Sam Tidswell-Norrish, Chair & Founder @ OPUS

0:00Next up though, we have got Sam who is the founder and chair of Opus. Opus is a kind of founder community and he is actually with us right now. Welcome Sam, how are you doing? Hi, can you hear me? Yes, can you hear us? Loud and clear. Yeah, I didn't know what was going to happen or when it was going to happen, but it's nice to see you guys. We are here. That was happening. Yeah, this is it. This is live. We're going. um how you doing sap good to be underprepared it's it's perfect um yeah i'm great thanks i'm i'm really good how are you guys nice to meet you paula nice to meet you too look kick off like i want to talk into him i want to talk about embark i want to talk about vc more generally i want to talk about opus before we get into it though just for like people watching at home give us a super quick intro who are you what are you building yeah uh well firstly massive thanks for having me and congratulations with what you guys are building.

1:02It's excited and more importantly, it's needed. So quick background, I have done a variety of different things, mostly in financial technology. 10 years ago, I helped form a private equity firm. We ended up building venture growth and buy out funds, raising nearly$10 billion of AUM. And then earlier this year in January, I decided to start again and do a bit of a slowdown to speed up. And subsequently, I've got a project underway that will be announced soon, which is a new, very new thing in the private equity space. And then in the VC and early stage space, I'm the founder and chair of Opus which is an early stage founder community with media community and venture components to it

2:02amazing very cool sorry go ahead Paula sorry I was just going to ask the three components you mentioned around venture media and community can you maybe just double click a little bit on what those are for those who have never stumbled upon you yet? Yeah. So the heartbeat is the community. Built based on the simple premise that founding a business is bloody hard. No matter who you are, where you are, how experienced you are. And peer-to-peer support can be super useful. I found when I've been building companies that I get home and want to whinge about my day and my problems because it's perpetual problem solving and my wife doesn't want to hear any of it.

2:50She's sick of my shit. And subsequently, it's really valuable to have other founders to lean on. So no different to a YPO for CEOs, this is an early stage community in that respect. And you get access to a whole suite of events, each other. We have technology and an AI tool, a bit like Bordy, that helps you solve the problems you have. and we have a big building, full building dedicated to founders in London Bridge. And it costs barely anything. So the whole value proposition is amazing. I put a ton of my money into it because I believe that this is what the community needs. And I love it. It's amazing to see what these founders are up to.

3:35The media part is our way of amplifying and championing founders. It's quite new. So we're starting to launch assets and contain capabilities to really build profiles. Again, no revenue model to it, just because it's a good thing to do. And then the venture component we're working through at the moment, but it's around getting founders raised ready. And then at some point we'll raise a venture fund, given building alternatives, asset management businesses is my background. But we'll do it with a twist. The world does not need another VC, that's for sure. Maybe that's a good segue. Yeah, I was going to say there's a lot to get into and unpack with what you've gone through.

4:22I want to talk about the future of raising a fund, the value that you're adding. I want to talk about why the world doesn't need a VC fund. But before we get into all of that and why you're still kind of talking about Opus, can we talk about Embark? And the news broke this morning. You kind of are joining forces. and like congratulations it's like i think an amazing amazing thing to do and embark is a phenomenal community i actually signed up like three years ago i never went to any of the events but i've always been on their newsletter list so i saw the news this morning um what was the rationale behind that yeah chris chris uh topman is someone i've followed for a long time and have a lot of respect for um amazing guy and uh and i have been watching embark from afar and i loved what they're doing getting people into founding is is a relatively niche space we exist once you are as opus once you are a founder i did series a but how do you even get to the point where you're willing to leave your comfortable corporate job uh and and this was the like launch pad and landing pad into that and so it kind of acts as top of funnel but it's we have the same mission we're just adjacent parts of the cycle.

5:34And I know, yeah, I worked as a trader at Barclays for five years. Like, God, I hated it. And God, I was bad at it. I sucked. But I stayed there because I thought it was the right thing to do. And then all of a sudden, one day, you're like, fuck it. I'm leaving. I'm doing my own thing. I've got the bravery to do it. And I wanted to make sure that as part of Opus, we have that ability to support people in that early step. the world knows that the world doesn't need another corporate executive, but the world does need more founders, more entrepreneurs, brave enough to take the risk. I love it. I think it's an amazing move.

6:14I think it's like a perfect matching up, partnering up. There's such an aligned mission there that I can really see the value. I think it's like a super exciting move. you know you're building so much value and you're talking about raising a fund down the line why have you focused i guess so heavily on front loading this huge back to value across community community and media and venture you seems like you're giving away so much to early founders and doing the fund down the line at some point like why have you decided to take that approach yeah um it's a great question and and it's an insightful question my philosophy is the capital intensity of businesses is lowering um and you guys will be able to validate or deny that um but if we were to build a dating app 10 years ago it would have cost us 10 million bucks here something ships and would have taken forever to get profitable the world is different now And I think we will see invariably over time less Series A's, B's and C's.

7:22And VCs will need to go further downstream. As they go further downstream, pre-seed C for high quality assets is going to become more and more competitive. It already is. And therefore, VCs, everyone has capital, but not many people have a value creation capability. And so I believe VC should stand for value creation, not for venture capital. That part's table stakes. So what value can a VC add to a founder? And the simple premise here with Opus is let's build an amazing community where people get loads of value and then not forget the capital is the lifeblood of businesses to provide that part too.

8:10But let's build the value add part first and then build the capital resource second. No different to how Harry built 20VC. He built a media business first and built the someone, Mario, the generalist called it mullet capitalism. Build the operating business out front and you have the party out back. That's a great, yeah, great phrase. And I want to talk on, like you said, the world doesn't need another VC. And you've mentioned hiring 20BC. Are there VCs out there today that you think are really value-add, kind of like aspirational for you and what you're building at Opus, where you can see that the value creating, they're kind of providing their founders with?

9:02Yeah, there are for sure. I mean, I could list off loads of VCs that are adding value. You've got the 20VC category with media capabilities. You've got the specialist examples that focus on like Motive Ventures, who are an amazingly qualified group of fintech investors that I was part of. You've got sports funds and influencer-backed funds. They're all pretty interesting. You've got the YC world that looks a lot like a community-backed concept. There's loads of examples of it, but unfortunately, they are the significant minority still. And what's happened over the last 15-ish years is it's been easier to raise money.

9:45Thankfully, over the last couple of years, not because it's cleansing a little bit. But everyone spun out and started something. Same happened in private equity. You had 150 % growth over the last decade on number of VCs and PE firms. And that's not because they were bringing something particularly differentiated to the market. It's because they were sick of sitting underneath someone else's economics and thought they could go do it themselves. And so we saw a whole raft of undifferentiated propositions coming into the alternatives market. it and and i guess what i'm saying is if i if i'm going to play in this space and support founders i'm not going to do it with something someone else is doing i'm going to do it with something very different and and i'm going to try and do it in a way that is truly founder first not a tagline on a website that says for founders by founders or for founders with founders it's going to be something where the economics work better for the founder where there's a value creation capability that the founder wants so that when they accept the capital, they're accepting that support.

10:51That provides access that they didn't otherwise get. And you're going to ask me a question in a moment, I bet, that says, not because I read the preamble, but it does do good founders need VCs? And do they need support from VCs? My view is everyone needs support, doesn't matter how good you are. If you're saying no to help, there's an imbalance, I think, in your humility. And so, it's our job to try and create help that is not generic and is value additive. And if we don't achieve that, then we don't deserve to invest in someone's company. I also wanted to talk about your own investments, right?

11:35So, you've got a lot of strong opinions about VC. You want to be able to add value to founders, but you've also done, I think I read 100 angel investments yourself. what are you looking for when you're kind of making those angel investments and have you already got a thesis on kind of the type of founders that you're looking for that you are going to kind of implement or build the opus fund on one day there's not a lot of rhyme or reason to my angel investing other than stuff i like and i have strong conviction behind and that's usually people-based i've made some amazing bets i made some incredibly poor bets and overall i think garden it out fine but i wouldn't i wouldn't write home as a as a world-class investor but i'm not trying to be um i i build brands i raise money and i'll make sure that my colleagues are the best investors in the market and i'll pay for them um so that they want to be with us and nowhere else um we do have a view on uh as and when we come to market with a venture fund providing pre-seed capital what we're going to focus on.

12:42It will be under the banner of AI native platforms across three sectors. But it's still nascent and I'm trying to iron out how we can have as much impact for the community as possible.

12:59Yeah, OK, so you're still trying to focus on that value piece. Have you got a timeline of when you're going to start raising the fund and deploying it? Or is that something that's kind of like down the line, focus on the value in the community first? Yeah, we're very community focused right now, but probably no later than Q2 next year. Nice. What is, I think the community aspect is so interesting. What if I was completely unfamiliar, I'm a founder and just starting out. what would be the reasons to join Opus and how do you also balance, you know, the age old question between kind of scale and quality?

13:40How do you kind of think about community building at the, you know, at the top of your game? Yeah, I'll start with the first question. I believe that firstly, our filter is on backable founders. So founders that could accept outside capital. So if you're an individual service provider, sole trader, you're not eligible. I believe that everyone has something useful to add, whether it be network, knowledge, experience, etc. So you become a node of knowledge and capability. In terms of why a founder should join, it's kind of simple. If you're a founder that faces problems, there's unlimited resources to help you solve them.

14:26And every day through our app, which is a bit like Tinder for founders, and through the WhatsApp channels, I see hundreds, thousands just flicking through of people asking questions and people helping people. That in itself is a wild resource. I've not seen other than YC any VC on the planet with that capability. um there's then a whole load of other uh services and offerings as part of of membership from 200 plus events and that's anything from a health tech meetup through to taking we take a big delegation of 30 people to davos every year we do international trips we've got a super yacht in croatia and a whole lot of fancy shit as well as as the the wholesome yeah meetup type stuff and we bring amazing people into the fold, amazing investors, amazing executives.

15:23We had a couple of weeks ago, the former chairman of Microsoft spending 90 minutes with our members, our founders. He took over from Bill Gates. He's one of the hardest people to pin down in the world and he was there just pouring his knowledge into the community. Same with Marv Porat who just joined our board who invented the iPhone and Android and cloud and all sorts of things. So it's like there's a load of reasons to join, but you've got to join with the view to give as well as to take. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And geography-wise, is it completely international or do you focus on certain geos?

16:10Yeah, we focused on the UK, UAE, and South Africa first and their launch pads into those continents. we are becoming increasingly decentralized and digital we have probably 20 people in berlin we have 15 or so people in munich 20 people in lisbon and so it's kind of dispersing and that's that's beautiful that's how our technology should make it um but we're we're hq'd in london even though everyone's leaving we're not we're here doubling down on london that's what we like to hear um you know i always wanted to get your opinion about the kind of the state of the vc model as a whole and you've spoken a lot about how a lot of vcs and capital is becoming commoditized we're seeing in the market a huge number of kind of like secondary sales and the delaying of ipos you're trying to build a very different type of fund i guess but do you see that that type of model the sort of like 2 and 20 model do you have views on that breaking down do you see that that's no longer fit for purpose as companies are staying private for longer as valuations are changing and as you know we're seeing like um almost like a split between like a small focus fund and these absolutely mammoth semi-private equity vc funds what's your kind of you know as someone who is like an expert in the private markets but also quite deep into early stage what's your take on the state of of the vc model in terms of you know that sort of like two and twenty yeah i don't think it changes um i think the levels change for sure um and you can become more economically attractive to lps um but i don't think the fundamentals change a great deal i think paths for liquidity do change massively that they've evolved astronomically in the private equity industry with nav lending and secondaries and cvs and so on i think i think the same starts to happen downstream in vc and you don't see exits as being full exits of portfolio companies in an unreasonable time frame you see it as yeah a much more vibrant private securities marketplace for secondaries.

18:28And we're starting to see that happen. And as alternatives get democratized and private markets access becomes easier and easier and you have the marketplaces like Forge and other ones, I think that becomes the exit path.

18:50Interesting. Okay, so like a continuation of those kind of like secondaries and that type of exit becoming the norm as IPO still continues to get delayed. What's the, like, and does that change? Are you seeing kind of reflections in the early stage founder community? Like what's the state of affairs at that level? You obviously tapped into a huge community of early stage founders who were, you know, going out to raise their first fund, throw their first raise. Like what's that like on the ground at the moment? What kind of issues, problems are they talking about? Or you've seen come up a lot? Yeah, it's really hard.

19:28It's particularly hard in the UK where there's cost of living issues and tax uncertainty. And we've got this looming budget that's going to penalize everyone who's done anything good. But elsewhere in the world, there's a lot more optimism. The UAE is a great example. Historically never had an angel investing environment. But with the amount of disposable income, the burgeoning SPV environment is creating a huge amount of opportunity for pre-seed fundraisers. So on the ground, fundraising is always hard. It requires people to do more work than ever before. Opus, we've launched, we just hired an investor from Octopus Ventures or Lamide, who's amazing.

20:20Oh, he's still got me. You got me back? I'm back. Not sure what's going on here. We've hired an amazing investor called Orlamide from Octopus Ventures. And she's built a Raise Ready Bootcamp. That's a 10 hours a month course, reloads every month with new people, where we bring in experts from family offices, angel syndicates, VCs. and we drill people we drill our founders to get vc ready for their pre-seed so even if they're not going to raise from a vc and nine times out of ten they they won't and don't want to um they are ready for the the toughest of gauntlets and uh and that's definitely helping we've had amazing feedback from that so far going to back back to your you mentioned the uae there and the kind of burgeoning investment kind of group there.

21:14Are you seeing UK founders increasingly pitched to that group of investors in that part of the world? Yeah, I think the UAE has been very misunderstood. The Middle East has been very misunderstood. I've been raising institutional great capital from there for a long time. And it's a place where you've got to invest the time, build the relationships, build the trust um but it's definitely not been historically a place for startups or vc environment um it's becoming more so with with the retail investors and the angels um but i wouldn't go there specifically to raise capital as a an early stage founder you do often see people do it but i wouldn't do it um if you move there it's a different story but uh i wouldn't i wouldn't head over there to read like exactly you're not going to rate your 500k pre-seed there without the relationships at least um yeah i what do you think you you alluded to it earlier that you know less capital is needed to to start a company to to create uh basic software um what do you think that's gonna do to the vc market in the next 10 years so 10 years ahead what's going to remain are we going to have some sort of bifurcation or what is sort of your prediction what will get cleansed and what will stay yeah it's such a good question um i'm gonna i'm gonna half answer it um let's let's skip forward 10 years okay um the alternatives industry is totally unrecognizable as is everything but we're probably five years away from agi and maybe another five away from super intelligence that erodes competitive advantage in everything in the same way harmonica's leveled the playing field on sourcing there's going to be no competitive advantage in sourcing you'll be able to get in touch with anyone on anything at any time and brand credibility will be the differentiator as well as value creation however value creation will be a whole new topic you'll be able to execute value creation plans and growth plans that will have taken years in months and it all looks very different.

23:34Capital will be sourced, I think, predominantly into fund structures from retail investors versus institutional LPs. And so you've got to start preparing for what that world looks like. I've spent a lot of time over the last nearly year with some of the leading minds in AI who've been doing this for the last decade, thinking through what does a world with AGI and superintelligence look like for alternatives? And how can you start preparing for that today so that you're not playing catch up in a couple of years' time? Because it is going to start to change quickly. And with that philosophy in mind, I think the VC environment changes very quickly.

24:21And I don't yet know how. I've got a much more formed view on what the lower middle market and mid-market private equity landscape looks like. I mean, honestly, the lines are also blurring somewhat. So, you know, I think it's equally interesting what you think about that market. Yeah, they're kind of blurring. I think VC is going to go downstream and I think low middle market comes downstream where a business doing a couple million of EBITDA starts to look quite attractive to the low middle market private equity groups. And the VC community crowded further down towards the zero base. On the private equity side, it's all of the above that I just mentioned.

25:11It's undifferentiated sourcing and real-time data feeds. It's retail investor bases. It's about very different forms of distribution and execution. And the invested professional role gets totally commoditized. It's, yeah, I've got a lot of work on it, but I'm not going to tell everyone everything. That's super interesting. No, look, Sarah, it's been great having you. We're out of time. Look, I'm a huge fan of what you're building. I'm super excited to see where Opus goes and how you kind of build, embark into this and kind of build a new type of VC firm eventually that kind of is value first. and I'm really excited to see how it goes.

25:59But let's stay in touch. We'd love to have you back on the show whenever you've got things to talk about. Let me know how I can help you guys. No, love it. But yeah, let's just stay in touch, Sam. And yeah, looking forward to seeing the next stage of Embark, I guess. Thanks, guys. I'm going to invest next in a better internet connection. So great to meet you. Thanks so much. Thanks so much, guys. Well done.