E523 | Sarah Drinkwater (Common Magic) & Anthony Danon (Rerail): Why Solo GPs Are Europe’s Secret Weapon

27:18There are just so many more dynamics to consider versus a kind of much larger first round, which I think can be difficult in terms of giving the fact too much time. But pros and cons, I guess. I just wanted to ask a bit about the dynamic of this, let's call it Dirty Duzin or whatever, the group of solo GPs that come together. How do these rounds come together normally? Do you believe that there is a good point in being locally specialized as a micro VC? And for that reason, also, when you end up syndicating, it's often that there's a local lead or a local champion for a specific deal within the group of solo GPs.

27:57Similarly, with specialists, you both have your specialty, the two of you. And then it's typically that way that it forms. and how much, and honestly, as an angel, you oftentimes lend a lot of decision-making and diligence, power, and so on with the lead. Is this also what happens between these funds or do you maintain as diligent as process? And I know what you'd say on a public podcast like this one, but what in fact is what's happening? It's so weird. I mean, as with any field, you have people that you deeply trust. Ultimately, it's my fund. I'm stewarding LP Capital. you're still doing your own process you're still doing your own references you're still trying to understand a like a market emotion or an emergent you know like like you know because I specialize in kind of bottom-up go-to-market and narrative that's the piece that I'm always most interested in of like like the the selling of the thing but I've made investments in the last year in kind of egg packing factories and you know like the egg packing robots and factories and so again for that particular kind of investment you're gonna have to go and do some work on it and work out who you know and so obviously you're communicating and coordinating with co-investors and tiny funds and maybe you're sharing information but you're not you know and you can tag team on diligence but at the same time you may come to the totally different conclusion to me conviction is quite a personal thing I'm just thinking of like the most challenging angel investment I ever made the one that I learned I regretted was something I said yes to on December 24th 2020 where a friend had already invested and was like oh this is so your kind of company and it turns out me and the founder in time were not a great fit if I'd have had more time if I'd been more experienced but You know, I think that was a really big lesson for me.

29:34As an angel, it's your money. So you can do that kind of thing as a fund. I do not think it would be smart to YOLO into things in that way. And I'm not saying it can't work, but I'm saying particularly if you're kind of building the structure and the muscle of conviction, even in a fund with 32 bets, that's not the right way to work for me, at least. So I totally agree. I will also add, which might be quite obvious, not only phenomenally syndicated rounds, right? So like I, now increasingly some of the rounds and companies have been pulled in lately have been, you know, an insider round after like a pre-seed that's kind of like topping up because it's doing really well, but they want to add a fintech angle to it or a round that's like, you know, closing, but, you know, they have this 50k left and like actually because they want fintech net worth, they will kind of extend it to like 400k and try to get me in.

30:26And these are all, you know, not the ideal situations in terms of like, I haven't met the founder super early. I haven't like, you know, built that relationship. And then you feel awkward because like they're closing in the end of the week or they're supposed to close in the end of the week. You have the lead VC that might have introduced you as well. And you're like, oh my God, like I feel, but these are, I think the biggest temptations when you're like, okay, I should just like feel like X fund is doing it. And I did a call with the founder and the team is great. We should do it. I absolutely don't do that.

30:52I actually am very upfront. I'm like, look, because of the dynamic and the category, I really love this, but I will need X amount of time. And I'll try to do it as fast as possible and as least touch points from you as possible. Meaning like we'll do like, you know, a couple of sessions, but like they'll be very high impact. But it's so important to kind of develop your own conviction and not be pulled into that. And I think a microphone type of round potentially has a more tendency of that happening because we all kind of, you know, share with each other. And I think the other point that you made, Sarah, that's, I think, very true, at least also also very true to me is it's a system like conviction for me is like a complicated system between like an emotional initial trigger meets kind of like a rational way of processing and then an emotional decision.

31:35And so like, I think the two emotional sides are informed by the rational, but the way people like assign implicit biases, weights to like the different risks and all of that underneath that mental model is very different. And so like I'd welcome like data points if like Sarah's done customer work and industry work. And I also welcome her opinion about it. And then I'll factor that into my decision. And it's not whether I discount her opinion or not. It's more about like what does that do into my mental model underneath towards like my conviction building. I think it's more complicated than like, you know, herd mentality or not.

32:12Or, you know, just coming in because others are doing it or not. Well, and something that I always really appreciate, and I tend to find that micro funds do this a little bit more than bigger funds, because bigger funds can always do the next round, is when you send something promising that you have conviction into a micro fund friend, and they come back, they go through their process, and they come back with like really interesting feedback around things to think about. and nearly always that helps me help the founder. Because nearly always is great. It's a reason why this wasn't for them. And I think everyone has their own mental models, their own systems.

32:44It doesn't affect your conviction, but it's another lens through which to look at the company and potential risks. And I just love that personally. Sorry, you mentioned headless rounds. Let's talk about that. First, maybe let's get the definition in place to make sure everyone follows. And then we dive into the dynamics. If you think about historically what Preseed is, pre-seed tends to be where there is a smart team in place with a bunch of assumptions based on a problem space they found or a problem space they've experienced now nearly always I'm seeing prototypes at first round that wasn't always the case but I think with software being so easy to build now and so inevitably there's a lot of risk and a lot of reward um I think the minute you start to have like design partners customers you know theoretically you could go out and raise a seed if you have a certain kind of profile and so what I'm seeing more and more is rounds that are sub 1.5 million, let's say, where there is no trad lead in place.

33:34And partly this has to do with the check size of small funds creeping up. So like my check size now on average, probably about 250. I think I'm still learning more. Like I like the angel positioning. I think 250, 300k to me feels great. But when you get three or four of those together, that starts to feel with angels like around. When I think about a headless round, it tends to be a syndicate of smaller firms coming together you know and that could include like even a c camp who you know their check size also is quite variable and flexed in nearly every case of this i've seen it's when the founder is experienced or confident enough to say well we don't necessarily need a lead to trigger the round happening the founder is confident pressing it themselves and going around to all of the various stakeholders and getting feedback on that to anthony's point the pros and cons are at the next round is everybody's job to pick up the phone which kind of is anyhow but i think when there's a lead in place, sometimes you're tempted to be like, okay, the lead will handle the work of kind of making sure all of their friends look at this company.

34:30I think the follow-on financing and bridging is actually really important in this landscape right now, especially because it's so hard to, you know, it is really unpredictable to know how much money you need the first round. And if the company has a good fundraise, they're always going to get often more capital they might need. But if they're not running a public raise, if it's a private raise, they will go out with a set of assumptions they might just need more time so i guess for me a headless round tends to be something where the founder is intentionally choosing not to pursue something that feels more lead-like aka goku ics um you know somebody taking 60 of the round i want to add two things that i think they don't contradict each other but it shows how controversial like how many two sides of the coin, like of each topic in VC exists, like is if you, for example, have these microfund rounds and that are headless by design, I think the nervousness is around what I think Sarah also mentioned, which is like, if shit hits the fan, if you need that extension, who will stick their neck out, right?

35:33And again, it's theoretical. Maybe someone does, maybe because of the power of the many and their LPs, you know, you stitch together. It's like, I think it hasn't been stressed as in Europe yet too much because I think they're a bit of a new phenomenon. But theoretically speaking, that's what gets me nervous on those. Like there's a lot of pros, that's the cons. Now, the other side of the equation, you get that lead VC, you would think like everything is being done on the next round, which is kind of what you also said theoretically. Practically, I can say that usually at the next stage, let's say a series A, whether it's been a seed fund or a multi-stage fund, even more so I think if it's the latter, I do a lot of the work.

36:09And that is not trying to say that I do good work or that I'm trying to take credits for it. It's just I'm like, you know, you're still the vulnerable place where they can be vulnerable with, right? And so actually the theory of like, no, you get to lead VC and then it's like scalable because you don't have to do too much. Actually, like through the next round, not after that next round, but to that next round, there's so much heavy work to be done, is my experience. And the more it's multi-stage, the more there's a dynamic of like, I'm also pitching to them because they need to double down. And so there's a lot of work to be done there.

36:40So trying to contradict on the theory and practice. Actually, a really important point is there's a supposition the lead picks up the phone. But in reality, all of us know if you are good at working with founders and founders trust you, you're going to be working on that really closely as well. And they'll work together. Like I'm not discounting the work the lead VC will do. They will really do that. But they will also want to like, you know, the things they're not sure they want to ask the lead VC or the things they want to be vulnerable on with you and are they not sure about the use. Right.

37:09I was at the E-Band Congress. When everyone else went to Superventure, I went to the E-Band Congress. I ran a stage where we designed a program that flew a bit in the face of how many angel investors invest in Europe or in the States. Some as well, but in Europe, we have a bit more prolific issue with angel investors that come in very concentrated in their portfolio mix and then end up being overly exposed to single assets. And then everything turns sour, especially the relationship. Once the startup hits the troublesome times that any startup will always go through because the angel does not like seeing all their money potentially going down the drain.

37:54And then they reach back into their private equity background and their toolbox from that time or their SME ownership times or whatever. and they become maybe less productive in the usual VC sense. So let me then ask you, because in this group, we had a discussion around or an interesting realization around how often would an investor be part of a round that is competitive. And it was so funny because I brought a group of angels that did 10, 12, 15-ish investments per year and all are very much embedded in the venture ecosystem. And they all raised their hands when I said, who here? Or they all said, well, I was in a competitor round last month, or like I just closed one yesterday.

38:43And then the rest of the group, the usual angel, to them, it was a completely unknown situation. Would you ever compete to get into a startup? I'd love to ask you here because you both do, and I bring this up as part of this conversation, of course, because you both do angel rounds. So I'd love to hear this micro VCs take on angel rounds and the competition that exists here and how to navigate, how you navigate it, how you think about it and what role competition plays at the angel round stage. I don't know if that's the right angle to it, but what I would say is that usually the competition in the angel rounds I tend to do is between whether they want to do an angel round or go for a proper institutional rounds.

39:30So like the competition I face is like persuading the founders that in their specific situation, they should do that friends and family angel round with like a micro founder to an angels versus a VC on the times that that makes sense. Like maybe it doesn't make sense for a specific company. So I think that's, so the competition I would say tends to be even more specifically, if I look at companies that I was going to do an angel round, but ended up becoming VC rounds, it systematically has been the founders of the company they used to be in if they're ex-operators. So it's like they go to the founders and they tell them, no, scrap that.

40:06You should raise as much as possible, which is funny because maybe they wouldn't have done that for their own companies. So I don't know if that was like the way you thought about the question, but I find less other angels be the competition because the check sizes and all of that can fit. And it's about crafting that angel is about crafting the idea, like since you're diluting a bit to get It's something that's not going to be about runway and burn and a lot of money. It's going to be about getting a buffer to get you started and value-added people around you. And it's usually a save for an ASA.

40:35I think there's flexibility on the check size and getting more people in as long as there's value on that. So I think the competition is less on that specific round. Once they've decided they want to do that, it's more, maybe competition is the wrong word. It's more about like, will they do that round versus the other rounds? I think angels are a really important part of the scene. I'm biased as an ex-angel angel investing was my gateway drug into running a fund I basically got carried away on the side in the weekends and evenings over COVID I think part of it comes back to kind of access and education like I learned about power law I think I wrote my you know I did about 39 angel investments and three or four companies in I learned about power law and was like oh my god got to build up portfolio and I think the you know particularly in the UK okay, there is a certain class of angel investor where it's very much more status led and that's fine.

41:24But I think at the same time, the best founders will always pick who they want. Like for me, I love to hunt. I have a very particular value add. I over communicate that. The kind of rounds I work on, like I'm working on a pre-seed right now with a founder that I did the angel round of. And in the angel round, it was just two of us. It's quite distinctive. But in the pre-seed round, we've signed with the firms who are amazing. And all the firms and me are working on the perfect list. He's in a very particular domain. And so the check size for the angels doesn't matter. It's really about what they can bring.

41:53And so in this case, you know, we already have the commitments for the round, but we're going on a hunting for a few particular profiles that we don't have yet. Because so many angels in Europe have become fund managers, I actually keep worrying about the fresh pipeline of angels. I think this is an incredible value add. You know, you want folks that are working in exciting scale-up startups, customers that are also doing checks on the side 5k 10k doesn't matter that can help our companies win so I actively spend time with angels because I always feel that you never know when you're going to meet a company that needs a particular thing you know to me competition always comes back to how much choice does the founder have how much intention are they bringing you know you never want to have folks on the cap table that are not useful that aren't going to answer emails that aren't going to be additive in a particular way.

42:41And a lot of that comes back to founders knowing what they need, and you as their partner, helping them with that, helping them put together the right sort of network of folks. More angels, please, in Europe. I would caveat it, though, because I do think that we have many more angels that could be incredible investors that are not. So I actually, I wish we would have a better conversion of people that decide they want to back startups to people that decide that they want to back startups and have realized the power law and have realized how venture actually works and thus then flip to the right playbook, which then has a bunch of knock-on effects because as we spoke about before, we actually hit record, fund size defines strategy and thus also as an angel, how do you decide to invest in venture truly affects how you act as an angel as well.

43:34completely but i think all of this partly goes back to you know as somebody who went from being an operator to running a fund it's really hard to raise a fund if you don't have a vc track in europe i raised 40 of my fund in the us for this reason i think there's just not the depth in europe of lps that buy that operators can become amazing fund managers so it's a bit of an imaginative leap i think it's a lot easier to underwrite somebody who's worked at a well-known firm locally because they have the training i have a firm belief that you can train yourself especially with my size of firm you either put in the work or you don't but but i think to your point there is so much amazing information the future will not look like the past but you know whether it's me reading the generous deep dive into founders fund whether it's going for walks and talks with folks in europe that have built amazing firm the information is out there for angels that want it i think it's more a matter of like any craft you have to put time effort and work into it like you you wouldn't expect a founder to build a company overnight so i think for angels out there who want to convert to become either professional angels or thumb managers, all of it goes back to putting the work in, learning, listening, building up your reps.

44:38I feel questioningly about that. And I think that's also a bit of a prompt of Andres to say like, hey, Anthony, what have you been doing with Super Angel? It's been a bit busy time, so we'll get back to it. No, but I do. So all that is additive to what's been said because I agree with all of that. But there's basically, I think, if there was a way, because new waves of angels, right? And you talked about crafting the best kind of angel syndicate, right? So you have some of those angels that are prolific angels. You have some that are like operators and have immediately peers of theirs that have done it before.

45:09So they learn it quite fast. But then you have all these other buckets of angels. Let's say, oh, I'm a company working in procurement and I want to have a few procurement leaders, you know, or, you know, that type of thing where like these people have kind of grown in their organizations to a level where they have some money and they like the innovation. But then like, can you actually get these people educated really fast? so that you're getting benefits of both worlds. Because sometimes you get that angel that's like the procurement leader X, but that angel doesn't know that, you know, the moment you do that angel check, you should write it off in your head.

45:41Like, or, you know, some of those fundamentals, like it's a power law, you need a level of volume as a minimum, and that can become a sour thing as well. And then it's a different equilibrium. It's like dissuading. Imagine that person that put that money into two companies, he put too much of their savings of their bonus of the year, they lost that money. And then all of their peers who could actually be a next wave of angels, he tells them or she tells them like, hey, don't do it. You just lose your money. And so it's like such fine line in these other buckets of angels that somehow if we can't have a way to educate them and maybe like I'm overstating how many of them are of importance, but I do think on the kind of more is better and more variation is better.

46:20I do think there's work to be done and it would be only a great thing, right? Yeah, that's really, I was just thinking of a friend in the Netherlands who showed me, who was super active during ZUP, but very concentrated, and showed me their losses from that time. And I was very struck by it, of just somebody going very halved in a hot year, putting too much money in. And then they're left with the supposition that all early stage investing, they will lose money. And I don't believe that is true in the long term. But again, it doesn't feel good to be them, I think. I was just looking here at ChatDBT, hoping that I could find a really quick number because now we spoke about how much the angels, Are there enough angel capital?

46:56Are there not? It baffles me when I look at the Danish ecosystem and I then get to learn that the Danban group, the Danish business angel group deployed in 2024, 40 million euros. That is a lot of angel capital. Great. But it is just deployed not in the way that Anthony described it, so to say, which is why I think that this is where we have. It's one thing. Yes, we want more operators from our good successors to come out and come back to the ecosystem and invest. Absolutely. But I really think that the big vision, or at least my mission, is to bring these already deploying angels into, so to say, normal venture best practices.

47:45Because that's not where we have them today. 80 % of angels never do more than three deals. You're bound to lose. No one is successful with that strategy and venture. So I really like this is where I'm focusing and why I'm touting it here on the podcast. I want to go to another topic. You gave me a good segue to it a couple of minutes ago, Sarah, and that's the decision to go solo. I'd love to ask you, we started this discussion around the future, so to say, or the dynamics between solo GPs, micro GPs, and then the big players, the multi-stage funds. I'd love to ask you both, tell me, why is it that you choose, or I actually say it this way to all my friends that I hope would become entrepreneurs.

48:34I say, I give them a bunch of good arguments why they should become lifestyle entrepreneurs like I am myself. You have chosen and all your friends, or at least many of them, are VCs. But a lot of them are also VCs in bigger firms. I'd love to ask you, because I'm sure that you're championing your own model just as I am mine. What are you saying to them? Why are you not saying, why don't you leave that big firm, build your own thing? Can you give me the sexy case of being a solo GP? I actually, I have lots of friends at BCs. I also have lots of friends who aren't. You know, I worked as a tech operator for like 20 years before.

49:10So I have lots of friends who are like, oh my God, why would you throw away your old salary and go and do this mad thing? You know, in my case, I was really led by the thesis. You know, I've spent my entire career building communities around technical products. I became irrationally obsessed that, you know, moats and technology were dying, which I think I was totally right. You know, it's sort of playing out really well right now. I became really obsessed with, you know, what stands around a company. How do you build your moats when technology is easy to build? It really becomes brand, community, trust, all these things I've done for a long time.

49:41And a couple of years ago, I was looking at Europe, looking at companies that have got big in this way. you know whether it's kind of hugging face or supercell or monzo or miro and realizing that no fund had that thematic focus and i kept thinking oh if there was a fund that did that i would try and join them and then it kind of clicked in my head one day ah this actually is your fund you know you have the right to run it you have the right to do it i think for my character and my personality and the way that i see the world i like kind of small-scale artisan boutique-fed investing i really believe in the primacy of the founder investor relationship obviously the maths of returning a small 10 million fund 3x net is a lot easier than a much larger firm.

50:21But I also had enough friends, you know, when I was going through the process of starting to launch Common Magic, you know, I was not 21. I had a lot to learn in terms of investing, but I had an incredibly clear thematic focus, had an incredibly clear set of angel companies that were all on thesis. And so lots of friends at larger firms were like, okay, you could go in and join a larger firm and get trained in that way, but you would have to pause on the thesis and invest in their way. And I think for me, I felt so strongly about the time is now. I felt so strongly in what I saw in the market.

50:52And I felt very strongly that if I didn't capture it now, I would miss the opportunity forever. And so, you know, I didn't particularly, the goal was not going to VC, the goal was launch this firm. And so if anyone's thinking about doing a solo fund, I think it appeals to people that are completely entrepreneurial. You know, you're not earning much money, you're working very long hours, you're managing, like, as an operator, I love the mix of my work. I've definitely seen friends who come out of large firms where all they're doing is just sourcing. It's an adjustment. Whereas for me, I think in my old life was managing teams of 70 from kind of Japan to San Francisco.

51:26So I was just very used to the kind of the workload was not unusual to me. But I love the personal, you know, the proximity of it, the intimacy of it. Like I've got all my founders on WhatsApp. I've got most of my LPs on WhatsApp. As a long-term community manager, as a long-term stakeholder manager, I really enjoy the relational nature of the work. It's not for everyone, but for me, it's been pretty amazing and beautiful. That's my lemonade stand. I love SolarGP Life. It's great for me. Anthony, before we kick it to you to say a few words, and I know you'll say many of the things that Sarah said, I'd love to also challenge you to talk about the dynamics of big firms, the politics of being in a big firm, so on.

52:12without calling out your past firms, but you have been in big firms and I know that you're very embedded in the venture space. So I think anyone can realize that what you say here is, of course, considerations across many, many, many firms in Europe. I'll make it broader actually, which is, and maybe also talks about the micro side, but in venture, if you think about it, right, it's such a long game, right? So it pays off because I went also like from one fund to another, right? And changed as well. And I was at the crossroad at some point. And I was asking myself, like, why am I changing like firms, right?

52:46Like, this is a long game. You should get into one firm, one structure. If you love venture, just be there as long as possible. That's the game, right? But it's really hard because, well, it's evolving beasts. And most of the structures that was before, and I'm not talking about the specific funds, it's just like a dynamic of any funds, how you join might be very different two, three years later, right? Of decisions that have been made. I was also junior at the time, right? So like there There were other people that are really making decisions and things are morphing daily, right? And so you're called to get into a structure where basically it's a vertically integrated game.

53:19So it's a partner specific thing, right? Then there's usually a managing partner that takes decisions that are strategic about a company and a fund, right? A fund as a company, which you might agree or disagree with, right? And then on top of that, you start having coordination costs because you have like basically layers and people and structures. they need to do your work and you need to report to someone. On what, on average, again, VC partners tend to suck at being managers or just are not interested into being managers. Why? Because the best venture investors are obsessed about doing great deals and helping their founders and they see it as an opportunity cost.

53:56And so this is biased to you, but I just think it's very rare. It's possible, but it's very rare to find a structure where all these things are ticked. We're in a structure where, you know, you feel like this is the fund that empowers you to do the deals you want to do, to win the deals you want to do, and to do it in your own terms. And for some people that checks, for some people doesn't. Now, within existing firms, yes, there's politics. I mean, I guess what you're playing for with being in an existing firm is you believe that the team around you, the strategy of the fund. So the team around you, you respect, right?

54:32And you feel like are additive to you. the fund and firm strategy you believe enables you to win your own deals. And it's a structure that enables you to do your own deals. I guess if you get all those things ticked, then it's a great environment to be in. And then you add an element of timeline because things evolve. They change funds like hire, change strategies. Now they do seed and they're aggressive. Now they do only growth. Suddenly, you know, oh, they kind of hired a bunch of associates because it was 2020 and they had to be on top of everything. Now they're firing most of them. then you're left like, you know, as the only person that used to be junior, that's not.

55:06So there's dynamics. And so I think that's hard. Now, at the same time, when it works, it's beautiful, right? Imagine being in a firm where you have six complementary like partners with amazing experiences, different implicit biases, goods and bads, playing total football with each other, being on top of everything, having more capacity to think through things, to be more strategic about things. That's amazing. It's rare and it's personal as well. So it's not like, hey, I can name you the funds that that's happened. It's just like for certain partners, this happens in certain funds. And I think that's fantastic.

55:41And this is by the way, not diplomatic way, just like the way I think about it bottom up. I think being through those different kind of like phases and firms and funds. To finish off, just to talk about like the solo side on my side, I'm not going to add too much because it's really hard to go after what Sarah said, because it was amazing. And I mean, of course, I agree with a lot of it. Some of it don't come as an, I mean, I was an operator in the beginning, but I didn't come at it from an operator point of view into the solo GP. I do think that it's the purest form. So you should start at it as an obsession about a topic, an edge strategy, right?

56:16It shouldn't be as I believe I'll do better alone. You know, it's like, I don't think that's like the way to start. It's like, I'm obsessed about like fintech networks. I think that's an edge of me. I think actually it's a huge time because increasingly almost any company is utilizing fintech and I feel I'm trying position to capture that and I'm obsessed and almost irrational about doing the least scalable part of investing which is just spending time with founders and hoping they're the next deck of corns or beyond by the way doing that and founding Sarah that actually takes all those boxes at the same time is super hard that's I think how you start solo I think that's the way and that was the way for me as well but that's a really interesting question Anthony like I got pushed on this a lot by LPs about starting solo.

56:59And I think to your point, if the right person had been right in front of me and we had absolute trust, we'd Asian invested together, I keep learning how hard it is to build a venture firm and a venture funds. Like hiring is really hard. Managing time is really hard. And I think what's most interesting to me right now, as I look ahead, is like, how do all of these small funds evolve in Europe? Like clearly some are going to fold. They might do it once or twice and decide not to go again. Maybe it's just not a fit for where they are. I think some are clearly going to merge. I think some are going to scale through AUM.

57:28Some are going to double down on exactly what they do best. I think it's very much decentralized in terms of there's no one path. And I think that's quite exciting. It means founders get more choice. I think there's something really interesting about how all these group of small funds starting now evolve over time that is unclear to me so far. Sarah, Anthony, thank you so much for this closing on the manifesto of the solo GP. I am truly excited about what's happening in Europe. I do think that we are at an absolute crossroads, so to say, both in terms of what's going to happen in Europe, but also in terms of I think that there's a lot of capital that should go to firms like yours.

58:06So thank you to both of you for joining me here on today's podcast. Thank you. This was a lot of fun. Thanks for having us. Before you go, I just want to give a massive shout out to the partners who made the EAVC Summit and awards possible. So please do not tune out. We're partnered with these firms because they're great people with offerings that we know from our friends in the ecosystem are truly world class. First up, I want to give a big thanks to HSBC Innovation Banking. They helped us incept the awards in the very beginning. And truly, they are the leading bank for anyone in European venture.

58:39There's a reason why everyone knows them. Google Cloud, they were our venue hosted the summit. What a team, what a big effort they put on to help us. We're hugely grateful. make sure to reach out to Arabella or Oksana at the Google Cloud team to hear how they can help you as well as your portfolio. Massive credits goes to them. Ace Alternatives, we have so many friends in the Berlin ecosystem partner with these guys. Just the best fund ops team around. And as with any good restaurant, where the locals are is also where you get the best service. And now they're expanding across Europe, so they're definitely someone to talk to.

59:16Hainspoon, they're longtime partners of ours in both our own legal work They're great supporters of us here at EUBC, and I definitely think that they are one of the go-to legal teams to have in your corner. CW Communications, our dear friends who helped us secure CNBC, Bloomberg, Financial Times, and many more for this summer. It's a joy working with Dan and Kathy and the team. Fundcraft, Digiton Native, Full Suite, Lux Headquarter, and a great partner as you grow your firm out of Luxembourg. Definitely a fund admin to consider in your stack. I can only say that the team are incredible to work with.

59:52I'm very thankful that I've gotten to know them. I think they're one of the up and coming fund admins that you want to be thinking about. Portfolio IQ by Synaptic. You may know them for the Discover tool, which is branded on a Synaptic, but Portfolio IQ is absolutely a product you should know because there's no one that understands intelligence better than this team. And finally, Goodwin. They are a truly world-class legal partner you can trust. They're hands-on, business-oriented, an expert in everything and anything transatlantic. So those were our partners for the summit and awards. I know this might have been a bit long and boring, but really, if you have these guys on your side, I don't think your firm could be in any better hands.

1:00:32And also, they're helping us do what we're doing every day for you.