E396 | Mike Smeed, InMotion Ventures: Aligning corporate venture capital with strategic transformation

30:03And again, if you look at our ads, obviously, we're uniquely placed from an automotive perspective. We're also owned by the Tata Group. So JLR's ultimate parent is the Tata Group. And so we have links in with a number of Tata Group companies as well. Now, not just in the automotive space. Tata's got, I think, a thousand different companies within it. It's, I think, the 19th or certainly the top 20 biggest companies or groups in the world, whether that's hotels or steel manufacturer or automotive or basically anything that you can kind of think of. And that allows us to take a much kind of broader view and means that when we're looking at investing in startups, JLR is a relatively small company in the automotive and corporate space.

30:57It is a very important one in the UK in particular. But if you look at globally, a startup will not be successful if it's working exclusively with JLR. Right. It will limit its growth. So this is where our financial hat starts to think, well, what do we do and how do we help these companies grow with an automotive? And in fact, if you look at our co-investors, you know, we invest a lot with JLR's competitors. Right. So, you know, we're on the cap table with our friends at BMW iVentures, with the Volvo Tech Fund, with Hyundai, with Porsche, you know, with some people quite, you know, quite surprising that we would kind of do that.

31:38But we're all attempting to take on some of the biggest challenges that I believe exist in not only automotive, but also in kind of enterprises that we've probably seen for 100 years or whatever it is. So we've got to work together in this space. And also, I know how incredibly talented those people are as well. And therefore, it's a de-risking point for me if I see something that comes from our fellow CBCs. In terms of the VCs that we want to work with, one of the advantages, again, that we have, we invest, as you said, Andreas, in climate, industrial and enterprise technologies. These are quite broad themes, deliberately, because we didn't want to have themes that we had to chop and change every 18 months or two years.

32:31These are things that will, whilst the specifics or the details of it may change, those themes will stay with us for the next five years or longer. That's what we've developed because as a seed and Series A investor, we're in this for the next five to 10 years anyway. So it's got to be able to kind of last that long. The great thing about the VC space is there are so many people who are specific. you know that they're so focused on individual areas and that level of expertise i think is incredibly important and you know you mentioned firefly is one of the companies that you know we invested in and working together with edo in the team you know and firefly i think that opened us up to a number of investors who you know said to us that they were really surprised that you know we were looking in this space at all you know they the natural assumption is you're just looking at you know, batteries and smart cities and micromobility and all of those kind of things.

33:29But actually, you know, when you look at the enterprise space, whether that's, you know, quantum, AI, sensors, cyber, space technologies, all of those kind of things, it opens you up to, you know, an infinite number of possibilities. And that's what we're really looking for. And those people that really know who they are, are really able to identify incredible startups, but are looking for potentially their first corporate investor from whether it's the first enterprise investor or the first automotive investor, that kind of thing, where we can be of some value to both the investor and the startup.

34:10But I think it's super interesting with these investment verticals, right, that you normally have. A lot of VCs tend to forget that you also have the horizontal investment strategies. So you have all functions within JLR, right? You have the expertise. And I think where we ended up looking at something was just pure procurement, right? We got into, you know, that's super interesting, right? And we can deploy the different technologies and software that is being developed. So I think, you know, as you mature over the two years and so forth, you know, just, you know, having that playing field towards VCs, super interesting.

34:51And I think also your credibility grows in those spaces as well. So, you know, we found, you know, so Louis, who's responsible for our climate investing, climate tech investing, you know, he's found over the last two years as well as he started to reach out. You know, you realize that there are some really amazing things that are going on, such as the drop, you know, which was a climate conference that he attended. And he said that it was the most it was the best thing he's ever been to. You know, it was very specific. It was very targeted. You know, I can say that it wasn't just virtue signaling.

35:25Right. It wasn't just a bunch of corporates standing on a stage talking about how amazing they are at doing X, Y, and Z. These were people rolling their sleeves up and doing some work at something. So, you know, it's some and I think those are the areas where if I if I compare it to what I hear from, you know, Will, who's based in in San Francisco, you know, the events that he goes to, because we all know in the Bay Area, you can go to something every single night. I mean, he's practically nocturnal. So, you know, there's things that are going on there. And, you know, he will say that it's just a natural thing that in the room you have corporates and VCs, you know, who are actively working with each other.

36:05Because, again, this ecosystem is a is a word that gets used, you know, in a in horrendous ways, I think sometimes. But, you know, it's an ecosystem is something that where every participant adds value to each other. And I think that's the bit that, you know, without sounding too TED talky about it, those are the bits that I think we're really starting to see now once we built up the credibility. And I think that's the most important thing. It's taken us a while to build that. And the most important thing for us now is to deliver on that. That's our main focus over the next 12 months is, you know, we have persuaded founders to take our money.

36:45Right. And that's another thing that corporates find quite difficult to say. but surely you know these are small companies they must be desperate to work with us and it's like well no that's not actually the case you know the types of founders that we want to work with the exceptional founders that we want to work with everybody else wants to work with too so how do you persuade them that you're the right person to give them money and then once you've done that piece you've then got to deliver on what you said you would do and we you know we've termed that the reverse pitch you know we we spend quite a lot of time particularly you know and we still do it and we'll continue doing it you know pitching ourselves to both investors and startups to say why we should be you know why we should be in a deal you know could you comment a bit on what mike said earlier when he was preparing for the job and and reading in a book that's in the textbook that was saying the last thing you want in a vc or sorry in a cvc is is someone internal to run it because that runs a bit counter to many of the conversations we've had early on on this show because we've often heard that the last thing you want to do is actually have someone from the outside running it because then you don't understand the motives and the inner workings of the corporate and it will just end up wrong so i would normally preach the opposite because my own learning and what I have seen is that if you create a corporate venturing entity without the integration into the core or the mothership, right, then you tend to not be able to do the collaboration side.

38:23So I listened carefully, Mike, when you spoke earlier on your team, and I really agree, but it needs to be a mix, right? My early days in CVCs, we had an amazing managing partner. He could kick in all the doors, but he had a little bit of sharp elbows. And, you know, the ability to do collaboration after that was hard, right? The second managing partner that turned up came with 20 years of experience from the strategy division and sales division. And for me, then I could start to collaborate. But I think it also goes with, you know, where are you in the lifetime of the corporate venturing entity?

39:07What needs to be done? Who has taken the decision to create the CV, right? So we were not fully onboarded in the C-suite when we started out. So a lot of work needed to be done from there on. But for me, I think what is nice to hear from you, Mike, is that you have this collaboration that is going on and then you have all the investors behind you. But maybe, Mike, you could also share a little bit more about how do you leverage your background from your past, right, and how you operate the CV entity. Yeah, and again, I think I probably shouldn't have, or I should have said, Andres, that the book I read was quite old.

39:57Yeah, yeah. So I do think there's been a genuine shift because I think, to that big point, I think that, you know, the VC is obviously an incredibly specialist. and incredibly important. You know, Mike, if you take someone in a VC, they're just different people, right? They're just wired. They're wired in a completely different way, which is why it's quite kind of interesting from a corporate perspective that, you know, that not only are startups and corporates very different, VC people and corporate people are very different as well. And just going back on my kind of experience, I kind of joined, you always look at these things backwards right it just wasn't planned and i think many people who end up in vc or cbc kind of you know didn't didn't this wasn't a a purposeful path that that they followed particularly when you're as old as i am that you know when these things kind of didn't exist it might be different now where people are more aware of of vc um you know through university and and and things like that but if you look at my backgrounds you know i there's two things one i've been very fortunate I started off at the graduate scheme at the Gillette Company in London, then was acquired by Procter & Gamble.

41:14But I've also worked for the Virgin Group and also for Walgreens Boots Alliance that owns Boots pharmacies, as well as a wholesaling business and Walgreens in the US. And as a finance person, you're always used to having one foot in the finance team who always say no to everything and then one foot in the leadership team of a business unit. And actually taking that to the next level, I've always ended up in roles where I've been in either a division or a part of the business. Even my last role, it was a joint venture, right? It wasn't in the core. So I'm used to working on the periphery of a large organization.

41:57And therefore, I'm used to being punched in the face from two directions, right? You're either too corporate or, you know, you've gone native, you know, which is the expression that finance people use when, you know, they say that you're too biased to the business unit and all of those kind of things. So I've kind of grown up with that in a way. my first graduate role, you know, eight of the nine graduates that were taken on in my cohort went to work in the head office, and I was sent to a factory, you know, 50 kilometers away. So even in my first assignment, you know. There is a phrase amongst VCs, and, you know, it has been a while since I've been a VC, right, but there's this, you know, investing is an art, not a science, right?

42:43So how does that go with you? Well, it's true. Right. And I think that it comes into the decision making. Right. So we all know that venture capital is inherently risky. Right. That's why it's called venture capital to begin with. So we've got to provide. And, you know, I'm I'm here because we know that, you know, 90 percent of the things that we invested will be lucky if we get our money back. Right. That's the that's the game that we're in. And you have to accept that before you start, because if you can't accept that, then there's no point even trying you know and but don't get me wrong if we see a startup that you know um unfortunately does fail you know if you still take it incredibly personally you still beat yourself up about it but you've then got to move on and you've then got to write the next check and you've then got to go again and and the really important thing for me is at that point when you make a decision are you making that decision with you know the best information that you have, you're making it that's totally aligned with your thesis, that's totally aligned with everything that you've done.

43:46So that at that point that you invest in it, that was the best decision that you could have made. There's nothing worse. And we had it with a company from our pre-reset, almost our legacy portfolio that kind of failed. And we were completely helpless. We couldn't help them in any way because it was so detracted from what it was that we could do how we could help and therefore you kind of sit there and go you know everyone accepts that not everything's going to work in the way that you wanted it to work but what you've got to stand behind is at the point you made the decision was it there was it a really solid one as solid as you could get it you know and and the way we look at it is you know and again where the was the potential financial for financial returns were they there you know was this a company that you could have seen the potential to get your you know 5 10 20x 50x whatever it is was the potential there was it a solid vc investment you then go into were they the right ones at the time you know when we did the market map when we really looked at their competitors when we did the diligence were we you know, were they the one that we should have put our bets on?

44:59And then the final one was, at the time, where was the strategic alignment? Like, what is it? Where is it that we thought they could help? Now, we're not one of those funds that requires you to have a contract in place or a POC or any of those kind of things. Not at all. But the potential has to be there. So, you know, when we use the diligence from the business units, we talk to people and we say, right, is this where you want to go now of course things change right but but at that time and and that's the bit if you've got that that you can hold on to then i think to your point you can then stand behind something that doesn't work in the way that you expected it to work and you say you know well that's the nature of venture capital and and corporate venture capital otherwise we go back to the thing that we're just a corporate dev function that's looking for you know 1.1 1.2 and we're looking to that you That isn't the game that we're in.

45:55And I think, in a way, having someone who spent, as I said, 25 years in a finance world, I think I bring that level of credibility into the corporate, right? Because having been a member of JLR's finance leadership team, if I didn't think this was worth my time and I didn't think it was the right thing for the company, then I wouldn't be doing it. I would have gone and done something else. because as you know jp sometimes this job is hard right because you are very difficult and there are easier ways of making money in a corporate than trying to sometimes help it help itself you know and to and to be the one that's really pushing the things that you really believe in and and that first kind of 12 to 18 months was incredibly difficult to build that credibility once you get the successes once you get the communication right internally you know once you have and the approach we've taken again learning from the real experts and i'm definitely not one of them making sure that the when you when you announce something good or when you you talk about something it's always the business unit right you always shine the light on the business unit you don't shine the light on the on the vc people we we have our own little celebration and we do our own we do our own little thing but it's all about them and then that just brings more and more you know things to you and again just just finally is you know i've been very fortunate you know i've worked in london frankfurt geneva shanghai and new york right but never for a bank right so somewhere somehow there must have been like an investor thing in there somewhere that was just waiting to come out and as you can tell because i'm waffling so much you know this is the best job I've had in 25 years.

47:41And it's one in which I think brings together all of the things that I've learned because as you guys know better than I do, the numbers element of what we do is 10%. I think that's spot on what you said there, Mike, because what excites me about corporate venturing is that you can take the investments into startups and then you can make them leapfrog through the collaboration with the corporation And it's so few VCs and GPs in general that aim to do that. Because in Europe, the GPs have not really started to engage with corporations yet. They do that on the American side of things, right? Because they know they need to exit their companies.

48:26It's like the European GPs, they are not there yet, right? They need to start working on that. And then, of course, we need European corporates to start buying also, right? So I think it's just a different matter of how to work with it. Mike, you said just before, let me put it this way. Now we've spoken about both how you position yourself in the market, the importance of the value add, how you bring your startups and even the ones you don't invest with closer to the JLR and the Tata group. We've spoken about how you try and manage the relationship towards the corporate owner and how you do that.

49:07We have not spoken, and this is, of course, in the context of the reset, the reinvention, so to say, of in venture. I'd love to ask you about those 10 % that are the numbers because in pure venture, when we build our investment strategies, you make decisions around do you want to lead or do you want to co-invest? How many investments do you do out of the full fund? you know, so on and so forth. I'd love to ask you when you went in, because part of one thing was you did a reset in terms of the other parts of the equation, but you also did, of course, the investment side. You said, okay, what's going to be our investment strategy?

49:55How many deals per year? The sizes we mentioned before, I think we said 250K all the way up to 2 million. You invest out of the balance sheet. But how do you think about this? As an example, as a VC, you often make the decision between leading or co-investing. And you often either say, well, it's a small fund, so for that reason, I co-invest purely. And then you have one specific way of acting in the market versus if you're leading. And if you're leading, you might only say, well, we want to lead up to this stage and we also only want to lead six of our 20 investments because we don't think we have capacity for more or you say we co-lead and so on.

50:42How do you think about these dynamics as a corporate investor? Yeah, that's a great question. We made a decision very early on that we would co-invest. So we would not look to lead rounds. And part of that is because we are a team, we were a team of two, we're now a team of three in terms of our investment team. So we have Sam, Leary and Eddie, and that's kind of it. And therefore to lead around, I think, and also we didn't have, and we still don't really have a strong enough network to do that. And I think if you are someone who's going to talk to a founder about leading their round, again, it goes back to the reverse pitch, right?

51:21We're talking to a company right now who's looking at fundraising at some point in the next kind of three or four months you know they're they're talking to three or four you know leads about their you know what term sheet they're going to put down what are they going to offer you know what do they what do they bring um and all of those things so we don't we did not and we still do not have the right to play in that space and i think that you know like any strategy or any reset you've got to think what have i got that no one else has got that i can exploit and then what can you know where where do i and again i'm going to mention that word value.

51:55I promised I wouldn't in this conversation, but what am I bringing? What am I bringing that's different, right? What am I bringing that would persuade a founder or a lead investor or another investor to ring either Sam, Louis, Eddie, or myself up and say, look, we've got this thing. What do you think? It would be great to get you in. We also don't deploy that much capital. We don't disclose how much we do have as our capital allocation, but it's not enough to be a serious leader of a round. So some of that's practical, I think. But also, we decided very early on that, and again, maybe, Jeffy, you'll know more about this than me, but we decided that we wanted to be famous or have a brand, maybe famous is the wrong word, but we wanted to have a brand of a group of people who were really good to work with, that delivered on the promises that they made and that stood for something, right?

52:57We didn't, you know, and I hear lots of horror stories about VCs and CVCs, you know, some people aren't very nice to work with and all of those kinds of things, but we, and part of that is the nature of, you know, the amazing team that I have is that they're all, you know, very incredibly talented and, and clever in what they do, but they're also decent human beings, right? That's at the core of, of, of who we are as a group of people. So therefore, when we make an investment and we want to be part of that startup's journey, we wanted to be somebody that was going to work with them for a long period.

53:31Because, again, if you're investing in pre-seed or seed, you know, you're in this for seven, 10 years, right? This isn't something where you're looking to do a quick turn, you know, get your one and a half, two X and then get out again. That's not what we kind of wanted to be. And that's because that's the people that we are. So a lot of that kind of drove, you know, drove that. And, and therefore, what we found is, is that what we can add, the value that we can add that we can bring is, you know, making things happen, as I said, you know, 90 % of our active portfolio today is working with JLR in some way, right?

54:09So of the 23 companies, you know, 90 % are working, are working with them. And that's really important because, again, that builds credibility and that builds the virtuous circle of. And again, one of our other core values was if it is a value is doing what we say we're going to do. Right. And again, you know better than me, this is an industry where people do a lot of talking, but not I see less on the delivery side. And maybe this is where my finance background is kind of is kicking in because I'm like, OK, where is it? You know, are we what's the impact? What is it that we're that we're looking to do?

54:44Just commenting on some of the things you said there, Mike, I think it's really clever that you don't lead for two reasons, right? The first one is that CVCs tend to increase the valuation of a startup when they lead. And that might make it difficult for the startup to do their next round. So I think that there's something in there that is super important, right? But later on, you will become eager to lead the rounds because that's where when you start to become a little bit cocky and say, well, I've figured this out, right? So I think it would be interesting to have this discussion with you in a couple of years and see, have you actually changed that statement?

55:25But from the get-go, I think it's a very, very clever decision to start with not leading. Again, lots of things have changed. And in the same way that startups do, right? You pivot and you move through and you change things as you go. But some of those almost rules that we set up at the very beginning about the why and the how has not changed. What we have done is we've really focused on the governance and speeding up our decision making. Because that was, again, this is another thing that gets thrown at CVC a lot in terms of how many months or years it takes them to make a decision. We really wanted to make sure that, you know, and we spent a lot of time in the planning so that when we did go live, it took us about seven months, I think, between my arrival and when we started to deploy money against the thesis and the way that we're doing it.

56:17Because what we wanted to do was not, Andreas, your first question, is not be someone who turned up to six months and then disappeared for a year. And then we came back again. And then, you know, you lose credibility. They're like, you know, what are you doing here? You know, so it was really important that we spent the time in the planning and the preparation so that when we started, we didn't stop. This just creates momentum. And of course, we shift and pivot like, you know, anyone doing anything new will do. But, you know, those values that we had just have maintained. And yeah, if I'm around in a couple of years, we should keep talking.

56:53I think when you go into corporate venturing from the corporate side, you tend never to want to leave the ecosystem. So in some way or form, Mike, you're stuck in here, right? And that's what I've seen with everybody that I've met in corporate venturing, because it's beautiful to work with startups and new technologies. You're absolutely right. And again, so for corporates as well, if you think about what's going on in, you know, I think everyone's read the press about what's going on in automotive, you know, more generally in Europe, but also any large corporate, I think, in Europe at the moment, you know, some of the conversations that corporate leaders are having, they're quite hard at the moment.

57:33You know, there's everyone struggling for growth, there's cost of living, you know, revenues, cost, you know, governments are changing and they're putting, you know, taxes up here and pushing, you know, different pots of money around. It's hard to work in a corporate right now. And keeping, you know, keeping the lights on in a corporate and keeping the machine running is an incredibly difficult kind of period. therefore if you can bring a startup into that conversation that's the best conversation that that person would have had all week all month all year potentially so therefore what you've got to avoid in my view is but that conversation's got to go somewhere it you can't just you know send uh some a corporate leader you know 6 000 startups and say you know pick one and we'll have a chat or you can't waste a founder's time talking to someone in the corporate which is you know we'll never go anywhere and you knew it was never going to go anywhere you know when you know when you were pushing the invite in so so making sure that you build that credibility that way i i think is important but you know teppy you jeffy you're exactly right i mean you know we are a separate entity we are based in london the corporate the parent headquarters is in the midlands of the uk which is about two hours away on the train from from london you know we have a small office with with just us in there and you're right these are these are great you know it's incredibly fun conversations to have it's incredibly challenging it's it's probably the hardest i've ever worked but it's also the most rewarding and most enjoyable as well and yeah you know there's an excellent question for you now and a little bit back to to the script right having come with the background that you have what is kind of your most counterintuitive learning uh in corporate reentering for you?

59:19The counterintuitive piece for me is the level of collaboration between companies that I would perceive as competitors, you know, and the fact that how open everybody is. Because again, I'm used to kind of working in environments where, you know, in fast moving consumer goods or in retail, it's an incredibly competitive space. So you're always looking at your rival, you're always looking at the people in your ecosystem, and you're trying to every day you're thinking particularly in retail you know where you get your sales on a daily basis you know that you're you're always comparing yourself to to somebody else you know a big supermarket a big retailer or you know if you're in a brand like Gillette you're comparing yourself to Wilkinson Sword or you're comparing yourself to you know to these other kind of things so therefore you're always looking at your competition with a bit of you know your teeth are great you know you're you're ready to go for them kind of thing whereas you know when I when I talk to you know my peers that, you know, again, you know, we were just to give you an example.

1:00:17We were in Korea last month in South Korea. And, you know, we we we spoke to the guys at Hyundai who we know quite well. And we said, you know, literally we're going to be in town. You know, can we come and spend the day with you? And, you know, because we really want to learn. I mean, I think Hyundai, Movis and Cradle is a group of people who are doing some amazing things and in the automotive space and people that I look at with a lot of, you know, envy. And I think that this is where I want us to get to, you know, I want us to be kind of where these guys are, you know, and the doors were, you know, we had a great conversation with Keith and Suhwan and, you know, and Guillaume, you know, in his office.

1:00:58And it just so happened that that was their innovation week that they were having, you know, in there. And they were like, yeah, come along, you know, come on. Yeah. And it was great. You know, whereas I would be, you know, let's meet maybe in a Starbucks around the corner so nobody knows we're having this conversation. But that's just interesting, right? Because in the ecosystem, right, it's about sharing your learnings and learn as much to drive these startups forward, right? And that is what I think you're experiencing, right? Yeah, completely. And also, take sustainability as an example, right?

1:01:28We all know that we've got a climate crisis and all of these things. And this is going to cost hundreds of billions, if not hundreds of trillions of dollars to fix. Right. And therefore, not even Sequoia or Andreessen Horowitz or all of the, you know, they haven't got enough money to solve this on their own. We've got to work together. And and particularly in in automotive, again, with the regulations and, you know, with the way in which kind of car platforms and customers and clients are used to engaging with their vehicles. that coming at this from an industry perspective is so much easier and less risky and less costly than trying to do you know a jlr version of this and a bmw version of that and a forward version of this and i think that you know and and even you know within our relationship with global corporate venturing you know there is a mobility council that you know we're a part of and in that group are, you know, again, you know, GM's in there, BMW's in there, Volvo's in there, you know, so we're able to have that conversation to say, you know, what are you learning?

1:02:33And again, the adjacencies from other industries, if I take Uncaged, which is a bio leather company that we've invested in, so biomaterials company that we've invested in, we know that automotive grade, you know, coverings and things like that are going to take a number of years to kind of work with. so they've been working with fashion houses and with other things because you know making belts and wallets and purses and bags and sneakers and all these other kind of things have a lot less you know regulation and you know fire you know things and crash testing and all of those kind of things then then you need if you're going to put it in a car seat or on a dash or something like that so so we've got to get outside and then you think again back to climate 50 of the climate of problem is technological and financial right the other 50 is psychological right so now we've got to try and talk to people about you know buying a car maybe in a different way we've got to talk to people about the materials in the vehicle maybe being recycled or we've got to look at alternative materials and we've been telling people for the entire auto industry has been telling people for 100 years that certain materials are premium more premium than others if you look at the fashion industry they've been saying that again certain materials are more premium the others you know we've got a again another portfolio company called gen phoenix who've been working with other um corporates so dr martens with their investment arm and tapestry with their investment arm to produce you know um dr martens boot with a lease with a recycled leather product you know so how do they talk to their customers about what this is because we know that right now, whether we like it or not, customers and clients are not willing to sacrifice price or performance for their sustainability credentials.

1:04:32For sure. So that's the problem that we've got now. So how do you take materials, advanced materials, and put them up against a hundred-year-old industry that's been cost engineered to hell, that's been optimized completely and then bring this other material in, you know, and then go, ta-da, this is going to cost you 10 times as much. And we're not quite sure how it's going to react in 10 years. You know, you'll get laughed out and thrown out. And this is why I think some of these materials, if you look at some of these fruit leathers, vegetable leather, all of these other things, I think have really struggled because potentially they've not had that level of corporate insight into building their companies and their brand, which is why we're so excited about what Stephanie and the team are doing.

1:05:21I would love at a later point of time, and maybe you can just mention your thoughts briefly, right? This doing letter of intent with some of your portfolio companies, specifically on the sustainability side, right? Because as you say, nobody wants to pay more for this, right? It needs to be as convenient, right? But is that something you do and have done with any of your portfolio companies? So we are working on proof of concepts right now with our company. So if we look at, you know, again, so of the 90 % of our companies that are engaged with JLR in some way, I would say half of them are running proof of concepts and projects with JLR right now.

1:06:01So again, we're, you know, as an automotive company, we're very lucky that we're used to long time cycles. And we also have internal R &D functions and we have labs and we have things which enables, which is incredibly valuable to a startup, right? Because they're not having to send their things away to a lab to pay, to get it tested and then bring that to another company and say, well, and all they do would just be to say, well, who are those people you've got that checked with? We can do that in-house with them and give them instant feedback and we can give them access to whether it's sandboxed, you know, kind of dummy data, whatever it would be in a, you know, and again, a sandbox data environment that allows them to run things, you know, again, incredibly in an incredibly safe way.

1:06:50And that allows them to prove their point. You know, I'm always a little bit worried about these letters of intent because I kind of worried if you were that intent on working with them, you'd do more than a letter. You would do something with them. And through a contract. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And again, we share that because one of the great things about what we've noticed about lead investors, good lead investors, by the way, is that they'll share the data with you. They'll share as much as they can and feel comfortable, the diligence that they've done. And likewise, when we do stuff, and again, it's got to be okay with everybody, the corporate, the startup, of course we'd share the information that we've got as well because that's what we're bringing.

1:07:28Again, it goes back to everyone adding value to each other. Otherwise, it just becomes transactional. And then how we started this conversation, Andreas just gets thrown back. Well, it's just corporates playing or they're trying to steal information. They're trying to take all your information and try to ruin you and all of those kind of things. Again, sorry, as you can tell, I get quite passionate about these things. I was never this passionate about finance stuff and international reporting standards and all of those things. Some of that is also part of venture, but no, that's not the parts people typically are most passionate about.

1:08:07I think to your point about collaboration and the partnership of the industry, I kind of liken it to, you know, elite runners and so on that, you know, they're incredibly collaborative and friendly up until they run the race. And then when you run the race, you're on. Similar, when you have those four term sheets delivered by the leads, they're doing everything they can to win. But then right after and all the way up to that, you're collaborating. And you have GPs that are best friends, you know, that are then competing against each other for two weeks or three weeks or whatever in a deal. And then after that, you know, they go back to being best friends.

1:08:46So one of them might lead and the other is then only given a follower ticket. And it's what it is, right? but you're back to collaborating because that's the nature of this game. And that's also why I love venture and why I'm in venture. One is the collaboration. The other is that it's long-term. So it means that every single interaction is much more transparent, much more honest, much more, you know, long-term, collaboratively oriented in the sense that, you know, you can be collaborative for three months and that's not the same as if you're collaborative knowing we're going to be together for the next 15 years.

1:09:20I really, really love the industry for that particular part. No, I do agree with you. And one of the things I just want to add on what you've just said about the elite runners and all of those things is if one of our portfolio companies wins a contract with JLR, it does it on its own merits through the procurement process with JLR. We do not interfere in that process in any way. So, and this is about the collaboration, the support and the help. But when you go into the official procurement process with JLR, then you're not necessarily on your own, but you're doing that on the merits of what your product is, the performance.

1:09:59And of course, we can maybe help open that door a little bit wider than maybe it would have been to get you into the shortlist or the list of 30 companies that they think of before they get that. But if you don't get into that final three, I can't get you into that three. That's not what we're here to do. And we are very, very clear that there is a line, a very thick line between what we do as in Motion Ventures, the startup and the corporate, because we're an investor. So we have access to information about the startup, confidential information about the startup. We also have confidential information about JLR.

1:10:36We do not share them because once we do that once, then we're toast. so it's a line that you never ever get anywhere near and that's something that we hold kind of incredibly dear again it's one of our principal values as we work through Mike thank you so much for joining for this episode I absolutely enjoyed it I think every time we do these it proves to me why it's so important that we do them I think what you said Mike is also spot on when it comes to the conferences that that's so wrong that we have so many things that are pure VC. Or when you have VC conferences and then there's a CVC side to it, and then oftentimes it's actually a bit of sidetrack or something like that.

1:11:24Yes, there's stuff that the CVC should care more about and do care more about. But I think we should focus a bit more on minkling the two sides of the ecosystem more. No, completely. And, you know, again, just on that point, I think interactions with GPs and VCs tends to be almost, you know, them wanting you to invest in their fund rather than wanting to actually, you know, talk about, you know, what they're seeing right now. How can we work together? It tends to be more a case of, you know, so do you invest in funder funds? And so I think we need, yeah, as you say, I think, you know, hopefully this is, you know, and you guys are doing an amazing job of highlighting this.

1:12:08And I think it will only grow from, you know, from these discussions and the similar discussions you have. But, you know, there are some amazing VCs out there. You mentioned Emerald already who, you know, we know very well and, you know, and do incredible work. And the more that we can work together with, you know, with groups like that, I think it helps everybody. It's actually funny, right? Because the part around the fund investing part, you might not be doing it now, but it's not like JLR and Tata Group doesn't have the means. It's just not in the strategy right now. So if you would choose to do it five years down the road, well, who would you be investing in?

1:12:45Probably the teams you've been collaborating closely with over the last period, right? So it's only win-win, so to say. yes, it might not be today that you'll get an LP investment. If it happens, it's definitely going to happen with the group that the team is working with closely. All right, gentlemen, thank you so much once again. I enjoy these episodes so much. Thank you for having me. Thank you for having me.

1:13:13Tear down this wall. It's more than just an alliance. This is a union of values. Let's start acting