YouSaid · the spoken record

Sasha Mirchandani

lines on the record: 46
first: 2015-12-04
most recent: 2015-12-04
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

“Are trying to send remittances for their loved ones or their friends, etc., who get charged the most. And TransferWise is doing an amazing job. And I hope this goes down as one of the biggest companies ever to come out of Europe up there with Spotify and Skype or bigger than even those companies.”
2015-12-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Scaling Ideas and Startups in the U.K. and Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Transfer-wise, I can't sing the praises high enough. Had I had the chance, and I don't know whether I actually did or not, I probably didn't have any liquidity because all my investments have been my own and it's a myth that you always have lots of cash there. You know, you go through cycles. I didn't have any liquidity at the time. But that aside, love what those guys are doing. Love the fact that they're non-Brits that have made the headquarters in UK and tackling a global problem, which is the remittance, which It's the most needy who get ripped off by the banks. You try and send 30 bucks to Pakistan or to Philippines. Western Union want, I think, nine bucks out of that. So it's the people who don't have the money.”
2015-12-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Scaling Ideas and Startups in the U.K. and Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's travel, but it's more, I think, the step after the hotel and the flights of you're in London. How do you get to the London Eye? How do you remove the friction which you manage to do in your flights and your hotels and your lift or your Uber or Halos, but then having to stand 16 minutes in the rain waiting to be told that you're in the wrong counter of X or Y at Madame Two Swords? So get your guide is obviously high up there. And the other one I can't sing the praises high enough. I believe the portfolio company of yours and I believe they're a seed camp company, right? Transfer-wise.”
2015-12-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Scaling Ideas and Startups in the U.K. and Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“From a very human point of view, myself included, it's actually the first property I own in London now, so part of it. It's just you cannot get on the property ladder. And again, if you think about it, UK, maybe you don't understand the problem, but if you're in New York, in San Francisco”
2015-12-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Scaling Ideas and Startups in the U.K. and Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right now, but obviously plans for expansion. And then once they get the property on, they're releasing onto the platform. And so they just set a world record a couple of days ago. It was a block of four flats, 1.1 million pounds sold out in two minutes and 19 seconds.”
2015-12-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Scaling Ideas and Startups in the U.K. and Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's pretty phenomenal. So they have a team that actually goes out there and sources property. So they negotiate, they have a whole team around negotiating these properties. It's in residential space right now. So they're buying either standalone houses or blocks of flats, individual flats.”
2015-12-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Scaling Ideas and Startups in the U.K. and Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, we're really excited. We've been an incredibly active investor, obviously, in fintech, but property tech as of late as well. And to Shaq's point from before, we do think UK startups in that space have been limited to date. So we have a company called Property Partner, which we're extremely excited about. It's a pretty complex business. They're combining acquisition of properties with funding them through crowdfunding. And so, yeah, exactly.”
2015-12-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Scaling Ideas and Startups in the U.K. and Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you look at Sweden, maternity leave and paternity leave, serious fundamental changes by the government, encouragement of leadership positions. I think there's actually a requirement that the ratio has to be X number of females and X number of non-Swedes on a border. I believe so you're starting to see that happen. I hope it happens in England and Scotland and Wales and Northern Ireland and every country sooner rather than later, but that's nothing I can influence because I'm not a woman. I can support the women who are there, women like Rishma, women like Eileen and Sherry and there's a bunch of amazing entrepreneurs, Alicia Nibarro, Robin Exton, an equivalent to in the States there's exceptional leaders such as Ellen Levi, Juliet De Bogovni. There's no shortage, but we need more and it'll happen sooner or later.”
2015-12-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Scaling Ideas and Startups in the U.K. and Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, our infrastructure needs to change as well, so childcare is kind of impossible in the UK market in London, and somehow it doesn't fall on my husband. It somehow falls on me to kind of think about that, right? And that's a pretty big issue. Working hours, you know, your children go to school at some weird times. I mean, they end at three. What do you do with that? And so a lot of that infrastructure needs to dramatically shift to make things. If you”
2015-12-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Scaling Ideas and Startups in the U.K. and Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Pepsi CEO, I think, is an Indian lady, it's starting to happen and I think we'll see a very rapid shift when that happens. I don't know, but some of the most exceptional PMs that I'm meeting in today's environment are not male.”
2015-12-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Scaling Ideas and Startups in the U.K. and Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, it's a great question one hears more and more about. And I'd answer it in one way similar to what Reshma growing up. Whether as male, female, etc., putting that to the side, it was, hey, I'm non white in a white country. And unless you're non-white, you will never understand that. And secondly, to answer your question, I think you can answer it better. We're sitting in a lovely venue in London and you've got an American Indian in London and a Pakistani heritage male sitting here. So, you know, is there diversity? There's obviously diversity in this room. Should there be more female entrepreneurs yet? But then you need more female investors, which we're starting to get now. And that trickle down effect will happen. I think we're going through a phase and there's more and more encouragement. And if you look at every sector, there are some exceptional women in leadership positions, Padmasri Warrior, Indian individual who was CTO of Cisco and now is doing a bunch of board stuff there. There's the”
2015-12-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Scaling Ideas and Startups in the U.K. and Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Create funds and they will become angel investors and so forth. So I think that'll help. I think role models, again, I'm a new mom and it's hard for me to get out. I mean, literally. But I still make, you know, I go out there, I have a supportive husband, and I think you need those role models. So Martha, you know, Sherry, Eileen, me, we need to play that part. Sometimes it's difficult to do so, but you've got to keep going out there and showing what you're capable of. So I agree with her that it's just not enough still. But I mean, even in our own portfolio, it's a tiny percentage that are female-led companies.”
2015-12-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Scaling Ideas and Startups in the U.K. and Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm not seeing a movement probably fast enough, I would say. I don't talk about this topic that much. I guess it's funny. I think I read an interview with Eileen. I think she and I were, when we were young, we were just worried about being Chinese American for her, Indian American for me. So I didn't worry about being a woman, right? And it's an issue I've been thinking more about. But I mean, again, I think it's just like entrepreneurship, female entrepreneurship, is an ecosystem thing. So we don't have enough female VCs who do look at things differently and will look at individuals differently. We don't have enough female entrepreneurs, female coders, all of that. I think, again, it's changing. I think as you have in the US, you're seeing Twitter product managers who've left and there's a few women who've started fund of their own. I think as you start to see talent leave here, hopefully exit, have a bit of wealth, they will start to”
2015-12-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Scaling Ideas and Startups in the U.K. and Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I think maybe actually it's a really good point. I think the challenges we're seeing across continental Europe with those support systems falling apart is actually engendering a move towards entrepreneurship. So we see that in Portugal uniplaces just has been, you know, has had a great round of funding recently. Spain as well, Italy a little bit also, is as those systems crumble.”
2015-12-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Scaling Ideas and Startups in the U.K. and Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Education system, you don't have the same challenges an individual in many countries, including America, where if you get made redundant, your health insurance is the first thing that goes and everything else goes with it. I know there is a welfare system, but the delta between the two is huge. And secondly, failure in Britain and even till now, it's getting better and better is not encouraged. And I can honestly recall being in a coffee shop in a cafeteria many, many years ago with my father who turned around to me and said, see that gentleman sitting over there, he's bankrupt. It was like it was a mass murderer or a high-level criminal. And now I look back at it. I would have loved to have gone over and had a chat with this gentleman going, hey, what was it like? What went wrong? And are you going to start your next company? And I was like, oh, wow, bankrupt. And Reshma, you've been here long enough to, I think, realize there is that stigma about failure.”
2015-12-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Scaling Ideas and Startups in the U.K. and Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was an entrepreneur because I dropped out of high school before my 16th birthday without finishing my exams. I had another option, no other option to do this, and I realized growing up in the projects in an environment where poverty was the norm, the only way I would really be able to help myself and help my family members get out was to accumulate some sort of wealth, which I wasn't going to get in the traditional career path, whatever that would have been, whether it had been in traditional banking or whatever, who knows what would have happened. But the country has never been as entrepreneurial as the USA has, and there's a number of social reasons and governmental reasons. One, we've got, even though people may complain, we have a pretty amazing welfare system here and a pretty amazing healthcare system here. When you know your roof is above your head and the welfare will give you sufficient funds to feed your family and clothe yourself and you've got healthcare system.”
2015-12-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Scaling Ideas and Startups in the U.K. and Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Whether they are dropouts to such, I mean, I don't think we kind of look at it that way. I think there is a much more kind of that zero to one thinking and thinking very, very big and being incredibly ambitious and having the toolkit to also execute on that ambition so not a pure kind of let's be dreamers, but how do we execute against that?”
2015-12-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Scaling Ideas and Startups in the U.K. and Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Good question. I think, again, it's an evolving journey, and so our journey with entrepreneurs has been that over the last kind of near decade. I would say when we started, there was a real lack, and I think I can say that sort of confidently being American, is a lack of commercial sense and sort of how do you get these products out to market and focus around product and usability and kind of thinking being the customer champion and how do you commercialize it? How do you monetize it? So I think there was a real kind of lack of that. It's changed dramatically for the founders we're backing today. I mean, just so much more astute. Everyone's reading the same thing. You're exposed to podcasts like this and a lot of knowledge and content like this. Also role models. So again, there's serial entrepreneurs and investors you're used to, you know, a lot more kind of a lot more access, a lot more people to access. So I think that's been a dramatic change.”
2015-12-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Scaling Ideas and Startups in the U.K. and Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He was either going to win or he was going to die. It was very binary. And when I row the check and it was just over $500,000, it was, okay, I may never see this again. And I didn't look at it. What is my IIR or what my liquidation? I didn't even know any of these words. But, hey, it seems like I'm a cool guy smarter than I am. So, okay, why not do it? And so really I'm the accidental investor. I had zero desire to be in the investment world.”
2015-12-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Scaling Ideas and Startups in the U.K. and Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If I look back to her, what was I thinking? I only put half of my net worth in there. I should have put all of that. And secondly, I shouldn't have ever done another investment after that because I always go back and it won't be as good as that. No, so for me, I'm not a big music fan for a start. But I got to know Daniel and it was his sheer passion and the fact that he wasn't willing to take no for an answer. So this is 2007, 2008. CD sales are still there. Download business is huge. And here's a young individual who walks into the record labels going, hey, I have a solution for your declining revenue. And they said, what's it? I said, give all the music away free of charge. And I remember when he'd get physically thrown out of these buildings and I'd go, so and he'd go, well, I'll go back there tomorrow. Because eventually they will come around to thinking the way I'm thinking. And I'd like to think, you know, we've now proven that streaming is the future. But all that came later for me, it was an individual who I realized had such passion that”
2015-12-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Scaling Ideas and Startups in the U.K. and Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm the accidental investor who never wanted to be an investor that ended up meeting Danielk when he was 22 years old with an idea of Spotify and I put half of my net worth into the company before there was a product.”
2015-12-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Scaling Ideas and Startups in the U.K. and Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Network, you have a huge brand, and you have a solid company. Halo is basically a London niche company funded by VCs who, if they could get an exit, would take their exit tomorrow and get out of the business because Uber has won in that space.”
2015-12-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Scaling Ideas and Startups in the U.K. and Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just naturally a desire also if you're a British entrepreneur or a European entrepreneur to go and win USA and from what Reshma is saying, I'd actually say the reverse. And I used a halo on the way here. Because Uber was 14 minutes away, they were going to get stuck in traffic and they can't use the bus lanes, whereas the license taxi got me here in eight minutes and knew the back road. But Halo only use it here and they've shut down in most cities they were instead of them going, hey, we've done London, let's go tackle USA. I would have done Paris, Munich, Berlin, Copenhagen, Sweden, you suddenly have a huge...”
2015-12-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Scaling Ideas and Startups in the U.K. and Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, because it was focused solely on black caps to begin with, right? And it never, again, it never expanded fast enough. And my taxi got funded by a different cohort of investors. And that never expanded fast enough, right? And then Uber just sprawled completely in record pace, obviously, as we all know.”
2015-12-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Scaling Ideas and Startups in the U.K. and Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's also, I mean, it's early days, but I think the last years of exits have taught both entrepreneurs and VCs here that you're capped if you don't have the expansion fast enough, you don't deliver that fast enough, you're capped. And I think if you see examples of Halo, which is a brilliant service I use it all the time, but Mike Taxi.”
2015-12-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Scaling Ideas and Startups in the U.K. and Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just by being in London, you won't be able to tackle the whole of Europe. And so now what you're seeing is people going, okay, if we're going international, we need to open up in Paris, we need to open up in London, we need to open up in Munich or Berlin straight away because the three are completely different when you're approaching it, whether it's labor laws, whether it's real estate. For us, it's what we do every day and we don't have those worries equivalent to somebody from San Francisco going to Chicago. There aren't that many nuances. But when you come from the States going, hey, I don't even stand the company set up here and why do I have to work with a union in Paris where you don't have to do that in the UK, which is two and a half hours on the train? So it's a completely different ecosystem at a smaller level in different cities.”
2015-12-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Scaling Ideas and Startups in the U.K. and Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So having seen this many times over, what happens is US companies like, hey, we need to go into Europe, we need to go international, so let's put our office in London and let's send Peter or Lucy who went to Stanford and did a semester in Paris because their aunt lived there and you can go run Europe. And that person is more familiar with Europe than most people. And sometimes what ends up happening is coming to London is actually a huge disservice because you feel like, well, if I'm in London, we can just run Paris out of there, we can run Germany, US is far similar to UK than France will ever be. So those challenges of accepting that”
2015-12-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Scaling Ideas and Startups in the U.K. and Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would think so. I mean, when our companies are doing that kind of market research, that's a lot of what they're finding. I mean, you still have to do a lot of segmentation within those sorts of cohorts, but I think a person in Shanghai feels a lot closer to the person culturally kind of what their day-to-day needs are to a person in New York or San Francisco or London or Berlin versus kind of maybe even the rest of China or rest of India or so forth.”
2015-12-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Scaling Ideas and Startups in the U.K. and Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. And are the cities were you describing, I mean, I get the US, but when you go from big city, Istanbul, Hong Kong, London, et cetera, are the users kind of of the same type? Is it the city that's the defining characteristic and the density and kind of urban lifestyle as opposed to the region?”
2015-12-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Scaling Ideas and Startups in the U.K. and Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Before you come international, so there's this different startup operational cities challenge that happens, and then it's just having sufficient capital to have a playbook to be able to replicate that city by city very quickly.”
2015-12-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Scaling Ideas and Startups in the U.K. and Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And if you look at the marketplace businesses, it's actually no longer about countries, it's cities, right? Which cities work and which cities don't work? And Istanbul is many thousands of miles away from here and there is an entrepreneur who would probably go, London, Istanbul, Dubai, Hong Kong. That doesn't mean they're looking at all Europe, all Asia. They're picking those cities going aggressively in there to tackle them. That we're far better positioned to do than the states because if you start in San Francisco, the natural thing is San Francisco, New York, Boston, Miami, Chicago, LA, San Diego.”
2015-12-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Scaling Ideas and Startups in the U.K. and Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What I mean, what I'm seeing a lot is, and it's a big generational shift. So I think if we looked at entrepreneurs from, again, about five years ago or more, there was this sense of, well, if I start in London or I start in Manchester, let me go across the rest of the UK. And then, as you said, maybe France or Germany, we're seeing a completely kind of change of perspective there. Our founders are saying, let me launch immediately in London, Berlin, maybe even in New York actually. So they're really going after an urban spread rather than any kind of geographical bias. So if they're starting in English, which mainly happens to be, it's a what are the main cities we can dominate? So, I mean, those are long-term trends around population sort of centralizing in urban areas and kind of the massive urban revolution, right? So we're not seeing such biases that we saw generation ago.”
2015-12-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Scaling Ideas and Startups in the U.K. and Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The same thing with Skype transfer-wise a building for a global audience because the local population is far too small to be a venture-backed company to have a revenue of billions and billions and billions so you have this international mindset from day one which companies in the states didn't necessarily have they're now starting to think more international so we have that advantage because we're all exposed to far more cultural inputs than a company in the states would be UK has probably been the last in that because out of European countries Germany and UK are pretty big populations in their own and I go back to a lot of the companies that were built here in the last 15 years were just market leaders in the UK some of our biggest online real estate companies are just UK only right move and Zooper two huge companies have never really ventured”
2015-12-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Scaling Ideas and Startups in the U.K. and Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So great question and easy way to answer is US is a huge individual market and there's enough room for American companies a lot of the time just to win the USA because one it's got population but two the revenue per user that you can get whereas you take a market like Sweden the reason why Spotify partly has been successful was from day one the product was built to go global”
2015-12-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Scaling Ideas and Startups in the U.K. and Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Are problems solved differently here and or regionally for that matter? Do you see a company that's coming out of Berlin saying, oh yeah, that's a Berlin company because I can tell from these characteristics or that's a UK company. But our problem solved differently than, say, in San Francisco or Silicon Valley.”
2015-12-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Scaling Ideas and Startups in the U.K. and Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, I think so. I think you do get such different perspectives and different systems of sort of finance or government or otherwise across the board across Europe. So I think you do get entrepreneurs that are able to sort of navigate that and build solutions that are more scalable. I think they're still sort of hindered by those geographic barriers and also kind of funding barriers as well. I mean, venture capital, I think, continues to be so regional. I mean, it's a terrible thing. It just doesn't sort of unify across Europe. And so scalability is limited there for big reason because of that. And then talent, I mean, is starting to move.”
2015-12-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Scaling Ideas and Startups in the U.K. and Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We talk about at the firm software eating the world, and as software and tech goes into every industry, whether it be healthcare or fintech or agriculture for that matter, is there an advantage in the sense of like you have people from all over the world, you have different approaches, and in some ways there's kind of, if tech hasn't seeped into all of Europe, is there a different perspective that entrepreneurs in England bring to solving problems that might play out better in the rest of the world in another industries?”
2015-12-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Scaling Ideas and Startups in the U.K. and Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The London Financial Centre versus Tech are two separate things apart from where fintech is involved. They seem like two very different industries where a lot of investment bankers are active in investing in tech startups.”
2015-12-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Scaling Ideas and Startups in the U.K. and Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think one way of looking at the difference between the US investment banks and the UK investment banks, I don't actually know anyone who's like, I need to get into Goldman Sachs, London. They're like, I want to become an investment banker and I'll move to the States. What is interesting is if you look at, you have London and then you have the British population and then you have all the imports of people who were brought up in a different country but then came to London. I think that is getting bigger and bigger, Rishma being one of them and my parents being first generation immigrants and Nicholas and Tavit. So you're getting a lot of exceptional talent from around Europe coming to London. But that's had its own issues in regards to visas over the years in regards to living costs. So there's a lot of those social type of factors which has hindered people from coming over, I think.”
2015-12-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Scaling Ideas and Startups in the U.K. and Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have to say, it's not, London is the world's largest financial center kind of bounces back and forth between London and New York. And just speaking of New York then, it's sort of the same dynamic. I mean, Wall Street and the financial center here have such a huge center of gravity. Is that part of the reason? I mean, are you still having kind of the best and the brightest head off to banking? Or is there a sense here now that technology is the place to be?”
2015-12-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Scaling Ideas and Startups in the U.K. and Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely, and I would say has a huge chance of being one of those sort of platform businesses if they get the next five years right. But people have left transfer-wise and Tavit is an active angel investor. So, I mean, you're getting, and that's not even just one example. I mean, there's multiple coming out of the Google's Yahoo here and so on. So King.com just exited, obviously, as well. I think they're setting up a fund. So you're getting that, but we're just sort of a decade behind, right? We're a generation or so behind.”
2015-12-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Scaling Ideas and Startups in the U.K. and Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I think it's a little harsh, actually. I am hearing of Simon Nixon more and more, but I would say we're probably a decade or 15 years behind in that sense. So you do have the Skype founders who've obviously done an incredible amount with Atomico and then some, but you have Tavet who left Skype and started transfer-wise, which is a portfolio.”
2015-12-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Scaling Ideas and Startups in the U.K. and Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So if you don't have those generational repeat entrepreneurs, then how do you build that kind of flywheel, that Silicon Valley, or do you, that Silicon Valley can lean on, whether that's in terms of angel investors or just people with an experience?”
2015-12-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Scaling Ideas and Startups in the U.K. and Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think Reshma's final point there is very, very relevant to encourage entrepreneurs that seed capital has to come from somewhere. And at the moment, when I look around, a lot of it seems to come from some family offices who seem to think tech is the cool thing to be doing, or it's coming from the savings of executives that media companies or tech companies. We haven't had those major hit after hit of multi-billion dollar exits, whether in the private market or the public markets, such as the Googles or the Facebook. So that trickled down effect hasn't happened. And it'll be a while till it happens. I'll give you a quick example. One of the biggest, biggest success stories that ever came out of the UK in the last 15 years was a company called Money Supermarket. It was a financial comparison service. At one stage was worth or close to a billion pounds, so one and a half billion dollars. I have never heard of Simon Nixon since.”
2015-12-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Scaling Ideas and Startups in the U.K. and Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, I think in the last five years, and we've been around sort of eight years, is a lot of the fundamentals are there. So you've got everything from beginnings of policy to encourage investment, talent with visas, and so forth, to the universities that breed that incredible sort of talent emerging kind of powerhouses around artificial intelligence, et cetera, to the accelerators, seed funds, more and more sort of Series A growth investors, American capital, Chinese capital sort of coming in. So all of those pieces are there. They've been building some pretty interesting companies. We use a lot around sort of derivative companies, which are great standalone businesses as such and can be quite valuable, but we haven't quite hit that sort of massive platform business yet.”
2015-12-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Scaling Ideas and Startups in the U.K. and Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We're trying to be, we're aiming to be kind of the choice of European founders as their first round fund across. So we're extremely aggressive for Europe. We're doing about 40 investments a year. So that puts us in quite the very active kind of investor role.”
2015-12-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Scaling Ideas and Startups in the U.K. and Europe · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source