E316 | EUVC | Natasha Lytton, Vincent Touati-Tomas and Jeroen van Dornik on marketing in venture capital

29:52I need to kind of build up my specialism and expertise because I see this as being an extreme. We're not experts on everything we cannot predict. You know, we don't have the crystal ball. But generally speaking, we've had a pretty good pulse on what are going to be, you know, things that stay and go the distance. And then what are going to be, you know, like we didn't go very deep into crypto. For example, you know, there were some plays there, but we were cautious of how hyped things were. And there have been certain spaces, you know, all the delivery, groceries, mobility, etc., where we also just decided not to play.

30:28And it takes quite a lot of confidence, I think, to decide not to wade in, especially in this market, which has this herd kind of mentality essentially around it. And when you're seeing all these opportunities and big rounds to kind of hold firm and actually say, we just are not convinced this is going to be a trend or it's not even going to be a trend. It's going to be a valuable business. So we're going to sit this one out. You know, we all know how much like FOMO is like the curse of this industry. But this comes back again, I think, to like your core and like who you are as an organization and what makes most sense for you and where you deploy your capital.

31:06Yeah, and I actually agree. And I think the biggest challenge we have when we grow as a VC firm and we have a legacy then is to make sure we keep this like hacker type of mindset where you're actually going to hack markets with founders because you don't know where it's going to go. like maybe grocery will actually take off who knows maybe ai maybe it's it's not the case i i often um come back to this like clean clean tech bubble that we had before the the last financial crisis uh in 08 it was way too early uh for different reasons and the market completely crashed um and so what's interesting in venture is that obviously it is venture capital it's a very very specific asset class that is super volatile and we are most of the time wrong and this is this is this is actually true and we talked a lot about like the power low but it is it's it is about the power low and this is also the beauty of venture capital because you get all these shots at trying most of them can't uh because it's really really hard to make it work but actually founders come back again and again and they build amazing companies that break out and that's what venture capital is for and that's why i think andreas you kind of like differentiate even like Sitkamp and North Zone in terms of like late not like we actually I think we are investing a pre-seed seed now uh and I think when you do venture capital even if you do it at growth stage it's still venture capital um and and and it's still very risky because we have these moonshots ideas uh that will make this power low performance but again like it's back to this specific asset class and venture is actually not for everyone and I think in our industry we we often like make this super shiny and it's so great with VC money and and these like events and all these things but I really like what you said about this event Natasha in in 16 because we are hackers that that's what we are and this is the identity of of our community and so we need to go back to the roots of of why we do venture capital and I actually feel like with with Gen.ai and with with all the tools that are coming coming back I feel like it's kind of uh same as the uh in like internet like the blog days uh I was a teenager at the time and I remember blogging and was so excited about blogging and I feel like I'm excited again uh with Gen AI and I didn't get this this excitement with the startup boom that was more of like corporate excitement I was like yes this is kind of mature but i feel like with the gen ai we have kind of a new technology now that is coming and it's back to the blocking day so i actually want to start again blogging because there is so much to say and to build with people um but yeah it's it's interesting to see these like challenges of like building brands uh according these like times how much is ai impacting your daily activities now yeah curious i i use a lot of different tools um I have to admit that I don't know how AI is going to stay in my life right now in terms of workflow.

34:24But I've been building templates for almost 10 years since I basically started doing marketing. And so I've always had templates for everything that I was doing repeatedly. And I feel like AI is kind of the step two of these templates because I can then apply kind of this layer. I feel like right now the tools are very basically not integrated in my workflow. So I'm trying to solve this right now as a user. But AI is definitely here to stay. We just did a survey with our CMOs in the portfolio. And they all say that they use AI or they want to use AI and apply AI to their marketing activities. So I guess we have to use it.

35:09And it's actually very exciting to see these tools. But again, the tools are going to serve the strategy and not the other way around. I think a lot of people just jump on, oh, yeah, you can now use ChatGPT to do your LinkedIn post. Good luck. We'd actually maybe let's kick the broad question to you as well, Natasha. Gen.ai and your marketing work at SeekCamp? Yeah, I mean, for me personally, it's not really something that I'm using, but I'm seeing in sort of other members of the team. And it's not actually just in marketing. It's how the utility of it across different team members, especially for those who might not be native English speakers, they're finding it incredibly useful.

35:49But it's not something that we're using from a marketing perspective at Seat Camp currently at all. And it's not something I can see, I for sure understand the benefits. But in terms of the work we do or the marketing that we do, look, you know, it's going to be pretty broken and pointless if any piece of content is just created using, you know, ChatGPT or whatever other tool. There will be zero differentiation. There'll be zero point in anybody putting things out and there'll be no individuality. So I do think as much as it's amazing how you can shortcut your way to certain things or have a turn of phrase produced better if you're confused about something, I really think if we genuinely care about individual thought, we're screwed if we're looking to that to create everything.

36:37We've also been clear as a firm, you know, not having like AI note takers on calls and stuff because we have to be really mindful, you know, as fund managers about data and information and what you're putting out there, right? We have to also be conscious as organizations, anything we're feeding into these, you know, systems and tools can come back at you. And so you need to be, you know, especially if you're thinking about anything like around your company's information or anything like that, you have to be really cautious, I think, from a privacy and information confidentiality perspective. So we do not use it from a broad marketing perspective at all.

37:13I can see for sure benefits, especially with like podcasting, getting scripts out, all of that sort of stuff. Like definitely I'm sure we'll explore that a bit further down the line, but they're not currently super actively using it. That is hugely interesting to me. And I almost even go as far as to say that it is confounding to me, Vincent and Natasha, that you're not making more use of it today. You did say, Vincent, that you're actually a heavy user, but you're seeing that it's definitely creating roadblocks for you, that it's so poorly integrated into the different workflows. And I get you 100 % on that.

37:55But I would say from my side, and I'm obviously in the content creation business, so I'm probably one of the roles that is most impacted by this. But I would say I very rarely start a task not with a chat TPT window open on my side. And that does not mean that what comes out in the end is then just Gen.AI. but it definitely means that I've had a sidekick working alongside me. Vincent, does that mimic kind of where you are in your process as well? Because I would actually say the way you described it as saying, I've always been a template guy. Anything that I did more than once, I had a template for it.

38:46Now, you can have a chat GPT for it. So yes, it knows your template and it knows how to generate on the back of that template their first draft. And all you need to now feed it is the new original thinking that you wanted to put out in that template. So, I mean, we could go down the use cases, but there are some use cases where I actually use AI in my templates and ChatGPT and Cloud, and I kind of like compare the two. So I'm actually using it for very, very specific templates. I'm not as a heavy user as you because I don't start all my tasks with ChatGPT. But that being said, when I feel that I'm down productivity wise, often I would just like open a ChatGPT chat and I would kind of like brainstorm with ChatGPT on how I can move things forward and it gives me like this productivity boost.

39:40But the one rabbit hole that I went through recently and is that I've always had a second brain. So for the ones that don't know this concept, basically it's just like having your notes at the same place. And my second brain has always been Notion. It's been years now, it's been Notion. Before it was ever not. I read a lot of media, very different stuff. So I clip stuff. And so it's mainly for like my media consumption, my books consumption, and some of these templates. But all my work stuff are more like Google. So my second brain, I've realized recently with AI that Notion decided for me which LLM was going to be on top of my data.

40:21And I had basically a wake-up call, and I was like, wow, this data that I've built for more than 15 years now that is building my identity online and that I often go back to because I'm looking for an article, stuff like this, a company is going to decide for me which which of the llm is going to be on my data that i don't even own so i basically had this web cup call and um my partner is an engineer and we're talking about it and now i'm using obsidian which is basically an open source and the entire concept is file over app because notion might be dead in 30 years but hopefully i won't so i want i want to have my data and I also want to be able, especially now with these LLMs, to choose whether or not I use Mistral because I trust the French sovereignty or I would prefer a Spanish version, who knows.

41:24But right now, these companies make these choices for you, often for money reasons, because maybe ChatGPT3 is less expensive for them than ChatGPT4. So then you have to use chat GPT-3 notion. I don't know. I make this up, but I'm pretty sure they've made a corporate decision to use a specific tool that was cheaper for them or that was more efficient for them. But that's not what I want as a user. So for me, it was the wake up call that if you do create content, if you care about like second brain concept, you have to own your data one way or another. And it's especially true with AI and especially true with what you said, Natasha, which is who knows where our data is going.

42:03And now I'm a bit more skeptical of how the data is being used against me. So I want to make sure that this very personal data is mine and I can control it. That's interesting. I was just checking out, I think it's lazy.ai or something like that that David is using as his second brain. I'll follow up. I don't think it's lazy.ai, but it's something. Maybe rewind or something like that? Yeah, but it searches everything. So you basically give access to all your data. I'm not even sure it's legal to give you like, to give everything to a tool that you actually don't know how they're going to process your data, which is why it's very important to go back to kind of files and protocols.

42:48It's actually back to marketing. It's like when you start this, like you start marketing, okay? Like day one, you have a website, you have a product, you have an idea, and you want to start. You need to start with protocols. So you need to start with a URL, a website that is accessible, indexable. You need to have an email database, like all these basics. Sometimes we forget about them. But that's the same with data. Like you need to own your data. And right now we don't. I know a lot of people are working on it, especially in Europe, because we are super forward leaning when it comes to data privacy and GDPR.

43:22And I actually think Europe, for once, is completely paving the way in how tech is going to be shaped moving forward. Because now we opened the subject of GDPR and data privacy and so on. And you described it as, yes, it's a positive thing that Europe is going to be or are in the front there. um i'd be curious just because any anyone working with marketing uh probably has a view on on tdpr and and privacy and whether we have overreach there or or if there's a good balance now i'd be curious to hear your take it's one of those things that i find it deeply frustrating in terms of whenever miguel who runs our tech is like no this isn't compliant or we've got to do all this or the cleaning like as an individual i'm like oh you know it's literally that that's my favorite oh but we have to you know look as an organization as well like we're we're regulated we're dealing in financial markets and you've then got this like kind of european uh regulation on top so i think that's important i think where you know and we're talking more holistically now it's out of just marketing but i think where corporations can often use the excuse and the veil of privacy compared to their own personal gains is unfortunately that you know where we see things happening a bit more, the whole kind of Apple meta, you know, arguments and things have been happening there.

44:47Similarly with like Google and third party cookies, like these things will cripple marketers, right? And it's very difficult because you hear that these things are coming down the track, but they get delayed. And so then you don't know kind of, especially when you're dealing in the early stages, you're just trying to do what you can do for now and with the channels that you have. And, you know, in the same way Vincent was saying, he doesn't know if Notion's going to exist in 30 years time, you don't know what distribution channels are going to exist in, you know, the next two, three, four, five years.

45:15And so as marketers, when you're thinking about building your strategies, you really have to balance what's going to work for the short term, medium term, but also what's going to give you sort of long term, like longevity. So you can get sort of what I was saying, you know, the example of the 2016 event earlier, like these tailwind, like long, like content halo effects that will last and go the distance, because we don't own things. I was looking for an article I wrote yesterday and I realized the site had died or it's gone. And I'm like, oh, that's annoying. And this is my own fault. I never own my content.

45:49I'll always do things for other people, but I'm never like, I'm going to just do this for me and keep a repository of it. So I clearly need to get my second brain.

46:00I agree there is a compromise to be made here between privacy and efficiency Because if you're an early stage company and you're fighting every day for survival, is it really going to help you to have to track all these things and these rules? I don't know. And I actually think Europe for this is actually quite painful sometimes because we create the rules and we don't think about the impact for companies. large companies like the GAFA, they can do it. They really don't care at the end of the day because they have the money to get a team of engineers to be compliant and they can also pay the fines.

46:42But it's not the case for startups. So I actually think as VC, we need to be careful not to foster this kind of like system. With the air taken out of the room, talking about GDPR, let's move to something as exciting as TikTok. No, let's talk channels, distribution channels. And let's start with the topic of just what channels do you find as hugely important for your firm? And what channels do you find as less important? I'm happy to start, but TikTok, for example, I think I'm the audience, given my age and given where I'm coming from in the internet. I've completely missed TikTok. as a marketer, like completely.

47:28And I've deleted T-Store personally because I feel like I was spending way too much time on it. When I saw it, after two weeks, I realized that it was very addictive. And so I deleted it. But I think, I'm very happy to answer your question about the channels, but I don't think we should start with this. And this is something you also said, Natasha, but you need to have a strategy. And I'm going to give you an example, which is Clubhouse. I don't know if you remember Clubhouse, but when Clubhouse came out, everyone and their mothers were saying you need a clubhouse strategy and i remember seeing articles about clubhouse strategy like it's so it's great it's the new content the new audio and i remember thinking wow like people just fall into the trap of this new channel and they're going to build an audience in there and it's going to be great for the short term but long term they would have nothing because at the time where we were thinking about strategy on clubhouse we didn't know if we could put links.

48:26It was a very early day. So it was kind of a VC bubble and start a bubble. What I find interesting with what happened with Clubhouse is that it proves you that you need a strategy because a lot of people have benefited from Clubhouse because they had something specific to tell to this audience and they knew exactly how to sell it on Clubhouse. And they were able to build these amazing communities where they basically built a brand for themselves. And then they were able to export this brand to all the platforms. So So for me, it's not necessarily about the channels. And we can talk about the channels that work well in venture right now.

48:59But it's more about what is your strategy and what are the channels that are going to serve your strategy. And it's the same with AI tools. And for me, it's much more important to start with this and even doing one channel well first, which is a website. You know, a lot of websites actually don't even work properly or have good call to action in our industry. And I think it's a shame because founders spend a lot of time trying to reach out to us. And often they don't understand the products that we are selling, which is a bit of a shame. What's the second one, Vincent, you find important in terms of distribution?

49:39So what else is working? I would say social media, obviously. The second one. And the third one that I think works really well is any experiences. So creating events or going to conferences, like building these physical experiences, it's super helpful to engage with your brand. And then if you have a funnel strategy, if you can collect emails or if you can have people follow you on social media, it's great because then you're in touch with this community. Yeah, I think ultimately one channel never works in isolation. And what we're always thinking about at Seedcamp is if we're creating anything, it's how can that work across multiple different channels?

50:21It might need to be chopped and changed a little bit. But ultimately, like not every content type or piece of marketing activity you're doing should live on the same platform or have the same goal. I think there's always a, like we all had a play with Clubhouse. We were all so bored at home, right? Let's not forget the kind of broader context that was going on there. And then we were just like, it's a podcast, but chat here. It's like, it's literally, how is this not a podcast? Why are we putting this on Clubhouse? But the beauty of it, again, which was just so contextual with that moment was we had like families or people we hadn't chatted to for ages just dropping in.

50:57And then it reignited kind of bits of connection and serendipity, which you were lacking because there wasn't that in-person stuff. So look, Clubhouse as a channel clearly, you know, was not going to be something that went the distance, but as something to experiment with, I think having an attitude of experimentation is good, right? Especially in, you know, these sort of worlds of adventure where, you know, it wouldn't necessarily be what's at the forefront of people's minds, right? And being able to think like Mark, so Andreas are an amazing example, right? You have a business, but you've built a whole kind of content business on top of it.

51:30We've seen that work really well as well for people like, you know, Harry. So I can definitely see the value in that. However, you're also doing kind of one thing, I suppose, really well by interviewing. You've got the really clear, like, who is this for? And I think ultimately that's the starting point. Anything you're putting out in the world for marketing, who is the customer? What are you trying to achieve? Then you get into the distribution flow of how that comes to life. But you don't, back to this idea of you don't own it, right? So Twitter used to be a great channel for us. Now it's crap.

52:03So, you know, there's kind of, you still have it. there's still an audience there but the however many tens of thousands of people you have there you can't guarantee you can migrate them somewhere else and you can't always be in the business of starting again again again to build up your your channel elsewhere it's really difficult um and the game is is rigged right because ultimately we're dealing with corporations that need to make money so you know I remember back in 2010 where you could organically grow a business on Facebook like hell can you do that now you know and so you have to always be one step ahead and not getting too comfortable and and that's what you've got to be looking for in your companies as well right if i'm looking and speaking to a company who have all of their acquisition coming through one channel i'm worried because i know that that acquisition rate is not going to go is not going to stay forever and you cannot guarantee it the diversity like channel diversification is really important but it has to start a level up who is it for what do you want it to achieve then how does it trickle down what are ways in which you measure the effect also you including sort of ripple effects or fins?

53:05And as you just mentioned, how do you get to the level where you understand that your product actually comes across the way you want it with a founder, for example? How do you measure that? I feel that trying to measure the effectiveness of marketing and venture is pretty much useless. And I think anything you can measure is likely a vanity metric more than anything genuinely impactful for because ultimately we're in the business of long-termism, right? And so looking at short-termist metrics like growth on a channel, click on a link, et cetera, isn't that useful? And so this is, again, where it comes back to the firm and your own understanding and buy-in.

53:47And this is for any organization, right? When you are investing in the power of brand story marketing, it's knowing that this is something that's going to have a long-term effect. And at SeedCamp, we're comfortable because we can see it. We can see the effect of what we put out into the world over, you know, the last 17 years and the efforts and how that sort of comes back around across all the different touch points, you know, whether it's things that are good for the ecosystem, whether it's founders referring, whether it's people wanting to invest in us. And so that's the way that we look at it.

54:20It's as this whole marketing is not a siloed part of the organization. And I think that's ultimately where where people get things wrong when you try and look at it as this separate little function that's meant to achieve all of these things in isolation i so agree and i i think it's uh it's a shame that some people focus on these vanity metrics and followers and because it's not really a strategy to to grow your followers you need to know whether or not you're cutting through and you need to know whether or not your inbound strategy is working like are people reaching out for the your thesis back to the product that you're selling which is a thesis and capital and portfolio supports.

54:57Do people come to you? Do the people you want to win come to you? When you go to these people as outbound, do you win? Like, do you have the brand to win? And so for me, it's much more important to be able to say yes to this question than how many people do we have on our website or how many followers do we have on top of our current followers in LinkedIn? And so, because again, like these channels can change maybe tomorrow everyone is going to search online through chat gpt and so seo wouldn't exist who knows but these things can happen so it if you build the brand people remember you and they will come to you and so if they don't come to you there's a problem especially when you go to a new market i think venture with the beauty of it is that we can we are very flexible in the team so if you want to put your flag in a in a market that you've never been in you know how long does it take for you to cut through the noise there?

55:55That's a metric that I follow. But all the others agree, especially in venture are not relevant. And I think it's kind of, it's again a cover up for no strategy. Yeah. So basically, it flows back to the core process, but you know, working with founder, performance access, deal flow, and those sort of things. I guess before we disregard KPIs entirely.

56:30Let me say how I think about it. We just had our call with our social media person yesterday. And then we've gone basically from, you know, when you have someone helping you with that, they tend to like over-index on a bunch of different metrics. I don't need 30 metrics. I know the importance of this. I know that directionally, I want to go in this direction. And I want to see us continuing out of that continuum. And that is the extent to which I measure. I want to see that our subscribers are increasing. I don't want to see that percentage growth drop too much in any month or week. Same thing on LinkedIn.

57:18Same thing on our virtual events. Same thing when I put out an in-person event. I want to see the wait list get as big this month as it was last month when I put another event out. That type of thing. But I never care about the individual number and really go down and nitpick the details. But just I want to, of course, also have that continuous tracking and seeing, OK, directionally, we're on the right track. Am I right in saying that, of course, you have that implemented at your firms as well? Yeah, for sure. Look, if you're never looking at how things are performing, you're also running blind.

57:57But a lot of these things can just be outside of your control a lot of the time, right? You cannot gain like what bigger thing was happening in the news that day you ended up dropping something or all of these external factors. And so if you take, while we want to look to data to give us results and to give us answers, if we blindly just always trust that, it can be misleading. And so you do also have to take your experience, your knowledge of these kind of wider things and what we were talking about, how it contributes to the whole, which is ultimately winning, you know, deals and getting the sort of best, best balance to come to you.

58:32And is everything kind of collectively contributing towards that happening? And if yes, then great. And if not, then you need to reassess from a strategic level and then look at doing things differently. I love to go to the topic of reputation management for a VC firm, because inherently in the VC model, reputation is incredibly important, but it's also incredibly easy to damage. So I'd love to ask you how you, with a marketing hat, kind of stay on top of the reputation of the firm and make sure that you work well. And where have you maybe seen it gone wrong, either by your own firm earlier or by other firms?

59:21Or where you've had ideas on the table inside the partner meeting and say, ah, that's not a good idea, guys. I don't know if it's a marketing question. I think it's more of a, do you have good values? And do you think that you're proud of them? And do you react to stuff according to your values or not? And that's, to me, a bigger problem. And as a marketer, I'm trying even with our portfolio companies to make sure that they always have this insight. especially you know because we talk about reputation when there is you know geopolitics events or stuff like this and often people wonder do you have to comment or not and my advice is always how does it first of all how does this resonate with you start with this start with your values and start with where you are in society and whether or not you have a specific voice a differentiated voice because if you're just going to put a statement out there that is that is very blend and you do not really know what you stand for, then it will backfire big time for your reputation.

1:00:29So you need to be very clear with this. And often, this is why we talk a lot about strategy and narrative, I feel like today with Natasha, because you need to have a strategy and you need to have a narrative in order to answer to these reputational risks that happen to you every other month. because you will have them. And so you will have to make sure that you have kind of a blueprint where you're going to compare your reaction and your values. But for me, it's actually very important. I've never had like bad experiences about this because I think I was lucky to work with people that have amazing values and they were kind of standing by them.

1:01:10And so immediately you have the right reaction, I think. But obviously you can make mistakes and it's kind of an industry where you have different individualities and you have to respect that as well. So that's kind of like the balance between individual versus corporate. And that's also something we talk a lot with portfolio companies when there is a big reputational risk for them. I think that's the thing, right? When you look at reputation, it's not just your organization, your individuals within the firm. There's all of the companies you're investing in. There's all of the people you're taking money from.

1:01:41Actually, if you think about the broad potential reputational risk, it's vast. So it then comes down to, you know, doing the best that you can. It's why we have KYC and compliance and things and checks and balances in place. But equally, things change. Right. And geopolitical being a perfect example. Right. And I can speak to an example from from us at Seedcamp. Like we had as an LP in Seedcamp, a very well known and at the time which they invested, which was, you know, a very long, like over a decade ago, a very well known Russian successful tech company. And they invested the individuals from that in us as a fund.

1:02:15And then, you know, who was to predict that a decade later, there would be the Russian-Ukraine war and then they would become a sanctioned individual. So, you know, we always act with, you know, integrity and our best possible, like, step forward with the information we have in any given moment. But macro and things can change. So it then also becomes about your reaction. We took very decisive action in terms of getting those people out of the fund and making sure we stay true to our values. But it is impossible, I think, to always predict what is going to happen because of the volume of people you're dealing with outside of the immediacy of your own organization.

1:02:53So it's then your response as and when something does happen which matters, and that's what people will judge you by. Katie, you look like someone who is about to say something. Yeah, that's correct. You're at that right, Andreas. I had a question about, you know, given that what Natanjan just mentioned, I mean, venture is constantly evolving or changing anyways, right? I thought, did you ever underwent a transformation on like firm identity level? Is that something that happened in the past or not so much? Yeah, I mean, Seedcamp goes through iterations constantly. A brand never should stay still, right?

1:03:36And if anyone thinks that, you know, the brand is just going to be there and in its current guise and last forever, they're fully mistaken. So we're always looking at our own organization, what we're putting out into the world and ensuring it not just matches kind of who we are as we evolve as people, but also matches the maturation of the ecosystem around us. So, you know, I think constantly evolving because your proposition, our core proposition, for example at seed camp has evolved significantly over the years right we launched as an accelerator with a 2.5 million dollar um you know amount of cash in 2007 we're now on fund six with you know like 140 plus million pounds it's a totally different organization and so the brand the proposition the communication of it all has to evolve without changing like the core of who we are because that core hasn't changed were there any pivotal moments in the journey basically with?

1:04:31Definitely ones, you know, and again, they come from the strategic point, right? So the strategic decision and view that kind of the perception of accelerators in Europe was perhaps, you know, like losing a bit of shine, not wanting to be as associated with that. While also, you know, and there was that, but also just that model didn't work. We didn't think for what companies needed in the here and now. We don't see the programmatic kind of batching, the calls to investment. You know, you've got to be able to capitalize on opportunities as and when they arise. You've got to be able to flex with the company and the individuality of what they need in the moment.

1:05:04So that was a perfect storm of kind of market trend changing in ecosystem. And that was a huge moment. And it was a scary one as well. It wasn't just changing the proposition, it was changing operating behaviors. And it's then having to bring the whole market along with you, right, Andreas? I think we discussed this. Yeah, I was about to say, we spoke about this transition period at quite some length in our episode, Natasha. So anyone really, you know, wanting to understand how you've been doing it through that, definitely go and check out that episode for a deep dive on that. Vincent, Northstone has been around for ages.

1:05:42Would you say you've gone through a similar pivot slash development? Yeah, and we've been through several partnership changes as well. Like the partners of Northstone today are not the partners that have started the firm. And that was big because it's an identity crisis, obviously in a VC firm, especially in our industry, they're so led by individual brands. And it was especially through back in the days when venture capital started, like it was very much the people, like venture firms were not thinking about brands at all. Now I feel like it's more of a thing because there are these roles of like marketers in venture firms, like teams.

1:06:22And so we think a lot about it. Actually, one thing I would say about SIDCAM that I think is amazing, I don't know if we're going to talk about it, but you guys publish your performance when you raise funds. And I think this is something that is missing in the industry. I mean, I don't know a lot of people that do this. And we ask a lot from our founders and we grill them publicly about the performance. And often it's actually really hard when you see these articles about evaluation going up and then going down. And it's really unfair for them. It doesn't happen for VC firms. And I think we talked about this a lot as well, like European versus American.

1:07:02But I think you guys are doing this and paving the way on how it should be done in venture. I personally think transparency is much better. and so for us it has always been this like through all the cycles we've tried to be super transparent about what we were going through as a company and I think founders really appreciate this and I think the next step for the European ecosystem is actually VC performance so knowing more than just you know a list of investors with like one big name of one big company that have done an exit or has a very big valuation, which is, you know, you don't really know what is the performance of this.

1:07:46And I think it's a bit of a shame because it will help a lot this kind of transparency ecosystem and all these transitions that we're talking about will be smoother. And that's the case in the US. If you look at the markets, it's much more mature because they are much more transparent about all this performance stuff. The way I think about it is truth of the matter is that it's never going to be the average VC firm that's going to publish. Because the average VC firm does not do too well. Because that's just the truth of the game. It's outlier funds that make this whole party worthwhile for the LPs.

1:08:30So I think that it's the likes of Seekam and Northzone that we all have to look to to start publishing. And then I think that there's one place where I think that there's a lot more to be won than there is to be lost, where I wonder why it's not more prevalent. Because a firm like North Zone, you have a big reputational risk in being too forthcoming or too transparent on your performance because you never know what the next fund is going to be like and what's the next year going to be like. So for that reason, there's a lot there. But emerging managers, first-time fund managers that are out there raising, they typically do so on the back of an angel track.

1:09:17That's very, very good. And I wonder why they're not more open with 30 investments, 18x. because those exist on an angel track because it's doable and no LP goes in and expects their first fund to then do 18x as well. But when you've hit that, the sun and stars and everything has been aligned, why don't you do it? And that's where it would be pretty easy and I wonder why we don't cheat more. I don't know either, but what I do see is that I think the Eurobeat ecosystem is still quite young. There are some GPs that we call as venture performance. So I think Seed can publish this shit, but what we call venture performance is not even really known between GPs sometimes, let alone LPs, let alone outsiders.

1:10:14I think that just also has to do with which generation and cycle we are in terms of venture and we're going into the right direction. But probably there's just a lot of educational stuff to do here in a general sense. And yeah, I think I agree with you. I mean, but the top performers, they could be more outspoken about what true venture performers can look like, basically. Let's also give a raised finger and shout out at the same time to EIF to start publishing their data because they're sitting on it. And I know from people inside the EIF that they're happy to publish it. They just, I'm doing air quotation marks here, they just haven't come around to it yet.

1:10:57Guys, we need it for the ecosystem. So please start publishing. They publish a lot though. A lot of data that they have. They don't publish performance, it's true. But we basically need a Cambridge Associates for the entire ecosystem that is public. And that does the work for the ecosystem. Because I think what's really tricky, you mentioned it's like angel performance is amazing. but if you're only like if if if only five percent of the market does it it kind of works against you because then people uh you know uh they they can make their own story with this and i think it's it takes leadership and sit camp has been completely paving the way i don't know how how long have you guys been doing this but i know the ecosystem talks about it and it's amazing that you guys do it because it's so important for the entire ecosystem to open these these performance discussions.

1:11:50Yeah, we've been doing it since fund four. So we've done it for the last three funds. So over quite some time. But I think, look, you know, again, it speaks to our culture of transparency, but also the fact that as Seekamp, we've always been about how do you build up the ecosystem around you, right? And so that's a real example of that. It's been a thing that, you know, we're constantly being told by emerging managers and people who are starting out that it's so useful to see just like the blueprint of how to create an investor, a deck to share with LPs. You know, we also now are at a point where, let's be honest, unless things are in the public market required, the numbers also don't mean anything, right?

1:12:33And that can be the issue a lot of the time too. And we've definitely had it in the past. I remember, you know, you talk about strategy and we never really do any proactive press at Seedcamp at all. It's just not part of what we do. But I I remember when everything was happening with EIF, Brexit, they pulled a huge chunk that was meant to go into our fund and actually attracting investment was really important. And so then doing a strategic piece around like fund returns are great when we did that sort of secondary to Draper and Moulton now at the time, there was a use and a reason for why we were doing it.

1:13:09And so I think it is really important. And if we go back to this idea of your customers and at different moments of your journey, you need to be putting out the stories and messages that speak to the different people you're trying to attract. So for sure, if you're in the business right now of trying to raise investment, you need to be able to demonstrate why somebody wants to back you. On this call for transparency around performance in European venture, let's close the call. And thank you all for joining us for this important conversation about venture marketing or marketing in venture. I think it's a topic that we have explored a bit too little here on the podcast, but I'm also sure that there's a lot out there that are going to talk about it and find inspiration in what you've said here today.

1:13:53So thank you for joining us, Vincent, Natasha and JD. This was the final show. Tear down this wall. It's more than just an ally. This is a union of values. United and determined we can serve as a model for other regions of the world. The nature of a problem requires a European response. Europe is a story of new beginnings. New beginnings. Let's start acting