20VC: From Leading the BBC to Leading Venture Capitalist, The Biggest Similarities and Differences Between the Best Founders and the Best Actors & The Future of Media; Legacy vs New, The Creator Economy, The Rise of TikTok and more with Danny Cohen

22:32I am also interested in have they always been in one area or have they moved around. There's not one definite right or wrong answer to what that means. But you learn a lot from that also. You learn a lot about people's focus, their attention, their drive, the quality of their execution in the past. I like all of those details too. It's funny, I find that the best founders that I work with have a hobby that is just very unusual. That's interesting. Give me the example. Akin, he will absolutely master the shit out of online chess. Yeah. And he will get so deep in it and understanding every possible optionality tree of moves.

23:08And then I'll have one who is fascinated by lodging for families in the 17th century in England. That's interesting. And it tends to be one thing. It tends to be one thing. And it can move. Is there anything that's different between them? When you look at it, like, maybe the more your actors, your directors, writers versus the founders, is there anything where the best have a difference? On stage talent, often come with a range of insecurities. It's a different thing that they take a risk and put themselves out in the public that the rest of us don't. And that involves risk and vulnerability. Most of us don't ever experience.

23:41That's something interesting in how you manage them and get the best out of them. I think that's actually one really, really important difference. that they take a different kind of risk. A founder is taking risk with people's money, an actor or an artist is taking a risk. A very public way about how people will respond to their art, and what they're doing on stage, or on film, or in a gallery. So I think that's actually one of the interesting things you have to do. And again, it comes around to how you manage people, how you understand what concerns them, what are the strengths you have, other people might not have, or you've got more of.

24:12I'll give you another example. I am not going to be the fastest in the room on the Excel. I understand how the Excel works. I can do the maths, but I won't be the fastest. But I may be one of the better people at understanding how people are feeling about their work, how you can encourage them the most, what kind of incentives they need, being very honest with yourself about what your strengths are, and where you're much better to lean on other people. You mentioned it earlier when we were just chatting for you, stars about your network, and the people you rely on who can do stuff better than you.

24:42Whatever business you're in, whether you're an investor or you run a business, Being honest about what your strengths are and being honest about where you need to lean on other people, that is the secret of success to me. Seagra's success is surrounding yourself with brilliant people who can fill in the bits that you're not as good at. Have you ever thought someone was brilliant and you were wrong? Yeah, I'm sure I have. Yeah, what did you not see that you should have seen or seen as a good question? I think the holes come pretty clear pretty quickly and hopefully you see those before the investment.

25:10You know, hopefully that initial meeting, initial zoom, if you ask the right questions, the holes become pretty clear, and you have a quick sense of, either this isn't ready or this isn't for me full stop. Sometimes it could be something like you wouldn't expect like they don't seem very discreet. You know, they're talking about other investors or they're critical of other people. Sometimes you get a flag like that, you think this isn't gonna be for me. Oh, very often. And so sometimes the flags around things which are not necessarily about, okay, here's our business plan, but the behavioural things around the way they talk to you and what it might tell about how they might run their business.

25:44I totally agree with that. When people name names on investors kind of callously or flippantly, to always a big sign. How do you give hard feedback? Well, I think the thing is, if you are generally good to people, when you say something directly, they really notice. One is the product of the other. If your temperament is always be shouting or over aggressive, people begin to tune you out a bit. If you're supportive and helpful, it makes it actually makes it easy when you have to say the tough thing because it's sort of, oh my god, they're saying that now, they must mean it. And I still think you can present that well, you know, you can easily say, listen, I'm going to be very direct with you now or I'm saying this because I think it's going to help you.

26:21And then you say something very directly. But I do think the two come together that if you are thoughtful generally, then when you have to be very direct and sometimes tough, which I can be, you'll notice more because that's not your typical Danny, when do you cut the cord? When do you cut the cord? I've ever had enough of being supportive. Yeah, it's not like. Well, if you know in your heart, it's not working, do it sooner. We've all had that experience where you leave someone in place too long and you think we'll give them another chance and another chance. We'll do it. And then a year later or nine months or 18 months later, you make the decision you should have made 18 months ago.

26:54And you think to yourself, I should have done that earlier, I knew it. I think when you know you know and you have to act because it's very, very rare that you go further down the line and you're wrong on that. Do you start with full trust or is it there to be gained over time? There's an immediate signal you're giving of confidence by investing or empowering a new CEO. Then they've got to prove back a bit of confidence after that. So you've created the runway of confidence for them. That doesn't mean they've got your confidence forever. It means that they then got to validate trust and verify.

27:23I think it's an example of that, really, isn't it? That that you give that initial vote of confidence, but then you've gotta help me show me I was right, give me the signs, the data, the results, which prove I was right and that you were on the right path. Have you ever had your trust broken? Yes, probably in television a few times, yeah. Did you become jaded as a result? Not really, I mean, it made me very cautious about working with those people again, but I think it's certainly, if your trust is badly broken, it's very hard to go back. Yeah, I agree with that. You said something earlier, which I just really struck me, but I didn't want to interrupt you at the time, and it was you said you wanted to kind of work for a very significant time and really for the rest of your life.

27:59Do you have to love what you do? I think so as you get older actually. I think as you get a little bit older you do. What changes is it? Why does he get older you do? I think when you're younger, you're related to hustle more, you're ready to put up with staff. It doesn't mean that as you're older you shouldn't put yourself into uncomfortable positions in situations because you learn from those uncomfortable situations. I think you think, you know, I want to use my time in the most valuable way possible and therefore or I want to enjoy what I'm doing. By the way, that's a privilege. I reckon a small percentage of the population, if you are a big job where you love it, you should realize how privileged you are.

28:32Danny, what's the decision making look like if you don't mind me asking? Is it like a weekly call with an investment committee? Is it you and Lynn on a call? So it really varies depending on the size of the investment. So if it's quite a small investment, it's something we might talk to Lynn just about directly, you know, in relative terms. If it's a very large sum of money, what we do is we get together, the way Lynn has built access, So we have a real estate team and it have the industry's team. We have biotech, we have real estate, we have some major investments in things like Warner Music and DeZone.

29:01So we have a very wide range of small team but a great range of experience across industries and in investing in general. We may not always have the specific industry knowledge. So we try and pressure test ideas together for where we meet every week. And I hope it's okay for me to ask an element of imposter syndrome. Did you feel that when you made the move? I knew I had a lot to learn. I felt really nervous, which is what I wanted to feel. You know, I didn't want to feel like I was going to keep doing the same thing for another two or three decades. And so the feeling of nervous was an active decision.

29:33And it was about as I was saying that pathway to having an interesting career for another 25, 30 years. But yeah, I had a lot to learn. I had a lot to learn on the finance side. I had a lot to learn about investing. What was the hardest thing to learn? The hardest thing to learn in a way is how strange the way the market's behavior is. Because I don't find it was entirely rational. I found that quite surprising. Have you heard the statement, a market can stay irrational longer than your company can stay tholland? Yeah, that sounds true to me. How does that shape your thinking then? If you take that one level deep, but if it doesn't always seem rational, do you do anything as a result?

30:07Well, to some extent you have to move with the trends. So obviously we've seen that movement from, you know, it's all about revenue to show you can make some money, show you can make some profit. So it's partly about understanding how things are changing and how things are going to be changing the way they're valued. I think it actually just takes you about the fundamentals. Do you believe in these people, do you believe in this idea, do you believe in their execution? What was your favorite part about the move? What was freeing about it? Lack of bureaucracy, the agility of a place -like access compared to a, you know, managed about 3 ,000 people at the BBC, it's an organization of 20 ,000 people.

30:38It's a huge tanker that takes a long time to move things around. So I think agility, flexibility, access to capital that you can spend on a range of different things. I think all of those things being great. What do you think is your biggest insecurity today? I always think to myself, am I got the right people around me to help me? And I really believe I have, but that's the thing that you always want to keep testing. Can the people around me on the things I'm less good at? Can they answer the questions for me that I can't answer myself? I think that's the biggest thing. I think the other thing is, you know, you're always having security around certain investments you've made.

31:09You know, I think you it gets particular, rather than big fundamentals around anxiety. I think, have we got this one right? What do we learn from it if we haven't got right? How might this change our investment thesis in this area? I think you can have the insecurities around certain things. I'm not sure I have a kind of large macro -insucurity. What would you say in terms of biggest mess? How did that impact your mindset? So one of the things I've learned in these years since I've been an investor is if you believe in a thesis about an area, invest in more than one thing in that area. Something I did a two or three years ago, we had a great company in an area, really believed in it, it grown very, very fast and I was brought another opportunity in the same territory.

31:50And rather than thinking to myself, I really believe in this thesis, I really believe in this area, I can be in more than one, I thought I should just focus on this one, give that the attention in this area and invest more in that. And I didn't take the investment and it would have been an A -tex in about 15 months. So that was a really interesting, maybe painful learning. We all have those learnings and investing. But what I took from it was, if you believe in something it's okay to double down, it's okay to take more than one risk even in an area. So that was one I really learned a lot from.

32:19I love that. What about biggest hit where it's like, it worked really well and you had great success with it? How did that impact your mindset? Don't get carried away. It's hard. Lots of things can happen, still in the future. take a long -term view, don't grow your ego, remain humble, keep listening. People often go wrong, and I've seen it, you know, with people on television. People often go wrong when they get too carried away by a moment of success or a period of success. How do you keep them on the ground? Yeah, I think you've just got to keep bringing people around to focus on execution.

32:48That's what it's all about in the end. You know, if you can just ask very granular, specific questions around execution, that's what brings people back down to worth from the clouds. Two final ones, which is actually one on marriage. What was the secret to a happy marriage, darling? So I married up. I married someone much smarter than me. My advice would be marry someone smarter than you. My wife's a lady called Narina Hertz. She sits on the number of company boards. She's on the board of Warner Music, Mattel. She's also written a number of bestselling books. So she's clearly much smarter than me.

33:21Support your partner and able them, liberate them, cherish them, those are the things I try and do and I know she does for me. So I'm fortunate to be very, very happily married. on marrying up. Does that ever make you feel insecure? Marrying up. Yeah, I think Marina tells me that I'm confident enough in myself not to feel that, even though I know she's very, very smart. I think it's the best thing you can possibly do, because it makes, like, very, very interesting. You can be proud of each other's achievements. Try and hold back that insecurity, because the benefits of it are so great. And also, if you're both ambitious people, if you want to achieve a lot, it can be better to have a wife or husband who is the same.

33:56on children, if you could cool up yourself before your first and say one thing, what would you advise yourself? Well, we don't have children. I'm so sorry I thought you did it. No, you don't need to say sorry because we're not apologetic about it. We just decided not to, we were so completely happy. We didn't want to mess around with it. Was it always that way, if you don't mind me asking? Yeah, I don't know, our fifth date was a holiday together. We went to go about 17 years. Just actually gets better and better. We didn't want to change anything because it feels pretty perfect. It's the right for lots of people, but it just didn't feel right for the way we live and the way we want to live our lives.

34:28And we feel so fortunate to have what we have. We don't really want to mess with the dynamic. How do you retain romance with time? This is going into places I didn't expect. How do you remain? 17 years is an incredible. You just have to cherish the person and make them feel special. And you do it at special moments like birthdays, but really it's about the way you treat each other every day, I think. It's about the way you treat each other every day. You know, it is one of the most popular discussion points on the show, though. It is happiness. It is happiness. It is a quarter happiness and meaning.

34:55Do you worry about the loneliness pandemic? We spoke to earlier about people management and how they feel and you said about being really very good at how they feel. I'm really worried that actually, which is more of a... So my much more than me wife wrote a book about this three or so years ago before everyone started talking about it, called The Lonely Century. So yes, it's a huge, huge issue for young people as much as old people. The data around the young people are actually lonely than old people. Yeah, those are some terrible stories and things around old people. But I think it's a massive, massive thing, digital culture and social media and our phones have played a massive role in that.

35:29The thing is, you can't get my head around and then we'll do a quick footage. It's like the business model of loneliness, respectfully, mental wellness, abs, solutions. So far, just haven't proven to be good businesses, of course. So Nareena describes this in the chat because the loneliness economy. It's wide. She found classes where people go and have hugs with each other. There's different ways of doing it where there's YouTube stars who eat loads and people find company in watching them eat and eat their food, particularly in Asia actually in this one. People get company from eating their meal with this person eating on screen.

36:02The range and diversity of the loneliness economy is huge. I think it's going to keep growing. Do you think it can solve that it's to one or two platforms? And do you think they will be platform providers who try and solve mental health and loneliness in the next few years that take a lion's hat? Maybe, I mean, there was an amazing woman in Wales that Nareena writes in the book who started these chatty benches in parks where, you know, it's a bench to chat on and people who need someone to talk to could come and chat there and make a friend. So there's so many different ways both in the physical world and in the digital world where this needs addressing.

36:31I want to move into a quick fight. So I say a short statement, you give me your immediate thoughts. That sounds alright. Trust me, you've got through the past, not so. I mean, this is easy. What do you believe that others around you maybe disagree with? I think I believe in storytelling as an incredible source of revenue in terms of film, television, theatre, you know, in a way you hinted at it. They won't necessarily be the high growth gaming or crater economy that it could do. But I believe fundamentally if you find the right things you can't make a lot of money in that area. We look at Barbie, 1 .6 billion in growing.

37:02I really believe that, you know, it's about hits and stars and it's hard, but I think the idea that you can't still make a lot of money from high quality, well -judged, long -form storytelling is not correct. It's not all going to be about TikTok. You mentioned Barbie that we have Barbie and Oppenheimer and that kind of mammoth weekend. Yeah. COVID cinemas. How was that? Disasterous for cinema, utterly disastrous. I mean, Barbie and Oppenheimer were a wonderful moment. It was actually became quite a frustrating moment because it was the biggest moment since the pandemic where you felt the electricity of cinema.

37:33You felt people returning in their droves and then we were in a writer's nexus strike. And the knowledge that there would be some kind of dislocation in content supply for cinema in the future. And so I found it both a joyous moment but also because of the labour disputes and of course good news is one of them has already been solved. The writers one looks like there's an agreement. It was also quite a frustrating moment because you know I went to LA a couple of weeks later. There was a lot of frustration and disencharming in LA at that point before the writer's strike suddenly was agreed because everything was stuck.

38:03So it was an interesting moment for cinema that where I was a moment of elation. But also this might be stuck again soon. What does the dislocation mean in terms of that content supplies? It means we won't have enough content for six months. It sort of depends how long it goes on for. But yeah, there will be a point, a pinch point, in the next year to 18 months where there's probably a bit less content around them before. If any industry pauses for four months, five months, six months, supply dwindles. Why is Broadway more expensive than the West End? I think a lot of it's cost -based, part of that cost -bases union costs.

38:34The union costs are many things in New Yorker higher. But what we're noticing and we're finding it more and more extreme is that the cost of financing a play or a musical in the West London West End Could be four times less than financing on Broadway now I think this is really problematic for Broadway because Broadway partly benefits from and exists because of the generosity of some very wealthy people to keep backing a very very high risk Type of investment and if those investors begin to feel the risk has just gone too high because the bad the capitalization for this musical is now 25 million where I have three or four years ago might have been 15 million and they think it's going to take three years to get my money back if that.

39:13Even with the amazing goodwill of those people or those benefits abroad where they begin to think differently about it and they're going to ask themselves more questions about whether they want to be supporting that. Good for the West End in one way but it's something I am growing concerned about and it's making us certainly at this point at access, access, entertainment much more cautious about about what we invest in on Broadway because we just see these capitalizations rising so high. How many Broadway shows percent wise, as successful versus not? Differing layers of profit. I mean, Len was one of the very, very first investors in Hamilton.

39:45He's good at investing. Is all the value created there in IP, in the music, in the DVDs, in the merch? No. I mean, the music has a lot of value and the Hamilton soundtrack was released on the record company Len Oensworn in Music. So it's been a lot of value in that. But if you're selling out theater every night, you're going to start making money. And then the other thing you'll get is that if you invest in the original production, you have a right to invest in all the other productions around the world. So access and investor in Hamilton in New York, but also in London, and in Australia and in other countries.

40:16You earn that right by taking that risk, want to invest in a successful production as it moves around the world. Tell me, what was your biggest lesson from working with Lennon? He also says, do big things, do less and do big things. I think, you know, you've only got so much amount of bandwidth. Whenever I'm with him, I learn things every time from his business experience. A story he might tell, he'll say, you know, generally speaking, I've found this and I've seen this pattern. So there are some like big things, but actually when you're lucky enough to work with someone like that, you know, when the world's most successful businessman, you learn from them all the time, you learn from every conversation.

40:48You can have dinner with anyone that are alive. Charles Dickens. No contest. 19th century English literature is my thing and most particularly Charles Dickens. Do you have a favourite Charles Dickens quote? I don't have favourite book, great expectations. Why that one? I think it's the most perfect novel in English language. When you start thinking about storytelling and this is why I did an English literature degree and I think that's giving me great training for the rest of my work in terms of storytelling, you think about character, you think about structure, you think about plot, you think about dialogue, you think about the emotional impact of what you've read.

41:19For me, great expectations unifies those in the most perfect way I've seen in any book I've ever read. actually reread it again last year. And I adore Charles Dickens. Do you think we've lost the art of storytelling? No. You don't. Do you find many goods? Why would you say that? Because I don't think we have many good storytellers, especially in technology and in lasting. So I think you'll write about... The learned game, they'll say, oh... I think you're right. And it's a really interesting point of connectivity between the worlds I've been in, the entertainment world is all about storytelling.

41:46And storytelling by companies and founders is not all as good as it needs to be. Sometimes it's about assuming too much knowledge I find some kind of founders. They expect the person they're pitching to to understand a whole set of things about what they do or about the area they're in. That investor may just not have. So I think a lot of it is breaking things down to their simple initial components and building a story. And storytelling needs a thought, it needs structure, it needs a shape, it needs highlights. It needs all of those things that are true if you're making a film or you're telling the investment story when you're pitching your business.

42:17To me it has immense value on it, it's something I love dearly. Can you learn to story tell? Undoubtedly. There are certain elements of it which you can learn, you can study, you can learn from people who are better at it than you. And some of them, as I say, they're fundamentals. It's about beginning, middle and end. Okay, when you're thinking about storytelling, fundamental story is a beginning, middle and end. So whether that's a novel or a film or a play or an investor pitching their business, what's the beginning and middle and end of your story? How do you want to tell it? How do you want to grow?

42:45He was understanding. Where do you want to land some key points? Where are your reveals? All of those things are true of very different kinds of stories. Which brand do you think tells the best stories today? I think I key is very good at storytelling. I just think you know what they are, you know what their tone is, you know what they do, and they keep delivering. I think that's a really, really interesting brand. And also some people become be good at storytelling and then lose their way. Yeah. You know, you can have a great brand and a clear story. The thing I find unbelievable is Chanel. And the reason I find Chanel amazing is a storyteller and a brand.

43:15It's because teenagers in Beijing love it. Mother's in New York, do your grandmothers in Paris, do. Normally with stories, it works for an audience. But you know there's an initial clarity of proposition there and a consistency of proposition that I think you're awarded for. Often people over complicate things I think when it comes to a brand. A brand is hallmark of something you like and maybe quality but it's also feeling a brand gives you. And a feeling is quite a simple thing in one level. It has to be clear and immediately accessible because feelings are things you don't think about them just what you feel as a reaction to something.

43:48Some of the best brands, they keep the brand clear and consistent once they've achieved it, you know, success in it and that gives you a great advantage. Do you think it has been a massive brand, missteps? I think there's been mismanagement. Yeah, I think you could probably look at some of the tech companies and they don't seem responsive to concerns. Leggo is another great story of that, isn't it? I mean, it's an incredible thing. What Matteladon with Barbie's pretty exceptional at the moment as well. I mean, that's a remarkable story of taking a decade's old brand, making it feel incredibly of the moment, incredibly contemporary.

44:17So I think it's always possible, but you have to have a strategy, a very clear strategy for doing so. Do you worry about work culture? I find there's two extremes to this now, and they both annoy me, right? People just use woke too easily now as a generalization. It's much more subtle, it's much more complex than that. So on one side you've got woke, and on the other side you've got people who are woke, criticizing people who are more traditional. And both sides have got to a point of, They've lost the ability to be subtle to understand complexity, to understand nuance. And that means they're too easy to dismiss each other.

44:48It's too easy to dismiss people who are more traditional values, like, are they just traditional their old school values? In the same way, it's too easy to go, that's work, there's nothing to it. And I think it goes to polarization of debate. And I think it goes to social media, has a role in that. I find both ends of the spectrum really, really off -putting, because they don't allow for really actually thinking about it. They allow for too easy dismissal of people's opinions that are different to your own. and I'm willing as to understand why they have that opinion. And we need to re -issue nuanced and specificity to it.

45:16Every subject, every question in the work, first traditional debate. Do you worry about the eradication of cultural history and what I mean by that is that, you know, role dial is getting edited for many of his characters? Yeah. I mean, I'm sure there will be Dickens' quote, slime statements that will not be worked. There's some things I feel very traditional on. On that one, I don't think anyone should be changing role dial or child's Dickens. I think you may want to, in your footnotes note, something about that use of language, but it's sort of under my intelligence of people, not to be able to see and understand that and if you want to read a footnote, do.

45:46But I think that culture history stuff is stupid. It, listen, it asks really, really interesting questions of how you feel about different artists over time. I love Virginia Woolf. I didn't feel great when I read that some of her d 'aris and d 'aris and d 'aris and d 'aris and this are pretty unpleasant, anti -Semitic things. So how you separate the art from the artist is also really interesting, important question and how you make sure you introduce nuance into these topics is really, really important. Yeah, no, totally. Yeah, you tell me, media in 10 years, final one, you can paint the ideal landscape for you, how you would like media and content to look.

46:21What would that landscape look like in an ideal world? Less distribution, less confusing distribution structure, easier for people to navigate. What is the less confusing distribution structure? Just too many different ways. And I think that's going to be proved by not all of these platforms are going to survive. There's just too many, you know, you've got to have too many subscriptions. It's too much for people. It's too expensive. It's too confusing. I think you're going to see consolidation there, which is in the interests of business, but also in the interests of the consumer. We're going to be ever more curators of our own experience.

46:52I don't believe that people will want to stop having live experiences. Look at Taylor Swift's concerts. I mean, look at that. So I think people are going to want to live in the real world. I don't believe that people can only want to live in the other world. My big, big hope at the same time is people put their phones down more and spend more time with each other and spend more time experiencing things and thinking. I thought to myself quite a while ago, do I want to get to the age of 70 and think I've spent a huge chunk of my life staring at my phone? I think that would have been a depressing way to spend too much of your life.

47:20And so how we dislocate ourselves, how we wean ourselves off the addictive quality of our smart phones is, I think important to our happiness. Danny listen I love doing this. Thank you for putting up with my very wayward questions. We've won all over the shops, but I loved it. Yeah it's pleasure. I absolutely love doing that, Shoe. I love a show that's a little bit more diverse in terms of content and theme types. So if you enjoyed the show and you want to see more you can check it out on YouTube by searching for 20VC, but before we leave you today, there is no shortage of helpful AI tools out there, but using the mean switching back and forth between yet another digital tool.

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