Harry Stebbings, Podcaster and VC

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0:40It will even make this podcast sound great, maybe. Head to lynn.co.uk for the best and most captivating audio systems on the planet. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Gentleman's Journal podcast. I'm Joe Bulmore. I'm the editor of Gentleman's Journal. And our guest on today's show is Harry Stebbings, the VC and podcaster. And we're here really because of The Social Network, the 2010 film by Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher, which was a kind of brooding portrayal of the early days of Facebook and the internecine wars, is that the right word, between Eduardo Saverin and a chap called Mark Zuckerberg, who's since gone on to do great things with the world, for the world, and had a jolly old time with all the money he's made, I think.

1:26A lot of people saw that film and thought, God, I'd like to be a tech founder, a tech guru. Seems to be a little bit of cash in that. I saw it and thought, I'd love to be a member of the Porcellian Club, the society at Harvard where the Winklevoss twins are members. And perhaps in many ways, I've been chasing my own personal Porcellian ever since. But Harry saw it at the age of 13 and thought, and I quote, gosh, I want to be a venture capitalist, which is remarkable when you think what the rest of us were doing at 13 years old. I was probably reading the Beano and even then just for the pictures.

2:00But I think that gives you an idea of the lovable precociousness of Harry Stebbings. He was 18 when he started his podcast, 20VC, which, as you'd hope, interviewed people from the world of venture capital in 20 minutes or less. And it was kind of an instant hit and has been running on for 1 ,400 and more episodes like a juggernaut ever since. And off the back of that, Harry has now got his own fund, 20 VC, which has invested in 13 unicorns, being, of course, billion dollar valued companies or more, which is a pretty good going. But we talked about that. We talked about the world of venture capital investment, the things that Harry is obviously incredibly well versed in about AI and tech and the future of both of those, which is always illuminating, but also about personal things as well.

2:51We spoke about Harry's very strict, I would think it's fair to say, regime, about his upbringing and his personal life and how his time at school probably formed him into the entrepreneur he is today. And I found it just fascinating throughout. And I could probably have spoken to Harry for four hours rather than just one. But I hope you enjoyed the episode. It was a lot of fun to put together.

3:25Harry Stebbings thanks for being here on the Gentleman's Journal podcast you're the only host your only guest in fact who's actually hosted us with their own equipment and this is far smarter and posher than anything we ever use dude you should come and actually A host it in our places and we have multiple studios next door now I know so you can actually choose the setting you can choose like fireside you can choose much more casual oh yeah Yeah, the ambiance in which you put someone for an interview is very, very important. It's not what you say. It's not what you do. It's how you make people feel, which is why being in an interview is very important to being a good investor, because you have five minutes at the start of a meeting with a founder to make them feel like you can tell them anything.

4:06And most investors are awkward and quite mathematical and engineering. They make you feel uncomfortable. My job is to make you feel super comfortable. And the way that you make people feel comfortable is really twofold. Number one, share a vulnerability with them. I suffered from bulimia when I was younger and had quite a lot of eating disorders. It was really tough. I might share something about that or my mother's MS. And it encourages them that they can open up in a similar way. Or number two is you ask for advice. Right. People, when they are asked for advice, feel superior and that you are in a subordinate position.

4:40And they open up more and they give very, very different to how most people would start an interview or a conversation. You've been doing this since you were 18. Yeah. That was your first episode. All those things you've just told me, you picked them up over time. You hadn't got that worked out at the age of 18, had you? No, no, no. And this is another massive mistake. Everyone should be building a personal brand and no one's building a personal brand. And every single person that I speak to pretty much says, I couldn't build a personal brand. It's just not me to put myself out there. It's just not me.

5:11It's what everyone says. and it's like going into a gym and going up to a treadmill for the first time and being like treadmill i've never met you before but me and you are great friends and of course you get on it's painful it's hard you don't feel comfortable you don't want to go back on it but next day you go you go you go and you get used to it in the 50th time you get better and better and better you asked me about public speaking before like i was very very insecure lacking in self-confidence but just through putting the reps in and doing it over and over and over I became a lot lot better what is it can you sum up your do you think you've got a strong and clear personal brand if we had to put brand stebbings on the wall I think it's incredibly important to have people who resonate with you and who dislike you dislike you absolutely you cannot have a successful I know it's true you cannot have a successful brand unless people dislike you Tom Hanks people dislike him yeah ant and deck people dislike them ask ant's wife ex-wife even um but absolutely and so when you look at the biggest brands in the world apple or windows yeah very clear distinction nike or adidas burger king or mcdonald's and the biggest problem with people is they're too afraid to actually have people dislike them and so they go in the middle and in the middle is where brands go to die.

6:34And so, no, I'm actually okay with that. Now that takes time because it's very hurtful to read bad comments about you. Yeah. But... Do you often get bad comments, even now? Are you serious? I get hundreds a day in my messages. DMs? Yeah. Instagram? I would say probably across all of them, probably three or four hundred a day. Three or four hundred negative messages? Yeah. Across... What does that do to a man's psyche? That's insane! Every morning you wake up and read that you know do you read them uh honestly no because there's too many no that would take you an hour two hours it would take far too long what's the general theme or perhaps we don't dwell too much the general theme is that you got lucky okay um and that uh you don't deserve what you have and it's the most important thing to understand with that is that very rarely does someone punch down yeah it's always someone who wishes they have what you have and the truth is you know i work seven days a week tirelessly and the work you do in private is the work you're rewarded for in public people see us talking now and think i go home at the end of the day and don't work people do not see you working late late late putting the hours in and that's what forms their opinion and so i it doesn't upset me i actually more realize that it's just their own unhappiness in their own life almost always in fact always what do you would you get nice messages too oh my god like more nice messages than bad messages great hey what are the nice ones so um you inspired me to tell my family about eating disorders i've struggled for years i tell my daughter about you and she told me all about her anorexia which i'd known about but she couldn't come out with and talk to me about your stories with your mother and her ms literally make my relationship with my mother better my mother is inspired she has MS too by seeing your mother walking it's a really dark world wow those are incredible things but they're not even the core at all of of what you're mostly talking about on 20VC or in your public persona oh no no no not at all but they're the things that clearly mean the most to you but the fact that you brought them up absolutely but this is also what people forget so much which is like you cannot build a brand with a corporate persona no authenticity is so important which is why leaders who are like oh i want to tweet but i don't want to do it myself it has to be you doing it you know toby looker a friend of mine who runs shopify he does all of his tweets it's incredibly authentic and it has to be authentic which is why my mother's ms and walking a marathon with her is very much on my social because it's who i am yeah of course and people resonate with people not with businesses and that's really important yeah can i take you right back then to the start of all of this and the first time i must have heard some of your first ever episodes and come across you very early on i'm so sorry for you well that was going to be one of my points because what i admire about it now is how how you just like you're relentless you'll get up and go and it was unpolished let's be very honest it wasn't in this kind of setup it was in my bedroom yeah yeah and that's with a 50 pound ice ball microphone okay called ice ball microphones because it was his little ice ball top.

9:46I didn't know any VC and I had no money. And I cold emailed VCs. And this is another thing that people suck at. The internet is the most glorious place in the world because pretty much anyone is reachable. You can email Jeff Bezos if you're smart enough to get his email. But they suck at the cold email. They suck at the cold email. If someone really wanted to get your time, they could say, do you know what? I love the Gentleman's Journal, the March edition. In the March edition, there was this. And it inspired me to do why. could I literally grab five minutes of your time I know you love lattes I'll bring it to the office and walk with you to your next meeting that's really a great cold email very short very clear request showed that you've done the work no one does that no the thing that that I think stuck out to me when I was listening today is I'm a little bit older than you you seem to have it kind of even worked out even then or was that just just the the naivety and brashness of youth in some way you seem confident oh yeah yeah yeah well I think my mother taught me that there's nothing that you can't achieve and only you know the limits of your own abilities and even then you are much better than you think I hate visions you know you're told to have a vision absolute bullshit there's nothing that's more constraining than a vision yeah right you will never be able to foresee what you're able to achieve when I started the podcast I wanted to be an associate at this venture fund in london well in three years time i raised 150 million dollars and was a founding gp of a fund if i constrained myself to the vision that i'd said i would be massively undershooting my potential and so to everyone you have to be micro ambitious right chase the shiny thing in front of you with everything you have but not pretend to be arrogant enough to pretend that you know what's going to happen in three to five years absolutely not I've got this Whenever you have a decision to make always choose the one which leads to more options Yes 100 % I'm building a kind of world view a grand unified theory I want to call it first stepism because if you want to do anything in life this isn't even new is it it's not even mine I'm realising Stephen Hawking Yeah Sorry Sorry to break it to you But I think yeah the first step is often God this is such a trite thing to say but it's very hard to make the first step and actually the first step is you don't need to know what the next 99 steps are just know that there's going to be other ones and that's fine just by the way 99 of people don't take the first step which is why such an important thing to do with the first step is to make it hard so much to walk it back yeah so like for me when i started you know the show i didn't have much money and i invested 80 of the money that i had in my bank account into a microphone and a domain name there was no what was that how much was that?

12:30Oh, fuck all, 200 quid. I mean, I was 17, 18. Maybe 300 quid. But there was no way I was going to spend 80 % of my money and then not do it. That was not possible. But if we go back even further, I've heard you say before that you were 13 when you saw The Social Network. Still one of my favourite films. Amazing film. I can't hear that soundtrack, those sort of eerie keys. Oh, brilliant. Without feeling something very profound and odd. Absolutely. gets to me. You saw that and you thought this is for me, this world. And other people might see that and think, what a difficult world full of disreputable characters.

13:08But you loved it. Well, actually most people saw it and thought, gosh, I want to be a founder. And I saw it and thought, gosh, I want to be a venture capitalist. I saw Peter Thiel invest in Facebook with his hedge fund Clarium Capital. He's a small cameo in that though. He's not even a big player. No, no, it's a very obscure scene that most people kind of ignore or disregard totally. But I saw that and I thought, gosh, This is the greatest job in the world. I can marry what I love, which is meeting the smartest people in the world with finance and investing, which is venture capital. You were 13.

13:37You were thinking like that. I do. When I was like seven, I used to get campaign the advertising magazine because I love advertising and telling stories. Wow. Building something that people resonate with is the most important thing in the world. You know, I always say to interview guests, the best shows are a combination of art and science. the art is telling a story bringing someone into that world with you and the science is sharing a framework of lessons that go alongside that as a result of that which is why we'll then manipulate questions because i'll say take me to the hardest or worst investment you made yeah and the lessons that you learned as a result i'm manufacturing the art and the science yeah yeah really important And that's the essence of great branding, great marketing.

14:25But when you look at what does it take to be a great entrepreneur today, I can tell you unwaveringly there's three things that are common in the$10 billion founders that I've interviewed. And I've interviewed pretty much everyone in the world, pretty much. Number one, they moved around a lot in childhood. You're forced to assimilate with different cultures, different communities, make new friends. Number two, they were part of gaming communities. They're very good at gaming. If you're good at gaming, there's a high correlation to you being a good entrepreneur. Okay, really important. And then number three is they started something entrepreneurial very young.

14:59All throughout my teenage years, I was doing arbitrage on Motorola Razr phones from Eastern Europe and selling them at boarding school. I was doing Kindle Direct Publishing on the student notes that I had. I still make three or four hundred pounds a month through Kindle Direct Publishing on GCSE English notes. Yeah. that's pretty good yeah i mean at the time i made like a thousand or two thousand pounds a month wow even better as a 15 year old well you've given me a bit of an open goal here then i'm going to put your framework back to you tell me what you were like as a 13 14 15 year old and how is the science that made you how that makes you good at what you do today because i can't my question i suppose is i can't imagine many other 14 year olds are talking about anderson Horowitz what were you what were your what did your friends think of all this stuff I didn't really have friends okay and it's a brilliant question because actually it deeply affected who I am today because I was very much alone and I used to go to the bathroom at break time because then other people wouldn't see that I had no friends Wow and I was very insecure and I doubted myself intensely and I was very insecure and unhappy in my own body as well I was very obese when i was young and i was quite an unhappy child to be honest and that actually is really important to who i am because so much of what i do is trying to prove to the world that i am actually worth something wow that's pretty motivating yeah as a founder story i'd buy that yeah and there is nothing that i will not do to win okay and and so if you're coming against me you should be very nervous.

16:39Yeah, why? Because I will be that motherfucker in the gym at 2 a.m. who is doing the extra rep just because I have to do it because I know that you're not. Why were you so unhappy, do you think? Just because, was it a vicious cycle? You didn't have friends and that made you unhappy or? I think, you know, there's this number one determinant of human happiness is the quality of your relationships. And I think I felt very much like an outsider. Everything that I loved, no one else liked. Was it because you were so interested in adult things, grown-up things? Yeah, I loved Andreessen Horace and interest rates.

17:14And fiscal and monetary policy was super interesting to me. But at 13, it's not very interesting to everyone else. And so there was just very little commonality. Any friend that I had was much, much older. And I used to get on much better with the teachers than I did the students. Really? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. That's so intriguing. That's a great image. You'd hang out with teachers. Oh, yeah, at break time, I'd often stay in the classroom and talk to them for the break than I would go out with the students. And it's not like an arrogance of, it's just, I just have nothing in common with them.

17:48Yeah. And, you know, especially now it's fine. But when I was 18 to 25, I would be deeply, deeply nervous about going to a party with 21, 22 year olds. I didn't know what to say or do. Now, I would literally have dinner with the CEO of Visa or the biggest investor in the world. I'm walking completely not nervous. But gosh, going to a 21st birthday party, I would be so nervous. How old are you now, Harry? Remind me. I'm 29. 29. Do you still have social anxiety? The few times I've seen you out and about in the world, you've been high energy, gregarious. You would not think that there was anyone, there was any sort of social anxiety behind that.

18:31I have to say I don't have social anxiety anymore I actually think that people change as a result of success and money in positive ways as well I used to feel very uncomfortable in nice restaurants or nice hotels because I didn't belong I literally didn't belong, I couldn't afford it well now I can I have more confidence because I literally do belong and also maybe you've realized that it matters less whether or not you belong in a nice restaurant I mean that's not a good measure of humans yeah 100 % we were talking about carbone earlier I have zero desire to be seen at a cool place I don't really care what other people think about me right that's useful yeah very useful you see that in my fashion you don't like my top I don't care I'm not wearing it for you so that helps a lot it's very mentally freeing to remember that actually people care about you a lot less than you think yeah absolutely they're not thinking about you at all yeah do this i want to talk more about the the podcast in the early days but my question is do you have friends now do you have time to hang out with friends knowing everything i know about you and your schedule i mean my best friends are my business partners okay they work with me day in day out and yeah they're very great and dear friends and then i do have great friends that they're all investors or founders yeah so i don't have any friends you met them through work yeah i don't have any friends who are from school or from any other discipline of life but you've got the quality of relationships oh yeah that made you oh yeah i'm very happy now as a human i'm good i'm glad i know like life is life has really been good to me yeah yeah romantic relationships honestly no comment no i'm very happy to comment if you do what i do work wise and hour wise it's very hard to find someone who's willing to put up with that because you are by nature third for me i have my company i have my fitness and my health and then the relationship not many people are willing to be third no no couldn't couldn't they eat first in a different way no this is also what people forget which is that if you want to be the best you really have to be unwaveringly obsessed like there is nothing else that I think about that I do I don't do other things yeah I don't go out for dinners why would I waste three hours going out for dinner that just doesn't make sense no I want to get to the idea of the best I think that's such an interesting thing and it's very important in our culture but before I do let's talk about those early guests was there kind of one that felt like a big upward inflection a big viral moment a pivot a breakthrough whatever we want to say Absolutely, Ariel Zuckerberg, Mark Zuckerberg's younger sister And I remember it exactly, I was at university and it hit 100 ,000 plays for a single episode Wow Yep, and then I got a call from a sponsor And they said, we'll give you 75 ,000 Well, actually, it was$100 ,000 for three months on the show And I said, that's wonderful, I'd love to accept And then I went to my law professor and I said, how much money do you earn?

21:38And he said, I earn 72 ,000 pounds a year And I thought, wow, I've just made what you earn in three months from a podcast so I called up my parents and I said hey I'm gonna leave university for this weird thing called a podcast that you've kind of seen me do and they were like fantastic we're very proud of you well done right and I really give my parents credit for allowing me the freedom to pursue what I wanted to do yeah I've heard you say before that one of the sort of great tragedies is when you think everyone is kind of brilliant at something inherently and that the great tragedy is that a lot of people never allow themselves to find that.

22:14I've got two questions there. Do you think that's actually true, that everyone is brilliant at something, genuinely has something in the world somewhere that they would be brilliant at? Absolutely, I do. I think it's the saddest thing in the world, which is that 90 % of people really just don't find what they love. I don't attribute much of my journey to luck, to be honest. It's been fucking hard work endlessly. But finding this was luck. Watching the movie was luck. and so I'm very grateful for that but yeah I think absolutely everyone does and I think the biggest crime is actually made by parents today where they tell their children that they should do this and they should do that they should go and work at Siemens or Bosch or any big company actually you have to give your children the freedom to fail and I think this is the hardest thing about parenting which is like you have to find the tolerable quantity of suffering that your children should have.

23:10I was bullied. I was obese. I was unhappy. And it made me who I am today. Some bits were tolerable. Some were intolerable. But if you just cushion me and let me just have this perfectly free and happy life, the first time you get hit by something, which you will do, you'll get fired, you'll get dumped, you'll get something happening in life, you don't know what to do with yourself. And so it's like, how do I give my child a tolerable amount of suffering to make them durable as a human being? Yeah. Yeah, grit, I suppose some people call it. Yeah. You can get that in sports. I think sports is good.

23:42And I think we should definitely celebrate losing in sport and not give. One of my friends is worth about$25 billion. And he said, you know how I parent my children? Watch the Discovery Channel and look at the elephants. The elephants teach by leading. If you want your child to be nice to waiters, be nice to waiters. The biggest problem is the father who retires at 42 and the children see their father retired at 42 playing tennis. Yeah. Children copy. My part B to that question about finding the thing you love is how can people do that? You attribute some luck to it. You found something at a young age which is really fortunate.

24:21Many people really struggle. Lots of my friends now have been very successful in one field and in their mid-30s suddenly realizing, oh, I'm successful in something I don't actually like. I've got to the mid to top of something I don't care about. A hundred percent. I think one thing is you can fall out of love with something. That very often happens. And I think that's perfectly natural. You have second, third chapters of your career. If you're truly obsessed like I am, we are building a 50, 60, 70 year financial institution. This will be around well after I'm dead. So I think very long term, but I think the majority of people don't quite have that.

24:58So it's like be willing to embrace the second and third chapter. And then for those that don't know, I think actually you can do a Toyota's five whys. And Toyota have this very good framework, which is ask why five times. And you'll generally get to the core of the truth. And it's very, very helpful. This young girl came to me the other day and said, gosh, you know, I love what you've built, but I don't know what I like. And I said, well, what would you do on your day off? And she said, well, I would go to a fancy store and go shopping. And I'm like, that's super interesting. Why do you like being in fancy stores?

25:29Oh, it's because of the way they make me feel. Why do you like the way they make you feel? Oh, well like generally that's a really nice smell They they actually have everything laid out beautifully the people in there are super nice to you It's a really nice ambience to be around huh? That's really interesting. So it's like the way that it makes you feel in a luxury location Hmm super interesting and you were very detailed about the scents that they used in the different stores Have you ever thought about going into luxury hospitality working in some of the best hotels in the world? That's very important actually no, I haven't, but that's really interesting.

26:04Hmm, that's really interesting. Why didn't I introduce you to some people? Really? That is one of her biggest passions. And now she has a job in that. That's interesting because other people might have heard that and said, what do you like to do in your day off? I like to go shopping. They would have said, that's frivolous and silly. And they would have thought that's just you being a consumer or mindless or wasting your time. You thought there's some truth in that. Of course, there's always a more to it. Why does she like shopping? It's because it's the way that she felt. Okay. Why does she why does she feel that way because of the smell because of the shop assistance because the layout and when you were speaking to her you saw something in her.

26:40I saw her eyes. Yeah. Yeah. When I asked the why do you love the shopping and she said it's the way it makes me feel and most people then stop again. And just when you think you should stop you should ask why again. Okay. That's good. It's like with interviewers. You know the biggest problem with interviewers is they're not comfortable in silence. very often after silence comes the most valuable part be comfortable in silence i want to play five wives with you but i suspect you know do you feel like you're very in touch with your own motivations if i asked you five wives you go for it okay you say you want this company to last 70 80 years after you're dead why is that i'm scared of being forgotten in timelessness of kind of eternity why do you think that is i think like when you realize that we all just go to dust i really need to feel like something is left behind that is me i don't think there really is a why to the pivot off that because i think that's pretty fundamental you've sort of shortcutted the process you're like why do you need to feel like that yeah I suppose so yeah probably because I if you're not going to be here the obvious question is why do you care you're not going to exist you didn't care about it in the year 1976 or 1742 because you weren't here you're not going to care about it in the year 2097 because you won't be here it's probably because I have a very large ego do you and I like to think that there's something that will outlast me and still be part of me I agree but I think children help with that but the challenging thing about children is do you know your great-grandfather's name?

28:22I know it because it was the same as my grandfather's name, but even now as you say that, I'm actually thinking maybe it was the other way around and his middle name was swapped. Proving your point, the fact that I haven't got confidence to tell you. I give you 95 % of people don't even know who their great-grandfather is. Oh, God. And so the idea that you live through your children is nice, but it's relatively time-bound. I saw an interview with Paul McCartney, and you're very much the Paul McCartney of VC, I think. He said that in, like, even a hundred years time, people will probably remember, like, two or three songs of his and he's probably the most important songwriter of the 20th century which is crazy to think about and very profound and it made me think about what our songs should be in life so to speak if you're really going to want to be remembered and you care about posterity and with respect no one's going to care about this podcast episode for example probably no one's going to care about 90 of the things i've done this week what are the things i'm going to do this year that are going to result in me having a couple of songs do you think like that Yeah, absolutely.

29:19And it's why we did Project Europe in some respects. Project Europe, for those that don't know, is a program which basically gives$200 ,000 to 18 to 25 year olds in Europe to build the most ambitious companies in the world. Robotics companies, medical companies, cancer treatments, space companies, defense companies. yeah in 10 years that we will have 10 10 000 person companies that would never have existed without project europe that is like oh shit we're changing the gdp of a continent that's i mean that's lasting that's very lasting and do you mind if people don't know that harry stebbings did that i don't care you don't care so your ego extends up to the point that it exists but actually you don't need the your name in lies honestly i don't need my name in lies i need to feel like i did something impactful, that my time was worth it.

30:35sound and chest-thumping bass that Lin's speakers produce. In particular, Lin's Magic System allows you to have that studio-quality sound in your own living room. It's the most accessible distillation of the whole Lin range, but one that produces the most gorgeous and clear sound imaginable. It will even make this podcast sound great, perhaps. Head to lin.co.uk for the best and most captivating audio systems on the planet. I'm interested in how you pivoted that podcast to a proper job in VC. That was obviously your early goal. Was that Apollo? Was your first fund you worked for? No, it was Atomico.

31:12Atomico. That's what I mean. Yeah, it was a billion dollar fund from the founder of Skype. London based? Yeah, London based. And how old were you when you got a job there? 19. How did you do that? I think they paid me$200 ,000 a year for like three days a week. Wow. And 19. Yeah. And I was an entrepreneur in residence. I can't wait to have children one day and say my first job was an entrepreneur in residence. So you've never had a proper job before that? No. Not worked at a pub or? Nothing. Wow. That was your first job? Because I made money through entrepreneurial things. Like working in a pub would have been vastly inefficient.

31:49But it might have taught you something. Some decent lessons working in pubs. Actually, yes. One of the most helpful jobs that you can do is working in McDonald's. yeah time pressures unhappy customers the importance of process-driven work so absolutely and i don't belittle it at all i would actually try and get my children to do the same but that was my first job um what do you do as an entrepreneur in residence my job was honestly to try and find good companies that we could invest in and i absolutely hated it really i absolutely hated it despite a lot of money for a young person really hated it was incredibly formal and it didn't embrace creativity and freedom in the way that i wanted it to it was very much like a bank and that's not how i thought venture should or could be so how long did you last there four months four months four months it was more of an internship right look at it like that were they surprised when you left i don't think so i think i was a terrible employee too which is very interesting because like people often do a lot of references before they hire someone yeah never ever listen to references if you're investing in someone's new company because generally founders will be terrible employees.

32:53I'm a terrible employee. I don't really take orders very well. I'm very unstructured, creatively, absurdly weird. I mean, I'm dressed relatively smartly today. I'm normally in very different attire. I eat one meal a day. I go to bed at 2.30 a.m. What time do you wake up? 8.15. Okay. Pretty rigorous, pretty rigid schedule. Yeah, yeah. First walk in the park is at 8.30 every morning. always have a first meeting at 8 30 and so like very very so to the point often references will mislead you and i think i was a very bad employee and i didn't like it and so i i left and i started my own fund then so that was straight out that you still 19 maybe 20 still 19 still 19 and that's when you set up 20 vc as a fund yeah as a fund so how did you convince people to give you money ah well i i had already interviewed you know 300 people yeah and a lot of great people sent me deals they sure thought i should invest in and so i went to some of the biggest founders in the world including the founders of you know spotify and many others and they gave me money to invest in these companies wow and i started with an eight million dollar fund and i was investing out of my bedroom just you just me how many employees do you have now 20 bc across everything like 25 25.

34:13As a terrible employee, what are you like as a boss? I would say very, very demanding. It's not easy working here. And it's not meant to be easy working here. This is the place where you will do the most meaningful work of your career. And you will make more money here than ever before. And you will make more money here than you ever will anywhere else. It's a good pitch. It's a very good pitch. But if you want to take the baton, be ready to work fucking hard. Right. What does that look like in practice? honestly we don't sleep so like i don't agree with like the change your desk at all but we absolutely do do 9 a.m to 9 p.m six days a week okay we absolutely do what if someone leaves at 8 55 that's fine okay so it's not so it's not a rigid light of course it's a it's a yardstick of but it's but you know what that's that's on me to make everyone feel like an owner of the business then because if they're an owner of the business they won't want to yeah i will jump on calls with people at midnight 1am and they're like yeah yeah and they want to do the call not me okay because they feel like an owner of the business and this is why so many leaders go wrong which is they don't inspire their team to see why the work that they do matters yeah you know our media team why are they so passionate because we have 14 year olds from favelas in brazil who watch some of our tiktoks and feel inspired to start a company or feel that they can do more with their life.

35:37The work that you do upstairs here inspires millions of children in some of the most poverty-ridden countries in the world to feel that they can do better, that they can do more, and their life isn't as difficult and hard as it actually is. That's why you should be so inspired to stay and work harder and harder and harder. Have you ever had conflicts with that worldview with your employees? No, because I'm very clear up front, and I think this is another massive problem that people make in hiring, which is they're not very, very clear about what it takes to succeed and what they're even looking for.

36:15As I said, we work unreasonably hard, and you will do better than you've ever done before. The quality of your work will be better, and you'll make more money. Nick from Revolut taught me something very clear about culture. nick taught me that we conflate culture and happiness and it's bullshit actually people thrive when they are developing personally and when they're developing financially so the only thing that you need to do is focus on winning right when you win people are happy yeah very rare to have a company where they just continuously lose deals no one ever succeeds there but they're very happy yeah no no when you are winning when you're making money when you're learning when you're growing when you're doing better work more work people are happy i mean it's pretty irrefutable that success is an incredible motivator and it's a and it's a virtuous cycle in some ways absolutely but also just remember the the importance of humility that like i'm always learning you know for me as a leader i never ever want anyone to feel like they can't tell me that i could have done something better or differently and so it's your job as a leader to create an environment where people can tell you you know what dude the way that you approach that conversation could have been handled better that's really interesting how could i have done that better i always want to know and the minute that you don't want to know how you could do it better or don't think you could have done it better is your last day.

37:46What has people told you recently that there are a bit of a learning for you about something in your working life? Sometimes feedback doesn't need to be given directly. And when I say directly, I mean directly in terms of time. So you got feedback about some feedback? I got feedback, yeah, absolutely, which is very, very helpful. And so the way that that shaped itself is like, you know, I move fast and I very much like velocity. but actually sometimes you need to appreciate that it's not the right time yeah and that actually tomorrow is a little bit better than today i know it just happened but actually that's the worst time actually to hear not the right time you're not in a good headspace just make sure and they're not in a good headspace and so you know what sometimes it is okay to go to sleep angry so to speak and actually the time with which you deliver it is really really important the other thing is you A great leader is a little bit like a conductor in an orchestra.

38:44You need to actually play people individually. The flautist requires something very different to the saxophonist. And your job as a leader is to understand the intricate parts of your team and what makes them play great music together. And it's not the same. And that's why kind of homogenous cultures are such bullshit. Because some people thrive on carrots. Some people thrive on sticks. and you can't plaster on this homogenous culture to everyone because it's so different for each person. Yeah, definitely. I'm learning I'm a big carrot guy. I only passed my driving test last year at the age of 34.