twice a year move in 10 teams at a time, it means tech stars here now, the most recent program started three or four weeks ago. And from a Friday to a Monday, of the 180 people in our building, 60 moved out on the Friday and 60 moved in on the Monday. And that's a third, that's a third of our community.”

    2015-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 062: Shaking Up London's VC Scene with Fede Pirzio-Biroli, Founder @ Playfair Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Where we can quietly say, Well, this kind of team would gel very well with that team on the floor or whatever it might be because they are operating similar spaces or they have similar kind of skill sets on the engineering teams. And hence, it just kind of benefits everybody else to make sure the quality that's coming in stays high. Now, in terms of making sure that it stays an engaging kind of space with a unique culture managers work very hard on kind of activities and everything from ping-pong tournaments to newsletters, to free beer, to everything like that. And then from our perspective, as an investor, it's fantastic because every six months, it's a very different picture in the yard, right? Companies move in, move out, people, it's priced in a way that I think is very attractive, but also makes sense.”

    2015-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 062: Shaking Up London's VC Scene with Fede Pirzio-Biroli, Founder @ Playfair Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Well, I'm biased, but personally I think it's very important. I'm biased for a variety of reasons, namely that my entire... A whole host of businesses that are really trying to basically have co-working spaces as a business model and executing one and opening it and executing the next and then executing the next and growing business as a business. And I think in our case as a venture capital firm that where I happen to own this building, we have the freedom because we have no designs on replicating it elsewhere. This is a one-off that gives us a lot of freedom to kind of quietly curate, I think, who comes in. We're not looking just to fill the space. We're looking to fill the space with interesting people because the value of the space very much depends on the quality of the people in it. And so when tenants move out, we usually have a list of four or five companies that are looking to move in. And whilst we're not openly kind of selected, we are quietly selected.”

    2015-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 062: Shaking Up London's VC Scene with Fede Pirzio-Biroli, Founder @ Playfair Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “But even when they do at great cost. So I think that's definitely a differentiating factor that we've been developing here.”

    2015-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 062: Shaking Up London's VC Scene with Fede Pirzio-Biroli, Founder @ Playfair Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “So look, we Firstly, we have Warner Yard, which is this co working space that I'm in now, where we have 180 desks and we have kind of a vibrant community. We have some resources that are available to our portfolio companies, but primarily focus around recruitment. And I think this is something that what we're seeing more and more VCs do this now, but hiring is the most difficult thing, hands down pretty much 90% of the time when you ask founders in most portfolios. And we've taken on a head of talent who was formerly at Facebook and Google before that, who's a technical recruiter. And we are deploying him amongst portfolio companies to hire CTOs, front-end, back-end full stack devs, entirely engineering focused at our cost because of the nightmare that kind of so many portfolio companies seem to have in terms of hiring recruiters that sometimes don't think.”

    2015-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 062: Shaking Up London's VC Scene with Fede Pirzio-Biroli, Founder @ Playfair Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Today, call it for whatever reasons, there's many, many reasons, I think, behind the added capital available to the early stage kind of market at the moment. But let's say SEIS is one of them. SEIS has really come into its stride since 2011 and basically created a whole new part of capital, which is Sometimes not motivated to deploy the capital for the right reasons. They're seeing it as a de-risked investment. And they have asset managers who are saying, you know, you can invest in A, B, C, or D. But then look, there's this new kind of qualifying investments under SEIS. This is this new asset class where you're de-risked by X percent. And so there's a lot of money piling in that isn't necessarily smart capital.”

    2015-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 062: Shaking Up London's VC Scene with Fede Pirzio-Biroli, Founder @ Playfair Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “So I've seen the seed funding environment change enormously since I started out, which is admittedly not even that long ago. I really became active in early 2011. I think at the time it was still 2008 was still relatively fresh in people's minds. There wasn't that much capital around. At the time you could count on two hands the amount of credible angel investors that were really, you know, that had kind of respectable deal flow in London. And so the barriers to entry to me coming in as a new investor with capital and new experience at the time were very, very low. It means the best companies would come to you at the time because there wasn't that much competition.”

    2015-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 062: Shaking Up London's VC Scene with Fede Pirzio-Biroli, Founder @ Playfair Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “investment that we have access to available stage investment for whatever the reason may be, we can do that investment if we really want to because we don't have external investors to answer to.”

    2015-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 062: Shaking Up London's VC Scene with Fede Pirzio-Biroli, Founder @ Playfair Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “So the average ticket size is somewhere between 200 and 250 K. When I was a one-man band and I was an angel, I could go smaller, but as much as we'd like to in some cases now, practically speaking, we always end up doing just as much work for smaller ticket sizes. So it really doesn't make sense to do things kind of below that. So the average ticket size is between 200 and 250. We are overwhelmingly investing at the seed stage, although we have done a few series investments recently. One of the things that is quite nice about having kind of a closed loop of me on the partnership side and on the funding side being a limited partner is that we're very flexible and very free to change direction if we want. And if one day a very late stage”

    2015-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 062: Shaking Up London's VC Scene with Fede Pirzio-Biroli, Founder @ Playfair Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Have external capital currently, we may one day, the structure is there. But yeah, just wanted to correct you. We don't have external capital, but we are allocated.”

    2015-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 062: Shaking Up London's VC Scene with Fede Pirzio-Biroli, Founder @ Playfair Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “About things more within the fund structure. Under the current arrangement, just like a standard fund, which has 80% of the carry going to LPs and 20% of the carry going to the fund managers, that's very much the situation that we're in now. 80% of the carry goes to me as the LP, and then I have an allocation, or the fund has an allocation of 20% of its carry that gets distributed amongst the team with vesting schedules and everything like that that you'll be familiar with. And that way there's an upside potential for my team that is in place retroactively for all the companies I've also invested in when I was by myself. And in that way, I think that we have kind of a structure that gives me a fighting chance of keeping a team motivated and not having them looking elsewhere too soon. And, you know, I mean, we don't.”

    2015-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 062: Shaking Up London's VC Scene with Fede Pirzio-Biroli, Founder @ Playfair Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “So, we don't have external capital, but the reason that I've structured things in this way is, I think, to provide a slightly disruptive environment that can incentivize a team in a different way than a normal salary that any angel investor could hire. So in other words, when things scaled and I realized the team I have is a great cultural fit and I'd want nothing more than to be able to create a situation that is attractive to them for at least five years. That became a goal and I realized that I don't have the budget to pay a team. Let's face it, I don't have the budget to pay a team as much as a £200 million fund does. I did a lot of thinking in terms of how to make myself competitive. And I think if we look if kind of, if I changed my thinking from that of an angel to think”

    2015-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 062: Shaking Up London's VC Scene with Fede Pirzio-Biroli, Founder @ Playfair Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “So wait, let me clarify. Let me clarify, right? So, because this is quite an interesting point, I think. So today, playfair capital is a limited liability partnership. So it is a venture capital firm in every sense of the word legally speaking as well. But it's a venture capital firm which doesn't have”

    2015-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 062: Shaking Up London's VC Scene with Fede Pirzio-Biroli, Founder @ Playfair Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “for support in different things like finance and legal at least initially and then that snowballed into now having kind of head of talent and basically you know to plug the gaps that that became apparent as the portfolio became bigger”

    2015-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 062: Shaking Up London's VC Scene with Fede Pirzio-Biroli, Founder @ Playfair Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “Yes, yes, from my own funds, from funds that I'd sold basically from shares that I had sold in the family business that I was admittedly very fortunate enough to have available to me. But basically I decided to dive into the deep end and do something proactive with these funds and then basically got carried away. And then that turned into PlayFrependital Today and the team I have now and the co-working space that I'm talking to you from today or now. And that is very much, I'd say everything's been built reactively and not proactively, right? So instead of it's not like five years ago, I said, right, I'm going to have a large portfolio of companies, have a team running a venture capital from it and operating a co-working space. That's by no means what I intended to do, but it's more, what I mean by being reactive is that as things grew and the portfolio became bigger and bigger, I started having a real need.”

    2015-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 062: Shaking Up London's VC Scene with Fede Pirzio-Biroli, Founder @ Playfair Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “Fantastic. Yeah, so we got along really well. They co invested in Doodle and then they very kindly kind of suggested or offered me a desk at White Bear Yard. And so I ended up sitting pretty much next to them over the next two years, so 2011 and 12 into early 2013. And over those two years, I ended up investing in 21 or 22 companies.”

    2015-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 062: Shaking Up London's VC Scene with Fede Pirzio-Biroli, Founder @ Playfair Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “I started deploying capital here and not in the kind of emerging economies, but that was more kind of to cut my teeth with a view to go and become operational in sub-Saharan Africa later on. That was as an angel, exactly. That's how kind of I started deploying capital. So I invested in Dudle in late 2010, and very soon after that, I was very lucky enough to meet passion capital, so Eileen Robert and Stefan. Absolutely.”

    2015-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 062: Shaking Up London's VC Scene with Fede Pirzio-Biroli, Founder @ Playfair Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “To me really struck alarm bells in terms of existing a fundamental disconnect between the perception of these NGOs by the local population and the mission that they're meant to be there to undertake, which is essentially to put themselves out of business, to solve a problem in the net leave. And to me, basically, I came to the conclusion that these kind of the well-educated youth coming out of universities, every single one of them that gets kind of attracted to going to work for an NGO comes at the opportunity cost of not becoming an entrepreneur. And actually small business and entrepreneurship is what grows an economy. That's what contributes to GDP. Aside from growing jobs, which NGOs do, they create jobs, sure, but they don't actually create sustainable development, I think, within the economy of a country. And so that's what made me start thinking about entrepreneurship.”

    2015-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 062: Shaking Up London's VC Scene with Fede Pirzio-Biroli, Founder @ Playfair Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “The inside. And actually without taking a step back to look at the effects this industry had had on the economic environment of the countries they were operating in. And I came to this conclusion that basically, and I know this is a long-winded story, but I came to the conclusion that essentially these NGOs had been present in some of these countries for more than 20 years. And the youth of these emerging economies often well-educated with good degrees from, relatively speaking, good universities like McAvere. They were coming out of university aspiring. I saw it too often, aspiring to build careers in these NGOs because these NGOs had been present since their birth, right? And they assumed that these NGOs would always be present.”

    2015-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 062: Shaking Up London's VC Scene with Fede Pirzio-Biroli, Founder @ Playfair Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “This well, so basically I came back from East Africa being very frustrated with the NGO kind of industry and how competitive it was and how inefficient it was. And so I came back and I was an aid transparency lobbyist for a year. So I lobbied kind of Department of Financial Development, USAID, basically big multilateral and bilateral donors to increase the transparency of the aid expenditure. And after doing that for you, which was even more frustrating than operating kind of on the ground with NGOs, I realized that actually this is trying to solve a problem from”

    2015-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 062: Shaking Up London's VC Scene with Fede Pirzio-Biroli, Founder @ Playfair Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “Absolutely. So my move into the venture industry really didn't, I mean, I didn't come to this from a traditional background. I had actually spent pretty much a total of, I think, about four years working in various different jobs within the NGO industry. So I actually was In Uganda for two years, I was in Kenya and Tanzania for a year. I worked for UNHCR doing refugee repatriation in northern Uganda. I worked at Oxfam and I worked at Mid-Saint Sans Fronti ⁇ res, so MSF, which you might think has very little to do with the world of investing.”

    2015-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 062: Shaking Up London's VC Scene with Fede Pirzio-Biroli, Founder @ Playfair Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source