E422 | This Week in European Tech with Dan Bowyer, Mads Jensen, Andrew J. Scott and Karin Nielsen

36:24Energy bills are through the roof. People just don't have money in their back pocket to spend. And then on the other side, we also have a huge workforce participation issue. And I think in order for us to address that, we have to have some really hard conversations about how to realign the incentives, because I just picked it up, right? So right now, in January this year, we had seven and a half million people on universal credit in the UK. Now, those people don't have money in their pockets to spend. And they also don't have incentives to strive while the government keeps subsidizing their income.

37:07So I think, you know, the problems are very different depending on which part of Europe you're talking about. But for sure, in the UK, one of the main things we should be doing is figuring out how we get people back to work and how we get them off government support. My goodness, we were going to get mega political then. I'm going to flip into gear four and go mads, AI corner. give us the the latest kind of lowdowns what's been happening on the ai side yeah i just think that's probably a lot more exciting to be honest and it's been a super exciting week anthropic released claude 3.7 sonnets and chat gpt 4.5 has just come out uh sonnet 3.7 is super impressive you just i love it i've always you know a huge anthropic fan And GPT 4.5 has sort of been one of the things the industry has been waiting on for a long time.

38:04It's been trained using about 10 times the compute of the last iteration, 4.0. And overall, kind of the initial impression is that it might be a bit of a letdown. The conversations feel warmer, perhaps, and more intuitive and emotionally nuanced. Are some of the things that folks are saying? And the question that's being raised is, is this really about a next-gen frontier AI, or is this more the sound of a pair of overpriced headphones? Sam Altman, he's acknowledged that it's a giant and expensive model, but he's also said it won't crush the benchmarks. And so if you think about a model like this, costing two, three, four, maybe even$500 million to train, you know, the biggest issue here is that it's very, very expensive.

38:56And therefore, the pricing of it has also been very expensive, about 10 times more than than competition. So, yeah, I think the question isn't so much whether the Vibes are better or not, but really whether these Vibes can justify burning so much money on improvements that may be relatively marginal, which sort of raises a bigger question. Are we at the edge of what the scaling laws can give us? I think one of the vectors here we might want to look at is kind of this notion of AGI we've been talking about. Are we getting closer to AGI? and it seems pretty obvious now that scaling isn't going to lead us to AGI.

39:34We're just not seeing the returns here on the scaling. But rather, we're seeing value somewhere else, which is in what we used to call a wrapper, but which is we can now, we can say, look, this is much more than a wrapper. It's all the applications that are being built on top. And so I think to some extent, you know, those of us that have been saying for a while, look, the models are going to commoditize and the value is going to be in the application layer. I think GPT 4.5 really hammered that home, if nothing else. Sorry, if you want to go around the horn, I wanted to talk a little bit about Chinese AI and DeepSeek as well.

40:11Yeah, do it. So DeepSeek, they announced this week that they would cut pricing by another 75 % during off-peak hours to align with US and EU daytime hours. Love it. Love it. And so on one hand, you're seeing OpenAI coming out with this incredibly expensive model and DeepSeek going exactly the opposite way. You talked earlier about the reduction in the number of Chinese startups. Xi has done an absolute 180 on this over the last two months. The DeepSeek announcement earlier in the year, and really December 26th, has galvanized the Chinese nation. There is so much talk now about rapid adoption of DeepSeek across China.

40:53and she has firmly put the entrepreneurs back in favor again and sort of swung right behind tech. So yeah, I would say to all Western tech companies, watch out. The competition is coming. I love it. It just reminds me of every time that China gets in a bit of the doldrums, they devalue. And it just reminds me of that. It's like, yeah, we're just going to know that OpenAI mega spend. We're just going to give you a 75 % discount. It's like, it's just, it's just, it sounds so Chinese to me but um Corinne do you when you're out with founders and you're you're working on projects and you're out and about in the world do you play with the latest AI tech do you care about this kind of stuff at the cold yeah I mean I use it in my own work every day so I'm I'm a I guess super user of uh chat GPT perplexity and clawed um but I you know I'm increasingly seeing teams using it as part of just standard operating best practice.

41:51But also, every company that I'm working with right now is looking at how to get a 10x improvement on their product experience by implementing AI somewhere in the layer. You know, I was always like super skeptical of all the arguments people were trying to make around AI wrappers being short-lived. I think that ultimately these foundational models are just an enabler for great products, right? And they'll be integrated into different types of applications in different ways to create better experiences of what those products are already good at. And obviously the ones that have the real advantage are the ones who are building with AI in mind from the ground up.

42:40And the UK has been great at producing those companies for a number of years now. So, yeah. Yeah, okay, great. Well, Sergey Brin at Google is trying to push, he's back in the hot seat and he's trying to push the organization into being the leader of AI and pushing for AGI and all these things. And he has basically said to everybody, you need to be back in the office. we've talked about this a bunch of times before it's no new news but it was really interesting he put some numbers and facts around and he's saying I recommend being in the office at least every weekday 60 hours a week is the sweet spot of productivity now to bring that back into a European perspective around three quarters of British firms offer flexible working b2b is slightly higher hardly any mid-sized or large orgs don't offer some kind of flexi work I think it was six percent the last time i looked um so there as of august 22 the eu established a comprehensive policy around paternity leave parental leave leaning into the conversations we were having before around this um slightly more work life balance um suggestion but obviously in the states the grind is back and we talk about work ethic and working hard and you know is the grind back Should it be back?

44:01Andrew, what do you reckon? Well, I think startups growing very fast tend to be chaotic and early stage. They often lack process and that can be a benefit because it means you can move very fast. It's the key advantage you have versus a large organization. And the challenge for working remotely is that you actually need quite a lot of process to tie a team together because you lose the serendipitous interactions and the high cadence of communication, which in-person enables. So it's also hard to create a really consistent culture. And with startups, that culture is all about urgency. But I think it's important to separate in-person from working nine to five.

44:46And in other words, flexibility is not incompatible with primarily being in-person. You know, having someone sort of clock in and clock out is very different to primarily being in the office, but giving people flexibility when they need to go to the doctors or not clock watching them. And at 7%, you know, we don't clock watch each other and we primarily work remotely. But that in-person time when we do do the one or two days in the office is without question highly productive. and you can sense the difference as you accelerate projects and the things you're working on from doing that. So broadly, I agree.

45:25And if I was running a startup, I would want it to be in person. So you're all slaving away at 11 p.m. in the office to hit the deadline. Okay, so what I'm hearing is grind is back, but not for all sizes and stages of business? Is that what you're saying? I think that's true. Every company has a different ambition level. And if you're saying that, if we agree that being in person in an office provides an advantage over not being in person, and you're trying to win, you're trying to outright win, then you're going to need to do that to beat your competition. but if you're in an industry where actually you're not trying to outright win and you're happy turning over a modest amount of money and you're happy not growing fast and not growing as fast as you can then maybe you can get away with productivity that's lower i think the only thing that i slightly challenge is that sometimes you need to be out of the office to do your job and i think in our industry in venture sometimes you need to squirrel away and do that analysis and write that report and dig into something and that's not about being you know at the water and that's why i said it's not about nine to five it's about it's really about flexibility um but uh yeah corinne i know i know you're bullish on on the grind and having come back from the bay you're going to be even more more wound up for the grind but what's your perspective oh man this is this is a big topic uh so i actually disagree with andrew on some aspects of of what he just said so right first of all i I think we're conflating two issues here, right?

47:05Like one is, are people in Europe working hard enough? And should the grind be back? And the answer to that is no, people in Europe, across the board generally don't work hard enough. And yes, the grind should absolutely be back. I think the bit that I would challenge is that you definitely don't have to be in person to grind hard, right? Like I work remotely and I track my hours. I think I average at like 11 to 12 hours a day. So I think I think from from my perspective and at levels, we had a fully remote async culture that we built from the ground up. It's ultimately about what works for that company and for that team.

47:48Right. So any big tech company or government department that tries to go remote is almost certainly going to fail because they haven't built that culture from the ground up. And they also haven't hired people with the characteristics and skills to succeed in a remote environment. Right. So I always like to think that building companies remotely well is like company building in hard mode. And it's definitely not for everyone. But there are definitely situations where it can be highly effective. And there are a lot of advantages to working like this. So obviously, the first most obvious one is that you have access to a global talent pool.

48:29But also, you know, a lot of parents who are generally the people who tend to be more experienced in whatever role you're hiring for, they can't stay in the office until 11 p.m. Right. So what you're essentially saying is you're ruling those people out of coming and working on in your early stage team. Whereas if you have those people working remotely, at least for some of the time, then they can put their kids to bed and then get back to their desk and carry on working. So for me, it's not about the location. It's about the type of people that you hire, how well the team knows each other. So, Andrew, like at the earliest stages, I completely agree.

49:11I think unless the teams work together before, it's very hard to find product market fit and to get through those iteration turns. If you haven't worked together before, you don't know each other well. It's hard to get that alignment from everybody on the team. um but i think if if you're a team of people who've built together before if you especially remotely then i agree with that then there are like massive advantages to working that way and it's you know a really uh deliberate remote culture is actually a forcing function for doing a lot of things really fucking well that every startup should be doing well um and that includes things like having great documentation.

49:57It means, you know, everybody's aligned at all times and running in the same direction. So yeah, I think if startups have the right DNA from day one, then I would absolutely encourage them to work remotely, but it's definitely not for everyone. And I think it's extremely hard to successfully implement a remote culture retrospectively. the key there was like there were a lot of ifs so if you've got people who are who know how to intentionally build that culture and understand how to do that and have worked together before i completely agree i mean i've worked remotely primarily for years as it's andrew galt my co-founder has been west coast for the 10 over the 10 years i've run seven cents so i'm i love working remotely and i'm a self-starter and i'll be at my desk for a stupid number of hours and we're out and about or whatever but too often i see early stage companies with more inexperienced founders who don't they're on such a steep learning curve just to build their startup that some of the nuance around being intentional about and the challenges and the gotchas of a remote team they never even get to because they're too busy learning steeply about even how to hire the right team let alone the sort of second or third order issues around, well, the difference between an in-person team or a remote team and the difference between managing a person remotely or in-person.

51:25So that was my sort of my default as a broad brush. But if you can counteract all the ifs that you've said, you've got those. Great. But I think the number of companies that do that successfully. That's why I thought it's not for everyone, right? The number of companies that do it a few. Right. But the thing is, you know, I think this is often turns into like this reductive argument where it's either remote good or remote bad. And the answer is it depends. Right. Yeah. So let me tell the question around. You mentioned levels. Would levels be an even more successful company if it wasn't remote?

51:57No. Interesting. Mads, I think everyone who's ever listened to this pod knows yours and my position on this. But we're kind of conflating two things here. One is this whole remote work piece and Sergey Brin saying, get everyone back in the office. And the grind and working hard. So how do you see the world? Yeah, I think most of the things have been said. Toby Lutke from Shopify has obviously built an incredible company. And they do a lot of remote work today. They have a lot of remote setup. And I think he said very well they invested incredible amount of resource into making that work. They've made it work.

52:37And he would not recommend that for very many other companies. I think the number he's used is something like 10 other companies in the world, he thinks, can do that. And I think he's got it broadly right. Karin, I think you make all the right points. I think your caveat is delightful. What I worry a bit about sometimes is folks then hearing it and thinking, okay, it's not for everybody, but it's probably for me. and I would say it's probably not for you. I agree. Because it's such a small proportion of companies in the world that this is right for. Like Andrew, if like us, you run a venture capital firm and you're never going to be more than five, six, seven, eight people and you all know each other extremely well and you don't have to onboard lots of juniors, it can probably work.

53:20If you're building a successful global tech company and you're looking to scale and you need to bring on fresh young people and teach them, I think it's a disaster. And so I think for most founders that are looking to build a global tech business, this will be absolutely the wrong thing to do. I think Sergey Brin has got it right. I think folks should be in the office to learn from each other, to discuss, to mentor and train the juniors that come in to help build that company culture. And then I think there will be, Karin, to your point, there will be organizations like you that are smaller, made up of more experienced people that aren't necessarily having that hyper growth, that are hyperscale where you can take other freedoms and you can organize yourself in a different way?

54:00I think there are plenty of examples of startups that are hyperscale startups that are fully remote, right? Like Deal, for example, is one of them. GitLab is a public company that's fully remote. Linear is another one that's doing incredibly well and building exclusively remotely. And I think I'd also push back on the idea that you can't develop junior people remotely. I think the opposite is actually true because you end up resorting to writing really good memos to using Loom as a async communication tool. So there are actually opportunities for lots of learning to happen and for it to persist in a way that it doesn't in an in-person meeting, right?

54:50But look, I'm not suggesting this is the right path for everybody for sure. And I think, you know, whatever challenges a founding team is likely to face will be compounded by the remote nature of their working if they're not an experienced team. So, you know, probably it's better for second time founders or repeat founders to work in this way because it is, as I said, building companies in hard mode. I'm not denying that, but there's definitely a huge upside for the companies that nail it. I read that about up to 10 % of up to 10 % of unicorns are fully remote which was actually higher than I thought it would be and don't forget that there's like a lagging indicator there so we're still going to see those companies and I think it's definitely not for everyone but there are a lot of companies that know how to do it and know how to do it well and I also think the more that we have those examples the more that playbook will be available for other teams to follow.

55:58With COVID accelerating that remote work kind of dialogue, those businesses are still working out that playbook. So the next generation of unicorns from that period of time is yet to come. But I want to shift gears. I want to talk about the future of AI. Yes, it's another report from Google, but it's not actually from Google. It's opinions curated from world leading investors and founders such as David Friedberg, Elad Gill, Joey Chen, Chamath, Jennifer Lee and the like. And it's a report is called The Future of AI Perspectives for Startups. And it's focused on founders and how they should think of AI in 2025 and beyond.

56:40Some quick takeaway or a few quick takeaways before I open it to the floor. Most people seem to be musing that AI will augment human productivity and creativity, not replace. Not sure I totally agree with that. Reliability and privacy and security tended to be the biggest fears, generally speaking. Yep. We kind of talk about this a lot. It's kind of vanilla. One thing I did agree with, which I'd like to discuss with the room is the enterprise or the larger org adoption of AI. And will big business get there in 2025? How, where or what will transform first? So now we're out of the kind of the frontier model stuff, we're out of the kind of the noise of the media.

57:23How is this going to apply in big business? And Mads, can you kick this one off for us? Yeah, as you said, I think it's an interesting report. I think there's some good takeaways there. One of the things that was discussed, I think, was Dylan Fox who sort of said, look, enterprise AI adoption is going to be slower than people think. because there's so many last mile issues that have to be fixed and they're not obvious until you're much deeper into the implementation. Ilad Gill, he also touches a little bit on that when he says, AI is not overhyped, it's massively underhyped. Just because in terms of the level of maturity of adoption of where we are, we're not nearly as far as many people think.

58:12If you look at classical machine learning, Actually, he says that is only now getting into the kind of the point where that's becoming mainstream adoption and generative AI is still very early in its infancy. So I think to your question, Dan, I think it's obvious to anybody that's been working with these tools that it will massively transform business and how we do, how we make, how we sell. And perhaps there's nowhere where that opportunity is bigger than an enterprise. So much work in enterprise today is kind of reformulating information, right? You get massive layers of middle management that are taking information in one format and repurposing in it and reports and meetings to other layers of the management chain.

58:53And we know how much of that can be done with generative AI. So massive, massive opportunity, but it might take a little bit of time until it's fully implemented just because of the complexity of getting there. Andrew, what are you seeing in your port codes and how they're working with businesses? Anything to highlight here? I guess there's a big variety of how people are prioritizing AI within their startups and how they use it. Broadly speaking, I agree with Alad that we're just at the start of this revolution. And I think this generation of AI is a bit like the move to digital or the move to computers.

59:38Those who didn't start using computers within their companies will fall behind because the productivity increase is so big by using AI. Equally, I'm still unconvinced that we'll see general AI. So true artificial intelligence come from the existing AI stack and technology. I don't understand how a LLM and transformer model in the existing sort of realm of the current technology becomes truly self-aware in a sort of scary way. So I think we're still a longer, longer away from that than people think. but for sure without leveraging ai now if you're not getting on that bandwagon you're rapidly gonna pay the price you're perhaps greater in efficiency perhaps more staff which means from an early stage startup point of view your bill's going to be higher which means your burn's higher which is a bad thing but also just generally for the economy small businesses that don't get their heads around ai today in the same way that for many years when i started life back in my teens to doing IT consultancy, lots of businesses had not got their heads around computers.

1:00:57And you see them struggle and their revenues start to fall and their customer base start to fall and some of their competitors start to leapfrog them and they don't really understand why. And it's because they've got their heads in the sand because they're laggard consumers of new technologies and services. So absolutely vital to educate. There's a wider education piece for companies in the economy, not just for startups around how to start leveraging ai i don't think anyone would deny the fact that um it is the it is you know this generation's cloud moment or mobile moment um yeah but but corinne what what are you seeing with the with the teams and the founders that you're working with with their customers i any any kind of stories or anecdotes around how your how your team's customers are behaving and what they're actually doing in the real world?

1:01:50So actually most of the teams I'm working with are B2C right now. So that's probably like a little bit less relevant because they mostly don't know they're interacting with AI if they are, right? Like the consumer, that's often abstracted from the consumer. But just, you know, thinking about adoption of AI in the enterprise, I think that was kind of the initial point we were ripping off here. I can kind of draw on my experience of working with the insurance sector, right? So when I started LENI in 2016, I was pretty horrified to see how huge legacy financial services companies like insurers and banks are sort of treating and handling their data.

1:02:34And I think one massive barrier to adoption in the enterprise, other than the obvious trust and GDPR issues that we already kind of touched on earlier, is that fundamentally, they're running off very legacy systems and their data exists in silos, right? So in order for them to actually leverage the capabilities of AI, I think that foundational sort of infrastructure issue has to be addressed first. And that is no easy feat. And as Andrew will probably know from doing IT consulting work, these things, these transformation projects take absolute years. So in terms of, you know, really fundamental, hardcore adoption of AI, right now, for sure in Europe, I don't see enterprise organizations doing much more than paying lip service and tinkering around the edges.

1:03:35So, for instance, use cases where the risk is pretty low, like in call centers, you know, sort of giving call handlers the ability to be more efficient by giving them some kind of co-pilot. I think that's the kind of use case that we will see emerging pretty quickly at the enterprise layer. But when it comes to like the really foundational transformational stuff, I think it's going to take a lot longer than people think, especially in Europe, for those companies to figure out how to leverage the capabilities that we have today, let alone what future iterations are going to bring. yeah i want to talk about ai in our industry so ai in venture capital lawrence lundy brian love that name from luna vc wrote a piece this week stating that data driven vc is over now who doesn't love a brick of a headline his thesis being that all funders will be able to see all founders because of data ai going even further to suggest that this will drive vcs to be super irrational to win because everybody will see every deal.

1:04:43Now there's a lot of extrapolation here. Now only this week Andrew and a bunch of our kind of crew behind the scenes were talking about the AI tools that are available to our industry to source deals and I do believe that Lawrence is right in many of the aspects and it's a really interesting thought experiment but very soon I do believe that there'll be all access for all people. No founder will be left untouched even the ones that haven't even thought about starting a business will be approached by a VC going, are you thinking about starting a startup? That's happening already. Yeah, for sure.

1:05:14I mean, we've got the tools and Mads has been stitching together some incredible deal sourcing tools. So there is an argument, I would argue there is an argument that says that data-driven VC has only just begun, but I'm going to open to this room in a second. But either way, I do believe that unless you're an established tier one VC, building an irrationally strong brand and taking a really strong position in a very specific niche will be super important for the non-tier one VCs now that the industry is bifurcated. So I also believe that possibly you could, you know, take such a unique niche that you do lots of other things behind the scenes, but you absolutely take this super, super powerful position.

1:05:54But opening to the room, Mads, if you can kick off, what's now for VC, do you think, with regards to all of these tools? I think right now where we are is sort of it's the difference between kind of being a good seed investor, a good series B investor. Staronsky from Revolut, he built a kind of a set of algorithms where they get a team test, you know, lots of different factors to see, you know, can you identify startups that are good for investment? And the assessment they had on backtesting was, look, we can use algos to outperform 95 % of other VCs and firm selection. But that's a series B, and this assumes you can get into the deals.

1:06:35And I think that speaks exactly to the point you're making, which is, look, even if you use Algos, you need a super strong brand because it's not enough to identify the founders. You also need to convince them to take your money, and that's back to brand, and that's back to support, and that's back to the things you can do for them. And then there is the whole question of, okay, well, series B is not C. That's not where it starts. and I think at seed you have very little meaningful data other than maybe some founders' CVs and maybe a bit of industry research. Now the industry research commoditizes.

1:07:05What you can do today using things like deep research are incredible. So in the end it's all about EQ, it's all about understanding, do the founders in front of you have what it takes to build something truly exceptional in the space they're operating in? And I don't think we've found algorithms that can quite tell us that just yet, even if we have some signals. Andrew, what are you using? Do you believe that data-driven VC is over? What's your take on this? We've tried a few different platforms with limited success, to be honest. I think democratization of data often means commoditization. And so I've always been suspicious of pure play, data-driven dealmaking in VC.

1:07:47VC is an outlier's game. In other words, I need to invest in the startups, startups, the very few startups, which will be a huge win. And they come in all shapes and sizes. And sometimes actually the counterintuitive decision, which goes against the data will be the best decision. So I think data can help with filtering in, maybe like identifying people who say they've started a self startup. So top of funnel stuff and help filtering out. So perhaps market analysis data, but the human factor remains ultimately early stage investing anyway the critical factor and so a blended approach is most likely going to be used for most firms going forward and i think that's what we do today at seven percent because the number one thing i've learned in 10 years of investing is it's just so much about the founders and to mad's point market data is not going to help you much with that we've experimented a few times actually with psychometric testing sort of opt-in from a founder point of view especially when there's more than one founder if they haven't done it we've said look we're really curious as to the dynamics in your team and maybe it'll help you guys or girls and the handful of times we've done it everyone's said yes and they've been curious and actually maybe in itself that would be a really great filter because if someone says no i don't want to do it then that probably says something about them themselves but that might and we've actually to be fair we've done it ourselves and team and we've always coughed up our report and gone here you go you can look at my report um and uh now me you show me yours did um will you carry on doing psychometrics or or is it not not worth it we we dropped off we felt that it was a slightly odd thing to force founders to do but definitely with a new fund i mean we'll sort of sit down okay what's worked what hasn't what should we what should we try experimenting with and i think it is a really interesting um thing for the founders themselves to do um especially when they're thinking about hiring the next key people into their team how to complement their own temperament or perhaps how they need to balance out the the human factor.

1:09:54Corinne as an outsider obviously you you get to see touch and obviously smell people. I'm on the receiving end of your data initiatives so I can offer that perspective I guess. Yeah do please please go. Okay so I like a meta observation is that bad investors reach out on LinkedIn, good investors DM on X. So that's a very high level thought. I think what I've noticed over the last year is since I, maybe longer than a year actually, but I think since I kind of made a pact with myself to be my absolute authentic self and to not sugarcoat anything I say, to not sort of get trapped in this cycle of having my speech curtailed or trying to filter my thoughts to adhere to whatever the current thing or the prevailing narrative is.

1:10:56I've actually had a lot of inbound from VC on X because I think, you know, I always have to laugh because I think investors fundamentally say they want outliers and people who think differently. But in reality, they often don't follow through with that. And the best investors actually look for that signal and they'll try to build a relationship really early. And that's something that I've observed for sure in the last 12 months, that a lot of outreach actually happens on X rather than on LinkedIn. And what you tend to see on LinkedIn is associates, you know, doing, as Andrew said, stealth startup style research and coming at people with boilerplate, which immediately leaves you with a sort of rookie taste in your mouth.

1:11:47so in my mind investing at the earliest stages is all about relationship building and that works both ways and I think often investors think they hold all the cards and it really isn't the case anymore especially as more European founders can raise money in the US and you know my next round of investors that I'll be choosing for my next company I want them to be values aligned It's not about the valuation. It's not about the brand of the fund. It's actually fundamentally, do we share the same beliefs? Are we aligned on our vision for where we want to take the company? And I think that's a lot more important than what VCs often talk about as a sort of being brand.

1:12:32Like what does that actually mean? Right. Ultimately, the brand is the quality of the partners. so i love that i love that thank you for that um i'm so i nearly didn't bring you in on the topic not being not being in vc but actually that's that's a really lovely insight and talking about loving i want to talk about the deal of the week and how can we not talk about lovable it's the fastest growing european startup ever started in sweden into in 2023 about 18 months old i think they closed 10 million dollars in AR in about two months they're now doing 17 million they've got 30 ,000 paying customers and they're delivering 25 ,000 apps per day they're the they're the the automating app builder the kind of the one click app builder so I don't know if anyone has any reflections or thoughts on that but I love that as a European success story and they've just raised 14 million pre-series a whatever whatever a pre-series a is but Andrew have you got any thoughts on lovable well what what how great it is to have a uh a good success and i think it's we're going to see a bunch of these so i don't think they're out of the woods in terms of winning there's a market timing issue around as this technology develops um so that the initial winners aren't always the ultimate winners but it's a great start yeah loving it mads any thoughts on on lovable loving it it's great loving it i'm loving it and corinne anything from you on lovable haven't used it but it looks like a great product and yeah obviously great to see something like this coming out of europe for a change so very excited i love it i love it i also had something else actually on this is that i think they've been great at uh marketing and yes the messaging and and the hype and the hype the hype around it because you said are the fastest growing startup in Europe.

1:14:24I was like, well, yeah, by what measure? I mean, lies, damn lies and statistics, but it doesn't really matter. They're playing the game. And I think that's so important. And it's something that the Americans are so good at that if it was the one thing European founders, especially on the deep tech side, but actually across the board could be better at, it's marketing and messaging and getting that way. Andrew, they did$10 million in two months. I mean, that is rocket fuel stuff. I'm with you. I'm with you. Sure, but you could have a B2B startup that lands one contract. I mean, Universal Quantum in our portfolio did one contract of 67 million.

1:14:58So, you know, was that in one month? Fair enough. Fair enough. Fair enough. I'm supportive. I'm saying rinse it. Rinse the PR. You know, that's what you need to do. Play the game. Sorry, Corinne. We cut you off there. What was that? No, I was just going to say, you know, top line growth is one thing, but it's meaningless without knowing what their retention numbers are. Leaky buckets, baby. Nobody loves leaky buckets. Awesome stuff. Thank you so much, team. Mads, what's happening for you this week?

1:15:32Lots. I've been on the road for two weeks. I'm back in London. We're going to meet some founders. We're going to do some workshops. We're going to try and help great entrepreneurs build good companies. That's what it's all about. Build, baby, build. Not drill, baby, drill. Corinne, what are you up to this week? Any plans? I'm looking at my diary and wondering what I can openly say. You sound like Andrew now. Everything's in stealth. Well, confidentiality. No, so this week I'm going to help one of the teams I'm working with launch a substantial new content initiative. So I'm super excited about that.

1:16:13and also helping them on board some really awesome new members of the team. Awesome stuff. Andy Roo? Well, I've got my first week with my new team. I've known both people over 10 years, actually. I was going to say, are you going to be in the office? Are you going to be remote? I am going to be in the office for at least half a week, yes. So I'm very excited because I've known both people over 10 years and that makes the whole process of working together a lot easier in many ways. You know each other's quirks and foibles. Do we know them? And then on Friday, talking at a defence conference in Cardiff, sunny Cardiff.

1:16:53A defence conference in Cardiff. Well, there's a one. Thank you so much for your time. That was absolutely awesome and we'll catch you next week. Look forward to it. See you soon. Bye-bye. Thanks, guys. Have a great week. This would have been a final. Tear down this wall. It's more than just an alliance. This is a union of values. Let's start acting.