E317 | EUVC Awards | Sophie Winwood, co-founder & CEO of WVC:E on diversity in European VC and the underlying causes

44:17But that's just our decision, right? And I knew that going into it, and that's also why I could have children early, because otherwise I would not have had it, because it wouldn't fit with my work life, right? What's your take on that? Do you also see the same? What's the conversations like inside the WVCE community when you talk about parenthood? Yeah. And I just want to hold my hands, I don't have children. So this is coming from having conversations with investors. But I think it's tough because a lot of women are in a relationship with a man who is also in a high-powered career. And so there is negotiation on that front.

45:07um there is a lot of reliance on family and um kind of a close network that again you have to be very fortunate to have that around you and you know this again i'm gonna just keep using the word anecdotal is it's it's been really tough for women to come back in the industry because of that the kind of not really knowing what's expected of them not having a policy in place not having the conversations up front and then kind of having to deal with the fallout as it happens rather than proactively this conversation is is relevant to venture but it's also relevant to the whole world right now which is that when you have a world where women want to progress and earn as much as men then the the like society that we've grown up with in terms of how it works falls apart because you're very reliant on unpaid labor from women to support families and so we've changed but society hasn't changed and yes we've got a bit more parental leave policy and i think that's great but i don't think we're we're having the conversation to the extent that we're having and so every couple's having to do it individually and i think collectively and that's something that we've at wbc have been thinking about as our role in the industry is can we be that independent third party that works with the industry to say okay we we understand this is difficult things are changing but we're smart driven people like can we figure out can we figure out something that works for everyone i'll put my head on the block and say that i think that if if we in venture can't figure this out like then there's you know then we're retards literally our work is typing up emails uh talking with people replying quick on whatsapp giving advice and and thoughtful reflections um showing up at board meetings um like there's nothing that can't be you know managed very flexibly by the individual uh so it's like it's archaic leadership that's keeping us from being able to make venture an open industry for parents because it's not an assembly line that needs to run 24 7 and for that reason you need to be there at this time right it's like i think the only nuance there is travel yes travel is a bridge yes and that is something that's never going to go away so yeah that is something that it's super uh it's super difficult and uh it's difficult on every single level like um we have the rules in my household that we try and make it only once per month but that's only doable because i don't have like i don't need to meet the funds we invest in in person but if you're If you're both investing in startups where they need that face time at points, and if you have a portfolio there, that's difficult.

48:25And then you have the conferences that you need to go to, to both network and get your name out there, founders, that type of thing. And then if you're also fundraising, which are partner level, it gets completely bonkers. I think that you're absolutely right. That's the one part that we can't really solve easily. But I just think that it's really at the partner level, it gets impossible to solve. Like there, but honestly, the world is not made for everyone to be a partner. And the world is not made for everyone to be a super good parent and a super high career achieving person that is a partner at a venture firm.

49:08And I always say I could not do what I'm doing if it wasn't for my wife's active, proactive choice to be the one that is the primary caregiver. Because then we would not be the parents that I would want us to be. And I talk about us as a unity there, right, specifically, because she's making up for what I am not putting in. And I think that if you want to act on partner level, you need something that looks like that. Either it's by utilizing nannies, as you said, or it's utilizing your extended family or your parents or whatever. It's just not something that can be done just with your spouse unless the other side says, okay, I'll put it in the hours here.

49:59Yeah. Yeah, totally. and i do think there is something about the both the women and men who do it well like ruthless prioritization very good at saying no and have very strong boundaries like i'm not going away on my kid's birthday like that's never gonna happen even if it's like the best the most important meeting of the lp like i'm sorry you're not more important than my family and people like people are like yeah of course whatever i do think there's you know yeah yeah we just need to get better at saying no yeah now and that's the thing right most yeah most things can be uh navigated around all right sophie so now we're back from just taking a small break so if anyone is watching this you'll notice that i have changed my t-shirt i actually asked sophie not to do it because he wore wore the uh beautiful wbce swag um but but i I ended up doing it, but I maybe should have won the same thing two days to not represent.

50:58All right. I want to get us right back into the conversation about building WVCE, because I think that we all have seen you from the outside, some closer than others. So I think I'll just leave it to you to tell us about the journey. yeah it's it's always really fun to reflect on the journey because it's been so wild but uh yeah and and can kind of give you a little bit of insight of while it looks quite slick and nice on the outside it's been a real it's been a ride uh behind the scenes but yeah it all started in in around april 2020 so ruth i mentioned earlier partner on the fund that i was working on anthemis we we have just always been continuously upset with the state of diversity and corresponding funding to female founders and then there were a couple of things that sort of led us to this aha moment the what the first one was Ruth is originally from the US and we saw that in the US there were quite a lot of events and support systems for women in VC and they didn't really seem to be anything in Europe which just seemed like a like a weird gap in the market the second thing was that um I was in a lot of women in BC groups across Europe but they were all quite local and nothing no one was sort of bringing everyone together and being like look how can we how can we work together to sort of forward this thing and so we we thought okay we're gonna put on a summit in in Paris we want to stay in Paris because I don't know if listeners have been station f it's this beautiful light high ceiling building it's um run by roxanne who's a huge promoter of diversity and they've done really great things for the french ecosystem and we also wanted to do it um not in london just given brexit and our whole thing is like unite europe um not just london and not just the uk so we set about doing a bit of market research spoke to you know women in our network would you be interested in coming is this something that you know your fund would support who would you like to see the best is and the feedback we got was phenomenal the excitement the energy so many women came back and said okay how can we help how can we be the bold we want this we want to make this happen so we formed these working groups that met every other week on a wednesday around different streams so we had a ticket attendee stream we had a speaker's scene we had a content stream um and it was incredible it was like this enhanced network where I had women across Europe just helping me on every aspect and we which we really didn't know what we're doing right we'd never run an event before and I think that you know I think you'll hear this from a lot of startups which is if I'd known how much work it was would we have done it probably not you know we were like yeah we'll put a summit fine maybe some people will come whatever and it was really this group yeah that honestly if you're ever thinking about doing an event just don't so also we you know we're very much doing this on the side of our desks luckily sort of 2021 2022 was when venture sort of grounded to a halt it was um a lot quieter that year than it had been but it hadn't got bad enough that our portfolio companies were falling apart so it's this sort of like nice bubble where we had a little bit more time to to dedicate to this cut forward to the week before the event we sold out 350 women from across europe we completely sold out we had incredible speakers like Russia from Seacab Rana from Bolden and Helen from Portage amazing sponsors came on board having you know never seen this before we were very lucky to have Cooley and AWS and SVB at the time and yeah we sold out week before that we hadn't even released the agenda it was all super junky on on the day you know we're running late and the agenda was moving and I was running around like screaming at people like this session site now and like but it was it was magical it was really this really amazing point in time the energy was incredible it really felt like the start of something and we to communicate with people I started a whatsapp group because we didn't have an event we couldn't afford an events app and that whatsapp group just kept being really active and people I think that was a great decision.

55:25It was a decision on one hand, but it was very much luck on the other hand. It was the only thing that we could do. I always wonder because events tend to use these event apps that we all, some of us use during the event, but we don't really use it afterwards. and whereas the events that actually have a whatsapp group connected to it that for for 90 they don't leave it and they check it whenever or when it gets close you know so i really think there's something there and you as an organizer can continue the conversation in there uh have you then can i ask you have you changed it to be a group or a whatsapp community yes so i think that's the second thing where I would say very fortunate and lucky in terms of timing which is last year they launched it last year like really mad and we and that is the year we decided this is this is not a one-time year events business this is a community and platform and um you know it's it's a movement and so at that very point whatsapp launches communities which was perfect because it added a form of like institutionalization and differentiation between your mates whatsapp groups it's like hey we have a community this is the business and it also allowed us because we were having you know a lot of people were like oh we want to slack and i'd heard a lot of a lot of people say if you move a community on stack you lose some of that vibrance and interaction and so it allowed us to build you know have a deal sourcing channel we have a jobs channel which has been really active uh we just launched a sort of partner gp only channel and that has been really helpful for us in terms of growing and managing the community and then what is great about running a community is you have a direct line of contact with your customers and so we realized that we don't you know the community needs more from us so that's why last year we started to do we moved from one event to we did i think it was six events across europe around conferences to bring the the community together we did what we call peer dialogues which are online round tables around a specific topic where the the community can kind of learn from each other and the first one we did actually was around the svb crisis and so on the monday after the weekend we got someone from svb someone from hsbc a load of partners one to talk about what was actually happening two to talk about how they're dealing with their portfolio companies and three to talk about the lp communication plan and that was awesome because it just meant like everyone could learn off each other and then implement very very quickly and the fact that we could spin these up so you know there's no one saying what's what are you going to do who are you going to speak review like it's like we want to do something tomorrow we do it tomorrow and we you know we realized that like fast iterations of online sessions around a specific important topic paired with you know we just did one on what the fuck's going what the f is going with crypto and kind of other topics that are really interesting and topical how many can i ask you how many do you have in the uh like could give some stats, whatever overview you think best represents the existence of this community, not just at the events or at the core event.

59:04And I'm asking specifically because I think this is an important part of why we thought that you should be a finalist in the achievement category. because anyone can put on an event and we're all doing that once you're basically ATMs and portfolio days and so on so why is it that the WBCE community you know is different yeah I guess I'll talk hard stats then I'll talk some some of the feedback we've got which is so at the moment we've got 970 women in our community as a whole and i would say of that 750 are kind of actively participating so quite a high percentage and that that you know that channel is active every day from recommendations to you know we're here so the the cool thing we're seeing now is that people are using our community to meet like-minded investors at different summits so we all spin up a super ventures uh whatsapp group people organize their own events under our umbrella so we're really kind of franchising the brand to enable us to be everywhere and bring people together we have a a weekly newsletter that goes out that has 1 500 investors on it and we have 4 500 followers on linkedin i know that's not that's not massive but um i would say that the quality of those followers and the quality of those news like you know our you know open rates are really really high that's the kind of hard data the kind of soft stuff is we the the best comment the comment that i need to like get as a screensaver on my phone when things are getting bad is that someone said to me that they didn't feel part of the industry until they found us and they came to one of our events and they feel a sense of belonging they still a sense of energy and they feel like they want to get to the top.

1:01:04You know, we've had people find deals through our network. We've had people find jobs through our network and, you know, create relationships with co-investors and friends, really, which is really nice. Can I ask you about some community design principles?

1:01:25seniority versus, how should I say, like some communities only work because they're super exclusive. while 750 super active is large it's not large enough to you to not necessarily have admittance criteria uh so how do you do that great question and i will put my hand up and say i'm very much building a community i haven't built a community so i'm learning as we go what i would say is we started with a very open door policy and the reason that we did that is because we believe that to be inclusive is the way that we need to move forward at the start and that the future generation of this industry are the associates and principals but we were very fortunate that at the start we had an incredible level of partners and gps participate by being on stage and i think the really great thing about us is that as soon as you come to an event you're hooked we just need to get you to that event and that that takes a lot of work right because some investors don't necessarily want to be associated with it's like i just want to be an investor i don't want to be a female investor no and you know i i don't want to go like while we're at this women's only event all the men are off doing their job and i don't want to do that so trying to articulate the value prop trying to understand trying to say like how important it is and also this feedback loop of okay maybe it's not as valuable to you but it's these principles associates seeing you on stage being inspired by you is gonna create a pipeline of talent for you in the industry and and you know hopefully create more leaders but we you know it's something that we're always actively reviewing is communities work best when you feel like it's a safe space you feel like you understand who's in the community the community is your tribe and that you can say whatever you want and that's why we're starting to have these specific channels for specific so this partners gps is you know you have to send me your links and profile to get in the group they're only partners gps and you know it also allows me to give them content that's specifically for them and also allows them to to have a safe space and i think that's how we'll continue to evolve the whatsapp community is is like micro communities within a larger community but i think the big community is always it's just it's so mad how effective it is you like you could ask anything in the group and someone will know the answer and connect you um and i think there's a you just have to balance those two but yeah i think we're going to move from a anyone can enter um to a more of a like process where we collect data as well because that's the other thing is at the moment our data is uh quite thin in terms of who's in the community and um which has been great because it allows us to grow really really quickly brand really quickly people see the value but i think this is a point where we're like okay right we need to institutionalize now and people need to understand who's in the community and how they can get the most out of it.

1:04:31So that's a process that we're undergoing at the moment. All right, let's just do a shout out for a second. Let's do a plug. How do people actually join the community? Yeah, so the best way is to email hello at wbc.tech with their details. And I will add them to the community at the moment. But moving forward. Why don't you have a apply or join or whatever button on the website? good question I think we were going to do it and then we didn't we will but maybe we'll implement that maybe by the time this goes out that will be also in place so it goes to hello at wbc e.b tech together with this so so you can always see your audience just going on on u.bc and and see the show notes and then they'll be there and it's female only but your events you've started to have a part that's female only and then a part that's mixed yes exactly so at our last two summits it's it's female only but we have male allies coming at the end i think as we evolve we're going to do more joint events throughout the year and last year we had an allies event and it was like bring an ally along and we talked a lot about allyship i'm very aware that we can't change the industry in our an echo chamber and we need the whole industry to be part of the conversation the problem for me the problem for me because i was invited of course and i just could not justify flying to paris for one day and then totally you know maybe i could have i or definitely could have bundled other meetings but it was like this a bit too much hassle how do you think about that like making yeah so this is what this year we've changed it so that there's there's not an allies part of the summit because of that exact reason and also there's such a buzz and an energy in the room that i almost feel like it's sad that there has you know that you come into that and it's a bit you know you're a bit cold to that and so what we're going to do instead is is do more events throughout the year and do it at a local level exactly yeah so you keep and that means that the summit is then going to be pure women yes exactly yeah yeah for this why not uh why not pure mixed the reason is is the there is a certain magic yeah i think about female only room they are there are conversations that happen that would not happen if men are in the room and there are so few female-only spaces in the world right now that we at the moment we we see that the value out rate outweighs the limitations to that structure now look we're in our third year so and every year we've changed the structure because we don't know what we're doing and we're trying something new so i'm not saying this is going to be the sort of rule for the rest of our company but i think at the moment people just yeah get a lot of value out of it and i'm very aware that that's not yeah i think it's the soul of the community right so that obviously that's what you want to do and then you could do the mixed part that more diversity conversation enabling across genders um part probably that would be most most naturally done with someone like super venture or whatever like saying add an extra day on to a an existing big event uh do it with a partner that already brings all the meals and then you would have the draw for bringing a group of women as well makes a ton of sense the other thing i would just say on that is what there's something really special about men being the minority as well like there is quite a nice thing like dynamic about like men walking into a room of women and being like oh shit Yeah, you get to experience for a second what it's like to be in the minority.

1:08:43That's true. I'm bold and not everyone around me are bold, so I feel like I'm in the minority every day.

1:08:52Question, question. You do not only do community work and event work. You also do policy work, both in terms of coming up with these parental leave policies and return to work process guidance, that type of thing. Could you share a bit more about that? Because that's an important part, I think, of the strength of WBC. yeah I think what we've realized is being a third party that is not associated with any fund can be really powerful when you have these conversations and also being a voice for the community and the industry so we how we do it at the moment is we you know we're very involved with our community we talk to them every day about things that they're struggling with and things that we can help them with and this kind of return to work parental leave has come up quite a lot and it is a lot easier when you have a kind of industry body or institutional company coming up with uh and doing the work and coming up with a market standard rather than and it's more efficient than every woman man in their fund going and talking to a lot of people trying to get some form of average and then presenting it back to the fund so we really recognize our place within this and then we just need to think about what is the most efficient and effective use of that resource to implement back into the industry so we talked about return to work and parental leave as as something that that is that is I think very it's an on fire problem like it is very important and it's very topical and it's very now the other thing that we're thinking about doing is is career progression and understand benchmarking and understanding sort of where you are in your career against your colleagues giving you that ammo to say you know this is this is where my peers are this is where I am have those conversations have those kind of salary conversations and then more and more actually because we have this fantastic community of of people we can mobilize we've been approached by other larger sort of lobbying and policy groups and the big thing that we did in 2023 was support the the movement to roll back the thresholds for angel investing which uh for your viewers who didn't know in the uk they increased the thresholds that you could be an angel investor up to 250k salary and 430k net assets which obviously wipes out a majority of minority angel investors and so lending our brand and our community and just from many men as well yeah yeah i mean basically just cutting the legs off angel investors which is obviously a really big part of our industry so we saw the power that that had and and and now that we're in certain doors I think there's there's more that we can do there so but I think just just to take a step back we are at the moment where me a woman called Anissa who is incredible uh she's also a startup life reporter for Sifted Ruth part-time and then we also have a guy called Patrick who helps us with logistics so we're a very small team and we have to focus on where we put our resources so yeah hopefully at some point we're a 20 person team we can attack all of these things but right now we just look for what is the best use of our energy and our focus.

1:12:36Now let me just try and draw out some principles or factors that you think have really affected your success because I think that's that's interesting and something that's relevant I think that most VCs would say that they're in the community building game uh so i think they're interesting again i love moments to reflect because as you're doing it you don't you think it's all just wild and fluke and luck but looking back i'd say a couple of things contributed to our success factor one was right from the get-go is we didn't do this just us we really went and talked to everyone that we could to understand what would be the best you know for them and the best for the industry and then we leverage them so i think it's all good talking to your your customers or your end users but they can also be your sort of marketers they can be your spokespeople they can be your you know acquisition channel and so right from the get-go we we saw how powerful this energy was and and we when we put it to use um we had uh we had like 50 or so nominations oh no yeah so so so that works that's magical oh yeah and and the second thing i i think is something that this is this is very much not coming from me definitely put this on on ruth which is the power of brand and we when we were originally talking to people and we talked to sponsors and we didn't have a website and we had this concept people like yeah it's kind of cool and then we spent a minute bit of money and we have this like awesome branding and like cool like illustrations and we kind of wanted to set it apart from what was already out there in terms of the more kind of corporate at conferences and and like you know we we give away some t-shirts at our summit and and i see people at conferences wearing them and again that's like using your customers for your marketing it's really cool and it's you want to build something that people want to be part of because it's a movement it's important but also because it's like cool and it's like a fun space so that was that was really important and now it's the way i tell my portfolio companies is i know you don't want to spend money on a website i know you don't have limited resources but it does like it and not just a website right it's your brand like really think about it holistically your brand and then the third thing i think is that we i'm an eternal optimist like i approach everything in a really positive way and i think a lot of the diversities have to be quite negative and depressing especially when you talk about the stats um whereas our whole thing is like this is such a massive opportunity what a fun ride to be part of it how exciting like let's go and that again like creates this really buzzy energy uh which is just you know people kind of want to come back and back and back which is very fun yeah i think i think that's a very important thing right because the energy that's around wvce is not this group of angry women coming together yeah exactly it's the opposite it's the power of women coming together yeah and that's the other thing i think the conscious thing that we we did is we don't really talk about diversity that much we do it's a very important obviously it's a really important part of it we want everyone to know where we are but actually if you look at the agenda of our summit it's all you know how to be a great board member and um we talk about different verticals and we don't say like come and talk about being a woman adventure we just go like just come and talk about being how incredible that you are about your job and and and have these articulate intelligent conversations and i think that's what also what people want like they just want to talk about their job but in a safe space where they can feel like they could ask a question that maybe they might not feel comfortable asking in a mixed scenario within colleagues where they might be judged and it it really creates an environment where learning happens very very quickly and follow-ups happen very quickly because there is this trusted space where everyone feels united in collectively helping the whole rather than like I'm just here to better myself which I think is really yeah because it's like a kind of cool thing to experience that's so funny I could talk forever about the network parts of venture and the whole gender edge dynamic, whatever we should call it.

1:17:28But we have already spoken about it. But now, because we took a break, it was yesterday. And now I want to talk about it. But let's not do that. Instead, I want to ask you about what have been your core learnings, if you should just tease those out from building WVT. yeah they're all really noddy and basic but I think that that's because they're true and the first one is build something you want to be part of and build something where you experience the pain point and that is because it makes you every morning you want to get up and you want to do it you have ideas and you're passionate about it but also it just means that it's a lot easier to like get to that poor core pain point the second one which i just spoke about is you know use your customers use your network use your community and have a real respect for your community like we are nothing without our community basically our company is our community we but it's not really me it's not really wbce because if we don't have them we don't have anyone we don't have anything so a real respect a real kind of understanding and listening and responsive I think that's the other thing is when you're a small company you just can be very responsive to people feedback and um and kind of go to where your customer is rather than you sort of putting something on on them and yeah and the third is like how important branding is and and and branding is is not just your website and your logo but it is how you want spaces and gatherings to feel currently reading a book called the art of gathering um and it talks about kind of gathering with purpose and how to create that purpose and how that should flow through everything from who's in the room to what is the room to how you create the content um and again i'm not saying i'm an expert in this but it's something i've learned you know the last year year two years is is just being very thoughtful about space and people and flow yeah i think that's very true i i guess you've you know spart a bit with uh sarah drinkwater from common magic yep yeah i might yeah because you said some words that kind of reflective of uh what i've both uh heard from her and seen from her she's awesome she's great because she's like it's like one of our big things to support emerging managers obviously she's a rock star a role model and and has been been with us from the beginning but also the community side of it has been really helpful so um yeah and she's she's great because she's not also afraid to be like guys don't do this all do this better okay yes uh she is also one of the finalists in the uh in the newcomer category.

1:20:29She should, she's, yeah. My vote's for her. And you're right, she does give rough feedback. I remember we had her on the podcast and it was like, I've never had feedback on my script before doing it, so that was cool. Enough about Sarah, let's talk a bit about Sophie. Who's the person behind WVC? Yeah. uh so i actually started my career well i started my life off thinking i was going to be a scientist so studied biochemistry university thought i was gonna save the world curing cancer with uh you know new types of drugs and uh yeah i um if anyone's ever worked in a lab before it is very boring to save the world take some time takes and it's also you know i think when you're a fresh-eyed 17-year-old and you go like, yeah, I'll just make a drug and it will save everyone.

1:21:29And I was like, no, there's bureaucracy and there's regulation and there's politics and we'll see. You have to be a lab rat, basically. Have you dug it through? You got your PhD? You started in LEM? I did undergraduate masters. So yeah, did four years, did my time, came out the outside being like, this is absolutely not for me. And I was so fortunate that both my parents own their businesses growing up so i've been around entrepreneurs um didn't sit me down the business and talk about business principles and go to market but um you know just just being around uh parents and it's all around physical sort of goods as well it's really interesting so buy chain and sourcing so did the like classic don't know what you want to do you go and do audit um i won the big four which i very quickly realized that i did not enjoy um so i did that in investment management private equity went and did m &a in banking especially finance for two years very very male dominated industry um someone told me that i needed to let house pay golf because all of the deals are done on the golf course no but that is true right and that is not a gender comment right but it's just that there are things in industries that you need to get to know how to do right yeah i mean it's a gendered comment because more often than not women don't like grow up learning golf because of um but you have to be from specific environments to grow up learning golf right yes yes for sure which are which are majority of m &a bankers golf in the weekend yes yes exactly oh yeah ridiculously expensive for i was working i was like selling insurance brokers and debt collectors and things like that and then i worked on one fintech and one insurtech deal and it was like my eyes were open and and also the teams were a bit more diverse and they wanted to move fast and it was this like change the world thing they wanted to change the world they didn't want to just build something that they could sell for a hundred hundred million and so I was like okay yeah for tech that's where I want my career to be and so I left big four and went to innovate finance which is the industry body for uko fintech so not-for-profit membership organization from very big banks like barclays down to like very small startups I was in charge of looking after some of our corporate members like bbva and visa and I just had the best two years like running around when you're not profit like you just go like how can I help you how can you help me and and it was like what a great way to start my network because again I'm not trying to sell something just trying to help the ecosystem and so I got to know you know a large at that point FinTech wasn't big it was like quite a once you knew you knew like most people that were in the scene which was quite fun and also I think just like linking back to WVC it was a community in in the early days of the sense as a membership organization had a big summit the IFGS and did a lot of programmatic stuff so in a way I experienced that from afar it wasn't exactly part of it but kind of interesting to see that I'm sort of copying aspects of it and yeah because I was and I was I knew when I come out of M &A that I enjoyed this like you know financial transactions and that the idea that the venture was way more interesting because you your value creation rather than like value shift right as an M &A advisor and then the role came up Anthemist with Ruth and it just felt perfect right it was like a venture fund that was to do with and tech thing i was really passionate about and yeah i was there for five and a half years until recently moved across to spend more time with wvc i just realized you were probably there at the same time as anthony dunnan i actually just missed him yeah i didn't like i arrived and it was this mysterious man and everyone talked about him and said oh my god that's a cool guy yeah yeah yeah i i have his biggest supporter in the industry oh that's awesome i actually only met him for the first time last year at the creandum 20th anniversary party in soco so really mad i was like oh i feel like i'll pass across multiple times yeah that's pretty funny okay i want to ask you something which is um running an event organization is a special beast.

1:26:13And we talked about this before. One thing I have always said is I am never going to run an event organization. We do a ton of events, but we always position ourselves as the content design comms partners of the event. I never touch logistics. How do you think about running WVZ where you're in the logistics world as well? Yeah. So firstly, to say, in that first year, in that 2022 year, when we were doing everything for the first time, it was a month before the event. And we had these working groups. Someone in the working group said, by the way, have you figured out how much coffee that you're going to have and the seats and the sound and lighting?

1:27:07and I was like no we were gonna we were gonna get to that um just we both me and Ruth were like we'll figure out like it's gonna be fine we'll figure out and um this is a woman called Lauren from Albion shout out to her by the way she's she's awesome and she connected me with a guy called patrick who uh has has organized a lot of events and is also worked with um like co-working spaces and had like a really holistic view of of what an event was he's also really like a huge champion in climate sustainability and and so like was doing a lot of projects and he has two daughters is very passionate about diversity and he just said yes and he took our like jangled ideas and speakers and and sort of turned it into this reality to the point where when I arrived on the day I actually cried because it's so mad and how much work you put in to see you turn up and it's like your creation has come to life in the most beautiful way and it was like lots of plants and greenery and lights it's just it was beautiful and cool and that is exactly what we wanted but But on the kind of other logistics side, I, I like found a side of myself that I did not realize, which was I like love that.

1:28:30I love operations. I love everything being in place. And I also have spoken at a lot of events and I there are so many things that are bad about them. I was like, I don't want that. So all of my communication was really thorough. It was really in advance. Everything was like, you know, you get a calendar invite. you get an email saying exactly where you've got to be when who the panel you get all of the bios of the panel i just was like i want our speakers i want this to be the easiest process for them i want to feel really appalled and very confident because we're asking their time and we're asking for their knowledge and so they should feel like we've got i'm swearing quite on this podcast we've got our stuff together this is the podcast force rolling so okay good yeah this is the after as far um and i think that's like we get a lot of feedback that people think that are you know one of the best run events in terms of that side of it and i do get a lot of knowing now that i've come on as a ceo i probably shouldn't be doing you know sending all the emails and um but the like the big thing for me is um air table have a events um like template and it is unreal it's so So I don't know why other events aren't using it, but it's so, so good.

1:29:49So yeah, using technology as well is really helpful. Have you used any of the event-specific AI, derivative AI, like copilots? Because there's quite a few made already. I have not. No, I will go and have a look. Yeah, it should be quite impressive. I'll shoot you some links afterwards. Yeah, that'd be awesome, actually. Yeah. I'll have to find it.

1:30:14And now, the quickfire.

1:30:25Okay, so now let's shift gears completely. And I want to ask you about advice to young people in the industry. What would be the core things you'd say? Yeah, I think to fly off lag a little bit, but something like I'm really helpful is find your tribe from the start. and that that first point where you enter the industry is this really nice moment where you have a lot of time and you have a lot of energy and you just get to talk to cool people and you just need to have a conversation and when you have that conversation ask like who are the three coolest people you know can you grow in touch with them and so you have this like amazing effect of like okay she's lots of lots of people but then you have to sit back and be like okay my network it needs to be really broad but my tribe needs to be really small so who am i tribe my tribe is like people that i actually personally get on with the people that are in the interest in what i'm interested in and people who work in the same way that i work and then just really fostering that tribe so creating you know organizing events or like all that groups or email sharing deals and so just thinking about those two manters of networking um and then the second thing is really it might be difficult depending on the fund that you're at is just find something that you're passionate and interested about and try and and like fly that flag within the fund and that might be really difficult because you know you have to be generous or you have to work on this like your junior but you can do that and you can also do that in a bit in your spare time it's just like pick something yes you'll be able to do a fintech deal and whatever but if it's that thing you really care about build your anti-portfolio you know go to events just build up that muscle because at some point being a specialist really benefits you in this industry and kind of know like building your network around that the third one I think is really really important is i think there's a lot of ego in this industry and a lot of feeling that people need to know they just portray that they know everything but it's really really hard this job is so hard there's so many intricacies and it's always changing and evolving so do not be afraid to ask questions like we just um i didn't mention this in the bit about wbc but we just launched a board training product for women of vt and we had partners and gps sign up to it because being on the board is really hard and you you don't necessarily get talked about all your legal obligations so yeah just it's so funny because i was thinking about bringing up exactly that example but from our side which is we have we have our academy side as well where we're we're doing on fund modeling and that type of thing and we're seeing two things one is as you said we have gps and partner level people joining something which is kind of like you'd expect them to to have this completely nailed down um so why would i but i both appreciate 100 that they're joining to just stay on top of things and see what's this and check it out for their their juniors and so on but but they're also they're definitely learning so that's the one thing even partners do these things uh and and get a ton out of it and the second part is you would not believe the activity in our chat during those sessions where you where we say please do ask questions and then you get the questions uh in a personal dm because someone doesn't want to display to the rest of the group that they don't know which like everyone should know that that's happening all the time during those sessions exactly exactly and i think we have when we have these online round tables uh i always feel like i need to ask that question yeah because you can't say you live by principle and not and not do it yeah and um yeah it's confronting right like i've been in this industry for six years and but you know like i said everyone always has a question i feel it all the time with the podcast right because can i ask this question am i stupid advances yeah yeah oh yeah that must be a minefield as well i've just uh i've just come to come to the uh conclusion that that it is what it is right totally yeah now that's uh we just spoke about advice to young people if you flip this and say okay what about then the emerging vcs meaning the obviously very senior people that are breaking out and going out to a fundraise what would be your advice to them firstly like just huge congrats and um respect for anyone who does that because it is a mammoth undertaking and this industry needs it i guess the first thing would be the same is like find your tribe and because it is a really really difficult thing to do and it's complex and nuanced and i think you would find that you might think that people would be predatory around LP relationships and and and structure and process but actually most people aren't because you know you've just got to believe that you'll win because you're you but also you want to help people around you because it's it's difficult and you know we all move faster we all help each other the second thing I would say is which I hear so we we support emerging managers we do a lot of work with LPs as as as you guys do um which I think is is is really important work and one of the things that keeps coming out is stay true to your story so you might get feedback from lps about x y and z and why are you this and why aren't you doing this and the reason that you're doing it is because you are you and you believe in this specific thesis or structural model and you will get a lot of no's but that doesn't mean you're wrong so just you know you can refine you can tweak you should take on feedback but stay true to your story and your truth i always say that there's a million ways to do a venture but for you there's probably not that many yes exactly yeah and that's that is the beauty of it right is that this industry allows that so um and then the third thing is you know it takes a very long time and just you have to you have to be kind to yourself and you have to take care of your own mental and physical health and put in boundaries at the start because it could be it's a second job especially if you're still deploying right or managing it's like you've just added a whole second job to your life and you need to bring your best self to both sides of it so what can you do and and this is difficult right because there's always another meeting you can take it's always more work that you can do I always think it's really hard to say like look after your mental physical health sounds really easy but it's really really really difficult something I've you know lived through and I I still struggle with but I think if you if you if you think about that that as the actually the most important thing the most important thing is your health really because if you don't have your health you don't have anything then apply that to the decisions that you're making yeah then it might be a little bit easier but i'm very i'm very aware that it's absolutely not no i think it's very true and we're definitely seeing with the aftermath of the tech reset people uh coming into the industry when things were easier uh and now finding that they're not um and and folding when you've raised 10 million enough for your first fund but you just see that the whole thing doesn't work so you decide not to do first close and then kind of like people are going through terrible things right um so so definitely make sure that you have your mental health uh uh in order when doing this so final question the most kind of intuitive learning you've had since you started in mantra the most I've got a couple feel free to pick a couple yeah okay the third thing I learned when I came into Ventures I really thought I'm coming from an M &A background and an audit background I'm really great at financial models and analysis and I can look at my eyes and I think what people don't tell you when you come into it is it's just all about people skills and emotional intelligence yes you can figure out what industry to invest in and you can figure out what the best business will be.

1:39:00But you sort of find that deal, win that deal, negotiate that deal and then support those fund disasters. That's all people skills. And, yeah, I just didn't think that the ratio was going to be that much like people skills. And then the other thing is I've started in, what, 2018 and have been through some wild, absolutely wild cycles. and I you know you think when everything's up and to the right it is fun like it's really it's fun it's exciting everything's fast moving and you and I think investors who just enter the market might think oh why wasn't I an investor at that point like this it's a lot harder now it's actually way better investing in a downturn it's like more discipline you like need to be a lot like it really relies on your talent and your skill you're only getting founders in the market who really want to build and because it's like why would you do this you're insane oh because you really want to solve this problem it's gonna be a massive business and you learn so much more yes it's harder it's more emotional it's time consuming but i've learned more in the last two years than i have in the previous four because you are forced to and so you've both you've both learned and you've unlearned.

1:40:23Yes, exactly. Yeah, totally. It's like just, you know, the ever evolving model and nature adventure means you can't think you know it all at one point in time.

1:40:38Sophie, thank you so much for joining us for this episode of the European VC podcast. I'm so happy that you were with us and I am also very happy to see you as a finalist in in the achievement of the year category. No worries, thank you so much. And excited to be in Berlin and I'm very excited about everyone else that got nominated. It's a really, really fantastic group of organizations and funds. It's gonna be some amazing days in Berlin in two weeks time. Yeah, two weeks, my God. Mad. To everyone who tuned in today, I hope you enjoyed this super long episode that we did with Sophie, but I've been waiting to really do a deep dive both on this topic, but also on the organization of WVCE.

1:41:18So I hope you enjoyed it as well. And do make sure if you are a woman to go in on the notes of this podcast and hit the hello at wvce.tech email to request to be invited into the community. Thank you, everyone. If you enjoyed this episode, do make sure to subscribe on EU.VC. Here's a few words from our beloved sponsor. Welcome to the European VC podcast, featuring the finalists in the Achievement of the Year category at the European VC Awards, proudly sponsored by HSBC Innovation Banking. HSBC Innovation Banking partners with innovators and investors, offering flexible banking solutions to ignite the bold ideas that reshape our world.

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