Laura McGinnis, Partner at Singular: Growing Singular's London office to back UK founders

0:00Hello and welcome back to Scaling Europe show. I'm Seth Johnson. Today I'm joined by Laura McGinnis. Laura McGinnis has got some amazing news to share. Laura, what's going on?

0:08Laura McGinnis:Hi, Sam. Good to see you. Yeah, I guess the big news is that I'm joining Singular as a partner. And for people that don't maybe know about Singular, Singular is a European early stage VC fund investing from Series A to B across sectors. The core brand is Series A, but we do come in at Seed. We partner with founders. The moment early proof market pull and company building ambitions start to converge. We have offices in Paris and London. And yeah, we combine the agility of a focused team with the resources of a much larger platform. Amazing news. Yes, you know, it's an amazing firm. This is amazing news for you.

0:48So like, firstly, a massive congratulations.

0:50Laura McGinnis:Thank you. Can you talk a bit about what appealed to you about Singular? Yeah, absolutely. So Singular is special because it combines the traits that I look for in founders. Originality, speed, taste, ambition, empathy, and non-consensus judgment. When I met with the team, it took quite a bit of time. And again, the team has ambition, but it didn't feel performative. They're super sharp, kind, contrarian. I think the job at Series A is to see the shape of something long before everyone else agrees. Singular has that instinct. Like they're very good at backing founders before the market has fully caught up.

1:37Laura McGinnis:I love the stat that over half of Singular's investments are preemptions. So they have like taste, but not theater. They're not overly showy. And so I really, I loved kind of the energy and feeling of the firm. Yeah, that's definitely the impression that you get is that there is certainly a sort of, I don't want to say like arty, but almost a creative edge to the firm that other funds don't have, I guess. Can you talk a bit about how this opportunity came up? Was this, you know, have you known the partners for a long time? Was this like a long time of getting to know each other, figuring each other out?

2:13Have you had experience investing with the team and kind of joint investments or something like that? Can you give a bit of flavor to the background of the story of how this role at Singla came up?

2:21Laura McGinnis:Yeah, absolutely. I wasn't looking and I was introduced to Maud through a principal on the team, through a colleague at DeepMind. And we had a coffee and that was kind of how it started. We had a coffee chat, just a standard VC chat. And after that, we realized you really enjoyed chatting. We had a lot of interesting debate around different sectors and how we like to invest and what we look for in founders. And then I met more of the team. So it was kind of a slow process, but it just meant meeting more of the team. And I started to just love the culture. And it's a team that actually enjoys being together.

3:02Laura McGinnis:They're extremely ambitious, familial, sharp. And the founders referenced them. They also referenced extremely well, the GPs. So Rafi and Jeremy, the founders referenced them as being really good people to both have on your board and also in your life. So, yeah, the opportunity came up a bit by accident and ended up evolving as we had shared values. And you're going to be based in the London office. any you kind of mentioned that series a is the the main focus but can you talk a bit about maybe the types of founders that you're looking for maybe it's industry specific or maybe it's just the type of founders that you find yourself drawn towards yeah absolutely so yeah i'll be based in london and so the london office already exists my job will be in london will be to make it bigger sharper more useful to uk founders um especially because the uk and ireland has extraordinary founders with global ambitions.

3:56Laura McGinnis:So I think at Series A, like you said, we invest in seed, Series A and B. Founders need more than just capital. So they need someone who can help kind of sharpen the story, the go-to-market, the hiring bar, the U.S. ambition, where a lot of my network is, and Singular can do that. In terms of what we look for in founders, we're having a session on it now, but I think we have founders that have this balance of high conviction before consensus. We kind of talk about the people that we back. We call them kind of creators. They're like founders that use frontier technology to reshape their disciplines and build companies that could not have existed a decade ago.

4:40Laura McGinnis:So we really look for these visionary future forward people. At the same time, we back incredibly brilliant, healthily paranoid people, great storytellers, hyper-competitive winners. And yeah, so again, it just felt like a good marriage between how I view the founder assessment with how they do it as well. And you mentioned the Singular is a sort of a small team by design, despite managing a lot of money. Yeah. What do you think are going to be some of the advantages of that or some of the changes in your role? Yeah, I'd love to hear about that kind of transition for you from coming from a bigger, more operational firm, I guess, versus the singular sort of small, nimble approach.

5:30Laura McGinnis:Yeah, yeah. I think the small, nimble approach, the way that they do it, and again, that really inspires me, is that they're not hype-driven. They pick a few bets, and then they spend real time with founders. They do deep on-site diligence. The team debates openly. They bring in everyone from the team, including across operations. I think it's just, again, a very familial and curious type of process. Despite the team that's tiny, they have big ambition, and you come with massive support. We also have executives in residence that support founders as well. And so it's definitely a change. But I come from an operating background.

6:15Laura McGinnis:And something that I loved about operations was that I was always like a Jack or Jill of all trades and able to wear many hats and jump into different roles and shake it up. And so I felt like, you know, Balderton's an excellent firm. I learned a huge amount there and I actually loved it. But I felt like I wanted to move from proving myself inside an established platform to helping build something. And Singular felt like the right next step. Just, again, ambitious, fast, kind, intellectually curious. And still early enough that I felt like I could really shape the future of the firm. Amazing. And let's touch on some of that operational experience because you did spend a number of years working for some great startups and companies.

6:55What advantages do you think that gives you over a different VC who maybe came from finance or being a founder, but like being really in the builder of a business?

7:06Laura McGinnis:Yeah, I think I'm thinking back to my first years in venture and that I had a lot of culture shock. I think one of my biggest shifts from operating to investing was realizing that finance is very good at pricing the tangible and maybe a bit more challenged at pricing true worth. And what I mean is it's important, of course, to read the numbers, but it's also equally important to understand how products reach customers, why people adapt, what creates trust, what makes a founder magnetic before the market has priced it. And so I don't look at companies only as financial assets. I look at how the product reaches the customer and all of that, the bigger pieces of the company itself.

7:49Laura McGinnis:So I think my style perhaps is like quant meets consumer. I care about the metrics, but I also care about why someone uses your product, why they feel pulled to use the product before they can fully explain it. And so VC is a really such a long, long term game. It's so hard to see success until like years and years down the line. Of course, you're starting a new role in a new firm. What does success look like in the first three or six months? Yeah, that's a great, Seth, that's a hard question. So I think for me, in the first few months, what's super important is to build trust and relationship to the team.

8:36Laura McGinnis:I think one of the most, the biggest differences between the U.S. and Europe also is that I think Europeans take a bit more time to develop trust. And I think you need FaceTime to actually do that. So I'll be spending a lot of time both in London and in Paris. And the team in Paris will also be spending time in London as well. We're just trying to optimize for that in-person time. Yeah, so first is optimizing for FaceTime and togetherness and really building trust and getting to know one another. And then the second piece, back to this plan with the London office and supporting the UK and Ireland as a whole, we know that London doesn't need another investor who shows up when the round is hot.

9:16Laura McGinnis:Like we want to be useful earlier when the founder is still like sharpening the story, the go-to-market and the ambition. And so what would be super good is if we as a team, like we're already starting to talk about this is just how can we find founders earlier? How can we meet them where they are? What are the what are the actual pain points, especially in this like age of of new tech and AI? How do you build a big company on a lean team? So all of those questions are things that we're debating internally and really want to make sure that we are extremely useful in London. So I think early on, spending time together, getting to know each other, rebuilding processes.

9:58Laura McGinnis:And then I think the long term or the near term ambition is probably for Singular to be known as like high conviction, low ego and genuinely useful to founders in the UK and I. And why is Singular now kind of, I guess, like expanding across the UK now? And what's changed in the last couple of years that now felt like the right time to go bigger on these kind of this region, these countries? Yeah, I think in the last few weeks, especially, we've published interesting announcements about the portfolio. We're entering, I guess, maybe the sixth year of the fund, and it just feels like we're seeing these compounding results.

10:39Laura McGinnis:So we have massive rounds. I think a good one was Aikido. Singular saw Aikido super early. They're like early in. Now this is one of the hottest rounds in Europe. Then you've got, we've made some announcements with Vibe, Basecamp, SporeBio. So finally, we have companies that people across Europe are speaking about. And so it felt like, wow, this is a time to, again, we have already been in London, but this is a time to really double down on the office in a bigger way to make sure that we can meet founders faster and support them where they are. And is your arrival, is that going to be it for the London office expansion?

11:19Can we expect new roles maybe you're hiring for in a team or the London office more broadly is hiring for?

11:25Laura McGinnis:Yeah, absolutely. So we will be expanding the team. So I think in the near term, you'll see some new roles on the operating side. And then also in the close term as well, some roles in the investing side as well. And we'll definitely fill you in on those. But we will be expanding the London office. We want London to be just as big as Paris. And yeah, truly seen as a dual HQ. Very cool. I know that while you were at Bolton, you wrote some things. I remember you wrote like the Gen Z playbook. Yeah. Are you going to have, I don't know, time? Are you going to be interested in doing more deep dives or writing like that?

12:04Laura McGinnis:I hope so. I hope so. I love writing. I think that's part of my I wanted to be, you know, a creative or journalist or a painter at one point in my life. So writing is extremely special to me and I read a lot too. So I think I loved these bigger projects that were more like, you know, open access to the community. And that after publishing the Gen Z Deep Dive, I got a lot of pings from Gen Z's actually. So from kids that wanted to, which is crazy, but who wanted to kind of chime in. And another piece that I worked on was about managing your board. And, you know, I received inbound from lawyers and, you know, general counsel themselves.

12:48Laura McGinnis:And that was super inspiring. So I love the aspect of the job where we get to meet sector experts and in some ways writing. And I'm sure you see this too, Seb. Writing, interviewing is a way for you to talk to your dream scholars. And so absolutely, I would love to keep writing and keep doing these deep dives. Hopefully I carve out the right time. But it's essential, I think, to staying hot on some of these future shifts. Yeah, I think you're right. The biggest advantage is just like framing your thinking, isn't it? And being able to like learn yourself and any value that anybody else gets is always great.

13:23You mentioned you want to, you know, that you and the firm are talking about how you can meet founders even earlier and where they are. What does that look like in practice? Like how do you come up with some sort of edge or strategized field to really think about meeting? because, you know, we see lots of AI tools around like scraping information and deep mind or whatever. But how do you really think about carving yourself an edge to really find the very best founders before everybody knows that they're the very best founders?

13:51Laura McGinnis:It's crazy that there are so many, just like you said, there are so many tools and there are so many ways to source and meet founders. But still, I find the best ways to meet founders are in person and on the ground, which kills me. But like, yeah, you think that, oh, it can all be automated. And there are some funds that their brand is like we automate sourcing. And so what I love to do, and actually, it's funny being an American, but I've been to multiple times to Oxford, Cambridge, Manchester, Belfast, Edinburgh, you know, Dublin multiple times. And so I actually like, I've found that I really do love the UK and Ireland and getting on the ground and meeting people that way.

14:36Laura McGinnis:Some of the best ways I've met killer people are through leading accelerators. So for example, in Dublin, you have like Dogpatch Labs. So they're kind of an incubator for really cool startups. They spend about six months there and then they do this great demo day. And there are a lot of cool companies coming out of there. In Ireland is also there is like this kind of like unicorn mafia of, I don't know if I'm allowed to say that, but unicorn ex-founders, like they're leaving these companies like Stripe, Wayflyer, Tynes to start building. So that's another great way is to just meet leaders at these killer companies that are now angel investors in the future.

15:18Laura McGinnis:And then again, the accelerators that I've been to in the north, you've got like Ormo Labs out of Belfast, and there's a lot with the University of Edinburgh as well. So for me, those have been kind of some of the best relationships I've made because a lot of people are angel investing and, you know, share things with me that way. So Laura, you've had this amazing career journey from operator to investor. Can you share any advice or give any advice to other people who are kind of operating in startups today, who are looking at venture as a very exciting or attractive industry to break into, but who also know how difficult it is.

15:53And you've successfully done it and now you've been in venture for four or five years. Can you share any advice or tips on how operators can break into VC?

16:01Laura McGinnis:Yeah, absolutely. It's changing now, for sure, because I think the skill sets that people that funds are looking for have evolved. And I think that's a good thing. So when I was looking into venture back in 2020, was starting to think about it. Most people in venture, at least in Europe, were from finance backgrounds. And so I was constantly maybe rejected because I didn't have the prestigious banking background. In the U.S., there were more perhaps VCs were more operator friendly. But in Europe, it was still kind of early for non-partner level people to join as from the operating side. Fast forward now, I'm seeing it almost every fund has a few operators, former operators turned investors, which I love.

16:52We're seeing a lot more funds looking for people that can code or with engineering background, which I think is super cool as the landscape shifts towards more of like a deep tech and AI mindset.

17:02Laura McGinnis:it. And so now it's a completely different game than when I joined. My advice would be first is to really make sure this is what you want to do. I think venture seems so shiny on the outside. And I love my job and love what I do and love technology and research. But there's a huge sales element as well and that you're constantly networking or you're always on Zoom. You're on a lot of calls. That shocks a lot of people that you're on calls and meetings so frequently. And so I think interning was one of the best learning launch pads for me. I was an MBA intern while at Inseada Balderton. I realized I really liked it.

17:48Laura McGinnis:And then they hired me full time. So if an internship is available to you, if you have that luxury, then I would say go for that first to get a taste and make sure it's what you want. And then in terms of how I really broke in, especially coming from the U.S., I didn't have the biggest network here. I think I emailed, called, LinkedIn DMed over 70 funds until people responded to me. And a lot of people took a call. A lot of people said we're not looking for operators. A lot of people said I was too old and that I joined venture after over 10 years of operating. And I wasn't a CEO. So it's kind of a strange profile.

18:31Laura McGinnis:But I chose not to let it deter me. I knew this was what I wanted to do. And I still believe that. I still love the job every day. And so, yeah, I guess those are my tips is like be relentless. Don't let, you know, a non-traditional background stop you from following your dreams. Like no one can say what you can and can't do. and if you have the opportunity to intern just to test if you like it it is a very unique career path so I would recommend getting a taste before diving in. Amazing that was phenomenal advice and congratulations again Laura it's great news I'm really excited to see the companies you invest in the work that you do here in London but at Singular so thank you so much for joining me.

19:14Laura McGinnis:Thank you so much Seve it was great to talk to you again.

19:23Thank you.