EUVC #289: Vincent Touati-Tomas, Head of Marketing at Northzone on marketing for venture capital funds

31:44I'm very lucky, first of all, because the investors at Northsun write a lot. This is like cultural, so I didn't even have to do anything about it. So you basically can tap into a pool of deep dives and notes on deals that you can then repurpose for content. But really, I think it's down to, I think if we talk about culture, you know, if we take media, for example, we pay for media. We have subscriptions. And it starts with this. Like, if you think media is free, this is the type of value you put on media. So you need to first pay. That's where it starts. and when it comes to content this is what I always say to young investors I think it's also disrespectful if you show up and you haven't prepared and we talked about this because we prepared this podcast a little bit asynchronously over email and this obviously makes a difference because you know what you actually really want to talk about you have some talking points and you have some bullets and then you have a conversation and I know the successful investors they have thesis that they write on their notion or knowledge base and they are able to share this.

33:04This really elevates the conversation immediately. The other upside is also one of my selling arguments internally, is that you build a public track record. It's really tough inventor to claim your track record. and I think we should be a bit more political about it. And if you do content, at least you have a public proof that that's how you've built your thesis. That's how you've made this one or two investment in this space. Because if you don't do this, what would happen is that, you know, five, ten years from now, someone else is going to claim this investment at the firm and stuff like this happen at firms.

33:54And we see it all the time with emerging managers leaving and having all the managers just stepping in. And then there is this game where people claim the deals. But this is just fair if people did not build a public track record. So that's always actually something that investors understand. I'm like, yeah, you're not doing this for me, for the brand, for the franchise. You're doing this for yourself. And then ultimately, obviously, there is a question whether you want to be a brand that is driven by people or building a tier one brand and tier one franchise. And this is very tough for a lot of VC firms.

34:43But at least for us, we know we really want to do a brand. and a very powerful brand that people recognize on top of the individuals. It's funny, the part that you said about preparation, right? Because it's very true. We do have show notes for this show, right? On EVC. We do have in the top of every script, we put a message to the guest that says the best guests prepared after doing 200 episodes, 278 hour thing. There's just no doubt that the hands down, the best interviews, the episodes that get listened to the most have had massive prep happen beforehand. And we, in the beginning, actually didn't force our guests to do that preparation.

35:27But what we found was that, and that was kind of out of respect for their time, right? But we found out that was mispleased because the people that actually should command the biggest respect from us and the people that have the biggest followings and everyone wanting to hear their word and cling on every single word that they put out there are the people that also prepare. So when we didn't ask them to prepare, we could see that they were sitting there with a real script in front of them. So for that reason, it's just anyone thinking that the thoughts of greatness just automatically pop into Fred Destin's mind.

36:04Not true. That guy prepares. But I'm going to go even further because I actually do not want to work with people that don't write. I'm not interested in this because life is too short. There is, especially in our ecosystem, a lot of competition. If you let writing, literally, like if you're never preparing anything, if you show up to all your meetings unprepared, honestly, there's no point. You know, like why? And I think this is the same with like media, marketing, thesis. it's so disrespectful to show up unprepared. And I will say that I've seen, and also we prepare a lot because it's the culture and we write a lot.

36:50So this is part of like preparing the mind. But the more senior you go, the more the tendency you have to drop this ball. And it's bad because actually you should, it should be the other way around. You need to even prepare more or build around yourself a setup where you have, you know, EAs or chief of staff or people in your team that are actually preparing with you the meetings, because otherwise you don't win. And I think the VT firms that really win, they actually prepare together and they have a really good knowledge base internally. And I know we're going to talk about narrative because that's my degree, but really this is all about this and having a place where you put all your knowledge and you know people can tap into as a company.

37:35I love to just ask you about performance in Europe. And it's because it's a point that I know is close to your heart. Same for me, obviously, as an LP. But we're not talking too much about performance openly in Europe. And I'd love to ask you to first share your thoughts there, and then I'll come in with mine. So this should have probably been my controversial opinion, actually. but the truth is there is performance and there is performance. So there is consistent performance. There is delivering 3 to 5x every single time. And there is delivering 10x and 1x. I think there is a secrecy around performance because people are just scared.

38:24But I actually personally feel it's super unfair because founders are constantly grilled on super high level stuff, but, you know, valuation. I'm always actually impressed by this. Like we have founders completely grill on their valuations and, you know, they raise and add to one billion plus valuation and they need to exit. And, you know, there is this pressure, but feces, you just don't know. And I think there is this like a marketing game that plays around it then where you think that some franchises are actually delivering performance, but they are not. And I think we need to be very honest with founders and talking about fund cycles, how it works, talking about what impacts the performance.

39:15And I just think in Europe, we don't have this culture. And what's really hard, because we thought about it and even releasing our performance, But the reason why we didn't do it is because if the entire ecosystem is not playing this game of sharing the performance, you're not going to get anything from sharing and be transparent. Because then people are going to pinpoint at you and use this as a reference, but you're not going to be able to respond to this. So I always think that we need to have a more open media list, for example, in Europe. In the US, you go to a LinkedIn page of prolific partners, they have their performance reason because they're very proud of this.

40:03And somehow in Europe, we don't do this. And it's a shame because this is the truth of our markets. LPs care about it even more. Right now, they're very much focused on cash returned to them, which is fair. but NIR which is taking a hit right now in venture in Europe but the truth is no one wants to share this data honestly I think you guys should do it and ask like the 10 top tier VC firm what is the average net multiple let's do something that is pretty simple average net multiple I bet you that no one is going to answer to you and they have good multiples I don't even know why they're fighting it because they should be proud of it I completely agree.

40:48And it's part of the transparency work we're trying to do. We try and, as an example, when we make our investments, we always make as much as we can public. And we try and talk with the firms about, we'd love to publish this and that and so on. Because we think it's for the betterment of the ecosystem. Because as you said, this is something for them to be proud about. I think someone, if anyone listening in is and doesn't know, then Seatcamp, every time they've closed the fund, they put out publicly the fundraising deck for the fund. They obviously don't do it while they're racing. They're not allowed to.

41:29But afterwards, you can actually go in and it's not, you know, that the performance benchmarks are not cut out of it. So I think that there's definitely something that can be seen there. I just listened to, and this is a shout out to our good friend, Michael Sitchmore on the Altgo's mainstream podcast. He had Fred Destin there and he introduced Fred with, he has a personal track record above 7x. I think that was the introduction, which is like, you know, and every time you hear someone actually saying that, you're like, huh, that's nice. I would wish we would be doing the same thing. I think also because the main problem that we have in venture when it comes to attracting LP capital is performance varies so much from the best to the mediocre, to the crabby.

42:20And I would so wish that the firms and the individual investors that are breaking out as emerging managers, that they would be much more public about the performance metrics that they carry around. That would make it much easier, I think, to make investors to whom ventures have such a weird asset class. And how do you vet a manager? How do you think about startup investing? so on, they've maybe done startups themselves or startup investing themselves and turned out super crabby for them. So for that reason, I've heard many times LP say, I don't believe in venture. It's like, well, you can't not believe in venture.

43:01You can have super bad experiences, but that does not mean that venture doesn't work. So I wish that all the investors that we're seeing, obviously being on the LP side, we see their decks. And for that reason, we see their performance. but I would wish that that performance number would be on their LinkedIn. Yeah, but I think the problem we have and the challenge is very much that we need to rally around some sort of even ends at markets, because this is the exact same topic. We're talking about performance, but really we're talking about liquidity. And I think in Europe, we still haven't found...

43:34When I started in the venture ecosystem, I was lobbying for startups at France Digital, And at the time, we were lobbying the European Commission to do a European stock market. This was 10 years ago. I still haven't seen it. And it's still not London. It's still not Euronext. And right now, the only way to have access to performance is to basically have companies like Spotify, Trustpilot, Kahoot, in our portfolio that are actually became public. And so then you can literally see the stake of the VC firms. And then you're like, okay, so it's at least the money they have on the table right now. You don't know the multiple, but you can guess with the fund size, roughly, whether or not it's a fund returner.

44:23And this is, I think, where we should start. And then you can go to private market data. But the truth is, we haven't rallied around a European narrative around performance. And I actually think it's important for liquidity. To be fair, you know what I say now, now that we had the discussion, I don't think it's a VC responsibility. I think it's an LP responsibility.

44:52Here we go. So what I would say is no LP would ever publicize anything that we're not allowed to. But we could definitely be more public about the averages that we're seeing across portfolios and so on. But then I think it comes back to the fact that many LPs, you know, you have a mixed bag, right? And for that reason, LP performance will always be less interesting than the individual firm. That would maybe be my one comment on that. I looked at my calendar here and I saw that we're saying 25th of January. That means that by the time this episode goes out, we will have launched the European VC awards in an initiative together with HSBC, Innovation Banking, Ismer Capital and Superventure.

45:39We're, of course, doing this initiative because we're saying we need to highlight the champions more. And of course, part of this, we will do everything we can to say VC firm of the year. we awarded them because of XYZ and we did that blah blah blah you know and the finalists were these and we will we will of course as the judging panel will of course have access to to quite in-depth data but hopefully together with that every year we will have for VC firm of the year three or five announced finalists where we will be able to publish their performance metrics right because they will be high level enough and it will of course be in collaboration with the firms so that nothing goes out that they don't want out there.

46:26But as part of the initiative is saying, if we can get this big enough that's picked up in Forbes and they share that the five top firms in Europe at these awards all had a DPI above whatever, right? That would be such a strong statement to get out to all the people that don't spend all their time in venture, right? Let's get on from our journey down performance lane and talk a bit about the dream structure for a VC firm when it comes to operations and marketing? Because I would love to ask a question on carry and incentives and that type of thing. But let's start with the open question. What's the dream structure?

47:05So the dream structure, if there is any, for marketing, this is only for marketing, right? Like you're not grilling me on the rest. I think, so obviously if you're a small firm, having an owner, it's important. I think too often the operations inventor basically hold potatoes. So it goes from like one partner to another. I think the true inventor, and because of everything we talked about, actually about performance, you basically need someone that links the product with the supply. And inventor, it's LPVC. So I would say that the managing partner has to be involved. in marketing. I know it's not always the immediate thinking you have when you see the marketing partners in VC firms in Europe, but really it should be their decision and they should have this strategy in charge.

48:08I think it works really well. And obviously you have different way to go about it if you have a lot of AUM or if you don't. So there's no such thing as You need to spend X, Y, Z on events, content, really depends on what you want to do and how much you want to invest. But invest in marketing from day one. That's for sure. That will help. Totally second that part with having it tied very closely in with a founding slash managing partner. So important when you look at the great firms that have been built, they've always been very involved on that. Even when they claim not to be. If you look at the US, they say they don't care as much about some of them.

48:49You have someone like A16C that's very public and have always built a very strong marketing machine and have had that as their core DNA right from the beginning. But even the firms over there that play the game of not looking like they're playing that playbook, they still are. And it's not because you're out there that you're doing. You can also be super secretive about the way you run these things, right? And I know a lot of people that do this. And back to media, for example, if you don't like headlines, if you do not want to be quoted for various reasons, journalists love this. They love conversations where they don't have to quote because they can have access to something a bit more special.

49:37So actually, you can be super powerful and have a huge network and a huge reach without being seen, which is, I know it's the dream of all the investors because they don't want to do it. So actually it's possible.

50:00Now let's get into our shout out second. I'd love to ask you, Vincent, to give a shout out to someone in the ecosystem that you just absolutely love. She's going to hate this because she's not very public, but that that would be we talked about mental health and that would be Anika Stenparson who's the founder of the Inno Foundation which is basically a foundation that invests in for-profit and non-profit mental health projects and startups. Anika has completely changed my mind on for-profit versus non-profit because I always thought that it was really hard to to merge the two worlds. And, you know, obviously, living in the UK, charity donation is a big, big thing here, culturally, which is not something that I had in France.

50:48But here, the charities are run like companies. Like, they're very efficient. And I think when it comes to mental health, which is such a big problem, and I'm actually involved with this foundation, especially with emerging young adults between 18 to 25, where you basically have so much happening in your life and so much pressure on your shoulder, I don't think it's addressed. And honestly, Annika is really paving the way. And I think 10 years from now, we're going to see more people driving this weird structures where they actually invest in different type of assets. And this is probably where the ecosystem is going.

51:28And I wanted to give her a shout out because I think what they're doing is actually really powerful and they have an impact on millions of people every day.

51:41Now, I would have gone more into self-work as I said before, but since time flies and we're having fun, let's take a closer look at Northzone and marketing at Northzone. So let's start with the question, what is typical marketing support that you provide over the years at Northzone? so obviously it really depends on stage we have a an operation teams with with the expertise one of them is marketing i actually think you had tom very recently in the podcast as to that's legal and we we work as a team on what people need at specific stages so it really depends and marketing is also very cyclical because the main support we get to founders when it comes to marketing is a fundraising announcement.

52:34So basically, what is your fundraising story? How do you build your industry relations long-term? What is going to be a narrative on the market? And very much building templates with the companies. I was much more hands-on when I started Inventor. I was literally pitching. We still do it when it makes sense, but I was pitching tech runs and the likes on behalf of the company. But nowadays, obviously we can help with these relationships, but it's much more powerful to build you on the Rolodex if you're a startup. Because if you always go to your EC from C to Series B to Series C to get step crunch um or sifted uh or taking you or all these other medias well you're never going to build this relationship that you need for your brand to grow and we're not an agency so another thing actually is to advise on agency picking and actually pushing people to hire an agency because a lot of the time they feel it's a waste of money.

53:45I'm telling them it is not. Absolutely not. It's a debt if you do not have an agency. One question on that, because many VCs also ask us, should we engage with the agency? We have our own friend that we often push people in the direction of. But what would you say are the things to really keep in mind when picking? Because it's not that there's not a plethora of different options. but it can be very difficult for someone who's not used to picking PR agencies to find that. Honestly, and you're going to think I'm mad about this, but I think if you don't have a narrative, and I know we need to talk about it, but if you do not put the work that is needed to onboard a freelancer, a PR, an agency, do not waste your money.

54:41because they are not going to be magicians and come up with ideas. You need to be the product. They are a support marketing function to distribute. And obviously they can strategize this. But if you don't have any idea about where you want to stand, don't even waste your money. And obviously you're going to be frustrated. And I always say this to founders. I try to understand why there is this frustration around PR agencies. And most of the time, they either wanted to micromanage this instead of dedicating this to someone that really wanted to do it in the marketing function because they think headline is super important, which is true.

55:24But ultimately, you can also staff it and have people that really care and think about it all day long. And also, they've been cheap about it. So they've been cheap with their time. They've been cheap with their money. And so they ended up working with people that were not the right people. And I feel sorry for them because honestly, this is one of the best marketing investments you can do for your VC firm is to have a very, very good agency or freelancer that is on your side, pushing you to build your narrative. Yeah, I completely agree. But it does take work and time. now i want to ask you about narrative adventure we've talked about it quite a few times so so so i think everyone's been waiting for it at least i have so so tell us a bit about how you think about about narrative adventure so this is the master class part well a lot of pressure on my little folders uh it's it's very simple it's not even fancy and i think we can even share the templates I have for VC firms.

56:30Just a side note on that, everyone. We'll put that in the show notes on EU.VC. So scroll down somewhat halfway through and then you'll find it. So it's a knowledge base. It's a Google document, Notion page, whatever you're using, where you basically have the skeleton of what you stand for. You have opinions about specific topics, your border plays. it is more of an execution play than the strategy play so it's not like a fancy I think a lot of people think it's like you know we need to think through no no it's super simple and actually the template is what it's for like who are you what are you investing in and then over time this is a document that has to leave and so you basically make this breeze with you know what's happening right now in the markets what are you thinking about layoffs and how it impacts your portfolio and how it impacts talent pool?

57:24What do you think about the performance of your portfolio? Stuff like this. So in that sense, you're saying you're starting out with the foundational questions about the firm. But then as something happens in the market, you don't go and write a blog post about it and then that's out there and you don't really retain that knowledge. You actually build it into your narrative document as well. Exactly. And then obviously there is an editorial element that can, you know, another layer where, you know, you decide whether or not this goes out of your narrative page. And obviously it makes sometimes a lot of sense because you realize that it's completely aligned with your value and your brand objectives that are at the top of the narrative document.

58:14And then, you know, it's super topical and going to work and resonate with people. And then, yes, it can become a marketing piece. But it's not what this exercise is for. And back to unprepared mind being the worst. This is making you a prepared mind. This is just it. That's what it is. Having a narrative document that yourself, you're putting together, it's going to force you to think, it's going to force you to know where you stand. And also when you write it down, I think a lot of people realize, and I do this with startups, obviously, they realize that actually they are not that differentiated.

58:51And so then you challenge yourself on how you can be differentiated and what are going to be the topic that your audience is going to resonate with. And I really urge people to look at the documents because it's super simple and you don't need to spend too much time on it. But you need to, on a regular basis, go back to it. and basically make it breathe. Yeah. And the important thing to say there is also, it's a repository of knowledge for anyone across the firm. So many of the questions that we would ask guests to prepare on when they come on UEC, answers will be there, right? So in that sense, any partner from North Zone will have a quicker prep because that's built within the firm.

59:42As an example, same thing when you engage a social media freelancer. Take on my social media. I don't have time anymore. You know, if you have that narrative build up, you really can't get to work right away. When you go and you want to do a post on something, right? Put it as the backbone of whichever AI writer that you're using and say, this is the foundation of what we believe about things. Now, please write a post about the layoffs in tech on the back of that, something like that, right? So there's just so many dividends from doing that. heavy lifting in the beginning. Now let's get into the, where do we start as a VC?

1:00:25Like where do we start when we want to get into this marketing game a bit more? That's a tough one because I think it really depends on where you are and what are the resources you have. I personally feel that you need to start with writing and, you know, having these types of documents. Identifying the best supporters in your firm and people that really want to to drive this build content being being online go to conferences i think this is very important to know what are we where are going to be the supporters and we're going to be the ones that are going to challenge the strategy because they feel like it's a waste of time so making sure that the people that you're sending externally or actually the one that are going to be supportive of this because if not it can actually backfire and then you basically don't do anything and I've actually seen firm you know doing this because they realized that actually they didn't want to do any any marketing which is a shame but I guess you know it's it's better to know where you stand on.

1:01:25I think right now with AI with you know author all these tools that are recording and transcribing in real time the barrier to build content is super low. Honestly, at this point, it's laziness that you're not having a blog post on your thesis about neobanks right now on your blog, you know, or whatever you're investing in. And I honestly think this is the case because obviously I'm not saying that chatty is replacing the thinking process. No, but you have tools to put a 10-minute conversation with someone and have some very interesting thoughts, you have the right tools to collaborate and write this with a couple of people.

1:02:16Something that I always say, and it's actually a good starting pack as well, is to have a pool of copywriters because people are busy and it's not the most expensive part of marketing. But if you already have thoughts and if you put your thought together, it's not ghostwriter, it's very much copywriter like to really put in shape copy especially back to the problem of language uh i mean i'm not a i'm not an english native i work with copywriters there's no shame in this and i think it's very important to be uh to be just you know playing by your strength and as an investor you're not supposed to produce content uh you're supposed to chase deals and investing deal so you know it's like delegating that part that you probably don't like but but i can guarantee you this is what i say to people as well if you start writing you're going to enjoy the process so if you don't like it it's likely that you you haven't really wrote i think there's a like likelihood of that yes now before we go into the quick fire vinton i want to ask you one thing and that's just if you could expand a bit more on building a franchise versus building a personal brand how do you think about that at north zone how do you think about it personally how do you kind of advise people to think about it i mean i think you need to be honest about it i think it's really hard if you're right now for reading on the market and you're because of where the market is you're basically having a smaller fund and you don't have the resources to build a big franchise on the get-go I still think you need to be consistent about the type of culture you want to build and whether or not you want to be for the long term I know for one that Northson founders were not working at Northson any longer they basically built Northson in 96 they were obsessed with building a franchise they wanted a company they didn't want a fun I don't think they knew it from the get-go but obviously when you talk to them you realize that they really wanted to build a company that was you know promoting people internally and And as a consequence, I think we have a culture where we know how to build generational shifts.

1:04:46And it's not a given in a VC firm. I think a lot of VC firms don't know how to do this. And that's probably because from the get-go, there's not this culture of actually building a franchise. And you talked about Fred Destin. I think Fred was also very honest about it and transparent recently about what he wanted to do next. and I think we need more opinions like this in the market because this is the truth. It's very different. Some people are in for a couple of funds and they know this from the get-go or they realize this after a couple of funds and it's also fine. But the cake is very good when you're racking management fees and so I think it's sometimes just a game of just having more and more funds.

1:05:33But in the long term, if in your core, in your heart, you do not want to build a franchise, the market is going to punish you. So that's how I think about it. And I think when you do hires in your VC firm, you need to question. And I know you briefly talked about carry, but you need to question whether or not you want to incentivize people for the short term or for the long term and what long terms look like. And I was lucky to work in companies where, you know, people thought about these topics. And so I didn't have to fight to, you know, get valued in an operation role. But I see people in investment teams at VC firms that are not getting the value they deserve.

1:06:19And these people are going to leave. And these people are going to create their own fund. And our market is going to be a bit more fragmented. there's this article recently i don't remember the name but talking about the aggregators versus the niche uh vcs and basically saying that in between uh doesn't work and i kind of agree uh and this is actually my statement the the controversial statement but i agree that aggregators can be build big franchise and niche can be smaller boutique uh funds and it's where market line. I want to pick one thing up you said about Kerry because we didn't make it to talk too much about it.

1:06:58But I said to David the other day that it's funny if you just make the thought experiment that because in venture, it's quite a few firms that were, it's obvious there's a big difference between whether you're on the investing team or you're on another team. If you apply that same thinking to any other type of business and said, well, if you're not on sales, you're second second tier, you're second rank, or if you're not engineering, you're second rank, you're not going to get the lion's share of the economics, or you're not going to get any equity compensation here because we only give that to engineers.

1:07:36It's kind of like if you put that line of thinking into any other type of firm, it would be outrageous. But in venture, in many firms, it is so that if you don't, if you're not on the investing team, you're not going to see much carry, if any at all. So I think that that's at least a framing for me that makes me think, okay, there's something interesting. So I think it's because we apply a framework that is not applicable to VC. I think in venture, it's more whether or not you're senior in New York. So if you're a partner, regardless of what is linked to your input, is investment, is it operation, you should basically get the same share.

1:08:14And I think this is where most of the top tier VC firms are going and I've been doing for years. for me this is basically how it works um and it's it's it's down to the functions and down to the investors to to claim their spot at the partnership if they want to climb this carry ladder and this is how it works in my in my knowledge in very good companies uh and i think it's back to performance obviously it has an impact on performance if you only have you know uh three people that are getting 80 % of the carry, it just doesn't work. Now on that very controversial statement, let's get into the quickfire round.

1:08:56And now, the quickfire round.

1:09:07I will ask you the first question here, and I know you haven't done any notes for it, and I guess that's because you're quite about the same age as I. So when I ask you, what advice would you give to your own 10-year younger self? That's a pretty young guy you're talking to. But I want to give you the challenge to still take it, though. I know. I honestly don't know. I think I would. This is why I didn't put any notes. I think, honestly, Bates National earlier, I think it was a big group of faith. But that changed my mind about everything. because you see more different cultures and you realize that your role is very small.

1:09:49And you realize, and the more you do it, actually, the more you realize that the world is an oyster and you basically have to explore everything to be in tune with people if you actually want to do this. So for me, it was very important. But I think I fought it for a long time because I thought that it was so hard to move with like visas and stuff and I basically put myself on various so that. I would basically say read in English, you know, get to this point where you can fly around the world or take the train around the world, which is more aligned with the, yeah, that's what I would say. But this is true.

1:10:32I'm way too young to give my younger self any advice. If anything, there are many, many mistakes I'm still in. Awesome. What are your top tips for emerging VCs across your core fund raising? I think we can repeat what we just said about franchise building. I think you need to define whether or not you want to be a franchise in the long term. And I know a lot of my friends investing in funds that are micro-funds and they only do it because they know exactly what they are going after. I think the people that don't know whether or not they want to build a franchise, they struggle to fundraise because they're not clear about the vision.

1:11:12They just see the one fund. I know it's hard, but I think it's very important that you define this from the get-go.

1:11:23And don't fundraise in your local market. Go abroad. Move again. Same as what I would say to my younger self. There are pockets of money everywhere. I think it's... actually there is a narrative that there is no money and it's impossible to raise right now honestly around me people raise uh we raise in 22 more than 1 billion funds obviously it's not the same category because we've been around for more than 27 years but the truth is there is capital available uh if you know how to define your product but i don't even know i don't even know I'm putting this out there because I don't know how it is to fundraise right now in this market.

1:12:09But that's my guess. I do think that you're right, especially as long as you're differentiated. But I do also think that before there was openness to raise or open opportunities to raise some less differentiated thesis. That's probably or definitely less true. Now, what is the most counterintuitive thing you've learned in venture? so i wish that was very surprising actually but early winners are not winners like most of the time i'll never get liquid like i one way or the other and this is nuts to me because obviously i'm i'm more of a creative person that these these stuff like very rational stuff or hard for me to understand but the truth is yeah it's uh it's it's not because you have an early winner in your portfolio that it's going to be the firm return or actually that it's going to give you any money um so this is sometimes it can even be a rest lab it's not always the case obviously but yeah and and still VC I would also say that I've learned that outside of the narrative that fast growth, it's so cool, there's a lot of capital available and grows so fast, blah, blah.

1:13:27It really takes time to build into your VC valuation. So I think people need to know this from the get-go that when you take VC money, it will take time to actually print the money because it's only on paper for a very, very long time. And I think we've done it recently in the team and you just realize that the large outcomes, the ones that really push your IRR up, or actually the ones that take a lot of time. And I think you can look at Norton's portfolio. It's the case of all the companies that have really produced outside return.

1:14:08Now, before we wrap things up and let you go, I just want to ask you to give us a controversial opinion or uncommon belief that you hold that most people around you do not hold? So I actually do not know it's that controversial any longer, but it worked for a very long time and still is a little bit. But I think PE and VC asset classes are going to eventually come together. The number of power low returns is very low. And the number of funds that are actually chasing these specific power low returns and not caring about all the others is extremely high. So I just don't see how it can work. That's just my guess on the market.

1:14:54And I hope I'm proven wrong because Venture as an asset class is very much focused on the power log gain. But I can see it coming with a lot of VC firms that are basically become asset managers and doing more P &P from doing more VC. All right, everyone. You heard it here first. If you enjoyed this episode of the EUVC podcast, do drop us a review. Follow the pod and subscribe at EUVC. And also subscribe to the Northstone newsletter because I am 100 % sure that you will learn a thing or two from that. Thank you. Thank you, Andres. This would therefore need to tear down this wall. It's more than just an alliance.

1:15:37This is a union of 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. Acting