Project Europe CEO Kitty Mayo: ‘Harry Stebbings is like our head of state and I’m prime minister’

0:00Hello, dear listeners, Amy here. Just a note before we get into today's podcast, we are currently between studios, which means our sound might not be quite as pristine as usual. So our apologies for that. Hello and welcome to the Sifted Podcast. I'm Amy, Sifted Editor, and today I'm joined by someone who fast become a champion of young founders across Europe. She is Kitty Mayo, CEO of Project Europe. The Accelerator launched to much fanfare by Harry Stebbings and about 200 other entrepreneurs just over a year ago to support and invest in founders under the age of 25. And if everything really works out, build Europe to next 100 billion euro companies.

0:41Before that, she worked at Talent Accelerator Entrepreneurs First for six years, holding roles in its talent growth product and investment teams. She's also briefly been a teacher and a ski instructor and is one of Europe's, I would say, biggest techno optimists. Kitty, welcome to the podcast. Hi, Amy. It's so lovely to be here. Thank you very much for having me on. So Project Europe, something very special and unique about it is this focus on very young founders, which I think some people see as such a huge strength and others have other people scratching their heads. What would you say are the biggest strength?

1:19of young founders and the biggest sort of reason to back people who are so young they might never even have had a real job before that's a really good question actually there's this kind of naive bravery um that i mean and you can we can all kind of remember it for ourselves um even even even if like for me now that feels like quite a long time ago um when you just feel like this sense of infinite possibilities and if and you like don't yet know like all the things that are out there that could kill you or make make life incredibly difficult you don't know the you don't know the failure modes in advance um so i think that is that's definitely one you you're prepared to go out so bravely and i think that bravery makes you kind of like almost almost more invincible because you're run directly through the through the the the danger and the pain um and then i think the other thing is on one side yes like not understanding how like what channels to go through to get to the right people how industries work that allow you to take shortcuts is in many ways like a drawback but actually you can quite quickly found find local guides within industry so you can hold your hand and take you through and sort of like champion you within an organisation but the benefit is you don't think in in terms of dogma you don't think of right this is the way this industry works therefore that's the way it will always work um and I think that is that's super so we're one year on from the launch of Project Europe what would you say has been the biggest achievement so far it's quite sort of like unbounded but the biggest achievement for us has been the the real sense of it being a movement um and the fact that it very much feels like a common good and the project europe is something that everyone kind of feels part of and so for example in a couple of weeks we're doing project barcelona we did these we do these big hackathons to the first one's project lovable with anton in stockholm then we did project at project 11 labs with matty in warsaw and then we were thinking right we need to we need to move into southern the earth and we need to have i mean partly because the summer months are coming and jade who i work with now i think about how can we really make the most of our remit but um we the next one is project barcelona because there isn't as much of current like superstar founder like um like antono massi in barcelona but it seemed like a really really really vibrant ecosystem the amount of support we've had locally is it's unreal like the people who are like inviting us into their spaces, who are offering to set up different things, to volunteer, come spend their time, like take a few days off work to support us.

4:03And then also people from different cities saying like, please come and do a project in the end, I come and do a project, Zagreb, whatever else, people wanting us to bring the movement to them. And it's not even because they're sort of, you know, they want Project Europe as a company or a fund to win. I mean, it's more because it gives them the remit or gives them the excuse to pull together people in their ecosystem. So Project Europe has kind of become this excuse for great people to come together in different ways. And so that's the thing that has been the greatest success by far, because there were a team of two full-time people.

4:46And then we have Ivana Bianat, who is the COO of Project Europe. I mean, she works part-time, but does the work that they eat full-time people. But we've been able to do so much, meet so many people, and have such an enormous surface area with a tiny team, purely because we've somehow, very, very luckily, hit on this amazing team of people who just want to proactively work with us in the same direction. You spend quite a lot of time, don't you, hosting these kind of hackathons, or you call them co-works where you spend a bunch of time in a different city and also going to events. We've been on, me and Sifted's podcast producer, Maya, have been on stage with you at some of Europe's finest cities.

5:32What do you think is the best formula for kind of getting what's going on in an ecosystem, for kind of meeting the key people, for figuring out whether it's universities or companies, which are the kind of talent factories because I think that is something very special you're doing there is something I did when I started you joined sifted seven years ago I also my first trip was also to Barcelona so I was making the most of my remit as well but there's something very different you get don't you when you're there and you meet a bunch of people in a sort of condensed period of time what what's the most important elements of that for you I think the the most important element is not limiting yourself to the things that feel important or high status.

6:22Because, I mean, everyone, like everyone who has helped, everyone who's thinking about the same things as you, like, has already thought about, like, the high status established centres for talent. So, top universities, top talent clubs, like the flashiest conferences, et cetera. Because, I don't know, there is, Yeah, there's a higher density of the serious grown-ups, but not necessarily a higher density of people we ought to be meeting who are these high-potential, hacky, interesting young people who also typically at that stage are kind of, they haven't really bought into the status gains and the hierarchies of the bench ecosystem.

7:07And so for us, what is most important is just making sure that we spend our time talking to as many people as possible. And actually, you end up having some conversations where you're like, okay, this is a waste of both of our time. But usually you learn something. You learn something about the city. You learn something about the education system. You learn something about how someone's viewing a certain type of technology. And what was really interesting, the last couple of weeks, one of our newest cohort members had posted on TikTok. and now every time I talk about TikTok I feel like I'm a million years old but she'd posted a clip on TikTok talking about like follow along with me as I go through Project Europe because suddenly the Project Europe story was on TikTok we had this crazy spike in application from people we would never ever ever have met and people who had university people who had gone to high school but had started building so their media diet was so like entrepreneurship content on TikTok rather than they weren't using LinkedIn because LinkedIn is literally set up for like traditional status games of business networking.

8:19And I think we've got pretty good questions on our application form. So you actually learn a lot about the people and things they're doing, the things they've done in their past rather than the structured like CV type stuff. And we've met some extraordinary people who like there's no way that any kind of intentional search would have found them because they defy all conventions. They've got nothing to do about them. And then also, I guess the other thing that's been very helpful is just getting to know a couple of people who can give you the local map of the territory, who can point you in the right direction.

8:49So you have to really trust their judgment as well because some people have terrible instincts or they'll point you in the direction of the things that held a lot of social currency two or three years ago that are now completely just swamped with the wrong kind of people. um but in most we're gradually over time we're building up a really great network of people who kind of get it and jade and i have this heuristic of like some people get it some people don't get it and like actually the people who get it can't teach people who don't get it they have to get it and like no one quite knows what it is that's why it's impossible to tell and so we just have like a bit of a mental database of people who get it who can give us a bit of a sense of where we should be spending our time what's the most telling question on the application form for project europe so there are two one is we ask like what progress have people made so far with the thing they're building um and like progress is obviously defined in loads of different ways um but the the one the thing that kind of killed everything dead is when people say like they've been working on this thing for two years and they're still kind of in like we're just teeing up to launch the mvp um and there's nothing about like what they've learned customers there's nothing about like sort of experiments they've run and that is that's super revealing and so you can read things where you're like this is so intellectually compelling this makes sense this is all very very good but then you realize that in two years they've done nothing to do with customers and they think well actually this is this is this is not a founder this is like someone who wants to think deeply about products but not really engage with the actual no people are going to be buying it and then the other is we ask people like what another sustained interest or passion of theirs has been honestly people are remarkable um you get everything i mean get everything from elite athletes to like incredibly talented artists to people with some like weird and unique fascinations with niche parts of history and it's i mean i'm just incredibly nosy so getting to kind of like see under the hood of other people's brains is fascinating um but most our interviews the first at least the first interview we barely touch on the company we'll talk pretty much only about the person um and and because these are young fans we're working with like that we have very few data points on them as a business builder or i mean yes lots of them have started like doing entrepreneurial things from a young age but like typically they haven't and so our job is to really kick the tires on like who they are like are they earnest have they they said actually things in the past that were brave and ambitious and have they like carried it through or is it just them jumping on a hype train um and that's really fun our job is just to be nosy and learn about people sounds like the job of a journalist it is fun isn't it you um you said before we came on air that you have been reflecting on the first year of Project Europe?

11:55What's been the most unexpected challenge? I think it's like a tension that Jade and I have been super aware of the whole way through is that we're a tiny team, but this year has very much been the pilot year and we've wanted to be able to do everything and learn firsthand from everything we're doing. It does also mean that we, and also our job is like so human intensive and that we are you know we're we're now working with 20 teams and we do need to be there to support all of them and we've done everything in a very unprogrammatic way and we have you know we have this like rolling cohort where more people keep joining um and we don't have a clear graduation point um and it's lovely though the founder's going to keep coming we're doing our fourth co-work which is where we bring all our teams together and we're doing that um at the beginning of may and we still haven't had a single team say they're not going to come to a co-work um as we kind of thought in our heads they come to two and then they're they're sort of like flyer than that um but they keep coming back which is lovely um but we are you know we are kind of we do need to make sure that we are still like super present and super available to be there for one of them and we're managing um and we communicate with all of them in a different way um but it's just i mean it's it's it's all either of us do um from the minute we wake up the minute the day ends um and it's it's like a it's a glorious part of the work we do being able to work so closely with these extraordinary people um but there's nothing that we don't have there's nothing we can delegate um we learn everything firsthand um but we are also I mean there's no let up um but that's kind of the luxury of this of doing doing kind of your life's work is that you don't really want there to be let up um I'm sure my husband wishes there was a let up um but it yeah it's it's been it's been incredibly full on so what what about your so you raised or the project you launched with 10 million euros to invest um i'm imagining that's mostly used up now if you've got 20 companies already in the portfolio we've got we've got enough about 10 more in there okay okay but there's a plan i'm assuming to raise another fund after this one yes we're beginning to think about it and this is as i was saying before we came on air like one of the the greatest sort of powers we've had over of the last year is not being tied to a specific way of working, a specific product, a specific model.

14:34And now actually thinking about structuring the next fund and going out to fundraise, we do kind of need to sell the path forward because, I mean, Harry Stebbings is extraordinary at pulling people together behind a mission and he was able to manifest this phenomenal fund with phenomenal people based on an exciting future but nothing structured. I mean, there wasn't even a team, but Harry just managed to get this, say, frenzy and excitement that kind of meant that the momentum manifested itself. So we do need to be a bit more structured. And we're now kind of, yeah, we're at the very beginning of figuring out what that looks like.

15:13I have a strong preference that we maintain the similar pace and scale of operation because we're still in the very early stages. and we need to really sort of concretize the identity and the ethos of Project Europe. And so, yeah, my strong preference is to maintain a similar size and then really think about how we bring in the best partners to support the founders we're backing. And so I think another thing that's been a surprise is that many of the greatest mentors and supporters for the founders we're backing aren't necessarily household names, but they are operators with really interesting experience who have swum in the water of the founders whose names will know, but have got a slightly different personal style.

16:17People who do actually want to mentor and go deep and spend time with these founders. and who really have belief to lend them. And so what Jade and I have been discussing today is we'd really like to make sure there's space for those kind of people to come in. And there's obviously a balance because having the big names is really attractive to the founders who are applying because before you've had experience of mentorship, your assumption is you want the most famous, biggest name to mentor you. because I mean if if nothing else like it's a good name to have on your LinkedIn it's a good name to tout your next next round of investors and so we'll definitely still and they have also been like phenomenally helpful in different ways but these are also people who are running their own multi-billion dollar businesses um and so they don't they're not going to be able to sit down and give every single person they're mentoring a like hour-long mentoring session with structured questions every every week they're not going to be saying like hey have you completed our shared one-to-one doc ahead of this meeting like obviously like obviously no one thinks that someone like Matthew from Eleven Labs is going to be able to do that like he's the busiest man in the world um but so it's important to have those people who they can open doors in different ways they can give really really really precise advice at the right time their endorsement and their referral means a lot to the right kind of people but we also need to make sure we've got the right kinds of operators and we're also rewarding the right kinds of operators by bringing them into the fund rather than just like using them as as as kind of um uh i don't know like agents out in or um scouts out in the ecosystem um because these people are also like they're so willing to give their time like freely um and proactively because they really care on the mission but it feels pretty important to us that we bring them into this as as part of the team as well So a lot of those operators who are currently, you're saying the most helpful mentors for the founders, they're not necessarily investors in the fund.

18:24They're just doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. Yeah, exactly. And maybe they've invested as angels in these companies too, or they will in the next round. But it was quite clear at the beginning that the fund, the only people who could invest as angels in the fund were founders or former founders. And a few managed to slip in who weren't. And I'm very grateful for it because they are also incredibly valuable to us. But yeah, I think we'll just think really, really proactively about who are the different profiles of people we want to have a vested interest in these companies doing well.

18:58And so it becomes like a really representative group of the support network that the founders were backing need. And it's amazing. There's something so fascinating about how you can align incentives to make something super effective. And so, yeah, we've got lots of thinking to do around that. You're not ordinary. No nine to five meal deal lunches, meetings about meetings, compulsory team building, living for the weekend. You're made for more, for the extraordinary. And you need an extraordinary bank. HSBC Innovation Banking exists exclusively to help visionary VC-backed tech and life science businesses achieve their ambitions.

19:37From pre-seed to IPO and beyond, we provide custom solutions co-created by actual industry experts to help you scale, delivered by a dedicated team you can call whenever you need to. Find out why 4 in 10 UK unicorns have chosen us at hsbcinnovationbanking.co.uk. and when you look at the portfolio so it's I think 20 companies um about half of which have gone on to raise funding further funding yeah uh I'm informed none of them are from the UK is that still right no still right we have we have we have some UK based but not originally no one who's been born in the UK yeah and then unfortunately not so many have female founders and then I don't know about the sectors, but what maybe are your reflections on that portfolio composition and what would you like to see maybe for the portfolio of Fund 2?

20:40I mean, we've got just under a quarter. We've got four teams with female founders in, which is, I mean, it's great, but it could be a lot better. in terms of composition we have a real spread of different technologies, we're yet to invest in like a biotech company and so we hosted the hackathon, or we co-hosted the hackathon in Berlin a few weeks ago with some amazing, amazing, amazing partners, because that was desperate to try and figure out how to navigate the world of biotech because that is a domain that I've spent not enough time in or learning about um so that's so that's that's reflected in our ability to identify like exceptional wire tech company so that is something definitely i would love to have more of um female founders like definitely um it's just it's also like a total joy working with female founders um not that it's not a joy working with male founders but there's there's there's something there's something very very special about working with next generation of members um um and i kind of naively i hope that as we bring more your founders in the fire will increase and then the other thing that has been really noticeable for this cohort is there is we have like a very broad spread of different domains but there's there's there's like a there's a strong proportion i'd say maybe 60 or so percent that has some kind of that is like only one degree separated from the physical world um and this is this is something that we notice a lot with the kind of applicants we get and maybe this is because we've invested in hardware companies and so like that's kind of that the fly will start spinning or because actually a large proportion of young founders have thought well i mean the ai race or so the foundational ai race is kind of so it's out of the gates and like way ahead maybe the thing for us to work on where we feel like we actually move the needle is something that brings that into the physical world but we have lots of founders who want to do their hands-on stuff that impacts like the world um and that is that's really cool and i think that's something we want to continue to double down on and also we need to start consolidating a group of european investors and global investors who believe similar things and want to invest in those types of companies too and i think that is a really strong movement in Europe now, the focus both on how can we build really, really strong sovereign solutions and the infrastructure that forms the basis for the future.

23:14But also, I don't know, maybe people are feeling a bit icky about the AI bubble, what's the supposed AI bubble, and want to invest in things that have tangible outputs. But it definitely feels like a movement, and it's a movement that we'd love to get behind as well. Does it feel, obviously, Project Europe was launched as we've said to much sort of fanfare by um harry stebbings and a bunch of other people and i still feel it's very connected to to harry even though you and jade as you said run it day to day does it feel like your company or does it still feel like harry's company i mean i can imagine that working around someone who's quite so well known can have its sort of upsides and downsides i think in a way and this is kind of maybe an unsatisfactory answer but in a way it doesn't really feel like a company it feels more like a like a movement that we're kind of shepherding um and like yes it feels like my company when it comes to like thinking about finances and like all the boring stuff like tax and employment law and that kind of stuff um like that is like entirely i have all i have all the responsibilities and like the buck stops with me on pretty much everything but it feels like a movement that was started or that was kind of convened by harry and that we're kind of now shepherding um and i guess jade and i we've been i think we've been like chatting i've been talking to kieran 20 bc to you about this about kind of like frames of reference for ourselves to understand this better but it's kind of like harry is the founder harry will always be the founder um it will always be like his thing like the thing he set off and so kind of like he's like he's like the head of state um of of project europe and that's kind of his inalienable right and like my job feels like that as kind of like the prime minister person who is like at that moment in time responsible for shepherding that thing and making sure that the outcomes are good and i hope unlike a prime minister i don't have like a limited term but maybe that maybe maybe like long term that's the thing that that works is that i don't know i do like a i do a six year seven year term and then pass on to someone who's like closer to closer to the movement where it's happening because in seven years time i'll be like pushing 40 or maybe i'll be maybe maybe maybe maybe people will be like right kitty to move on she's so out of touch who knows um the thing that feels like more important to me than sort of like my, and again this sounds almost like falsely self-sacrificial but the movement matters so much more to me than my role within it and maybe that's a very fluffy answer but it doesn't feel like a company in a traditional sense Okay again this may be a bit of an unfair question but Project Europe is run by two women but it's back as our overwhelmingly men the investors are overwhelmingly men the partners who the vc partners who are on the investment committee are all correct me if i'm wrong men and and most of the founders that have been backed are men why kitty aren't you on the investment committee oh no i am on the investment committee you are okay good yeah don't worry so the event the it's a good question no it's not it's not on bad question at all um but it's a the investment committee is me just me as one of the voices and then we have to have one of the vc partners so harry kieran uh then ricardo from powerpoint nine and nico from adjacent so one of them have to say yes and then one of the partners who are one of the founders who've backed project europe have to say yes and it has to be there have to be three yeses um and so i do have like a decisive vote vote on every on the ic um and then i guess like the the fun too obviously the the the aim is to bring in a far far sort of broader church um i did i mean i didn't i actually did nothing to do with the setup of the fund it was i mean crazy um crazy opportunity just to be was to be handed a fund um with lps and money and not having to journey not have to do any of the hard work that goes into it I did then scramble along with like the partners to bring in like more women um after I joined um before we closed the fun um but yeah it's it's everything's getting better but yeah I'm the diversity at the beginning yeah it feels it wasn't fair to ask you this because you didn't set it up and you are a woman and I feel like in general it's frustrating isn't it when it's almost like the expectation is um there is more expectation upon women to fix these sort of structural issues than other people um which doesn't feel at all fair so um yeah yeah i'm glad that is a priority for the for the next fund and i wish you luck thank you amy and then i guess i've got this like slightly naive belief that i spent like i spent so many years in the beginning of my career thinking that i need to do everything i can to change the system before i'm able to succeed um and i did i did like you know like female specific family boot camps and i did like endless like drinks and ma sessions and like fast i chat actually it's amazing because i've made a number of friends through that but i don't think i did anything to change the system um apart from just like they brought together um interesting women and smart women who a supported pig but now increasingly I'm like I just need to I just need to win I need to do some great work and like maybe that means it'll be a little bit I'm not going to be operating within a perfect system I'm not going to be able to be building the thing that on paper I would obviously ideally I'd want to have like 50 % maybe more women investors and more than that in the teams we've invested in But increasingly, I think I need to be able to move faster, set up, build a bit of a, build momentum for this thing.

29:40And then over time, that gives you the remit to be able to change the system behind you rather than change it before you even feel the right to play. And that has been a real shift for me in the last couple of years. And I think part of that was, I think I spent the first, I spent my 20s trying to be as likable as possible to as many people as possible. And now increasingly I'm like, well, I just need to, I need to, I need to have the remit to be able to change the system. And I'm not going to get that by being likable and waiting my turn. And I hope I'm likable, but it means I can't like just guarantee myself like perfect systems in order to win, I guess.

30:18what is your what is your personal big goal what what you know if you're if you are the prime minister of project europe for the next uh let's say eight years that's how long they mostly get right um what comes next like what are you are you an investor are you a founder are you an operator are you you know gonna go live up a mountain and totally leave the world of tech like what's or your thoughts that's a good question i i kind of i don't i don't actually have a clear or good answer to this um for me the thing i find most i guess i got there are two things like one is like for me personally the thing i find things i find like affirming and fun and then the other is like what i want to see in the world and for me if the next eight years are a success then there will be one a culture of this exuberant optimistic ambition and desire to produce wonderful things that will be commonplace or the norm among like young europeans um and i don't know what was whatever the opposite of disenfranchised is we'll have like super franchised young europeans who just want to want to build awesome things um and like secondly i know harry says there'll be like 100 billion whatever lots of big big numbers and big companies like for me there will be companies doing like stuff that really materially change the physical world uh in interesting and compelling ways like you look about look back at the the awesome companies for the last like thousand years and the coolest ones the ones which have like some physical output that changes like their lives and like that's i want europeans and for people citizens to be living like living differently as a result of some innovation or some company that came out of project europe or was even just like that had like some kind of roots into the movement that we're part of that matters a lot and then for me personally i started off studying architecture and then i became a school teacher and then i became a software engineer and none of these things make sense made sense at the time and my parents like despaired of like all my like short-lived different careers but for me the thing that really mattered was creating institutions even if those institutions were just kind of like in people's heads that changed how people live their lives in some way and for me that was a cool thing about architecture that you could like create these literal physical spaces that would change the way people like went about their day-to-day life like how neat is that and so for me like that is the thing and for a while as i thought maybe maybe i'm happy being ancillary and being the person who kind of tees someone else up for success and i kind of have but that has to fit like more sort of like more broad it needs to fit into like a bigger thing it can't just be like multiple different sort of it has to be it has to be scalable there has to be like some kind of scalable ancillary-ness um and so it's completely it's hard to like define as a singular ambition um but the people i look at in history i think are awesome like gertrude stein who was able to create at the institution of the salon that propelled all sorts of different beautiful like wonderful artists into into the success they had in their careers and that would be like something like that something gertrude stein-y but for technology that's kind of that's the that's the dream you mentioned how this sort of positivity around europe is important and it It feels very much like we're in a kind of pro-Europe moment or at least if you spend enough time on certain parts of LinkedIn, it feels that way.

34:03But it's also kind of pro-very hard work and pro-what can sometimes veer into things that seem much less healthy to me, like posts that I'm not sure whether they're a joke or not, but about how I can't date until I reach my Series B or glorifying a complete inability, just not sleeping at all. which if you've read certain books you will know is very very important for our long-term health or being very anti sort of having any sort of social life outside of company building what do you kind of make of that and where do you think I don't know the right balance is on we want to be positive and we want to um kind of promote Europe as this great place to build companies and and work without it becoming so extreme that it excludes a whole bunch of people who think this is madness if we can like I don't want to join a company where you know I can't ever go on a date no I I think it's so icky I hate I I I actually read grit when I Angela Duckworth book when I was I don't know 23 24 and I remember being like oh my gosh I'm such an underachiever I can't force myself to do all-nighters.

35:20I've never worked at McKinsey. I'm obviously a lazy person. I'm totally never going to achieve anything interesting. I generally spend so much of my career thinking I don't work hard. I actually work incredibly hard because I don't think I've already stopped working, but that's because I'm also incapable of doing things which I don't want to do. But when I want to do something, it doesn't feel like work anymore. um i think the so yeah i think i think like the grind set i don't know like the hustle culture 996 it feels it feels pretty it already feels kind of dated as a as a concept um i think this kind of like holistic like life's work work life kind of everything together and where you're inspired by your friends and you you are able to bring your life into the work you do like it's super important like i know i mean candidly i'm like in my early 30s recently married like i will have a family at some point in the future i hope and so for me like the idea that like i couldn't carry on doing this work because i couldn't i couldn't you know show up every day in the office and and work until 11 p.m every night like i don't know it's kind of kind of well if i if i take that as like take that seriously it's kind of heartbreaking but i also just don't think i have to say that seriously at all i think there's there's a way that like my life's work can like can become part of my life and my life can become part of my work and I don't know like maybe like I'll have I don't know my my husband my dog and my baby in the office in the future who knows um but yeah it seems it seems it seems it seems totally made up um and the other thing that has really struck me I don't know how much he followed all the uh the Alyssa Liu content during the winter olympics this amazing ice skater um has like such a fan girl but she i think 19 years old but she had like hustled so hard worked so hard to to sort of like no in the traditional like brutal like training regimes of like figure skating which i know nothing about but i've seen blades of glory and that looks like easier but she but she um she'd had like a really really punishing training schedule till she was 16 and then she thought and she was no she was on top her game but she quit because she hated it and then she took a year out came back and skated for joy and did it because she wanted to do wonderful things and she kind of completely reinvented the the sport because she was not doing it within like the fixed like the fixed parameters and she wasn't doing it with like the the the brutal regimes everyone else is following she was just doing it in the way that felt exuberant and natural to her i do just i don't know like yes people work hard to make wonderful things but there always seems to be for like the wonderful things that exist in the world there seems to be like some grain of like kind of madness and some huge amount of exuberance and delusion that then is like executed on like pretty intensely that leads to an interesting outcome i don't i don't think i really don't think you can just like grind away following a playbook and create something that changes the world but yes you can create a huge amount of value for yourself but like i don't know like venture capital is it's all about like backing the things that have the potential to either change the world in a in a in an enormous and like highly profitable way or like on the other side be kind of embarrassing and a bit delusional we're not we're not we're not in the game of like backing so like the that the grindy like playbook following to trad outcome um and if we were i wouldn't be working in this industry because that seems kind of seems kind of I'm glad you brought up figure skating the second time the Olympic figure skating has been brought up on the sifted podcast because I am also a mega fan thank you so so much for joining the show I could have asked you a whole bunch more things um I feel like we've touched on lots and lots of interesting topics um so thank you so much this is so nice to speak and listeners please as always rate review and share the podcast this episode was produced by the inimitable Maya de Rumpel-Walby.