YouSaid · the spoken record

James Wise

lines on the record: 38
first: 2016-04-25
most recent: 2016-04-25
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“And everything else. They are building a very smart solution to improve that through software rather than hardware. And I think that it's a, I think it's a great team. Actually, I used to work, we had a great guy working here called Friends, our data scientist, and he was so blown away by what they were doing. He's gone to join them. And we incubated them here at Boulderton. So I got to spend some time with Rob and the team. I have to say I'm in awe of both their technical capability, but the business sense that they have around it.”
2016-04-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Europe's Youngest Series A Venture Partner, James Wise @ Balderton Capital on How To Get Into Venture & What The Future Of The VC Industry Looks Like · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I can't remember which are public and which aren't. I can talk about one which I think we've mentioned before possibly, but magic poning technologies, magic pony technologies is a former entrepreneur first company and it's a machine learning approach to working with video compression. And they've basically found a way to help predict what video is going to do next. I think that's a very simplistic way of describing it. But the implications for this and the applications for this are huge. And if you think about the way that the world consumes information now, video is outpacing everything else. And that causes huge problems to people in parts of the developed world where they don't have a strong brand width and even parts of the developed world where my Netflix still doesn't stream properly. And if you look at the explosion of video in all platforms, I mean, I am a Snapchat addict and I must consume just so much video every day through Snapchat alone, let alone Netflix.”
2016-04-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Europe's Youngest Series A Venture Partner, James Wise @ Balderton Capital on How To Get Into Venture & What The Future Of The VC Industry Looks Like · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Once again, I've been incredibly fortunate to have a very, very broad range of people I've worked with. The person I probably spent most of my early first few years at Boulderton being looked after by, as it were, and being tolerated by is Harry Bricks, who's now the British Grave Fund. And he's a partner there. And I have to say, you know, I think I've benefited massively from working with a huge range of VCs over my time. But Harry was the person I sort of, who first actually encouraged me to come into VC. He's the person I've trusted most for advice on personal and professional level. And I think he's a role model to many other people who want to get into VC and to understand that if you want us to realize just how important it is to be a decent person and to be successful in BC, just really just actually care and really put the effort in and really be thoughtful about the way you say no as much as you say yes.”
2016-04-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Europe's Youngest Series A Venture Partner, James Wise @ Balderton Capital on How To Get Into Venture & What The Future Of The VC Industry Looks Like · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Said earlier, you should create a newsletter or something like that. Same he did. He's created a brilliant newsletter. He reads hundreds of articles on AI, machine learning, companies in the startup world every day. He summarizes them and he sends out a fortnightly, I think it is, newsletter summarizing 10 brilliant articles and giving you his tips on it. And so I think if you Google Nathan Bennia.”
2016-04-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Europe's Youngest Series A Venture Partner, James Wise @ Balderton Capital on How To Get Into Venture & What The Future Of The VC Industry Looks Like · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have two. I have one which really pushes me, which is the morning paper by Adrian Kolya. He was XL. Yeah, he's a very long career and he writes, basically manages somehow to summarize one to three to five computer science papers on broad range of topics on a daily basis almost. And I have to say, you know, if you want to ruin your day by completely taking up your entire thinking space around these amazing issues that he brings up, read that every morning. And trust me, you will be intellectually enriched. You may get nothing else done, I have to say. So I really like the morning paper. I think it helps me keep up to speed, but also just reminds you of many different sects at the same time. So I find that. And it's well done, well written, and it's very thoughtful. I think that I will give a slight plug here not to Bolton, but actually to Playfair Council, Nathan Benniac there. And Nathan is someone I met a couple of years ago, and he asked me about venture capital and how to become, you know, how to become more high profile and be good at VC. And I said to him,”
2016-04-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Europe's Youngest Series A Venture Partner, James Wise @ Balderton Capital on How To Get Into Venture & What The Future Of The VC Industry Looks Like · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And he's talking actually, he's coming here to talk soon. And he's a really impressive individual who's managed to communicate incredibly simply what I think is a very powerful artist.”
2016-04-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Europe's Youngest Series A Venture Partner, James Wise @ Balderton Capital on How To Get Into Venture & What The Future Of The VC Industry Looks Like · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Don't I think that the breadth of general intelligence is far beyond actually I won't hook on this because I instead will recommend another book by Kate Vostrom, superintelligence. I think it's called, yeah, super intelligence. It is.”
2016-04-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Europe's Youngest Series A Venture Partner, James Wise @ Balderton Capital on How To Get Into Venture & What The Future Of The VC Industry Looks Like · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Some significant breakthroughs in both the distribution and the technology behind the conversational AI and other narrow AI applications like that I think I'm excited by.”
2016-04-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Europe's Youngest Series A Venture Partner, James Wise @ Balderton Capital on How To Get Into Venture & What The Future Of The VC Industry Looks Like · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of getting in touch with people through conversational AI. In the process creating a better experience. And so that's the area which I'm really excited about. I'm most excited about that because I also see the natural loop of anywhere where there's a stateful requirement in the process, anywhere where that conversation has to be remembered and that information about you has to be captured. Right now it's not done particularly well. And I feel it's stateful narrow our views in the conversational way, maybe a solution to that. So once again, I don't think we're going to make investments in AI companies as a whole, right? I don't think that's the thing. But I think companies which have already thoughtfully found ways to apply what have been recently”
2016-04-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Europe's Youngest Series A Venture Partner, James Wise @ Balderton Capital on How To Get Into Venture & What The Future Of The VC Industry Looks Like · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I vary on a daily basis. I'm going to go cliche here and say, I think narrow AI and the applications of it. And I actually don't think it's the technology that really excites me. It's more around the specific use cases that are going to be developed. And obviously people argue that machine learning techniques and the stack behind machine learning and the applications of that towards what people will call narrow AI are currently pretty poor actually if you go on Facebook chatbots they leave something to be desired at the moment. But I think there are some really interesting specific use cases which are developing. Not trying to solve the whole problem, but instead trying to tackle specific instances, customer services, sales, marketing, like a whole range of different applications of it, which are allowing people to free up their time from doing boring data analysis or create new ways of”
2016-04-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Europe's Youngest Series A Venture Partner, James Wise @ Balderton Capital on How To Get Into Venture & What The Future Of The VC Industry Looks Like · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It isn't about raising the round that's slightly larger than the competition. It's about raising the right round for you. It's about making sure that the public understand your message. It isn't comparing yourself against the competition. It's building the best team you possibly can. I think that idea is something that's really lost at the moment in a lot of the hubris of the tech industry. And so that's something I really care about as well. And there's many other takeaways from the book. So I highly recommend it.”
2016-04-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Europe's Youngest Series A Venture Partner, James Wise @ Balderton Capital on How To Get Into Venture & What The Future Of The VC Industry Looks Like · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it's difficult one because I don't actually read that much in terms of books. I read books for pleasure, for hobbies I have, but in terms of industry books I read a lot. The best one I've ever been given, which sits up in the Bolton Library actually, is the Score Text Code itself by Bill Walsh. And the reason why I like it is a book actually. It's about management as a whole. But you can apply it in very broad ways to almost any aspects of your life. But there's a couple of things in there which I really love. One is Bill's focus on process. So he's more interested in building the best team, building the right processes. And then the outcomes will look after themselves, right? Whatever happens in the outcome, if you've got the, you must focus on the process and the team around it. And if you focus on that, the score takes care of itself. Everything else will follow. The second thing I really like about the book, which I was one big takeaway for me and something that I try and apply as an advisor where I can, is the idea that you want to have an excellent level of performance that isn't compared to your competition.”
2016-04-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Europe's Youngest Series A Venture Partner, James Wise @ Balderton Capital on How To Get Into Venture & What The Future Of The VC Industry Looks Like · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“History book? It's about the human condition, but yeah, an intimate history of humanity, I think it was. Yeah, yeah, it's more about what life is like in the 20th century. But history, I guess, is what we're looking at. For the 20th century, I know that's history to you.”
2016-04-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Europe's Youngest Series A Venture Partner, James Wise @ Balderton Capital on How To Get Into Venture & What The Future Of The VC Industry Looks Like · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's a really hard question to answer because everyone in Bolton at least has come in at three different ways. I'm quite fortunate to be here relatively young. So I got a few more years run at building a track record than most people.”
2016-04-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Europe's Youngest Series A Venture Partner, James Wise @ Balderton Capital on How To Get Into Venture & What The Future Of The VC Industry Looks Like · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I know that they'll ever get their specialists internally, but to share that breadth of expertise with a broader basis of skills. And that's why just saying, hey, I'm going to set up the best three-man team to do something really specific in venture is, I think, going to be flawed in the long run.”
2016-04-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Europe's Youngest Series A Venture Partner, James Wise @ Balderton Capital on How To Get Into Venture & What The Future Of The VC Industry Looks Like · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I should say on top of that, you need the breadth of judgment, you need pattern recognition, you need people who can help you build a marketing team, even if you're ML, you need people who can build the sales team, you need people who can help with PR and you need people who can help you with talent acquisition. And I think that breadth of support is always going to be needed at an early stage, no matter how expert you are. And so even if you're the best venture capitalist in the world at identifying companies and self-driving vehicle space, you want to be part of a fund which can provide all the other range of support around that as well and that you have a partner sitting next to you who may know nothing about self-driving vehicles, but wow, they really know how to train a founder to fundraise. You want that person on your team. And wow, your other partner just really understands the IPO market inside out and can help you appoint a bank and can help you run a roadshow. And that is a broad case of skills which every company, no matter which sector you're in, will require. So I'm far more in favor of funds having people attempt to be experts or special.”
2016-04-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Europe's Youngest Series A Venture Partner, James Wise @ Balderton Capital on How To Get Into Venture & What The Future Of The VC Industry Looks Like · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think what happens with those sort of specific funds, so some people would have argued we saw the unbundling of venture capital when people split between hardware and software or people said we're only going to do web or we're only going to do mobile and web, right? And that was not unbundling. That's them coming and growing with the market, right? So I don't think you'll see people who, I mean, I think there is a market actually for very, very specific venture capital focusing in very specific areas. My argument against the idea that every single VC will specialize in one very, very specific vertical is pretty simple. That I actually think that beyond the expertise that you provide of really understanding deeply one sector, for example, the applications of machine learning or the future of machine learning, which is pretty broad actually. Let's say you were the machine learning expert, right? You've got all the PhDs and you build machine learning company. I mean to say that that fund doesn't need to exist alone is that that's not the skill you need. You need the expertise, but it's not the only skill you need.”
2016-04-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Europe's Youngest Series A Venture Partner, James Wise @ Balderton Capital on How To Get Into Venture & What The Future Of The VC Industry Looks Like · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Space last 10 years, right? It's looking at artificial intelligence, the self driving vehicles, it's UAV's broad range of use cases for blockchain. And on and on and on, it's union kernels and deeper into the staff tools. There's this huge explosion of really, really radically different opportunities. And I think that The way that the business will change is that they will have to be people who become slightly more specialized in these areas and specialize enough and networked enough to really understand who the leaders are in it and encourage more people to come into it and apply the same risk approach as they did to mobile gaming or software before that.”
2016-04-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Europe's Youngest Series A Venture Partner, James Wise @ Balderton Capital on How To Get Into Venture & What The Future Of The VC Industry Looks Like · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's a really interesting one. And sort of I look back, I try and look back 10 years ago and think about how things have changed and how we've moved towards a far more operational model. We are far more active in deal hunting and we're far more specialized than we were before. And I can't see many of those trends reversing. I think there will always be the ability of individuals, the need for venture capital to come in and provide high risk capital at situations where you just can't yet fully apply a data rigorous data model to a sector. And they've set a shift, by the way. If you launch a mobile game today, there are rigorous data models, which basically mean you don't need venture capital anymore. You know that there'll be certain targets you need to hit and some growth investor or someone else will buy you. There'll be some other way to do it because that market is so rigorously thought out now. Five years ago didn't exist and so you need adventure. At the moment we're seeing that explosion in new sectors which are well beyond the capabilities of people that have been working.”
2016-04-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Europe's Youngest Series A Venture Partner, James Wise @ Balderton Capital on How To Get Into Venture & What The Future Of The VC Industry Looks Like · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Regularly see and actually, we just don't see much competition because venture is a very personal game and we make decisions which other people will think are crazy and vice versa. I think we're in the right position for our skill set and I think we're in a good position for the future economics of our business.”
2016-04-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Europe's Youngest Series A Venture Partner, James Wise @ Balderton Capital on How To Get Into Venture & What The Future Of The VC Industry Looks Like · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Early stage companies being formed. And with them accelerators and with them seed funds. And if you look at this growing mountain of deal flow, which we're looking at, I mean our deal flow now is 5,000 to 6,000 applications a year for funding. I mean, not all of them viable, but it's more than double what it was a couple of years ago. Obviously, we have to be smarter about qualifying them, but we're seeing this wave of new companies coming up and they're all approaching the stage, which we start to play at. I'm really excited about that, right? I think that's the really exciting thing about being in Europe now at our stage, is that this wave of opportunity is coming. Now, obviously, qualifying that effectively, making the right calls, picking the needles in the haystack. I'm picking the people who are the right people for you to work with. I think it's going really, really difficult. But I do think now is a great time to be doing investment at this stage in Europe. And also, there just aren't many people who do pan-European investment at our stage. Maybe there'll be more competition in the long run, but it's a handful of funds really that we...”
2016-04-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Europe's Youngest Series A Venture Partner, James Wise @ Balderton Capital on How To Get Into Venture & What The Future Of The VC Industry Looks Like · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Those at a stage where you're ready to scale up and need that 1 to 20 million dollars. So doing pre product teams, we just don't have the skill set for that. But then going to the 50 million dollar, going, you know, going up against the grace, insights or someone like that to your 50 million dollar rounds, well, then a lot of it for me is extrapolating from where we are today. It's far more economical and it's far more around financing. And none of us are very good at that. I don't think we hand that level of or sell me. I'm not. We hand that level of professionalism over somewhere else. So I think it's just where we think we have a skill set because a lot of us have our operational background because a lot of us have desire to understand the cogs a little bit and help them grow. I think earlier stage 1 to 20 is sort of the reason why we're there. So that's the reason why we want to be there. Secondly, I'm glad we're there because I actually think that matches a big gap in Europe at the moment. In the last two or three years, we went through maybe what San Francisco went through a few more years ago. But in the last two or three years, we've seen this experience.”
2016-04-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Europe's Youngest Series A Venture Partner, James Wise @ Balderton Capital on How To Get Into Venture & What The Future Of The VC Industry Looks Like · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, firstly, Harriet doesn't surprise me that you've been in many VC interviews, partly because obviously you're a very bright guy, but partly because you wear so much VC stack. I'm sitting next to a man dressed head to toe in free gear from VCs across Europe and San Francisco. But why at this stage, so there's two reasons why I'm excited about the stage we're at. And, you know, we used to say series A to B, but in reality, those words have become pretty meaningless now. It used to mean you were the first institutional investor. But the way that the stack has developed for capital with professional angel investors and seed investment funds and everything else, pre-seed and post-seed and crowdfunding, what we really say is we're early stage. We do 1 to 20 million dollars. I'm excited about that region for a couple of reasons. One is as much as any of us like to think we're the perfect judge of people, we also we're kind of slightly geeky as well and we like to feel and touch product and we like to see some data and we like to play around with that data and we like to try and hypothesize about how we can maximize X, Y, Z and basically we want to see which tiny cogs are going to turn in order to move a massive wheel. And you really get”
2016-04-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Europe's Youngest Series A Venture Partner, James Wise @ Balderton Capital on How To Get Into Venture & What The Future Of The VC Industry Looks Like · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Fun now, there's some money on the table. And I think that's great, but it's quite short termist view for what is a very long term industry. And if you really want to be around in 10 to 15 years' time, just as you would if you're a CEO, surround yourself with the best people in the world. And I'm working with a partnership that I believe not only have been supportive of me probably too much, if anything and tolerant of me, but also genuinely are the best at what they do.”
2016-04-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Europe's Youngest Series A Venture Partner, James Wise @ Balderton Capital on How To Get Into Venture & What The Future Of The VC Industry Looks Like · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, you're fascinating, had no options at all. I have to say. An interesting one for anyone considering venture and also anyone working with a venture fund and taking capital because this is a cliche now, but it is a very long-term game. When you think about making investment decisions externally and other funds, you think about what's this relationship going to be playing out like in five to ten years time? Because that's the timeframes we have to think about. And it's the same thing in venture. I thought to myself, well, what do I want to be doing in five to ten years' time? Like, how am I going to improve myself personally? Who are the people I want to be around and supported by? Who do I think is going to be likely to support me if I'm doing badly or help me learn more? And I've worked with the Bolton team for three or four years now. I knew them before that and it was partly because of our shared network with some of the founders and principals here at Boulderson that I joined Baldism. I think that's the decision I made is that these are the right people for me to be around. There is a huge, there's quite a big rush actually I've noticed of people saying hey I'm going to go and raise my own”
2016-04-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Europe's Youngest Series A Venture Partner, James Wise @ Balderton Capital on How To Get Into Venture & What The Future Of The VC Industry Looks Like · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And when you're thinking in that way, when you're thinking that the best companies in the world are made by the best people in the world at that job, that's why I think it's global thinking. Now, the hubs that can really do that, there are very few. London is definitely one of them. Berlin arguably is becoming the play. You go to Berlin and you'll meet people who've left San Francisco because they don't want to go and work at SoundCloud or they want to work for this brand new startup. I don't know, artificial intelligence out there. But there aren't many hubs that can really do it. And I think that's the real challenge isn't about can you get enough capital in or is there regulatory barriers? I think all of that is a complete misnomer. I think what people really need to focus on is can we get the best talent for that position anywhere in the world into our office? If we need them in the office or even work for us remotely, but normally into the office and there is the real challenge for European hubs.”
2016-04-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Europe's Youngest Series A Venture Partner, James Wise @ Balderton Capital on How To Get Into Venture & What The Future Of The VC Industry Looks Like · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, there's a couple of ways, and there's still some things that the best companies still understand local culture and understand local usage practices and obviously language. There's some things which you do have to change for. But for me, if I meet entrepreneur thinking global from day one, it's actually about talent. And I think the one competitive point, which San Cisco still leads on and the one which only a few other hubs in the world can really challenge them on is talent. Can you hire as entrepreneur the best person in the world doing that job? And so you have to be able to say to yourself, I'm thinking global from day one. I'm not thinking about hiring the best person to come out of Oxford or even the best person to come out of the UK. I'm thinking about hiring the best person in the world to do this and I'm going to take them out of Google and I'm going to take them out of WeChat and I'm going to take them out of Flipkart, whatever it is. I'm going to take those people. I'm going to get them to this country. We're lucky in London to have a system whereby it's actually getting harder, but it's still possible to bring global town like that into one hub to work with you.”
2016-04-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Europe's Youngest Series A Venture Partner, James Wise @ Balderton Capital on How To Get Into Venture & What The Future Of The VC Industry Looks Like · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“About market entry into Germany versus the US. They launch on the App Store. They launch from the Play Store. They're global instantly. And I think about Citimapter, for example, one of our companies, there's 20 people in Farringdon that are building an app which is used by millions and millions of people across the world every day. They don't care about, should we have moved to San Francisco? Should we have moved to Beijing? They know that they can do that from one position. So I don't really buy the Europe is too fragmented argument anymore.”
2016-04-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Europe's Youngest Series A Venture Partner, James Wise @ Balderton Capital on How To Get Into Venture & What The Future Of The VC Industry Looks Like · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The largest GDP block in the world is the European Union. The GDP of the European Union is larger than America and China. If we were a country, we would have, I think, the highest GDP per capita of any of you took any large company, right? I'm not talking about like Vatican City or Luxembourg. And I completely disagree. If you just look at the stats, Britain has got the highest purchase rate of e-commerce products per capita of anywhere in the world apart from South Korea, well ahead of the US. Germany has got an incredibly rich domestic market. And I think we're seeing at every level, apart from current political rumblings, we are seeing a deeper level in the technology layer and also language layer and usability and everything else, a huge rush to common acceptance and common usages across Europe. Ten years ago, maybe that would have been true that you would be worried about entering the US or entering China or entering Europe. But right now, the entrepreneurs I meet are thinking global from day one. So it doesn't matter.”
2016-04-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Europe's Youngest Series A Venture Partner, James Wise @ Balderton Capital on How To Get Into Venture & What The Future Of The VC Industry Looks Like · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly. And not selling out yet, which is really important. So that's the second wave. And now if you think about all the people in that first wave and that second wave who've been in those companies, who've seen that leadership and visionary approach to building companies. Now, what are they going to do next? They're going to go and build the third wave, which is the 10, $150,000 billion companies. And they're obviously not going to be competitive with the types of companies built in San Francisco in the same fields, not in sort of the information, the search. They're not going to compete data at Google, not in the social graph, not compete down with Facebook, then other areas where actually Europe does have the lead, the merging areas, artificial intelligence, fashion, fintech, all of these areas where we've shown the ability to build big companies. I think that's going to be the foundation of a third wave of big businesses. And you want to be obviously at the leading cutting edge of that here in Europe. And then sort of the final point is I'm pretty proud to be British and European. I want us to be in this fight. And, you know, I don't want, I think the CEO of Alibaba.”
2016-04-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Europe's Youngest Series A Venture Partner, James Wise @ Balderton Capital on How To Get Into Venture & What The Future Of The VC Industry Looks Like · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I wanted to leverage that and make use of that. The second reason why I'd encourage you to stay there is because I think Europe's catching up. We're now in what I think of as the third wave of our ecosystem. And the first wave was sort of software companies which are running pretty well. They aim or IPO early and they'd grow from there, think of ASOS and to some extent that Fair News kind of companies we used to back and have that. That was the first wave. Second wave are now the companies who are getting to one five ten billion dollar valuation market caps, either being acquired or looking to grave them further. Think about Spotify. Five years ago, Spotify may have been bought out. Now the CEO is a visionary who wants to change the world of music and he's pushing well past those barriers.”
2016-04-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Europe's Youngest Series A Venture Partner, James Wise @ Balderton Capital on How To Get Into Venture & What The Future Of The VC Industry Looks Like · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In reality, it's still a very person to person game. It's a very, very personal game. And I found it incredibly useful to have my group of friends who are entrepreneurs here, the group of people I've worked with, who are often entrepreneurs or work in technology here, and to have a broader base of experts in all sorts of different sectors, all based in Europe. And because I'm connected to them, I've been able to leverage them in a way which I would never be able to do in San Francisco.”
2016-04-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Europe's Youngest Series A Venture Partner, James Wise @ Balderton Capital on How To Get Into Venture & What The Future Of The VC Industry Looks Like · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Want to be successful? I mean, it's an interesting one. I was once told by a friend of mine who works in a valley fund when I said, look, I'm thinking about working adventure in Europe. He said, well, that's great, but why would you want to be the top goal scorer in Division II? No one knows who the top goal scorer in Division II is. Why would you bother, right? And I think that, yeah, exactly. And to some extent, that's clearly true, right? The best returns of European venture funds are dwarfed by the very, very top funds in the valley. And I think that When you're considering where you want to base yourself for an industry, just like an entrepreneur would when he's hiring his team or building his team, you want to consider where the best place for you is to maximize your returns. The valley is still a really exciting place to be for anyone working a venture. Personally, I'd encourage you to stick around Europe for a couple of reasons and anyone working venture for a couple of reasons. One is, despite the fact that you can be a global investor now because data is allowed us to collect information and share information on a global level, and you can learn from that, make good investments because of it.”
2016-04-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Europe's Youngest Series A Venture Partner, James Wise @ Balderton Capital on How To Get Into Venture & What The Future Of The VC Industry Looks Like · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“From private equity, they sort of developed from there and have traditional structures. In reality, that will change. And you will see venture funds. And we're already seeing venture funds set up and developing with a much broader set of skills within the partnership and within the team around it. And I think that actually the fragmentation in venture skill sets, as it were, the specialization we're seeing, the fragmentation we're seeing is happening as quickly in Europe now as it is in San Francisco, when you have funds set up entirely by people interested in specific sectors or entirely by people with specific areas of expertise or by a mix of people with a breadth of expertise and not everyone in that fund has got a financial or consulting background.”
2016-04-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Europe's Youngest Series A Venture Partner, James Wise @ Balderton Capital on How To Get Into Venture & What The Future Of The VC Industry Looks Like · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that's an outdated model. And I think the only people who are still following that model are people who haven't realized that the venture game has changed considerably. Certainly it does help to have the advantages of a decent consulting background where you're used to being a trusted advisor. And in fact, the company I used to work for, the consultancy I used to work for, we used to think of ourselves, that was our tagline, very American company. So a bit cliched. Used to call ourselves trusted advisors. That's what we wanted to be. And in a way, a venture capitalist is very similar. Once you join the board of a company, you have to be trusted in your advice. You can't really force many things through. You have to be there to help when things go wrong as well as to support when things going well. And those skills can be learned in the consulting world. But that model, go and spend two years doing consulting, go and do an MBA, maybe go and then start a startup. I think that is based on a world where private equity was far more, so that's what private equity wanted. And a lot of early VC funds in Europe in particular sort of came down.”
2016-04-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Europe's Youngest Series A Venture Partner, James Wise @ Balderton Capital on How To Get Into Venture & What The Future Of The VC Industry Looks Like · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Software businesses. And so is it a viable career to start early and progress through yourself? Yes, it is, but I think that you need to therefore supplement your team with people who've also done other things as well to really get the breadth of advice and support that you need to attract the best entrepreneurs to your fund.”
2016-04-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Europe's Youngest Series A Venture Partner, James Wise @ Balderton Capital on How To Get Into Venture & What The Future Of The VC Industry Looks Like · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's people who were journalists like Mike Morris, there's people who are financial analysts, like Bill Gurley. There's obviously people with great entrepreneurial and operational background. But it's really not clear that you need to have huge amounts of entrepreneurial experience in order to do the two things which VC should be able to do really well. One is insightfully source companies, so find interesting companies in areas which are fast-growing. And secondly, to have great judgment about how to select those companies and build those companies. So if your job is to find companies, make judgments on them and help them grow, none of those things really require huge amounts of operational experience. Now, having said that, it does help to have a balance. And so here at Bolton, for example, we have a very broad base of experiences. I personally have a background in a charity. I set up and run a charity, right? Very different background to most of my other peers here. We've got people who work to Google and Uber. We've got people who, two people who built billions.”
2016-04-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Europe's Youngest Series A Venture Partner, James Wise @ Balderton Capital on How To Get Into Venture & What The Future Of The VC Industry Looks Like · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's a good question, and I think there's a couple of different schools of thought here, right? But I think the first thing to take into consideration is it's a tiny industry. I think for the amount of press that we get and the amount of coverage, basically people seem interested in the industry in terms of career, is actually tiny. There's 700 funds in Europe in 2007 after the crash of about 400. We're slowly building our way back up. It's only, I don't think you could fill a football stadium with a number of VCs there are in the world, possibly. So that's the first thing. Is it a viable career? Well, first of all, do you really want a career in such a small industry, and especially one which is so variable? So it depends on what's right for you. In terms of is it a viable career, which I think what you're leaning on is if you start early and you can build your way up rather than what is a common piece of advice to go out and become an operator, to start a company and learn the hard way. I think that the proofs in the pudding, and if you look at the most successful venture capitalists in the world in terms of the companies they've backed and the returns they've generated, it's a very mixed bag.”
2016-04-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Europe's Youngest Series A Venture Partner, James Wise @ Balderton Capital on How To Get Into Venture & What The Future Of The VC Industry Looks Like · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source