E312 | EUVC | Natasha Lytton, Director at Seedcamp on building a strong marketing team for Europe's leading seed fund

0:00Hi, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the European Music Podcast. I hope you will enjoy this one. I at least had a lot of fun with Natasha talking about the journey of first being a startup founder, then getting into Seatcamp, joining the team there, doing marketing, platform, everything in the back end of the world of Seatcamp. And then also becoming a mother and really diving into some of the soul-searching conversations that one might have just having returned after Matt leave. I myself, of course, have two children. So that's also something that is close at my heart every single day.

0:37We dive into anything from taking Seatcamp from being an accelerator to being a fund and being known now today as probably Europe's first and best seed fund. And also, how do you think about the annual V-Wheel asset fund and how do you think about the different channels, how do you think about different metrics? Do you really even care about metrics? And much, much more. We ended the closing note. Never think that anything is static. In Manchu, you need to be moving all the time. I hope you'll enjoy this episode.

1:28The world. The nature of a problem requires a European response. Europe is a story of new beginnings. New beginnings. Let's start acting. This show is not investment advice and the hosts of this episode may be invested in the funds and companies featured. So, Natasha, I have been looking forward to this conversation because as many know, and I've just said in our intro, we are LPs in Seat Camp with the Syndicate for Operators, many of them women. Thank you for pushing us to do that. That was really cool. So I've been looking forward to talk to you because you are really the backbone of the organization that not everyone knows.

2:11Like we have Carlos and Reshma on the podcast. We have Tom talking on the Super Angel podcast all the time. But we haven't had you on yet, so I'm super happy that we're now getting the time to shine some light on the backbone of SeedCamp, as I call it. I like that. I like it. Very excited to be chatting. Let's start out with how did you first come to join the SeedCamp team and break into venture? Yeah. I always feel it's kind of a bit of a disappointing story, right? Because people are always contacting me and they're like, oh, they're really intentional around, which I love. But I have to be honest, I was not intentional when it came to getting into venture.

2:51I had been operating in startups in the CMO role for a couple of years. I've been through highs and lows, successfully fundraising, unsuccessfully, unsuccessfully fundraising. And, you know, the last startup I was at, this is summer of 2016. We shut down. We had our Series A term sheet pulled at the last minute. And I was like, huh, how are these VCs making decisions? Because I was like, this was actually a pretty good business. the last one where we were raising I'm not so sure so I had that curiosity and Seedcamp just so happened to be an investor in that business Carlos was also probably our best customer it was a food delivery company he's still like seven and a half years later is like I still miss that salmon dish from pronto so yeah it was it was this really organic thing where the last startup shut down I kind of you know went straight into okay shit what do I do next and had conversations with a load of startups and I felt that you know the the journey of what I would be going through to work with them would be a bit repetitive like the science and the structure and the stage all of that would be similar the creative output would be different but I was like okay I don't feel that's going to be the best next challenge for me and as I mentioned Seedcamp was an investor I pinged Carlos on Facebook messenger back in those days and I think I literally said yo any of your portfolio hiring and he said actually we are how would you feel about joining us and it was just the kind of perfect moment I've been thinking you know more about how do you get this information to a wider group of people especially back at that time like 2016 everything was about growth performance no one really cared or was talking much about the importance of how you build like foundational structures and brand and why that is more than just you know your marketing campaign or ads and how it influences absolutely everything across the business and yeah it was one of these like amazing kind of in true seed camp style amazingly serendipitous sort of moments I was in with the whole team later that afternoon and I think got the job the next day so yeah that was seven and a half years ago which is pretty pretty wild but it was a really organic kind of entry in and clearly one that's worked quite well.

5:10Amazing. And we're going to talk much more about that. And of course, you know, as the audience can hear, obviously this is going to be oftentimes coming back to marketing and platforms. So this is one of those episodes where some will tune in and listen very, very attentively and others will be like, ah, well, that's not me. But I think since the majority or many in our audience are GPs of smaller firms, I think we will have a ton listening very attentively here saying, because they're juggling so many roles aside from the investing role. So I think many of them will be like, how can I be Natasha for like 30 % of my time or 40 % of my time?

5:53And so looking really much forward to this. But Natasha, before we dive into the pure professional talk, I just want to just congratulate you on having become a mother seven months ago. Thank you. And then I want to ask you, because you're one month back from mat leave, that is tough. Tell me a bit about how has it been to come back? it's it's both tough and different while also very familiar if that makes sense it's um the context switching is definitely quite weird like I remember rushing back from a leadership meeting to go and breastfeed my breastfeed my child and getting sicked up on I was like oh yes I've gone from just being you know in quite like professional sort of mode but that I think what's really important to me and where I'm fortunate with Seacamp as well like I have always been very much about my whole self comes and you know with that comes whatever it is you're you're going through and um you know I was fortunate to be supported and you know having those six months um really out to focus on you know being a mother because yeah that stuff's not that easy it turns out but you know it was actually a really curious uh experience for me I think um perhaps my own perception of myself and what others maybe thought was oh you're gonna just want to get straight back into work like six months is going to be too long you're going to be bored I actually had a a male said say a guy said to me um before I went on that leave non-seed camp uh oh you're gonna hate it blah blah I was like okay like well let's see how it goes and actually I loved it like I loved sort of being you know amongst all the difficult times and sleepless nights which are carrying on uh but I I loved like being able to focus on you know nurturing a child it's really funny I was speaking to somebody yesterday actually about some brand stuff and he gave the analogy of you know a child growing up which was actually something that I presented on stage at Slush in November 22 22 yeah 22 but I was pregnant but I didn't realize and I was actually talking about how like startups and and all businesses you basically start as a baby and you go on this kind of trajectory of like from a toddler difficult years teenager etc etc and and so it's quite funny you know to be be living that now with a child but I've also been really thinking and reflecting on you know a the benefits of in many ways the pandemic to be able to work a bit more flexibly but also the benefits when you're used to operating and being in the early stages like you cannot control everything that's going to happen you cannot predict and there's going to be a fire that all of a sudden you have to put out so how you thought your day was going to go is going to look a bit differently.

8:44And so that kind of, you know, mental attitude and resilience to, to kind of adapt. I mean, I tried to remind myself of that at 1.30 this morning when he was crying at me. Yeah. I hear, I hear that you haven't been blessed with one of those kids that just sleep through everything all night, no problem during the days. Who are these children? Like literally, where are they? That's what I, that's what I So I have two children, right? A six-year-old and a three-year-old. My son has never been easy and is not easy now. And my daughter, on the other hand, who's three, has always been like she could be on my lab during calls.

9:32Not a problem at all. My son can't even still be in the room while I'm doing a call, right? So there's definitely a difference from child to child. And, you know, I'm just fingers crossed. David just announced yesterday on LinkedIn that he is expecting together with his wife or soon to be wife. So that's exciting, but definitely also something that makes me hold my breath because, you know, you definitely take a hidden productivity. You can say anything you want in terms of I get more focused. I now know why I'm here and blah, blah, blah. That's true. But you just cannot put in the same amount of hours.

10:13That's just not doable. That's at least how I have seen myself. And that does not make you a worse employee in any way, right? Because I think you gain so many other things. But the sheer hours that you can put in, that will just automatically drop. What's your take on that, Natasha? Am I saying stuff you hate hearing? No, not at all. I guess I'm thinking about it less as hours and time and more about mental capacity, to be honest. And it's the mental bandwidth, right? I mean, and I woke up this morning thinking about a load of work stuff. But equally, you know, I'll be in something. And if, like, something's wrong with the baby and I'm getting a message, it's like, how do you kind of separate these two?

10:52And, you know, you have to have a degree of, you know, compartmentalizing as best as possible, but also creating boundaries. I'm not great at that. I have to do a better job. Like when I'm coming back and like doing bedtime and things with him, I have to be much better at like, OK, my phone is going away because those moments are precious. Right. And you don't get those moments again, especially with your first baby. So it's definitely like I think we're often our worst enemies in these habits. It was also really funny, you know, during maternity leave, my sort of phone addiction was much less.

11:27And I was really curious, like, OK, maybe this is a habit. You know, it's not the first and last thing I'm doing the whole time. I was like, maybe this will be a habit that's broken. All that it takes, however many days to break a habit, it's gone. Absolute rubbish because straight back in work, straight back, like all those off behaviors. But yeah, it was funny. Someone was like, do you feel normal? Like, are you normal? Like, I was like, well, I'm very much myself. Like, my personality has not changed, but there is a new constant, which, you know, like touch wood and crossing all the things isn't going anywhere.

12:02So, you know, that's going to affect things. I think for me, it's more the, you know, there's a lot of social stuff, events, and they're going to have to be like meaningful for me to like pass up on bedtime and things like that. Yeah, I think it's very much that thing. And what's tough in mind is specifically that everything's so network driven, right? And certain depth PDAs, you started describing it in the beginning, right? how you got into seat camp. Serendipity often happens in the wee hours out of you being in weird places where you didn't expect anything to happen. And the time for that is harder to find when you have children.

12:41I try and really limit how much I travel, right? I always say I never want to go more than once per month. And then during event season, that's hard. But I really try and stick to that. What have been your thoughts so far? how have you managed it inside Ccampus well because you have you're not the only one with the child right I'm the first I think mother in the UK team for a while to go on that leave so we've got other parents but I think it's been about five years in our like London um office no one's gone out so it's also it's different right like the last time people like Antonio and Rush were having kids again it was pre-COVID it was a slightly different moment um you know so So now there's pros and cons, right?

13:28I can not commute some days and get straight on much earlier and do more things. And, you know, so there's definitely a degree of that. I can actually just hear my baby crying, which is like totally disappointing. I have three to go if you want to, Natasha. No, I don't need to go. But you know the, like... You are definitely... I can understand why people are sometimes like, oh, yeah, you get into the office. But for me, having that time where I can be with him in the morning is super important. but for the events for now I look we host lots of events I'm going to things as I mentioned I'm just sort of more intentional about what they are and if they can if people want to do things like maybe we do it in the day versus drinks and things as much in the night you know it's also because I've been at Seacamp I guess a long time there's a very established network of people so people are always kind of messaging and in touch and while there's still a lot of joy and serendipity like you know you are also just like a phone call away from people.

14:26So it's like, can I just, you know, I had that this morning. Someone's like, I just need to pick your brains for five minutes. I'm like, cool, I'm here now, like, let's go. So tech does enable a lot of that stuff. Now let's get into the meat of things. And I think it's always, and I wanted to take the opportunity to talk a bit about parenting here and transitioning into that role because there's so many, every time we're at conferences, this is the conversation, right? You do the VC speech for a while, but then you end up in the wee hours talking about, fuck, how do we manage doing this at the same time as we're also all parents trying to make life work?

15:05I think it's important that we talk about it. I actually just quickly had a really funny, you know, when your context is so switched, I was pushing my pram at like 8 a.m. in the morning through Battersea Park. and I saw someone who looked so familiar and he like waved at me and it's like there was a annoying look but I was like, why? I was like, why? And he was also pushing a pram and then like afterwards I was like, oh crap, that was Rod from Outsides and you're just like, because you're not used to seeing it, you're not used to seeing each other at like an event or in a certain context and I was both pushing this pram at 8am.

15:39Ah, yes. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that is, it is a different context for sure. But I think that's also it goes to show, you know, we're all just parents, right? Trying to make life work. We used to just be kids trying to make life work and make sense. Now we're parents in the same situation. So, Natasha, tell me on marketing overview, how do you think about marketing and venture and at Seacamp specifically but let's start with that what's marketing in venture for you what is it that really matters where is it that you make a difference as a as a marketing person or as a firm with a marketing brand or a good brand in in european venture so i think this role has evolved massively right especially since i started out in venture at you know seven and a half years ago there were very few people in these kind of operational support function roles it was very much just investment focus and there were very few funds and sort of sources of capital comparatively right so there wasn't as much of a need but at that time the those of us who were in these roles there was a lot of focus on you know the actual portfolio support side of things um and some stuff for the fund and then i think we've seen this real proliferation and introduction of so many new like entrants to and opportunities and sources of capital that you've seen various things you've seen kind of the the new players who don't have the legacy and the portfolio track record to stand on that are thinking oh crap how do we go about making ourselves unique and known so there's been a real opportunity and investment in marketing for those sort of entities you've then had the you know those who perhaps have been known for something but that was a long time ago and you want to move the narrative and the story along so there's a need for marketing and you know a thought I guess, in how the brand story evolves in those.

17:37And then you've perhaps got the ones that, you know, who used to easily get access to things. And now because it's competitive, they're thinking, oh, crap, maybe we need to put ourselves forward a little bit more. So those are probably the three buckets I would consider when I think about marketing adventure. I think there's a, and how do I say this really nicely? I think there's a danger, perhaps, of everybody trying to do the same thing and you know let's just invest in this thing we don't really know what we want it to do and we don't want to invest much of our time in it but let's just give it to somebody to to sort out and I think you have to be intentional and also just realistic with like what does marketing do what are the expectations how bought in are you as an organization to that because having one person in the silo try and steward something along with no buy-in in any organization is never going to work right but it's so different you know there are loads of people doing marketing and brand stuff now in venture in a way there just really wasn't before and I think it's also tricky right to actually find unique ways to to create stand out to create something compelling um you know we all have access to the same distribution channels the same content form so you know I always am pretty strict with like to put something out there it's got to really be trying to achieve something and be really clear around what you want it to achieve and taking a lot of the like you know we just need to do something for the sake of doing something because what's the goal with that there's many things that i want to unpack but i want to start one place which is who do you communicate when you communicate from the seed camp world is it to founders is to co-investors or is it to lps when you do let's say a newsletter or you do a, you know, now you're on this podcast, obviously, it's probably more for co-investors and LPs.

19:33But what do you do on social media? How do you think about that? How do you marry the world and the narratives and the storytelling? Because I think that's oftentimes where I see people, you know, struggling a bit, figuring out, you know, exactly who am I communicating to? What's your take, Natasha? So for me, it's very similar to any startup and company. You have your customers and you have your probably primary customers that you need to focus around. And then you have, you know, other ones, too. And there's a hierarchy of messaging that you have as any business that is constant. And then you dial up and down certain parts of that message, depending on who it is you're speaking to.

20:09So for us, like founders, obviously, like primary, like incredibly most important, like customer we have to speak to. But there's also our co-investors, LPs and, you know, our operators and experts within our network. So those are kind of the four key customers that we are speaking to. And so anything that we put out really has to be aligned with the needs of one of those types of customer. And the founder is a really good example of one. Us doing things for our founders isn't necessarily us saying things. It's us supporting and leveraging, you know, their content and helping to spread it and give it sort of legs.

20:46because when you're a founder of an early stage business, you don't yet have the, you know, the gravitas, so to speak, of a more established brand. And you need to kind of stand on the shoulder of giants to lift you up, as, you know, just a metaphor, to get you to build the trust and to help get you to that next stage. And you see this quite funny inflection point always with, you know, especially some of our companies at the beginning, that they're desperate to kind of get your report because, you know, So at that time, you can really help open doors for certain things. And then what you hope will happen is that their value will grow as yours kind of becomes lesser for them.

21:22And as funny as that sounds, like you're doing your job well, right, if that's what happens. So founders, obviously incredibly important, not just, you know, the founders that we invest in, but prospective founders that we might want to, you know, consider and think about seed camps. anything we're putting out has to be value additive to them and not just sort of stoking our own ego um so to speak and then you know things like newsletters I always see those as kind of they're quite hard to keep a proper grasp on exactly who is in that like base right you're likely to have a mix of all of it so I see that as kind of just keeping people like up to date on what's going on and your supporters, so to speak.

22:05Can I ask you a question around tone of voice? I saw something the first time I received an LP report from you, Natasha. I noticed this is very simply written in the sense that you're not using big words. You're not trying to sound smarter than you are or whatever, which is very interesting. meaning, and this is, when I read it, it was like reading a story, right? I got it right away. I understand what this is about. Whereas there's definitely others where you feel like you're reading the bank statement of someone. And that made me think, okay, this is not coincidental, right? And it's interesting because you'd have a small fund that will over-index on complexity.

22:54and then you have this probably Europe's leading seed fund or I would say Europe's leading seed fund communicating very eye-to-eye level, almost something that I could read to my six-year-old and he would actually understand it. It may be, okay, the DPI that you had in the parenthesis, I don't know what that is, Dad, but I understood the rest. The majority is not the case, right? for us simplicity and being very human and real in our communication is absolutely key and it's something it's interesting you raise it because I was actually just thinking you know we've just hired we've been growing quite a bit at Seacamp and we've hired you know some new people and there was just some content that someone was asking you to have a look at and there was some stuff in there I was like oh this feels a bit overly complex and wordy and and you have to as your brand grows you have to ensure that everybody joining you is really aligned with the kind of the core tenants of the tone of voice and the positioning to carry that through right because it's not just the you know reports going out to LPs it's the social media content or the you know content going on the blog so it has to it has to be consistent across the board and for us you know that human aspect is just so important and I think it's a really key part of us it said it sounds so bloody obvious as well right it's like we are people but it's not right and and it's not and i think it's because we're all schooled and we know all know how to write in all three voices or whatever right we we know how to write as we do to our friends we know how to write as we did in academia we know how to write as we did in our probably first banking job or first uh corporate job so it's like it's so easy to fall into the trap of saying okay when i communicate to a founder it's more friendly.

24:45When I communicate to LPs, it's more corporate because it's corporates receiving it. But then you just end up with a mixed bag, in my view, which I think I just thought that it was such a great example of clarity of voice when I saw how everything from the Seekamp world just connects and plays well together. I have a curveball you have on your website. You say Seat Camp, Europe's Seat Fund. And Hardcore has Europe's Consumer VC. I thought that is really cool. But I also thought, I'm sure you've had some fights internally about, do we want to just claim that? Will we just claim that? Is it an infensible thing to say about ourselves?

25:36It's a great question. I mean, that's a tagline that won't be there forever, right? And so it's a piece of the story and has been part of the story. Do I think that's going to stand forever? No, I don't. But we're quite comfortable with being a bit bold and saying, yeah, we are the seed fund for Europe. I actually love it. I love it. I think it's so important. It actually inspired me to want to challenge myself to start every one of our episodes with Chris Wade from Iceman Cabal, the GOAT of European LP investing or whatever. I forced myself to make that one liner for every single guest because I think it's so clear and you should be able to do that.

26:30Otherwise, you don't know what you stand for. And that bit's really key. right look and defensibility is a great point you have to be able to like own what it is you're saying and do I believe that we are like the seed fund for the best European founders yes I absolutely do um and so that's been you know very much the the narrative and the story but I I think of these things as you know it's funny people can get very like hinged and like attached to taglines whereas I always think of them as something that evolves. Honestly, unless you're Nike and you keep like you just do it and stuff, these are things that are in many ways like a marketing, they're a positioning like piece, right?

27:12It's a how do I understand how to contextualize and frame what this is and what's the most simple way back to this idea of simplicity of me immediately getting what that is. And the kind of genesis of that, again, in that slash talk, I think I did, I spoke about like the back end and the front end and I spoke about how that kind of front end of Europe seed fund came to be and it was asking all of those back end type questions to get there all the kind of core ground things you generally go through like who we are why do we exist why is that important who are you for who are you not for what's your tone of voice what's the kind of personality you're trying to put out in the world and that was just the the simplest and cleanest and most real reflection of when we did that kind of back-end investigative piece of work.

27:59How do you think, because now you described that brand process, how do you think about how often do you refresh your brand? How often do you need to revisit it? How often have you done it? What would you wish you had done earlier? I think that people can often want to point at branders. When there's a problem, people will often be like, oh, the brand's the problem. first of all it's like you actually have to dig deep and understand what is the real problem here and how do you solve it and deeply understand what brand is to then know what does fixing it even mean right a lot of people think brand is broken and it's because they don't like the color palette like that's nothing to do with your you know that's like some design thing that's not going to change anything your your brand is and you know everybody knows this but it's what people say about you when you're not there it's about how people tell their friends about you and ensuring that that's the right story and reflection of what it is you're doing as a business evolves your brand is going to need to evolve alongside it because what you're doing is going to change so where while you hope the kind of north star where you're trying to get to is is consistent what's happening around you the macro and what people need is likely going to evolve and that's very much been the story and the narrative for us right Seed Camp started 17 years ago as an accelerator and it was a very different proposition to what Seed Camp is now and so there's had to be evolution along the way in terms of how we position Seed Camp so that you take people on that journey with you we kind of have the the blessing and the curse of legacy when I sort of talked about those three buckets earlier we we're in this um you know spot where we were we were so early and so you know first really and so there's so much amazing goodwill and people love you know that it's incredible when you're out and about in the network and oh my god i remember this seed camp event i love it i miss it and that's amazing but as part of that and especially when you're as network driven and focused as we are and you've been involved and engaged with so many different people making sure all of those people are carried along that journey with you to understand where you are now is is part of our job and part of the you know the brand piece of work that needs to happen to take people along it so Europe Seed Fund was very much a genesis away from okay people keep calling us an accelerator we really are a fund and that's how we operate and you know and it hurts us for people to think it's an accelerator because we're not going to get the sort of founder we want to attract if that's what they believe so there was a very real need to do that at that point and so it's really identifying is there a very real need and a some a disconnect between what it is your brand is saying and how you're operating and what you're doing and those feel like really natural moments to to evolve things and how often natasha do you both like firm wide take a look and do a 360 on the brand, where are we, where are we, with our marketing, all that stuff?

31:01How do you structure that firm-wide and also you personally? Because we are all thinking about it every single day. Okay, did we hit our tone of voice? Are we going a bit too much in that direction? Are we too often talking about X, Y, Z? Are we getting a bit too AI? Are we only an AI fund now? You know, that type of thing. How do you, as the main steward inside Seekam, make sure that you continue being on point but also refreshing? For me, it comes back to what I was saying around operating principles and what you're actually trying to achieve as a business. And you have to make sure that these things are aligned.

31:47So are we there like every day, like scrutinizing every tweet and post? No. Are we there thinking intentionally about what we're putting out and what we want to achieve? Yes. so it's much more around where are we seeing the needs at the moment where are there gaps and where can there be like genuine utility both in terms of you know how do we scale ourselves and our own kind of content and put out resources and information that can be genuinely useful but also how's that going to benefit the others and be a real reflection of what we want to put out in the world i've you know i joined a conversation i think my first day back from mat leave about you know one part of the business oh we think this bit's broken and let's redo this thing i'm like the problem's deeper so let's actually take a pause and let's not do this thing let's think about what's actually going on and how do we address it and what is that going to look like and sometimes that can be scary right because everyone wants a quick fix and so just saying like this is going to be the quick solution yes happy days but I always want to go very deep in terms of what is the real problem at hand and then how do we solve it a good example we had of that back when we were changing a lot of our operational behaviors was when we were getting rid of deadlines for applications.

33:04And there was this, you know, we're not an accelerator. We didn't want to be seen as an accelerator. We wanted people to know that we're a fund. And yet there was this fear from some internally that to kill off these kind of deadlines for applications would hurt us, It would make it difficult for people to have urgency around needing to submit to us. It would make the kind of reviewing difficult. Yeah, you had a very good, I'm sure you had a very good marketing process around. Yes. We execute this every time and we get tons and tons of inbound when we get close to the deadline. It all works so beautifully.

33:40Let's not mess it up. And there's always going to be that tension, right? It's like what is going to break and what you're going to have to fuck up to fix it so that it's more aligned with where you want to get to. And so sometimes you have to do the thing that feels a bit scary and you need the person that's going to push that to happen. And I guess that's a lot of where my role comes in to push that. And I have to be quite clear, like, there is no way we can, you know, operate like this while still having this kind of framing. It doesn't make sense. It's confusing. So those are some of the ways I think you need to really think about it.

34:15And you need to have everybody aligned because changing core, like ingrained operational behaviors is scary. And so you have to make a good bloody case for it. That's for sure. You said in the beginning that it's so important that marketing and brand lives with everyone in the firm. It can't just be one person that's, you know, responsible for everything. And then everyone's kind of like, take care of it. Could you share with us a bit about how do you make sure that brand and marketing and content creation and so on lives with everyone in the firm? How do you think about firm communication versus partner individual communication?

34:58First thing I'll say is I think the voice of Seedcamp as the brand Seedcamp has always been and the goal has always been to be relatively like clean simple and neutral to give the platform to our founders the individuals right because there are a lot of different personalities that make up seed camp and you know you don't want to kind of dull any of those like we all are our own characters and we speak sort of freely and openly but we are all super aligned around the kind of core tenants of what we do how we we communicate that and and it takes a lot of work and repetition Even, you know, having this conversation with you, I was like, oh, shit, it's probably like worth having a conversation with some of the newer people to the team.

35:41Just, you know, reinforcing some of that stuff. You know, you cannot take for granted how much you need to reinforce and drill things in for them to stick. So there's definitely a big component of that. and then as individuals you know we we've never had at seed camp a sort of you know here is your strategy this person or your strategy this person it's really very fluid and organic there are some people who like creating content who like engaging in certain things and there are some who don't so much and while you want to you know push people to do certain things you also need to totally respond to the fact that different people play well in different arenas so trying to make every single person do the same thing is is pretty pointless and again it's not a real reflection of them so i think playing to people's strengths like some people are better orators some people prefer to write like letting them lean into those elements where they feel comfortable is ultimately where you're going to get the best out of people rather than making everybody like have ghost written blog posts like you know it's very much not our style at sea catcher yeah you have Carlos with his own pod.

36:48I'm very sorry. I've forgotten what it's called now. It's This Much I Know. This Much I Know, yes, which is very much followed by Carlos's curiosity. And then we've managed somehow to talk Tom into co-hosting the Super Angel podcast with us. And you do a ton of leadership work yourself and put that out from the Seat Camp brand. so i'd love to hear how do you think about content and do you kind of run a like annual wheel this is how we want our content wheel to be this is what we want to talk about over the year or is it much more organic i think it's a combination of the two we always like to have good intentions and then you have to be opportunistic and take things with a plan and you also have to be fluid and flexible when things don't go exactly to plan.

37:42So we have Seedcamp Firsts, for example, where, you know, look, our focus is really on zero to one. It's how you get your companies kind of through those early stages. And part of the genesis of that idea was how do we demonstrate, you know, the amazing breadth of knowledge and talent that we have within Seedcamp, not just kind of our core team, but from the portfolio companies, from our expert collective and all of this and how do we get that information out to many so we were intentional in thinking about what are the core questions that come up time and time again and who are some of the great operators from across our network that could come in and collaborate on some of those questions so that we can help not just the founders but the teams they're building around them right like it's really important I was having a call with a founder yesterday and we were speaking about you know design partners and creating um some sequencing for his content for his company and he was like you know right now I feel I'm doing six or seven jobs and I just kind of want to do the one and so so our job as well is to really think about how can we upskill the founder in the areas where they're not the expert because we know they're not going to be the expert in every single area and also think about supporting the people they're going to bring in under them so we are intentional with things like that whereas this much I know is definitely more of a curiosity led you meet somebody interesting and how do you bring their story to life so we have these different types which speak to kind of the different needs as well and then we have deep dives when there are topics that are you know particularly pertinent there are some different players that we can bring in to discuss it more in depth and so those are the sort of three types so they have their own place and they have a kind of loose structure and intention around them and then a degree of reflecting back on it are we achieving what we wanted to achieve with it is there something we neglected um is there a better potential contributor than we originally thought etc but also you know the thing we ultimately always have to do which will take precedent over any plan a founder or a company that we thought we wanted to engage with something in a timing that works for us might not be a timing that works for them and companies are evolving the whole time You know, so we always have to have that degree of flexibility because it's often just not the right moment for them.

39:59And that's totally cool. We'll get into the other parts of the whole Seatcamp platform, but I'd love to now talk a bit about marketing with the founders slash for the founders. How do you kind of make sure that you, as Seatcamp, does the best you can by the founders with your marketing machine and marketing capability? Yeah, so we always do our best, you know, and you see it, especially in the early stages, right? kind of to what I was saying earlier, when they don't yet have the trust as readily built up, they're looking to hire or attract next stage investments, find customers. So, you know, we'll always support, put out a blog post, like help if we can with, you know, any introductions, review materials before they go out, really think about, you know, the piece as a whole, and what's the story that you want to tell?