EUVC #273: George Henry, GP at LocalGlobe on Investing in the intersection of tech, culture, and politics.

26:27You know, for me, there is no other way to look at it. Like it's an amazing achievement. putting the politics aside i think as a market for venture europe for which a long for a long time was considered as a frontier market and again that's why i need to give so much credit to uh my partners soul and robin because i think they saw it and they advocated for it for so long before it was uh it was obvious to most but you know europe is it's an extremely exciting market which we've now seen over the last couple of years with with some amazing companies but i think europe is really interesting at this point and going forward for two things i think it has amazing raw ingredients and raw talents it has amazing universities it has amazing people and talents has amazing companies it has amazing social values it has it has funding there's lots of people with a lot of money in europe i think there is a second thing which maybe slightly more intangible, but there is a set of intangible values and social values in Europe, which are, I think, extremely strong, but also very well suited for where the world is heading with technology.

27:36Even if you look at the history around philosophy and some of the social science, which I think, as we try to understand our role and positions toward machines, is going to become even more important. the appreciation for design, for beauty, for the arts. There's amazing cultural heritage in Europe. And I think if you blend this together, this amazing raw talent and raw capabilities with this very strong cultural values and heritage, I think it can produce amazing thing. And we've started to see it in the last couple of years. If you take AI specifically, as you said, DeepMind was arguably one of the real, and it was armed before that, But DeepMind was arguably one of the first breakout AI company, but it had to be acquired to really scale.

28:20And I think that's why it shows where Europe still has a long way to go. And I think I was referring to it when I introduced the platform and why we launched Solar is because we think right now where Europe needs some of the most help is at the scale up level. There is like really strong emerging scene at the early stage. But in terms of having people having the vision and the resources to back some of those projects long term, Europe really needs to up its game. And if you look at it, when amazing companies go public and they go public outside of Europe, and then the investors who back those companies or pension funds who sits outside of Europe, in a way, it's a line we've used internally at LookGlo and within the group, it's we're selling our future.

29:03Like, you know, we're generating returns for people who don't live here, while we've done all the hard work of creating those companies, backing those companies, etc. You look at ChatGPT today, I think there's no reason to believe ChatGPT could not have been born in Europe. Maybe DeepMind could have been ChatGPT, right? And I know with If you can do lots of things, but what's for sure is, of course, the European company wouldn't have had the resources to really scale. And that's why you see the way ChatGPT has managed to scale through partnerships and investments. But we had DeepMind, we had SwiftKey, which Microsoft acquired, by the way.

29:40But I think you also see through other industries, like see what's going on in Paris, which is catching up with London. And I think it's amazing to see what's happening in Paris. There is obviously an amazing AI scene in Paris, but there is also like an amazing appreciation of like consumer culture, which we see through the Zenly team of launching a new product. And I don't think it's a coincidence. Like I was reading recently, I think 40 % of the Paris stock exchange or like CAC 40 is related to like luxury fashion and beauty. you even have I think Cotier US company doing a dual listing in Paris because they recognize there's like almost a thematic market stock exchange so yeah I think look all around and you see all this potential and start to see evidence that this potential is coming to life and then yeah happy to talk more specifically about new Palo Alto but maybe that's for a later question.

30:35Yeah, George, I love how you kind of set it up and mentioned a bunch of things that we're now going to deep dive in. And the way I'm going to kind of kick this conversation off is with, I know that you have some interesting reflections on the relationship between culture, technology, and politics. And of course, I'd love to ask you to expand on that and how it actually affects your own views on the way you invest and how you think about your strategy. But maybe also throw in an extra topic in there, which is, well, if you share that view, one could argue that tech investors have an underlying responsibility because they are impacting culture and politics.

31:14And do you think that the cohort of European venture investors that we have today are up to that responsibility? And are they accountable for that? For sure. I mean, I don't want to speak on behalf of everyone, but at least I think the conversations we have internally. And again, you were going back to like, you know, who are the kind of people we want to hire? I think that sense of like mission and purpose and being extremely aligned around like the long term mission of what we want to achieve as a firm and the companies that we back, what we want them to achieve. I think that this sense of alignment is extremely important.

31:51I think you see a lot of people trying to focus around some of the hardest problems and opportunities, right? Whether it's around climate, it's around health. So I think that's the amazing thing with what has changed in the VC industry. It used to be almost a retirement job, right? People had done, you know, a couple of companies, operators. They had, and in many ways you need those people because they have amazing experience in building businesses. But I think that the opportunity that we have today, someone at the beginning of their career can decide whether they've done a bit of startups or a bit of like businesses or other things, other activities.

32:26So, you know, I really want to back some of the most exciting companies. I'm really passionate about innovation and the impact those companies can have on the world. It really allows the investors to take the long term view alongside those companies. Because in many ways, you're betting your own career on these investments, right? The feedback loop is so long in venture that you need to be aligned with the long term potential of those companies. So I think that sense of like mission and purpose driven relates to the industry is definitely growing. And George, I want to ask you to expand on this, you know, this view you have of the relationship between politics, tech and culture.

33:06Lay it on us. I'd love to hear you expand on that. Yeah, so I think it was triggered partly with a conversation with a friend of mine who is in the culture industry. He produces music. He created a foundation related to climate, et cetera. So he spends a lot of time thinking about culture. A couple of years ago, I wrote a blog post about the climate zeitgeist where I was explaining that. I think we were the tipping point for climate because climate had become a cultural movement. It wasn't just an industry. You had people following Greta walking down the streets. and they're really advocating like they hadn't advocated for a really long time.

33:45And my friend was explaining, he believes that culture always sits upstreams of politics. It's really when something becomes extremely cultural that you have pressure on politics to regulate and intervene. And so if you can drive the right cultural change, you'll be able to be in a position where you can have governments to act. And then I start to reflect on this and I'm really interested about the relationship between technology and culture because I think technology is the enabler, is the innovation, but then for a product to succeed it needs to be adopted, right? And it's a bit of a chicken and egg there, but I think it's the adoption, it's the cultural adoption of a technology that really is driving the change.

34:27If you look at it through this lens and take AI, for example, there's been a new breakthrough technology with the work and research that have been done over decades. But now we feel like we're in inflection points around AI. There is a product like ChatGPT or MidJourney, which is really driving and changing culture in a very rapid and profound ways. And then you have governments looking at AI and suddenly like we need to regulate this thing or we need to understand it. I think in a way the path is becoming shorter and shorter. If you look at the time that it took for some governments to really start to understand the potential impact of social media and social networks or other businesses that were changing industries in profound ways, now I think it's going much faster.

35:16I think in many ways it's positive because I think the more you can have conversations, and I'm really using conversation, not immediately regulation, but I think the more you can have conversations between all the different sectors at an early stage, I think the better. It doesn't mean everything needs to get regulated too quickly because I think you can also then slow down innovation. But that's where, again, if we invest in the new breakthrough technologies, of course, we really have a responsibility in terms of what we look at and what we're investing in. And I think that's what partly makes us excited about, again, Europe and new Palo Alto.

35:54So as you described, the forward train ride from London I think the proximity you have between the talents, the science, the innovation, the cultural industries and the governments, I think in the age where we're at now, it's an opportunity. Because again, look at the AI Safety Summit that was organized a couple of weeks ago in the UK. I think it was a great example and great reflection of the proximity of all these disciplines, being able to come together and have a constructive conversation. Did you attend, George? No, I wasn't invited. What the fuck? Your friends at Index, where I saw that on the Rishi Sunak and Elon Musk talk.

36:36So I have a question on the topic of AI and its tech's impact on culture and vice versa. If we think back to when venture created or really amplified social media and put money behind the likes of Facebook, We really ended up creating something that has altered how almost anything policy-wise and culture-wise is developed in our societies. And that was, to a large extent, probably first seen by the VCs that plowed millions of dollars into those companies. I think it's fair to argue that we're at the same place with AI. And in our small, narrow world of venture, we talk a lot about the opportunities of AI.

37:30We talk some about the threats. Then we have government that talks some, I think, about regulation, but not as much as I'd maybe like, at least not publicly. I know that a lot happens behind the scenes, but we're not seeing it in the public discourse. And I'm thinking, where do you see the role both for yourself, but also for your colleagues in venture in terms of picking up the mantle and actually using our voice to try and talk about what AI actually means for the future and for society and for the individuals? Because I think that's in the end where we're putting money, right? That's what we're putting money into may come to fruition.

38:17So we're creating that world and financing it. Are we being open enough or blunt enough, candid enough about what type of future we might be creating? No, I think it's a great question. And it could probably make for a really long conversation. I think we can always be more open. I think that's a danger. It's something really hard in our industries. Like, you know, we live a bit in a bubble. And sometimes you think that what we see, the products we play with, the things we discuss, the things we read, we take it for granted that it's equally distributed. But the reality, it's not. And I think it's part of our responsibility.

38:58We try to democratize and share those perspectives. And that's where, in a way, the VC compared to some of the other asset allocations industry, it's quite amazing. It's very open. There's lots of content. People really talk about what they do. So I think that's a great opportunity around AI, specifically, that you were asking about the summit. The week of the summit, we helped co-organize what we call AI fringe events, which became like a distributed conference where you had all sorts of like AI mini talk conferences happening during the week of the summit at the British Library, at the Crick, at our office.

39:37We hosted a couple of talks, et cetera. And where the idea was really to bring together corporate, the civil society, and just have an open conversation about AI. And again, I think to go back when I introduced the platform, I think this connection between really what we do for ourselves as an organization because we think that's the right thing to do. But also part of the right thing to do is trying to contribute to the ecosystem. To us, I think that's how we look at it. What I think is really interesting with AI is the speed at which some of those products have been distributed. I remember there were some companies like, let's go back to Airbnb.

40:15It feels like for three years, I knew about Airbnb and my friends didn't know about it. I was like, how come you can't know about Airbnb? And here I'm amazed, like ChatGPT, not only people know about it, but people are already using it daily. I'm always surprised when I ask my friends, are you paying for it? The number of ChatGPT plus subscribers, etc. So again, in a way, it's a positive because I think sometimes playing with this technology is the best way to understand it and then have a conversation about it. But yeah, I think we can always be more open. But I think in terms of open, not only amongst ourselves, but really bringing a lot of parties to the table, whether it's politics, whether it's industries, whether it's universities.

40:58That's the key thing around the conversation. George, I'm now going to take us into the shout out segment because in the interest of time, we can't continue this conversation for too long, but hopefully we can revisit this in the future.

41:17I'd like to ask you to give a shout out to a co-investor, Angel or LP for being awesome. And of course, do share that story with us. So maybe I'll start, I'll do an individual shout out, but I'll start by a collective one. Because I think one thing which I particularly appreciate, especially over the last two years, where the market has been more challenging, is the value of board members and co-investors. and as we know VC can be a very competitive industry but I think it's also important to highlight that once you're on the board it becomes like a team game and you can really have different people play different roles and bring different perspectives whether it's co-investors and other VC firms or non-independent board members former operators which by the way are usually an amazing addition to boards but I think so I guess the collective shout outs to like all the learnings I've had from some of the amazing fellow board members, especially in the last two years.

42:10If I have to pick an individual one, I've already mentioned his name, but I really want to give a shout out to Saul because I've now been working with him for, you know, if you include Local Globe and Index, almost 10 years. I first read about him or knew about him when I read an interview in DFT where he was in Estonia talking about Erpli. and every time I go back to that interview, I feel like it's the same message that we discuss now almost every day in the office in terms of like the potential for Europe, the importance to pay attention to Europe, the idea of building really an ecosystem when he co-founded Seedcamp, this notion of openness, which we've just talked about being open about AI and the impact on society.

42:53He launched the Open Coffee Club as a meetup. I don't even know which year it was. It was probably almost 20 years ago and it became, I think, one of the most popular tech meetups in Europe where people could self-host it in their city. And still today, we get deal flow because people say, hey, I remember Sol from the Open Coffee Club. So yeah, I think in terms of what's really amazing about him, he's a founder almost before he's an investor. And what I mean by that, he has a bias towards action and a bias towards a long-term view and a long-term vision. and the way I always like to describe him is like if you take the uh uh think different motto of apple you know soul is very much like this it's like think different and whenever I'm in a situation where I'm like hmm what should I do I don't always agree with him right and I'm not saying he's always right but just that like nudge whether he's there or because you know we've been working together for a long time thinking okay think different is um it's very stimulating and it goes back to the fact that you know rules like we said for kids like you know you should you think the venture industry has certain rules and certainly there's probably some some rules uh there are and that you need to stick to but there's probably a bunch of rules that you know you don't necessarily need to stick to and again it's reflected in how we're uh we're building uh we're building the firm today with for example giving a separate brand names to the different funds it's uh it's because we want people to understand local commitment to seed and that's where for us the journey start with companies we're not a multi-stage firms trying to invest at like every single stage you know our reason to exist is local globe and if we do our job well at local globe then we'll be able to invest a capital from latitude and with solar because we'll be in some of those companies we will go on this uh on this journey but i think again it's it's very different and and i think there are other ways we're that that thing different is reflected in how we're being structured like from very early on we set up a foundation as part of the uh which i should have mentioned as part of the platform and group company.

45:00And the foundation gets 10 % of our annual profits from the management company, and then 2 % of carry of every fund. And right now, we've mostly backed local organizations like school NGOs from our neighborhoods. Again, going back to the mission of being a good long-term neighbor, it can be digitally in terms of like partnering with amazing founders in New Palo Alto, but it can also be physically with our physical neighborhoods and we treat the investment in those foundations just like a seed investment. We think, you know, see a great organization with some great people at the head of these organizations with a long-term mission.

45:33And then we make a commitment from the foundation. And again, I think it's very unique and it could only be born out of the think different mentality.

45:46Now let's head on into our three biggest learning section. And I want to ask you just to tell us what have been the three most important learnings for you in your last 10 years? This is probably going to be a bit repetitive. I think I've already mentioned like, you know, kids bringing the best out of you, which is the first one that comes to mind for me. I think the second is the power of vulnerability. I think, you know, you come out of university, you're very driven, you're very ambitious, you want to do things, you start working, maybe you do a company or you do like a really high-demanded job and you're pushing, you're pushing.

46:21And there's, again, a sense of strength that you want to communicate. And I think actually learning that sometimes showing your vulnerable side is extremely powerful. I had a friend who worked at Apple under Angela Ahrens. Sorry if I mispronounce her surname. But she's ex-Barberi and led some of their retail transformation. And he said she was the most amazing leader he ever worked for and asked him why. and he said she was not afraid of being vulnerable and it built so much trust with her team. And so I think that's something I've really tried to apply. And again, when you guys ask me what's your most pivotal moment, I'm happy to share that maybe the very personal story I shared because I think it's important for people to really understand who you are and why certain things are important to you or why you might react to certain things in certain ways.

47:14and then finally I think this feeling of like saying no which I think that's quite hard for me but I'm really trying to learn and nurture but again in in this industry like when you get into it you feel like you have to say yes a lot right because people if you say no too much they won't send you companies if you say no to too many meetings that we they won't want to meet with you or catch up etc you know realizing that there's only so much so many things you can do and being very focused is extremely important. So kind of this idea of like less is more, I think it's something I'm definitely trying to like nurture and cultivate.

47:51And that's why people would always complain that I'm not necessarily always good to reply to emails or at least reply really quickly. It's because I've taken the view that your email inbox is a to-do list that's dictated by other people. And I want to dictate my own to-do list. And so this notion of like, you know, zero inbox, some people it works really well for some people, but sometimes I just realized like it just doesn't work for me. And so I'll process my inbox in a honestly pretty chaotic way, but I'm trying to make it work. So yeah, I think that these are probably the main things that come to mind.

48:24Yeah, George, if I may, as a listener, I think there's a fourth one at least that I retain from hearing and participating in this interview, which is rules are made to be questioned both in venture and in life. Because you mentioned this when reflecting on parenting, but you also mentioned this when shouting out to solve yeah no i think definitely and you know i think the people we work with every day and the founders that's basically what they do they just rethink the rules of of industry so i think keeping that mindset but that's that i think that's something i find interesting like sometimes investors of vcs are not really good at like putting into practice the thing they they preach and and again it goes back for us this notion of building the firm and building the organization is something that we feel so aligns with some of the founders because we try to challenge ourselves and there are things we don't do well but we try to get better and improve.

49:14It sometimes still feels like a cottage industry and we love our rule of thumbs, right? It's so easy to navigate the world like that. Anyway, now it's time for the quickfire round where I'll ask you three quick answer questions. And now, the quickfire.

49:33Quick start, quick start, quick start.

49:39What advice would you give your 10-year younger self? For me, it's very much learning along the way. So I much prefer to be in the moment and learning. Since this is an investment podcast, and even though it's not an investment advice, but I think 10 years ago, probably it was 2013, so probably would have been a good time to put a lot of your savings into Bitcoin. And then two years later, take some of the return and put it into ETH. So that's what I say, but maybe it's a bit trivial. I wish I was there to hear that. What are your top tips for emerging VCs across Europe for now fundraising? I think there's an amazing cohort of emerging VCs and SolarGBs.

50:14And like I said, very much where I see myself as an emerging investor and an emerging firm. The thing we try to apply in my advice would be behave like a startup. Like, you know, pick your... Oh, hello. Hi there. We have an unexpected guest. Yes, to those that are not watching the video, Oliver just joined us Andreas is a six-year-old You want to say hi Oliver? You want to say hi? No He's stunned He's stunned by fame Oh my god What is this? Sorry George Maybe we should ask him some questions Because if you want to stay true To what we said earlier Maybe he should be the one Giving us some The one teaching us I will wait for you Maybe Yeah I think you know Can he be something That's like Underexplored But right now we see a lot of emerging funds trying to go after like operators who can become founders.

51:06I think that's a really exciting quote, but I think quite a lot of people start to focus on this. I think you have other people who really try to pick their own niche. You know, take someone like Ramsey who started No Label Ventures, something we funded with fact, and he's backing on the immigrant founders, but he's also using his background at like XKKR and Silver Lake to do precedency. so if you read his memos it's like you know honestly it's quite it's quite impressive gloria poor line which i'm sure you know should uh we should just give a shout out to ramsey because we he's a good friend of the pot as well so great so yeah big shout out just take your time here to to make sure that everyone knows that there's a solid guy there big big shout out to ramsey we we love what he uh what he's doing gloria borderline with puzzle ventures i think what's interesting about gloria is like she's done a growth investing at tcv and index also early stage investing at index then operator um at crease or at later stage and then at back to early stages she has a pretty comprehensive view both on the operator and investor side and i think you can see it in the way she's trying to get into you know some of the most interesting pre-seed and seed investments in europe and then you have probably people who now like look a bit more accomplished but the way nathan picked ai as a as a focus a couple of years ago with uh air streets now he has built one of the most valuable interesting ai community picnic at adjacent who you know was banging about consumer subscriptions and we're like yeah is that big can it really like get big enough etc and then today everyone is paying for spotify and chat gpt yeah i i think all these people are like really good example of like just like a startup pick something that you feel people are not paying attention to and then do it really really well final one what's the most counterintuitive thing you've learned since you've been in venture?

52:50I think it's the, and sometimes it's also due to the vocabulary, but you have a sense because the vocabulary for startups is very much around speed and moving fast and velocity and shipping products, et cetera, that you think VC is the same, that you want to go fast, you want to do. And in many ways, VC is just a slow industry. Sometimes you have to move fast. You know, if you look at a company and you need to make a decision in a short amount of time but even ideally i think you have a bit of time to make that decision uh but like i said i think vc is much more like of an endurance game it's like pick your lane stay focused and run your your your own race the feedbacks loop are long some of the best uh investment you'll make would probably be come out of relationship that you've built over five ten plus years because those people you know you've learned to know them maybe they've done a company before maybe they've been operators and like all good things if you try to do it well stay focused and keep doing it and try to to be better like you know always try to be better then hopefully at some point it just compounds and then uh and and the most interesting comes towards towards the end and actually if you pick some of the most famous investors it's quite interesting sometimes to see that some of the greatest investments were done quite late in their uh in their career so yeah i think putting a vocabulary, which is more around a slower pace and the endurance for the industry is more appropriate.

54:16Everyone, if you're listening in and you love our show, you know what to do. Follow the pod, drop us a review and subscribe at io.vc. George, it was super nice to have you with us. I appreciate your time and hopefully we'll connect soon. Thank you guys. I love what you're doing. And I should have said when I talk about Europe, I should have started by saying you pick the right name for the podcast. So, yeah, it's really cool what you're doing. Very creative, right? George, we have a final message from my son. He wants to say something. Okay. Yo, I file bye-bye. I did spend a couple of months in Denmark when I was at Cope at Bane.

54:55Oh, really? Yeah, but unfortunately, I'm not sure I understood this. he attempted a trump remark of uh saying you're fired

55:07i think as his way to say the interview is yeah tear down this wall it's more than just an ally this is a union of values values. United and determined we can serve as a model for other regions of the world. The nature of a problem requires a European response. Europe is a story of new beginnings. New beginnings. Let's start acting. Yo, I file. Bye bye.