E476 | Finn Murphy, Nebular: Going Solo, and Why the Next Great VC Firm Starts with You

0:00What kind of person starts a venture fund in the worst market conditions in over a decade? Everyone was like, this is literally the worst time anyone has raised a fund and argued for the last 15 years. For Finn Murphy, leaving the safety of Frontline Ventures to launch Nebula as a solo GP wasn't just ambitious, it was seemingly impossible. I did my first closer at 7, and I was like, wow, this is going to be really, really hard. But where others saw insurmountable obstacles, Finn saw something else entirely. I treated fundraising as something that you can just learn to be better at. It's like another sales process.

0:33It's another exercise in product positioning. This mindset shift revealed the secret weapon behind nebulous success. I think curiosity is the right angle to go down. And it's curiosity in search of great vendors and leveraging my network to then go and find those people. But Finn's insights extend far beyond fundraising tactics. His perspective on regional innovation reveals a stark reality. In the U.S. is that, like, the floor is, like, really low. And, like, the ceiling is so high. It's kind of one of the challenges with Europe. The floor is not that low. But it was kind of causing a, like, slow death of Europe.

1:12The stakes couldn't be higher for European entrepreneurship. If we don't deregulate, if we don't become more entrepreneurial, we're going to go and move to a world that I think a lot of us are really not going to like. Discover how one solo GP's contrarian vet is reshaping venture capital. and what it means for the future of European innovation. Tap in to hear the rest of Finn's story on the European VC podcast.

1:41Here's a few words from our beloved sponsor. Make an impact with a bank made for the innovation economy. We always take a relationship first approach, bringing passion, dedication and unparalleled international connections to everything we do. Our specialised, flexible solutions for founders, firms and funds are built on deep expertise that are designed to facilitate growth and enhance your prospects for success. HSBC Innovation Banking, connecting you with what's next.

2:14Tear down this wall. It's more than just an ally. This is a union of values. Let's start acting. Acting. This show is not investment advice, and the hosts of this episode may be invested in the funds and companies featured. Welcome back, everyone, to the European Easy Podcast. Today, I have a dear friend with me, Finn from Napula. Finn, we are doing an episode here. No script, no conversations beforehand, just diving right into it. And I'm super excited about it, because if anyone can talk without a script, it's you. Oh, well, yeah. Yeah, well, thankfully, we won't keep it too long. But no, thanks so much for having me back on, Andrew.

2:55I think the last time we spent, we probably lost a podcast like three years, over three years ago. Yeah, probably. And yeah, it's been awesome to see everything you guys have done with EUVC, both on like the LP side and the podcast side. So, I mean, yeah, we both had a lot of things change. You know, I was previously at like working at Frontline, like had a really great setup and then kind of decided to sort of try to have a go of it on my own and move over here to the US. So yeah, lots and lots to update you and the podcast folks on. Everyone does know this, but I've been pestering you to come on to talk about Nebula.

3:27But you haven't been wanting to, but now finally we're doing it. So tell us about Nebula. You used to be with Frontline. We love their Frontline team. It's incredible what they've built. We were sad to see you go because I thought the same about you. But then seeing you then build Nebula, you know, just made me even more happy. So Finn, tell us all about Nebula. always fund one gas fund two is about to come up soon so tell us all about it so i i had an amazing like experience working with the frontline team from like 2018 to sort of like early well like when would it have been sort of like summer 2022 when i said i told them that i was uh i wanted to go out and i sort of always planned on like doing my own thing i i didn't necessarily know my own thing would be another venture capital fund but i'd been you know i'd been based in europe up until beginning of 2022 and then started sort of making moves to figure out the U.S.

4:19was just sort of calling me. I felt that at the particularly at the on the small fund size at the precedence seeds like being a solo GP was just like very suited to the way I did venture and having like a very wide aperture that I could go exploring in like you know looking all across the U.S. looking all across Europe was without like a real like specific theme like you know obviously I have to invest in things that I like broad strokes understand although like the you know I think like my the pin tweet on my twitter is sort of like you know vcs invest in things that they don't understand all the time like I think the whole idea that you can have like wide deep knowledge of everything interesting that's emerging on the company formation side of things it's just really really challenging and it's better to sort of consider yourself like a student and someone who has to have that curiosity to be able to learn about new things as they become interesting and yeah and the timing for nebular was like obviously so i i finished up um my sort of main responsibilities at frontline and maybe like september october 2022 and went into the fundraising market that was like bottom of the nasdaq everyone was like this is literally the worst time anyone has raised a fund and like arguably the last 15 years i had like and i was like initially i was like riding high i got like two five million commits and i was like wow 25 million target i'm gonna be done so quickly and then one of those commits uh was impacted by the ftx blow up which like feels like a lifetime ago so they were like we're at um the other other commit we're like oh if we don't really want to be like five of like you know a nine million first close so like we'll do two and a half and then i was like oh okay so i did i did my first close around seven and i was like wow this is going to be like really really hard and i think one of the upsides of starting in that market though was like every lp like people's schedules were like wide open and obviously people are like paid to take meetings so i kind of got to meet every serious lp i'm like you know they were all like oh this is great but like there's absolutely no way we're going to invest in your fund and i was like oh amazing um and i just you know i started putting I got really good advice from a couple of mentors who were like, again, do the first close, get in business, start investing, start putting like one foot in front of the other.

6:38And I think gradually over the course of 23, that became more obvious because like my LP pitch was like horrible. You know, I was like, I'm going to be a solo GP. I've just moved to the US. I'm going to do lead checks at pre-seed, ideally co-lead checks at seed. And they were like, and so what are you going to invest in? And I was like, well, like, I don't know yet. Like I'm going to figure that out. And I have this kind of viewpoint that like there are certain moments where it's very like company formation in certain categories, whether due to like a macro market shift or a macro technology shift, become really interesting and they tend to attract really high quality entrepreneurs.

7:16and those moments in time you know it's sort of like maybe like social networks circa 2004 to 2006 and the web and maybe like similar in terms of mobile like 2010 to 2013 you know similar with sort of fintech from sort of like you know 20 call it like 2013 2015 like there were these sort of pockets and it becomes harder it's not that you can't build a good business after those pockets but i think if you're going to be a precedence seed investor you have to get really good at identifying those because if you miss your moment you're kind of screwed and you know i think a lot of venture capitalists go back to this is like you know this is a macola quote from benchmark where it's like oh our job is not to predict the future it's to see the present very clearly and i think like a lot of people misconstrue hearing like when people like benchmark give maxims like that and it's like that maxim is for benchmark it's not for everyone else and you know if you're a benchmark you can afford to just see the present because you can come in and do the hottest series a in the world and i think when you're building a new firm and a new franchise you just don't have that luxury you have to kind of take this viewpoint of like i'm going to take more risk and where i'm going to take more risk is on these emerging categories that i think are going to be great and have a lot of like the target rich environments and you know that started it off with nebular being so target fund size was initially 25 million ended up closer to 30 million at the end which was like great i mean you know i was fundraising for like 15 16 months so it was it was definitely a haul but like i treated fundraising as sort of something that you can just learn to be better at you know it's not this just like oh terrible thing that you always have to do it's like another sales process it's another like exercise and product positioning it's a lot of the things that like i would talk to founders about when they're trying to figure a product market fit and you know it led me to this point where i got a bunch of people that i'm like extremely happy to have on board they're all like believers in sort of my madness and hopefully the potential in ebular but you know it started off with being okay i have this on a high level macro thesis the demographic change is going to have a big impact on a whole bunch of different industries, you know, as we got like through like end of 22, like beginning of 23, it became more apparent.

9:39There was like, okay, AI is the wave. Like this is going to be the big new enabling layer for like a whole bunch of new application software companies. I kind of felt like very early on that I had already missed the boat on AI infrastructure. And a lot of the new AI infrastructure was actually just like changing so quickly that I was like, I'm not the guy to invest there. and so you know started making a bunch of investments and so the health care like technologies and health care mostly focused around back office and administration again aging population like increasingly like you know increasingly infirm plus like just a smaller number of like nurses and qualified doctors to actually treat those people i had like this view on manufacturing as well that came from a similar place and i was like oh like you know we're gonna see like similar dynamics there's gonna be like less globalization more nearshoring the problem was like I went in and got both of these categories I was like I think these are interesting and I ended up meeting like seven founders in healthcare that I've invested in head of the fund so far and I've done 19 core checks in two and a half years versus one in manufacturing and you know it's not that the thesis was different I had the same idea but it's like go out with a lens on the world and then if you meet really interesting people great invest in them and if you don't don't you know it's been a really interesting experience i'm like a whole bunch of learnings um you know when you're fundraising you're like i'm gonna be super disciplined i said i'm gonna write 500k checks to 1.5 million checks i said i'm gonna get like you know at least four percent as i'm gonna try to get up to 12 percent you know i said i'm gonna invest in like six seven companies a year and you know all of these things get like squished and stretched and it was like good advice you know right now I'm sort of 75 percent deployed well 75 percent of investable capital deployed which is like I do like 75 percent of the investment up front 25 percent in reserve I ended up with you know 19 core positions which are sort of in that like you know four to twelve percent ownership range and another five sort of like smaller strategic checks like positioning things and you know one of my LPs basically told me he was like 20 of the strategy is to be off the strategy i sometimes like when i do these podcasts i have a great time and like it's really enjoyable chatting to like really smart people but i'm also there's like so much stuff i had heard and until it actually happens to you and you get hit in the face and you're doing it you're like oh okay that's it that's how this is going to work and yeah and it's been it's been great i've been like you know had like a lot of great supporters a lot of great co-workers like I've got to work with like some of my best friends go investing in like really interesting businesses all across Europe and the U.S.

12:24and yeah it's now I mean the terrifying well not terrifying thing the like exciting thing is it's you know because I started investing as soon as I did the first close you know I have a three-year investment period and I'm coming up like you know towards the end of that and I think it's just a lot clearer now what I was going to do and like where I was going to find like interesting founders and like in interesting categories you know now I think the narrative I have when like when you're pitching a fund one I think you're like you know there's a lot of this like people are like you need to figure out what box you go in that's hard because like I think like authenticity and there's so many people fundraising right now that there's such a massive premium on like being authentic to you and yourself but if like you and yourself is very different there's not a box for you like you know as the fun has progressed and i've kind of been a bit more like comfortable in like the pursuit of interesting ideas and different opinions you know i did a bunch of research into kind of like edge applications of lms and like that led me to investing in this uh ai companion teddy bear for kids focused on children with like language development issues and that founder believes that like the next smart iPhone is an AI companion and the richest data moat for that companion is the companion that you've had with you for the longest period of your life.

13:48And the delta between when health insurance and the US will start paying for speech and language therapy is when kids turn four and when most parents start worrying about their child's language development is around two. And so they've found this sort of wedge into the market. And, you know, initially you're like an AI teddy bear. Are you serious? um and so like i didn't actually call it that for the i was still fundraising for the first two investor updates after i'd done the investment so i called it like a a research lab into loms at the edge and then that led me to another i was talking to another investor and they were like oh i'm meeting this kind of like weird company that are doing like sort of like edge for ai but it's in space and you know that led me to investing in this company called luminorbit that's now rebranded to star cloud and they're basically building they're building data centers in space which then led me to another which has gone on to be like a really interesting and successful investment so far but that then led me to this company called ozu which are doing like scaled like video processing and video search for filmmakers on local during using local inference on apple devices and like all of these things connected like also there was like just a random of one thrown in the mix like there's a founder who was briefly working for me while she was figuring out what she was doing her next thing came back to me and was like hey I have this kind of like nuts idea but you know I think like the market for dinosaur fossils is like open to a monopolistic player by turning it into an asset like a new asset class for investment and I kind of feel there's a certain part of me where it's like when you're a solo GP when you're like on the like highest end of the risk spectrum you kind of need to be like you just can't do what everyone else is doing like you can't try to compete in the same games and whatever way my brain works is just like slightly more lateral but i was i was talking to one lp and he was like he they they didn't invest in front one and i was talking through the portfolio and he's like finn why did you not tell me about you were going to do like the dinosaurs on this data centers in space and the teddy bears this is amazing what how did you not tell me these things i'm like what are you talking about like how could it like it's like post hoc like i think venture like every good venture fund is very good at revisionist history and so on the way in your pitches it feels like it's like oh yeah of course i was going to tell you how i was going to be successful and like the reality is like people don't know specifically how they have like this directional sense of where they're going and so yeah i i've really yeah it's it's been a really really great like decision for me to go out and do my to just do my own thing it's like sad not having like a team of people anymore to like kind of like take the wins and the like not so fun times together yeah it's set kind of set me up well for like now with my like when i go out for fun too i'm not pitching a like hey here's this like speculative thing that's unclear what it will actually be it's like here's more of the same scaled up slightly with the same kind of risk and the same kind of like edge with the same sort of viewpoint of like the best founders they can come from any g like i don't know anyone really outside europe or the us so i don't invest in geos outside the us and europe i don't understand certain categories like i don't understand biotech IP businesses you know really understand like mobile gaming like consumer but like those sort of like digital consumer businesses but I think like the thing you just figure out getting good on is like ultimately always getting good at trying to figure out people and then try to use an understanding of like markets and trends to give you like a narrower aperture to go and look for people because otherwise like you know all pre-seed all seed all europe all us like i could go like i could go like fully insane just talking to people all the time and so having that filter has actually been it's it's been the kind of helpful side of things for me so finn i want to ask you being a solo gp i get 100 and i really think that this is the beauty of solo gps you can pursue whatever avenue your network and your mind and your interest kind of takes you to, which I think is one of the superpowers of a solo GP.

18:12And that's also why I actually like if the solo GP is sufficiently strong, which I think they should be. Otherwise, you're not in the business of being a fund manager. It's beautiful that they have their own remit and you basically just get money to do what you do best, which is a solo GP being you almost. But I'd love to ask you, how do you think about your niche? Because oftentimes you have solo GPs that do say, like Anthony with Rerail, FinTech, that's why I'm doubling down. I'm building this type of network around FinTech and so on and so forth. And of course, also his own understanding. It feels to me that you're more doubling down on your curiosity and your pathways within your network.

18:59And that is how you kind of then let yourself be guided to the right decisions, to the right investment opportunities. Is that somewhat correctly stated or do you, and I know you've been big in crypto before, do you have like verticals? These are the places that I look first and foremost, and then I hunt out my network and go that route. I think curiosity is like the right angle to go down. And like, it's curiosity in search of great founders. I'm like leveraging my network to then go and find those people. Like I always say to founders, it's like, look, I'm never going to know more than you will about your business.

19:35arguably like I'm not even going to be able to help you that much what I'm kind of here to be is like a trusted partner from the earliest days who can write like meaningful capital to get your business either off the ground or to the level where the reason you're not going to succeed is not because you couldn't raise enough capital it's going to be because it didn't work that's like the message that I try to stick to as opposed to I'm like even on my own assessment side of things i get smart on like okay is what these people are saying credible but i'm not trying to be like at the same level of like an airbus systems engineer for 10 years building satellite buses like i i think my job is to try to get good at like asking questions to those sorts of people that tell me about like their expertise and their curiosity and their sort of like level they're they're sort of where they're at but i think that's a pretty fair characterization in terms of what i need to go and like find like basically like the types of people that i need to go find and how i how i sort of go about it how do you think about this decision to be a solo gp do you see that that's the vision and evergreen mission of uh of nebula no definitely not i do a bunch of things even like in the interim to try to make myself appear less solo so like i set up an office with a bunch of other solo gps and early fund managers here in new york that we like joke is like the rebel alliance headquarters it's like five jeep solo gps or like you know two there's one two-person partnership there's like a bunch of portfolio companies work there like we're all just kind of like scrappy figuring it out i have a bunch of group chats with like other gps be they solo and or at firms like sometimes they're just like vents of just like you post some tweet like that's so so stupid and it's the group chat because you just need the outlet to be like am I going crazy here like is our industry just like bananas sometimes and those are the things that like I I do because like I'm an inherently like sociable person like I don't like sitting in my room and like staring at my screen not interacting with anyone for long periods of time i i think like the rise of solo gps is now like like lps if anything actually prefer solo gps which is quite funny because obviously like partnership risk has blown up more firms than like you would notice yeah like a lot of firms have just blown up over that like way more firms have blown up over partnership breakdown than they have over like doing bad deals and so i think like from an lp mindset the rise of solo has kind of cropped up but for for me i think it's like you know if you're gonna do this for like 20 years you know there's obviously people like r &z who've like managed to pull it off there's like you know people like nico wittenborn who like you know are kind of like four maybe like four three four years ahead of me who've like done an incredible job but i i think for me personally it's like would i still want to be like doing all of this on my own in 10 years time no and that probably means you know it it might not be like immediately lately but figuring out a way to to get to the kind of partnership that like you know if you go spend time in the usv office they're all like hanging out chatting they all like like each other you go to like you know you spend time with any of the 0.9 partners and you know they clearly have like an enormous amount of respect for each other and i i think that that's like a idealized world like being solo is great don't get me wrong but i think there's like an idealized future where you have partners and you're doing your own thing and like that's that's how you can become like one of the great firm that's how you can become like one of the really great firms and kind of like build something that probably like goes beyond you as well okay i sort of have this other like kind of maybe like controversial view that like like you can't really be a good seed investor for like more than like 15 years like maybe 20 it's just like hard like it's like there are there are many ways to do it but you know like the way benchmark like retires partners and brings in new partners like obviously like once you're like have made billions of dollars in carry it's like easier to be retired i would have a credible narrative for why i would continue to be as great like i think it's more of an athlete style game like eventually lebron is not going to be winning the nba farm i'm I'm sure he can still play great basketball, but he's not going to be winning the NBA finals at 55.

24:18And I think there's a similar kind of arc for early stage investors as well. I imagine you know Neil from the Nordic web as well. He runs everything in his firm, in his solo GP firm, from his desk. He almost doesn't travel. I imagine you're the opposite. You travel quite a bit and you try and meet as many people in person. And I imagine that his style of investing can work for a long time. And it's not so intense that it only lends itself for someone who's quite early in their career, to be very honest, or early in their life. Because I imagine that the life that you lead is very hard to reconcile with having a wife and children.

25:05Oh, yeah. No, no. It's definitely, I think it's extremely challenging. Like the sort of like lead check, like if you want to write lead checks, if you want to try to be like the first partner to these companies in like a meaningful way and you want to do it like globally, like, you know, across the US and Europe. Yeah, no, it's completely unsustainable over a long period of time. Like there's no doubt about that. I don't necessarily, I think like my side of things is maybe more, it's probably more of a young person's game. I think you can probably come to investing later in life and still have a good 15-year run because you probably come at it with a different edge and a different direction.

25:43But the reps of a seed investor is just always, always on. And eventually, it's kind of the same thing over and over again. And the market's changed and the market's evolved. but I think like motivation like the psychological aspect of investing is like way more prevalent and powerful than people realize like you know it's not an objective game like some days you wake up and you decide because you've had a good night's sleep and you feel good and then you meet a founder and you're like oh I really like this and then some days you're just like oh I've just done eight calls and this person is like great but like no it's what i mean like this motivation piece is like if you continue to be great you know after 15 years you've either been proven to be great or you've been proven to like not be great and so at that point it's like if you're great do you want to and this is maybe more of a personal it's like do you want to continue believing you can have another 15 years of greatness or do you want to like find something else or like evolve what you're doing in a different way that's something i kind of consider for more like longer term thinking about because you think you have to think about everything in venture on these like absurdly long timelines i actually think it's actually a bit funny because one of the reasons why i love new teams but especially solo gps is because it's a bit of a perfect storm you have this perfect alignment of everything that they've done before to them I'm now being able to form this solo GP firm.

27:22And that rarely happens with multiple people. And that is why I'm inclined to think that solo GPs are very often in an absolutely incredible, unique position compared to combined teams, because it's just very, very hard to have that perfect storm happen with multiple individuals at the same time. It also means that if you don't have that perfect storm as a solo GP, you're dead in the water. Oh, yeah. No, no, I totally agree. I mean, like some LPs I've spoken to about this, like one LP, I was like, yeah, look, like over time, I want to add partners. And this is like a very large institution LP goes, oh, so you don't think you're the rainmaker?

28:00And I was like, well, no, I think I'm pretty good at making money. Well, why do you want to fuck that up with like a bunch of other people? It's actually funny. The way I call it, the way I call it is that it's very, very hard to scale the incredible talent of the GPs, the founding GPs. and oftentimes when you have teams of two or three if i'm very honest oftentimes there's one that stands out from the rest if that person would be in a place where that person would want to run their own firm and do everything on their own that which is sometimes not the case but that can sometimes be a much stronger constellation oh yeah well like i mean like every you know like large institutional lp i know is like oh god i just love like the martin quesada funds or like oh i would just like there's one lp who literally every time he sees alfred lynn is like i'll give you a billion dollars just take it i just want i want the alfred lynn fund i'm like obviously he doesn't do it because there are many other aspects to being at sequoia that are like you know there's the intangibles and the tangibles but yeah i it's funny that i i've only come around to this perception more recently where like most lps are like partnerships are like something we're both we put up with because we believe it's like a necessary evil to success as opposed to believing that it's something that like it is like inherently better for returns outside of like people are like it was like one benchmark partnership where it was like mitch lasky matt kohler peter flatton bill gurley like yeah yeah where you're just like oh and everyone was hitting like banger after banger after banger and now the majority of partnerships are not like that But the fact of the matter is that most people have a life that does not lend itself well to be a solo GP because it is as intense as we just talked about.

29:53I want to make it to talk about one other thing because we are close to time. I want to ask you, you're investing both in the U.S. and in Europe, and you are of European origin. So I'm sure that you hear a lot of people talking about both in the U.S. and in Europe. I'd love to ask you, what's your take? What's your thinking? We've just seen Project Europe be announced. We've got the EU Inc. with Andreas Klinger moving incredibly. I'd love to ask you, what's your take on this thing? Yeah, I think it's like what Harry and Nico Wittenborn, the.9 guys, are doing with Project Europe is great. I feel bad that they got a lot of flack for it.

30:36I completely agree. I have the biggest respect for Harry, everything he has built. and then with this initiative the only thing i thought was why is it only 10 million i wish it was much more oh yeah i i just i just gave them shit for the terms being slightly worse than yc i was like just make it slightly better and but then i was like i saw the other people piling in and i was like oh guys like i i think it's we're sometimes like a little bit self-defeatist in europe so like my attitude like i'll give you the kind of because so i obviously grew up in europe started a company in europe worked for european venture capital fund had always spent time like i'd spend time in the u.s but like europe is like you know i still go back like i'm probably back like seven or eight times a year a lot of my best friends live in london paris berlin and it's i'll give you the u.s perspective first oh wait where are you where are you now stalko yeah i mean denmark on the west coast oh you're on the west coast of denmark oh actually copenhagen is like Like I have been to Copenhagen every year for the last, and I have two portfolio companies in Copenhagen.

31:39We did the very first episode. You were in Copenhagen in a hotel room. Oh my God. Oh, I completely forgot about that. This is, yeah, Copenhagen is like definitely sort of becoming second home in Europe. But I've got, I don't know, like the US attitude, and it's like very on display with like a lot of the attitudes inside the like current US administration is, they like think that Europe is like the barbarians are seizing power like society is collapsing one of the things you notice by spending time in the us is that like the floor is like really low it's bad you know there are obviously a lot of negative social consequences to the floor being so low but it's kind of what makes the whole thing work ever and like the ceiling is so high and it's so self-reinforcing that like the more success you have the more you want because the more you're kind of put into different circles and i i think that's kind of one of the challenges with europe is like we've set our society up so that the floor is not that low we've set our society up so that like we are like more compassionate and we've set our society up that we don't venerate that we don't necessarily venerate the wealthy and the successful and i think that that is like there are you know it's like everything there are good things and bad things to that but it was kind of causing a like slow death of europe in terms of regulation like building anything almost anywhere in europe is like basically impossible getting licenses to do interesting things in technology like the ai act was a classic example of this but the the u.s perception of europe as this like dying back order i think is like you know an exaggeration and i think like the actions of the current administration are like the best thing that could literally ever happen to Europe.

33:32It's like a wake up call. Like, I don't know if you read like, like 1984, I think is like such a great book. I'm just understanding like political theory and messaging. You need an enemy. Like I say this to founders, I say this to myself, it's like, if you don't have any enemies, your enemy is yourself. That's the problem. And Europe's enemy for the last 20, call it like 20 years has been Europe. and it's like very unfortunate that the u.s and well for russia for like other reasons but like you know suddenly you were going from like no enemies to two very large enemies and i think that's going to result in like the attitude shift that unfortunately like i think like eu inc is going to make administrative burdens lower project europe is gonna enable more young people to do interesting projects i think both of them will end up like preaching to the converted like what we really need on a massive scale is like an attitude shift in Europe that like if we don't deregulate if we don't become more entrepreneurial if we don't change the way we like I own like that my business in the U.S.

34:39and like I used to be like god it's such a racket being a business owner in the U.S. this is so advantageous for so many reasons and then I was like oh it's my fucking European brain being like why should I as a business owner be advantaged over employees. And it's like, oh, because they want people to be business owners. They want you to have an advantage. They want the incentive structure to encourage people to go out and do that. And one of the things I think about in Europe, I think it's like, if you give the average European half a million euro risk-free, what are they going to do with it?

35:14It's like buy a house or an apartment. If you give the average American half a million dollars, what are they going to do with it. I mean, like some of them are just going to like YOLO it into pump.fun, which is like insane. But like, you know, a lot of them will be like, I'm going to start a business. I'm going to buy a truck. I'm going to do, you know, it's a very different type of like economic activity over here. I think like the biggest thing we need to change in Europe is attitudes. And that needs to come at like the very highest levels of policy. And it's like a kind of shift in the way that we think about incentivizing entrepreneurship.

35:49Most of the LP dollars in Europe are government dollars, whether it's KFW, BPE, British Fishing Capital, EIF, Irish Strategic Investment Fund. And they all have mandates on their capital and where they want it to go, how many dollars have to be invested in certain geographies, how many dollars should be invested in certain categories of company. And it's just like not how you encourage innovation. You can't centrally plan it. You have to like set up the incentives to encourage people to actually take risk, because most of them will not be rewarded for their risk. Like most people when they try to do things will fail.

36:29And I think that's the conversation people don't have around incentive alignment is like, you know, people talk about it's like, oh, we can't cut taxes on like millionaire startup tech employees, you know, when they're selling their shares in their IPO, you know, like, that's not the fucking point. The point is, the incentive encourages more people to join companies in the first place, knowing that that equity is probably not worth anything. You pay for it on the far end. But like, your cost is not just like, oh, we're giving millionaires tax break. What you're actually getting is the value of encouraging more people to take that risk.

37:04I think like the founders in Europe are like just as smart, just as strong. We hurt a little bit because no city has the talent density that you have in New York or San Francisco. And that's both like talent density and probably customer, like, you know, customer centric. And I think that's like, that's just always going to be the challenge of like Europe and how it's just like, it is distributed. There's a company in Dublin called Times. And like, they just raised a recent brand like brand value in the company of a billion dollars the founders own and thomas are great but like i'm pretty sure they've hired like every single risk on really competent person in dublin like there are more competent people but all the risk on people are kind of gone and this is a company that's already like valued a billion dollars and i still think people would be like Like, ooh, but that last one that was valued at a billion dollars, it didn't work out so well for them, did it?

38:03And anyway, that's my kind of like longer take on it. You stated a lot of the critique or, yeah, the criticisms of Europe that I actually don't align very well with. And it's an age-old discussion, right? Do we have less risk on Europe versus in the States? and are our founders, do they have less ambitious plans and so on than in the States. I kind of struggle a little bit to see the, how do you square that we say at the same time as we say this, we also say that the best founders will run through walls and nothing can stop them. They will not fit into any square box. The idea that, well, the problem is that they are not incentivized enough.

38:55The problem is they're so on and so forth. Like, cause to me, it kind of seems, and yes, okay, I get, they'll, they need operators that are of a different kind. But I do think that, that I honestly don't think it is that much of a problem as we make it out to be. I think the whole attitude of like the very best founders, like the very best founders require people that are willing to take risk all around them. They require people to be like encouraging of that risk. I agree with you in some respects, but this whole idea of like, everyone knows who the best founders are is just like nonsense. Like, sorry, not to put like, and I see this in VC, it's like, oh, obviously, like, Mark Zuckerberg was always going to start Facebook.

39:40And I was like, are you talking about it? Like, obviously, you know, you take these cohorts of people and everyone's like, oh my God, the Harvard class from like 2002 to 2000, you've got like Josh Kushner, Chris Pack, Mark Zuckerberg, all these people. like how do there's so many brilliant geniuses and it's like because they all saw facebook working and they were all like oh that looks good we should go into tech like the reason i'm in tech is because i watched the social network and i was in college in 2011 and i was like oh that looks way better than working for a fucking consulting firm like the you have to like show people like your cohort around you no matter what anyone says has a much bigger influence on people than I think.

40:24Because I agree. And I very much agree with that, Finn. It's more this foundational entrepreneurial inclination in the European populace and the U.S. populace that I'm a bit unsure whether I think it's as different as it's often made out to be. I do think that, yes, we do not do enough to stimulate entrepreneurship in our young people. We do not do enough to incentivize entrepreneurship in most countries many places are almost anti-entrepreneurship at least if you're successful there's a lot of initiatives to get you started there's a lot of initiatives to oh yeah take all your money if you're successful um so i definitely i definitely get all that i just think that that it's for you sorry i i actually totally agree with you i think the initiatives are like not like largely nonsense i think the like tax on success is total nonsense i i what i'm i suppose i'm trying to say is like it's the wider attitude like why is having enemies good for europe yes like it it's the existential i have to do so i there's there are a group of people around me that are doing big things for big reasons it's not more accelerator programs it's not more lp dollars mandating we invest in like you know whatever we want to say like Italian defense tech startups like that's crazy all of the other bits are like window dressing that's where I'm like the macro shift combined with like more cultural icons like you know I think it's like a shame that someone like you know Europe's most iconic company of the last like call it like 10 years revolute is like a Russian immigrant who has now moved to Dubai like you know and the uk have since left the european union like it just like yeah yeah i like it you know there's the layers to the like it's not like the uh-uh along with the help of the french ecosystem we did xyz but no i i'm more aligned to you on the i don't think you need more programs but and it's why i think this is the hardest problem like i sit around talking to friends being like how do you actually fix that um and i think the key for me as an investor is like you know try to influence the world around you and it's just like when you meet really ambitious people wherever they happen to be in europe just like back them you would back any u.s founder and encourage them the way you would encourage any like u.s founder because at the end of the day like their market up their opportunity set and their attitudes are usually not that different.

43:04I have one final thing I want to ask you on this note. One of the things that I am very much trying to champion is that we need our VCs and our founders to get more involved in policy and politics. And I say both because I think it's hard to do policy without also doing politics. Many people say, no, no, no, you want to stay out of politics because that's short term. It's antagonistic. People don't like you just got in trouble. But I actually think we can see it in the States, in the end, you've got to pick sides. You've got to pick someone that's pro what you believe. I am seeing so many in Europe not wanting to engage with this.

43:46I'd love to ask you, having seen what's happened in the States with the Trump administration and the takeover of the White House by what we in Europe even, I hate it when I see it in the newspapers, calling it the tech oligarchs. It's like, come on, man, don't call them oligarchs. It's just the successful people in the next generation of technology companies. Come on. Yeah, I do think those people are not doing themselves any massive services in the way that they're behaving. There's a degree in US politics where like at the end of the day, everyone acts in their own self-interest. For Elon, like for a lot of these people, their interests, like their ideological beliefs were like sure aligned with like what they i don't think their ideological beliefs are like aligned with like what like the likes of stephen miller and like the likes of these people in the trump administration believe but they were like you know what it's going to be very bad for some people but it will be good for me and i i think like the challenge in europe is you know in five years time we could have like an afd in like germany we could have like um le pen in france i'm like more hopeful than that but i i do think there's been like a kind of like failure of liberalism in europe to produce results like in ireland we've been talking about building a subway from the airport to the city center for almost 27 years um and it's still in the courts because some school it was going to close one of their soccer pitches for a season like there's been the same in the u.s of like so much like liberal like bureaucracy of liberalism has held back so many things and liberals didn't change that and they didn't take action and i think in europe like i totally agree like you you can't put your head in the sand and not be politically involved in some way i at one point like i worked in the u.s senate for a summer i took a year out of college to be elected in student politics i thought like politics was you know a really interesting way to like affect change i've realized like then i realized i was like oh actually like i think technology and entrepreneurship is like an even more powerful way for someone like me to affect change but it's hard to be everyone kind of leans into policy because they don't want to offend anyone and they kind of like dance around the edges of like oh well if we did this then we would do that and it's like no like some people are going to be upset we're going to have to do things that are for the benefit of everyone but are actually going to piss some people off or else we're going to go and move to a world that i think a lot of us are really not going to like it's not enough that we do best practice policy and kind of try and come with our views there and our learnings and smart analyses.

46:39I don't think at all, like I don't care what part of the political spectrum our VCs and founders will choose to be on. I just hope they'll get in the fight. That's what I'm hoping. Yeah, I think the challenges for politics is like by design, incremental and slow up until it isn't. Like there's the whole Lenin quote of like there are decades where nothing happens and there are like days where decades happen. And I think that that's like the challenge for tech people is you're not used to that. And it's just like the history of all human political shifts. And so I think being ready for when those shifts come in Europe and I think like right now it has the potential for being one of those shifts like massively to the positive despite the world becoming like more like chaotic and more challenging.

47:30I think it's not just for the tech community. It's like citizens in general. Like you can't ignore the environment that you're in and you can't ignore your politics. And, you know, taking no sides or like putting your head on the ground is sort of like, you know, the worst option on both sides. Exactly. Finn, thank you so much for joining me for this conversation. It was incredible. Oh, no. Thank you so much for having me on, Andres. I'm sorry I put you off for so long. I had to come back with actual material. And you did. Thank you. Here's a few words from our beloved sponsor. Make an impact with the bank made for the innovation economy.

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