Will Wells, Ex-AI Founder and now Partner at SpeedInvest

0:00Welcome. Congratulations on the new role.

0:02Will Wells:Thank you very much. It's been a busy morning so far. Yeah, I can imagine you've probably been pinged relentlessly by well-wishers and colleagues and all sorts. Can you just give us a quick intro, who you are, and for those who haven't heard or seen, what's the big news that we're going to talk about today? So I'm delighted to be joining Speedinvest as a full partner. I'm going to be leading their deep tech investing. you know my whole career has really been in this space i i used to be um a founder so i was a very early built a very early ai platform using remote sensing and drones and robots and um since then i've been investing at first minute and and light speed and i'm pretty active across the whole space so uh really really excited about the next chapter and what excited you specifically about speed invest I think that they're a brand on the up, amazing leadership from Oliver and the other partners and have a really clear vision how to win in Europe.

1:08Will Wells:and the combination of that and having a deep tech team with its own allocation and people that just talk about compute or space was too good an opportunity to say no to. That said, I was so happy at my last two places. I'm sad to leave them as well. And can you touch a bit more on what your role is going to look like at Speed Invest? You mentioned that you're going to be a partner there, deep tech focused, but is there a specific stage that you're looking for, specific vertical, specific check size? Any more detail that you can give there? so most of the day job is trying to find the the next pioneers who are trying to build and sectors like robotics defense climate um they have their own health care team but it's very close to that as well future of ai um and space and these are these are generally um first or second time founders really strong technical people maybe they spun out of eth or cdtm and um you know they're trying to solve the biggest problems in europe or globally today so you know i'm trying to find the next spacex or the next tesla um and then the other half of my job is bringing a little bit of my multi-stage background to the growth team where i'll be operating on a more generalist basis post series b so i'm really excited about both got it so two buckets i guess early stage deep tech finding those very technical founders and kind of giving them the capital to get things up and running and then also working later stage growth but more generalist on that on that first bucket how are you and you've been investing in this time in this space for some time but how do you go about finding and sourcing those highly technical teams who have the ability to build hardware deep tech?

3:09Will Wells:So I think with someone like Speedinvest, they've got a big presence across Europe and pretty high NPS score with their founders, a bit like with First Minute. And to that extent, you've got to be open for business all the time, right? And very reactive. um like getting your head around foundational models and robotics is not that straightforward so you've got to have a thesis at the same time so it's no good if you meet um the next black forest labs or the next lovable or the next um miss strow unless you've been thinking um uh quite intentionally about what that whole space is going to do um and then finally i i always have a hot list you know my sort of five to ten founders i'd i'd back at any price and whatever they were doing and you know sometimes they're running businesses right now and sometimes they're in places like palantir waiting to leave and i think it ultimately it's all about the people at at seed so so interesting you've you've already kind of got a network of people that you're ready to to back as soon as they as soon as that they take that leap yes and like hopefully it's a good idea as well i think um you know it's it's very different than to to series b where you have a lot more data points and you know but in my area in deep tech right we know that deep tech companies and non-deep tech companies hit 100 million of arr at the same moment but we also know that they're very much behind at series a and b which is also when they're the most capital intensive so deep tech investing at growth is is not for the faint-hearted and it's potentially where the biggest gap lies in europe and perhaps the biggest opportunity as well and you think that that's where the gap is and that's where the problem is because at that point those companies haven't seen the traction yet that that software companies normally have that's true and then And simultaneously, what I call the venture ecosystem at growth for those type of deals is still very young.

5:28Will Wells:Europe is much younger than the US, particularly in deep tech terms. If you think of a lot of the very big European winners like Spotify and Revolue have been shallower tech winners. in the US you do have the Teslas and so forth that like just just helps the ecosystem along a bit um that said there's an absolute you know march of of companies coming through the ranks and I'm in no doubt we're going to have a handful of 100 billion plus deep tech European champions and in in in short order and where do you see those companies who are who kind of on that growth trajectory already where do you see them getting their growth capital from are they having to look is the u.s currently or do you think we're going to be able to to plug that hole in europe it's a great question and i think it's hard because look i work for a u.s fund right so i'm naturally biased towards my ex-colleagues and their ability to help people scale really quickly so i think you know to some extent if you're like a really good top percentile european business like 11 labs you know you're going to have you know andreessen and sequoia and nea and all those guys all over you very early so i think that the ecosystems are fluid enough to have to have both i think maybe it's the less obvious top decile ones that haven't had very many data points that where the biggest gap lies um if that makes sense got it yeah yeah you know speak to the lack of growth stage capital across Europe is a problem that we hear time and time and again from different people, from founders, from VCs across Europe.

7:16And I think it's especially true in deep tech. But I wanted to go back in time a little bit and talk about your business, your first, you know, your foray into entrepreneurship. Can you touch a little bit more on the business that you built, why you decided to build that business at that time, and how that shaped your journey and your approach to VC.

7:35Will Wells:I had an interesting time in my late 20s. I had been working at a hedge fund. I was a little bit burnt out from finance. I'd only had cancer very badly for a couple of years and I was sitting on my back in hospital thinking, I've just got to go out and swing the bat. And a little bit like an MRI scan, looking at disease in my body at the time, Hummingbird, the company I built, originally it was how do we use drones and robots and high-res imagery and early ml to see disease in plants so that farmers don't put as many chemicals into the food chain as they currently are and you know i grew up my mum gives lectures on plants and i'm a i'm passionate about the food sector and it was a confluence of all of these sort of tragic either tragedies or passions that were happening in my life um i then scaled that business we got to sort of roughly series b and we slightly ran out of steam and uh it ended up being a soft landing exit and we got we got lots of things right and lots of things wrong um we were also just very early i mean the there were literally three ai companies or now ai companies in london at the time it was kind of benevolent deep mind and someone else who doesn't exist now so it was just early but um what what a ride yeah and of course it sounds like your yeah your background must have played such a big role in in kind of yeah taking that leap um you know one of the questions i wanted to ask is that now that you've seen ai and the industry develop and come to fruition and the models get so much better and the technology overall gets so much better do you have any any wishes to take another swing at the bat do you ever wish you were still in the arena this is um this next challenge is you know is a big step up for me and it constitutes a nudge of the bat um i don't want to be another one of these vcs that you know likes to sort of refer to themselves as a founder within a vc fund but it's it's genuinely entrepreneurial so that's number one number two is um i also feel like deeply privileged to be right on the front line of of what's happening and um colleagues of mine at first minute were were early investors into wave and nan and colleagues of mine at light speed were early investors into helsing and mistral and like leaning in and working with those founders you you are very much like you know a little bit a little bit behind the surfer on the wave and that's that's good enough for me right now um but but but thirdly i think you're right it's funny it's funny in life um timing is kind of seems to be the biggest vector in all of these things and um i remember chatting to flow at quantum systems who actually who also co-founded stark and you know we were we were big customers of theirs in ukraine buying drones to fly over farmland in 2017 which is kind of wild to think that if we just become like a drone company in defense you know I'd probably be um dialing into this call from my leader yeah amazing that's uh yeah how different things could have turned out um and you've spoken a lot about uh the lack of entrepreneurs or exited founders in vc and european vc why do you think that this is why do you think it's important to have ex-founders become vcs or or more why is it important that vcs have that founder experience so i think it it's key for empathy and just having some kind of operational right to have a view um knowing what it's like when you face an existential funding round um you know not being able to meet payroll and going through the pain of the zero to one on the product side from from the inside these are like absolute bread and butter things that every vc fund should deeply understand it doesn't mean that everyone has to have been an ex-founder right because it's just the dna i think it rubs off i think it's healthy um i think it builds a stronger ecosystem i thought long and hard about why why europe's behind here and a friend of mine pointed out the other day it's because finance is it's so strong like so much talent particularly like graduate talent is still being is still being leaked to the goldmans and the jp morgans and the citadels and stuff and they have very big presence in europe and i think i think that's one reason but it is getting better um and we saw that when you know companies like google and meta tended to then be the most popular place to work and and and indeed that that ecosystem is rich and filtering down already yeah and it's definitely when when i speak to people who are looking to graduate soon or graduate in the next few years those institutions no longer hold the same appeal as they once did and you're right it's a lot more there's a lot more excitement about tech about startups whether it's big tech growth tech um so i do think it's changing yeah and i think it's something that we hear a lot you know i had a you know dan bow the partner of supersede said the same thing he being an ex-founder we had eric the ceo of encore talking about the exact same thing and he talked about it from the risk perspective and he said that vcs who haven't taken that swing like you said have a slightly different approach to both speed and risk do you think that's true i think it is i think it must be true um what what what's going to really interest me so i've noticed quite a few talented associate principal sort of level vcs recently go and become operators this has always happened it's a sort of you know principal at x joins this unicorn as chief of staff i think it's happening more and i kind of wonder in my mind is that a general um consequence of venture funds becoming leaner through ai native kind of process and therefore maybe a bit more top heavy because they can be a bit more top heavy because they've got the tools or is it a sort of ecosystem is waking up like actually the operator experience is so valuable that we need to go and do it i think the jury's out interesting yeah i haven't heard that perspective before it's um that that route to partner in the vc model is is almost a bit misleading because when you compare it to something like a partnership and accountancy or partnership in in a law firm the ladder is very very clear you rise that ladder you do your time you get from analyst to associate and you get to partner and it does feel like that that partnership model in VCs changing or breaking and that it's definitely as we move to more entrepreneurs becoming coming in I think it's going to become harder and harder for career VCs to to rise through the ranks I think so and what's the the the Collinson brothers at Stripe always talk about this you know the most valuable thing you can do in your 20s is to know what good looks like I've been super lucky in my career to have have had that and I think it's the same like if you imagine you're 26 now and you you work for open ai i mean you you've probably done pretty well but like i think you know a hot shot mid-20s mid-level product person at anthropic has probably got a way shorter path to being a partner of a fund in the valley now than anyone else i think yeah yeah yeah it's really interesting and and yeah would that be the advice that you would give to young people who are interested in VC like try and join the most exciting maybe scale up that they can find I think for me this is very personal and doesn't reflect um it doesn't reflect like my kind of current or former colleagues all of them you know I can't speak for everyone else I think it's a great mix of person to have across a fund you know like someone that's been recently in a sort of scale-up rocket ship.

16:01Will Wells:I also think that there are some amazing, you know, career VCs and just through their own experience, I mean, they've worked with so many companies and they've got so much pattern recognition and they've done, I don't know, like 50 Series A rounds for their companies. That's also as invaluable. It's a great, it's all, you know, it's always about diversity. Yeah, absolutely. And you've been building and investing in deep tech for a long time, right? Specifically across the European continent. What's your state? What's your kind of take on the overall state of deep tech investing? Do you think money's being allocated into the right places?

16:37Do you think there's a real opportunity for Europe to become, to kind of build resilience or build independence when it comes to deep tech? We'd love to get your views on it. I think it's a timely question. I think it's been really strong, right?

16:50Will Wells:and that's reflected in it now being a hot space but i think you look at european deep tech the tens of billions that have gone into it in recent years have proven to be resilient with like good exits and um you know i don't think the failure rate is any higher than let's say in sass so we've debunked a lot of the myths i think the thing that abides is that you do need a lot more capital so that's that's that's the kind of the delta um i'm i'm i'm very very bullish and like europe has if you look at something like defense there's like an amazing opportunity for european defense companies now to to go out and build very big businesses and quickly um you know we we know about the peace dividend and defense as a percentage of tdp going quite quickly up to five percent if you think that you know 75 percent of all kills in ukraine sadly are now uav derived or autonomous system derived that was like zero a few years ago so the way to think about tam is not three percent of gdp to five percent it's like zero to 75 and in a growing market so for me that's an immense generational opportunity and we're going to see massive companies you know we're going to see a european spacex we're going to see huge uav companies like helsing and stark and others um we're going to see a whole robotics layer um i'm very very very excited about different pockets within european deep tech yeah and to touch on some of those verticals or categories you've said that some of the things that you're most excited about are the multi-bucket opportunities you know the ones that don't necessarily sit in solely robotics or solely defense can you touch on what you mean by that and give perhaps some examples yes so with that comment i was i was i was sort of thinking of companies like tesla and palantir so they look they're over a decade old but the the interesting thing there is that they they sit across in palantir's case gov health defense ai and they have these products foundry that are really platforms for an entire deep tech ecosystem and when you blur those sector bucket lines you can build these generationally big companies i think as well i saw um you know janet and robin at gc said this the other day like founders need to build platforms not just products so you think about what companies like Lovable and Salonis and Helsing are doing they're building platforms for the entire ecosystem right and that will that will that will take them outside of their initial sort of MVP zone that's what gets me that sort of type of ambition is it kind of what I'm looking for when I filter for founders that I want to back yeah so not just dominant players in a vertical but broad platform ecosystem players that can serve lots of different verticals correct and you know whilst whilst deep tech requires more money don't forget that it also builds a moat so if you combine massive ambition huge underlying market and then dollars towards a moat it's you know you can you can maybe um you know hit new highs which is just kind of what it's all about and do you see more investors moving towards deep tech we're seeing a lot of these changes a lot of this demand as you say in defense and energy and european resilience do you see other vcs who have typically been sas players moving into deep tech i think i think it's a natural consequence of deep tech making up let's say roughly a third of the whole let's say venture ecosystem now and there having been some great winners and maybe you know at what point do the foundational models make some of what we considered enterprise SaaS investing unattractive or smaller or capped as an outcome.

21:05Will Wells:I think a lot of these, like, it's like, I think it's a lot of different dynamics at play. But for me, I love it, you know, like seeing the investors into Proxima Fusion, right? We had a lot of non-typical deep tech money into that. A lot of people piled into Mistral that didn't normally make foundational bets. And I think that's only a good thing. You know, I'm joining a company, a fund in Speedinvest that had been doing it for years before it was cool. So, you know, I'm just a small chapter in their journey. Yeah, no, I think you're right. It is kind of like a necessary movement as kind of the global venture scene changes.

21:55You've also said that you think governments should become kind of active backers of new technology. Can you elaborate a bit more on how European governments across the continent can do that and to kind of encourage deep tech across Europe? If you take a step back from the same,

22:12Will Wells:how big is the US defense budget? It's like broadly a trillion. Like however way you calculate it, you get there or thereabouts. Now, why has the US government or the DoD been so pivotal in creating that ecosystem? Well, they give billion-dollar-type contracts to people like Andreal. And SpaceX received 10 billion-plus of government grants. And I think that instead of sitting back economically and then being very aggressive on stuff like regulation and red tape, the government just needs to consider itself like a great procurement partner. And whether we're talking about the next generation of semiconductors that will take a lot of money to get them to tape out.

23:09Will Wells:If you're doing optical compute, it does require money and partnerships. And I think the government has a key role in that. It can't just whinge about sovereignty without putting its foot forward. Yeah, without adopting it itself, I guess, and being willing to take that risk and put its money where its mouth is. Conscious, we're running out of time. I wanted to finish on some very quick fire questions, not so related to tech entrepreneurship, but to kind of get to know you a bit better. You've mentioned you like rooftop gardening. Favourite thing to grow? Well, I'll tell you what, the only thing that seems to have worked on my roof has been carrots, which doesn't really make sense.

23:46Will Wells:but we all love a carrot. Well, that's good. At least you've got something, I guess. In green to sports, who's your favourite, most inspirational athlete? It's got to be Gazza, Paul Gascoigne. You know, he was like Leonardo da Vinci on the pitch and amusing at times off pitch, but maybe not as prolific. You've got a daughter. Favourite thing, hardest thing about becoming a parent? Gosh, I mean, I know nothing thanks to my wife. I now know a little bit, But waking her up in the morning is like the best part of the day. You know, she's so smiley, 7 a.m. And it's becoming harder and harder to leave her.

24:26Will Wells:But I travel a lot for work. But very, very happy to have her. Amazing. And final question, biggest investor regret. Is there any opportunity to invest in a company that you passed on and you kind of lie awake at night thinking about? Do you know what? i didn't see it which is probably a mistake as well but matty and 11 labs i i love i love them as a business i've always been a multimodal ai guy so you know voice to text sound as ai is just right up my street and um yeah he's a he's a great founder so like that that's one i also owned tesla super early very big position and um and then sold it i mean what an idiot so that i mean we're talking 13 14 years ago so i think you can make a mistake after having got something right which is probably as important it's selling too early yeah yeah on the investor forums and reddit everyone always says you just got to hold and hold and hold um but will thank you so much for your time congratulations on the new role and any time that speed invest or yourself has got something to talk about you've got founders that you want to come on the show and give them an opportunity to talk about what they're building just let me know 100 % Seb thanks for having me my pleasure let's speak soon