Full transcript: Benjamin Southworth on London Real
0:27 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. I’m the host of London Real. And this is the concept of my partner in crime, Mr. Colin Pyle, who comes to London via Toronto, China and India, sometimes on a motorcycle, sometimes not, sometimes with Guinness Book World Records, sometimes without.
0:44 But before we get to our guests, Ben, I was wondering, Colin, if you could tell people about your vision for Silicon Real, because that’s the only reason we’re here, is because you sent me an email a few weeks ago. Yeah, it’s really simple. I always find the stories behind great businesses or great failures, or even just businesses that flutter about very interesting. And as an investor, as an entrepreneur, I’m always looking at the people, and I think the people is so important.
1:12 Ideas come and go but but the people really drive those ideas so tech startup scene in London is amazing it’s so it’s going going nuts right now and I just felt like we need to tell stories and we need to find great people to tell those stories so let’s do it perfect awesome and I have to agree with you I’ve just got into the tech startup scene we had Bryce Keene one of the other beards here a couple weeks ago and and I’ve been at two round two silicone drink about so far and I’ve caught the bug so we’ll talk about that in a bit before our inaugural episode, we are very stoked to welcome Benjamin Southworth. He is the now departing Deputy CEO of Tech City UK, which I believe is a government organization created to promote business in the UK technology startup scene.
1:58 Welcome to Silicon Real, and was that about accurate? That’s bang on us, exactly what it was kind of aimed to do, and yeah, it’s great to be here, and just thank you guys for doing this. This is exactly what London needs, you know, we need these stories coming out, and it is about people. No, it’s all about the people and you’re one of the drivers behind building the community and I think that’s what’s so important is the community. We met via the community and this is only going to work with the community.
2:23 Yeah, and you were one of the original beards that started the Silicone Drink about which is this get together that has such a good vibe about it. It’s got like a, we’re not there to talk business but we can, but it’s all about helping people. You don’t charge admission, it’s like anybody can come, it feels cool when you get there Like, you can just hang out. And I know you used to be involved in a variety of startups in the roundabout tech scene until nine months ago you were kidnapped, or you took a job with Tech City UK, and that contract’s coming to the end in August.
2:54 I was wondering if you could tell us what that was like, what you did there. I know you were liaised with number 10 Downing Street. Did you have to think hard before you accepted the job? And I’ll just let you answer. Yeah, I thought really hard about taking the job.
3:11 You know, I arrived in London sort of, what are we up to now, probably getting on to three years and I predominantly worked in Cambridge, which is the only place that I knew of that used the phrase startups in the UK. There used to be a lot of technology businesses there. Shifted recently in the last sort of three, four years more to sort of biotech, med tech, And that’s mainly because the university is shifting its focus. But for a long time, Cambridge University was the place where the computer geeks were.
3:43 And they were producing amazing stuff, spinning that out, creating amazing businesses, an autonomy being the proof of that. It was a huge sale. And so after a series of failed relationships, and I found myself in London with no friends, a fledgling consultancy business around startups. I’m a hacker by training, mainly Googling, just sort of trying to get start-ups and small businesses online, trying to get them to understand what it is they’re doing, spend all my time online reading about how to do this lean starter methodology, looking at the valley.
4:23 I spent three months living in Denver, Colorado, and got plugged into the Boulder scene out there. People like Andrew Hyde and Brad Feld and I just loved it. I fell in love with this community they created this like open door policy like everyone is equal there’s no one better than someone else like there’s no question you can’t ask just this kind of really sort of laid-back sort of Colorado sort of foothills mountain vibe and I was just like this is awesome this is so cool it’s not standard sort of British stuck up don’t talk to me I’m too important you know and so when I kind of was in London you know I needed to find work and I went along to a tweet up and I found two guys I found Bryce and Michael and we were sat there drinking this beer and I can be I can be fairly blunt and we didn’t like what we saw just like this is shit like you know what we can do this better and Bryce being Australian said well you know we’d need to have a barbecue, it’s like okay also, it’s like well you’re a designer, you work in an agency doing PR, I’m a geek, let’s target these three people, let’s throw a party, free beer, free food, get someone to pay for it, get everyone in the room and just get everyone talking. So somehow we kind of kept talking and kept in touch and we hacked it together and we’ve just managed somehow like with luck, blessings, lots and lots of phone calls, big beards. At the time the beards were small.
5:58 We were young beards then, yet to kind of grow into our faces and we put it on and everyone loved it. Twitter blew up, it just went mental and we were just like there’s something in this and everyone was like when’s the next one, when’s the next one, so we did another the one, it was bigger and better and I think we started with 80 people and we got to 160 people and we raised like three grand in sponsorship for the first one and then we got six grand. And it was hustle, right, and it was kind of that just sheer determination, force of will, like who can we ask for money, like just give us money and we’ll put interesting people in a room and then you get to come along.
6:42 And so it was kind of grooving along, and we set up a few more events, we created Don’t Pitch Me Bro, we saw a need for the emerging startup community to showcase in a kind of low stress way what it was they were working on, and we got that up. And somewhere around the second sizzle, Michael Acton-Smith, who’d actually set Silicon Drink about up, and he’s the CEO of Moshi Monsters, said, look, I love what you guys are doing, I haven’t got time to run this, take it off us, so he said, okay. So we’ve been running it for him, really, for the best part now, two and a half years.
7:16 And at the time, it was kind of really just the mushy monsters after work drinks, didn’t feel very sort of accessible and open, and we knew what Michael wanted it to be. So we kind of played the same sort of methodology, which is be visible, be there, kind of greet people, be nice, make sure everyone’s got a beer, like make sure everyone’s been fed, looked after, you know, connect people up. And we did a lot of real sort of manual physical, oh, you’ve got to talk to this guy.
7:42 You’ve got to talk to this guy. Hey, you’re not talking to anyone. Let’s go and talk to you. And we just kind of bootstrapped it up. It’s so important, because tech people can be a little introverted sometimes.
7:52 Yeah, you know. I can be a little introverted sometimes. It’s weird, right? You don’t, if you go to, it’s like going to a house party, right? You’re always looking for that friend you know.
8:03 And actually, sometimes the greatest conversation is with the person you don’t know. And actually, we’re just wanting to facilitate that and make that happen. It’s the only way to grow a community really too, right? To facilitate the introduction of things, otherwise you just clique it up and you know, you ended up where you were before. And people get addicted to it, right?
8:22 Once people know that’s what you do, they then do it. So the more connections you throw out, the more connections come back to you. People are always coming up and saying, hey, Benny, you’ve got to meet this guy. Hey, you’ve got to meet this guy. You’ve got to meet this guy.
8:34 You’ve got to meet this guy. And it’s like, wow, okay. you end up meeting these fantastic men and women who are building fantastic businesses, putting everything on the line. And it’s so inspiring, like it’s an honour to help them, like it’s a pleasure, you know, it’s such a kind of… So there I was grooving along doing that, building websites for a variety of different people and clients and businesses.
8:53 We did a town hall with Tech City UK, because we kind of realized there was this kind of community engagement piece that they were missing. And we did it, and then I got this phone call from number 10 Downing Street and I put the only suit I own on, made sure I got my picture from my mum, went down, got my picture, went down, talked to them and they said look come on board for 12 months, kind of help us, make this make sense, tell the story of what we’re trying to do to these people. And I thought long and hard about it because at the time it wasn’t maybe in the best space, people were quite sort of at worst negative about it or best sort of neutral to it.
9:34 This is people in the community who want to hear about Tech City. Yeah, okay. They weren’t sure what government was trying to do. This cluster emerged on its own and people were like, why do we need this government piece? Why do we need to kind of be told what to do, right?
9:49 And that’s always the fear when you deal with government, it’s the government that’s going to take away something from you. And the more I kind of talk to government, the more I can understand what they want to do, the more I was like, actually, only government can do some of these things. Absolutely. So creating a tax policy, convening all the local landowners together, looking at entrepreneur visas, working out immigration peace, and giving it a kind of global story is really hard.
10:20 The beards couldn’t have done it, I couldn’t have done it, I don’t think almost anyone could have done it. that sort of big reach the government has and so I kind of was not sure and I went and chat to Bryce and Bryce said look you know you can either do it or you can watch someone else do it and if they don’t doing it right you’re going to be so angry with yourself thanks Bryce and he knows how to wind me up like he knows exactly what I need to know. Do you want to be a critic or do you want to be critique absolutely so I stepped in and went in and you know I learned a lot like the hardest thing I’ve probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done it was very very challenging in lots of ways you know I’m used to startups I’m used to entrepreneurs I’m used to agile software teams I’m used to super fast you know from idea to delivery stuff and I was in this gigantic tanker trying to turn it round and it was hard you know and everyone everyone kind of they don’t they don’t mean to fight you but they’re so scared of getting it wrong yeah you know and actually to get stuff right you sometimes have to make really big difficult decisions and it was just that kind of sort of day in day out sort of difference, you know, they’re in suits, they’re 50, 60 year old people.
11:53 Are they thinking about their long-term political careers in these moves and is that why they’re a little more cautious? Of course, you know, it’s the civil services is simultaneously a wonderful thing and also a negative thing. You know, it’s very hard for them to to take a risk because it’s one of the very few jobs with a good pension package these days in UK and you know you’re dealing with with important people these important people are there because of 30 years of good service who can see that pension pot and they can see it and there’s me who’s 32 bearded in a t-shirt angry swearing passionate sort of you know and there’s straightaway there’s this kind of distrust of each other right and then there’s these other sort of political pieces which is I didn’t come from their world so I don’t know anything and I’m just dropped in by number 10 and politics starts to play a part and I was naive and innocent about it I didn’t know I just didn’t I didn’t think I just kind of assumed we were all trying to do the right thing and I don’t think they were trying to do the wrong thing but they weren’t willing to take the risk sometimes to do the right think from this new guy that just yeah yeah this new kind of beardy, sweary, non-sooth-wearing, sort of disrespectful kind of upstart and I’ve never been good with the authority ever at all so this was a kind of a tough a tough place for me to be but you kind of very soon find the allies in the organizations
13:32 You find the people who get it and you learn how to make your ideas become true and then when that happens it’s magic and you can see why people get addicted to being in power or politics because you can do insane things and you can have conversations with huge people and get them excited about stuff and you can do crazy things like ask 4G to double triple the speed of the local network and they’ll do it. It’s kind of crazy you’re like okay what else can we ask for and it’s like well we need some people do some apprenticeship stuff yeah we can do that we need to kind of get some visa stuff happening oh yeah we can do that. Wow. And just started thinking wow you know and connecting up with investors to give feedback to HMRC to talk about the tax policies they put in place for entrepreneurs and you know amassing this insane group of of super smart, super connected, wealthy investors to make sure that feedback loops there.
14:36 And a lot of what I personally did was make sure the policies made sense to the community and then facilitate those conversations and make sure those kind of feedback loops were as short as possible. And I kind of did it. And I kind of can’t believe that I did. I managed to do what I set out to do. And life doesn’t always go like that, right?
14:59 Most of the time not at all and you were you were hired on to be the deputy CEO and and then later Joanna Shields came on it was the former Facebook vice president I think of the European head and pointed appointed the CEO so it was it in your mind was it always just 12 months or was it like to just see what happens it was I knew you know I’m a very project focused good person so I never really was you know I would see what would happen after 12 months for But I wanted to do as much as I could and all I wanted to do was kind of respect those people who had been so lovely to me. People were so kind when I took the job and have been so generous to me with their time and their support. I needed that.
15:45 I needed that. After tough weeks and going to drink about people saying you’re doing a good job, it meant everything to me. I worked for these people, and that’s how I saw it. It’s almost like a community service you gave for a year or something. Well, yeah, I kind of see it as national service.
16:03 That was me. Some go to the military. Yeah, you know, some do, right? Some do Peace Corps, and this is like tech corps, right? It’s just like, you go in and you do your time.
16:13 So you pushed a lot of those bureaucracies and boundaries, but it’s like now that you maybe have had your alliances and you can actually get stuff done, do you kind of wish you were there for another year? You might be able to get more done in the next year than you got in the last year? I think the answer is I don’t know. I’m not really sure kind of how much there’s left for me or for my role to do. The community’s engaged, the community’s plugged in, the community’s connected.
16:43 The community has a voice directly to number 10 now. I don’t really see what more I could do and there’s always projects but some of these projects I can just do on my own anyway. So that was the sort of challenge of I’d kind of sprinted for 12 months and I’m tired, like I’m burnt out, like I’m really done. I need a break, I need a rest and the opportunity came up to say let’s call it done and actually working out what’s next is really interesting, kind of working out how I would have done things within the organisation more.
17:26 I don’t know, I can’t see that piece, I don’t really see. I want to hear about what you have next, but if we were just going to wrap up the tech city thing, what would you say would have been your best accomplishment while you were there and what was your biggest disappointment? I think the best thing I did was I managed to make it understandable of what the government was trying to do. To the community? Yeah.
17:59 Right. Communication. Right. and kind of just being accessible, being around, not being all in Whitehall all the time. Just being on the ground and knowing people can tweet me.
18:10 Probably just being on Twitter was probably someone that they never had anyone that was probably as engaging as you are. Maybe, but I think just the fact that people knew me, liked me, trusted me, kind of that really helped. Government is a very unique organization in the world. There’s no company that can ever do what a government does but sometimes they do a really bad job at explaining what it is they’re trying to do. And so people get a bit wary about it.
18:42 And actually there’s that translation piece of what government’s trying to do to how that actually will affect people and why it’s awesome. And I think once people understood actually, you’ve got people at number 10 who make change happen, make policy happen, listening to this tiny, growing, rapidly accelerating sector is kind of mind-blowing because it never happened before, like ever. And we’ve introduced policies that UK-wide will bootstrap up digital businesses and what they are doing and the people inside who are doing it are inspirational and are sort of, you know, they’re like entrepreneurs for government. They’re really hacking the system and being able to explain that honestly, frankly, straightforwardly without kind of bullshitting anyone was a real kind of point of pride and something I didn’t wanna lose.
19:37 Okay, disappointment. Disappointment, I was gonna say the IT curriculum, but we’ve actually just announced that that’s gonna change now. That was, I think, well it’s not a disappointment, certainly the hardest piece, because it doesn’t matter how much we jump up and down and say, there are amazing people doing amazing things, unless that pipeline of amazing people is there, it’s gonna fall over. This is for students in the UK, just the basic, like from grade four on, or just like what the- Yeah, so the IT curriculum, now thankfully changing, was awful.
20:19 I mean, it was like, here’s an Excel spreadsheet, here’s formatting, you know, and it’s like, really? Come on, these guys are using Facebook day in, day out, Twitter day in, day out, YouTube day in, day out. They know this, they know it from birth. So it’s kind of trying to get them to understand the impact of it. And there are many people still, and we forget this outside of the scene, there are many people who are still scared by computers.
20:48 They’re just scared, they don’t know what they are. They’re worried about how it’s gonna impact society. So that was a really tough, long conversation and very frustrating. It’s really frustrating when you’re passionate something and you know they can change it. And that’s something you fought like from day one and it took you 12 months to kind of kind of and is that now how long does it take for that to change like you change their mind is that implement next year or is it in like so yeah in this case it’s gonna go in next year next year so that quickly they can they can yeah they can but it’s it’s a long it’s a really long conversation to get them to do it you know and a lot of it was just facilitating and saying, no, no, no, go and talk to these people, you know, they’re actually, they’ve got it, they’ve actually built you a curriculum, they just want you to look at it, you know, and kind of, it’s like anything, right, if you hear something once you can kind of ignore it, if you hear it twice you’re like, oh that’s that thing again, you hear it three times from three different people, three different places, you start to go, what is this? And, you know, kind of using all the various connections from people like Mozilla to the cabinet office, getting Everyone to kind of come a less and just attack all the time on this never give up, you know Just constantly emailing haranguing hassling sounds like you’re a politician now. Yeah, well, you know, that’s the game you have to play
22:08 Whether whether I like that or not it kind of you have to do a sort of small lobbying piece and make it happen Okay, you know where in the future silicon real is gonna have kind of a 30-minute structure We kind of go through specific questions we have people on you’re obviously a little bit different because you’re like a really big picture guy You’ve been in the scene so I won’t hit you with the same questions We’re gonna hit everyone else But one of the ones Colin and I came with came up with if someone gave you 10 million pounds right now What would you do with it? Now you’re in an interesting situation because you’re coming out looking at all the possibilities of what you want to do next So what do you want to do next and let’s say for example you had 10 million of C capital in the bank Would you invest your time and your money in?
22:51 So There’s kind of, there’s sort of three or four projects I certainly want to get going. I’ve always wanted to do a big East London sort of multi-site sort of tech festival that fuses how computers are interacting with music, with art, with theatre, with fashion and really kind of stitch what’s amazing about London and UK up with the amazing tech stuff. I’m fortunate enough to have two amazing partners who I think can really help me deliver that. We’ve got All Tomorrow’s Parties who run fantastic festivals all across the world now.
23:31 And Dazed and Confused, who are an amazing art and sort of fashion magazine looking at digital. And I think we’re gonna try and kickstart this festival up. We’re gonna try and sell the tickets a year in advance, get people excited and pull in sponsors and try and make that happen. So I definitely wanna spend at least four weeks of my time doing that and kind of get that up and get that out and start promoting that. I’ve got my charity, which is Tech Bikers.
23:57 We’re riding from Paris to London again, 100 riders, all entrepreneurs, investors, the scene, hopefully trying to build three to four schools in the pool. Is this bicycle or a motorbike? Yep, cycling. It’s like, you used to be a bike messenger. Yeah, I did, yeah.
24:11 I don’t know if I was, I was outing you there. No, no, that’s fine. Did you used to hang out at the foundry back in the day? I did it in Cambridge, it was much more general. much more genteel. It’s kind of a set up and beg bike, you know, it’s like delivering a little basket. Yeah, absolutely. Waving. So there’s that. And then I also, I’m really inspired at the moment about, about digital skills and schools. I think there’s a really opportunity to do something around a free school model, which is people centered learning.
24:43 Looking at sort of things like the Harkness model, the Exeter in the States does. Trying trying to kind of basically produce maybe only 30 at a time, 16 to 18-year-old disadvantaged kids and trying to produce really digitally savvy, business savvy, sort of wannabe entrepreneurs for the area and probably will do a pricing model around getting the companies to pay after three months of having hired these people back in to fund the school so the school can kind of do more. So it’s kind of using, you know, using businesses to basically pay for what would be very, very expensive private schooling, but for disadvantaged kids. Wow. And trying to kind of grow that out so that it moves and you do three years, four years, five years, and ultimately I would like to see it run from five all the way up to 18 and maybe do some post-grad stuff and some university piece and kind of really try and build, you know, I guess like a selfishly like a school I would have wanted to go to a school that kind of really prepped me and enabling kids to kind of specialize on what it is that they care about rather than what we think they should learn. It’s strange because I think everyone that’s gonna be sitting here for the next four weeks is gonna tell you how they’re gonna take that ten million and make it a billion pounds and we’re gonna go public and we’re gonna and yet Ben seems to be just talking about very philanthropic endeavors. Why is that? Just I think I
26:13 I don’t know, I learned in this job and with the beards, if you give stuff away, it really comes back. And it comes back in ways you never knew, and you open yourself up to these opportunities. I think if you chase money, you get money. If you chase something you love, you can often get money and love, and that’s kind of a much more holistic, happier way I want to be. I don’t need a fortune.
26:42 I just want to do good things and be proud of what I achieved. But at the same time, I’d like a nice house somewhere. Money’s good also. Yeah, money makes things possible, right? Yeah, yeah, I’m sure money does open doors.
26:56 Yeah, I know, I agree. I think, as an ex-finance guy, currency trader, you’re just chasing the bonus, the paycheck, the more money, the bigger house, the better car. And at a point, it just becomes so destroyed, right? And so just my shackles are sort of on the floor way behind me now, and I’m moving forward and much happier for it, right? And just giving back is important.
27:19 And I think that some of your ideas are phenomenal. And they’re not small, right? So they’re big ideas, but they’re great ideas. And I think a lot of them, you actually might be able to implement now with your Downing Street experience, right? Because a lot of those things would be hard to do without some of those relationships, I would think.
27:39 Yeah, I mean, that’s the thing about kind of, that was why I didn’t understand with the gig was, it would make me think like this and think big. I kind of thought it would make me focus on small stuff. Actually, it made me kind of have mad, big ideas. Working for the government opened your mind up. Yeah, which is like just completely counterintuitive.
28:04 You just don’t imagine it. But you get to interact with all these people who are doing big, world-changing things, and it becomes really addictive. It becomes, you know, but I’m also selfish. I just wanna go back to coding. I just wanna build a few little products.
28:20 The soul of a few little personal itches. Yeah, I saw that on your blog. You wanna get back in code. You know, one of the other questions we’re gonna ask on a regular basis is, aside from what you wanna focus on, which is some coding and some very philanthropic stuff, what do you see out there that’s one of the most exciting and fastest growing parts of the tech startup. And if there’s one or two things you see where you’re like, keep your eye on this without making any enemies or friends.
28:44 No, I mean, it has to be sort of wearable, qualified med tech stuff. I think this kind of qualified self piece is just gonna start hitting the mainstream like so hard and so fast. And I think I was hanging out a few Fridays ago with a guy who’d gone to Shenzhen, China, and got this guy to build a watch with sensors on that can track blood pressure and heart rate and sends it via Wi-Fi to his computer and he’s got all this stuff. And that’s the thing I think we’re gonna see and I think that’s gonna really impact just healthcare as a whole and that sort of stuff.
29:23 I think it’s gonna really start to transform how we think about ourselves as humans enable us to really hit a next level evolutionally change. I think that sort of quantified self data piece is really fascinating. There’s also so much still to be done. Lots of things are quite rubbish. Lots of tech is still a bit rubbish.
29:47 A lot of that stuff, battery power, I find. If you have your Bluetooth watch attached to your phone all day, my phone doesn’t last all day anyway. Absolutely. If you can’t jump the hurdle of battery power, and I find these things. It sounds like battery tech’s coming down and down and getting better and better.
30:04 And we are going to start seeing much more conductive charging stuff, I think. It’s still not quite there, but you know, computers are only just getting to the point that we always kind of hope they would be. Actually, you know, for a while the internet was a bit rubbish, it was a bit slow, wasn’t that interesting? And now it’s kind of getting, you know, Broadband, full stream, HD, surround sound, like becoming the ultimate content delivery system. But there’s more to the internet than that.
30:36 There’s more to computers than tweeting pictures of your food. Like there’s more to it. There’s still problems in the world. There’s still stuff to fix. There’s still money to be made doing it, right?
30:49 And I think previously what we’ve seen is generate sort of entrepreneurs make a money and then become philanthropists. And actually what I kind of want to sort of do and be inspired by is doing good and making money at the same time is nice, it’s a good feeling, it’s kind of fun. It’s the only way it sustains too at the end of the day, right? Absolutely. It has to be a business model or else it just will flutter away.
31:13 Yeah, and you can’t rely on just donations if you’re going to do good stuff, right? You have to, it needs to be a sort of middle way of trying to support people and trying to create value. But when Africa comes online and smartphones and Bitcoin and SMS payments, there’s some really interesting disruptive stuff that’s going to happen there, like super fascinating. I was reading recently, I was comparing the number of IPOs that happened in New York versus London versus tech, and it’s like 100 and something to, I don’t know, maybe I’m quoting numbers wrong, 20 or 25.
31:47 And we had one of the beards, Bryce Keenan here, and we talked about how London is trying to shake off this like, you know, we’re the forgotten stepchild of the tech, the world tech community compared to, I don’t know, Tokyo, you know, Silicon Valley. What are your thoughts on that? Are we shedding that? Is it changing? I know FinTech has a lot of possibilities here because of the proximity of shortage in the city, but yeah, what are your thoughts?
32:10 So there seems to be an institutional investor issue that we’re trying to sort out with. The London Stock Exchange has got a new listing system. The guys over at Tech City have got this future 50 concierge system to help people manage that. What the problem really is right now is currently the valuation to float in London is dramatically different than it is to float in the US. Now, that’s not going to change unless people start floating in the UK.
32:44 Like the minimum valuation. So we need the big PE houses and equity firms in the UK to start believing that this stuff is possible. And I don’t think at the moment they sometimes realize how much talent and money and resources being lost because America’s a bit more on it, wants to get it a bit more, has worked a bit harder for it, hustles a bit more. We’re still very British. still kind of well it’s the computers isn’t it it’s not you know it’s not property it’s not bricks and mortar it’s still intangibleness it’s still and you know a few years ago 10-15 years ago people got really really burnt you know yeah people people went crazy in the 90s in the UK you know they didn’t the States but it’s about changing that reality of like you don’t need 20 million to do this stuff anymore you need 20 grand you know everything’s in the cloud, you don’t need to worry about scale, that will be handled by someone else.
33:49 There is this new movement and there’s some really great opportunities, you know, King.com are about to probably IPO, you know, we’ve had people like autonomy, we’ve got like, we’ve got arm, 98% of the world’s phones are powered by chips built in the UK, design certainly in the UK, it’s not built. The designer of the most popular computers and most lusted after is British, it’s not The British are not the failures that they think they are, and the press doesn’t really help that kind of case either. It’s still like internet, website, startup, so and so, and it’s like, we just look down on it with distaste and disdain, and it’s kind of like, you’re idiots, you’re all going to be automated out of the process if you don’t get on board and look at your business models and look at what you’re doing, but we’re still just not quite there yet.
34:43 It’s interesting because when an IPO happens, whoever takes the company public usually takes an equity investment, whether it’s Barclays or these places. So they end up taking five, 10% of the companies. Ultimately they have to invest in it too. But I mean that these drink abouts happen literally a half a mile from where I used to work in the city and it just seems something as simple as getting more suits there to just feel this energy and start really understanding that it’s more than just, hey, there’s a brand new website coming out.
35:10 It’s like, no, no, this is a different business model. This isn’t just a hobby, right? Like these are big businesses that are starting here. Absolutely, and you know, predominantly banking has been very good at understanding how technology can affect it, right? Yeah.
35:25 They’ve been doing big data forever. Super smart people from Oxford and Cambridge PhD scientists going in and trying to work out how to reduce latency and transaction times and working out exactly how much money is flowing around this money sphere. Like, they’ve been so good at it, but I don’t think they know the sort of, the vector difference between the money that they’re making at Christmas time could turn into 10 million pounds in five years. If they didn’t buy the Ferrari, and instead invested in a 21-year-old idea, you had a person, they’ve got a huge opportunity.
36:07 Yeah, the other issue is the innovator’s dilemma, FinTech being really big here and a lot of these banks looking at these companies that might replace them And I don’t know. Maybe that’s also a weird conflict of interest Yeah, I mean I mean one of the big reasons, you know, one of the first things I I’ve kind of announced that I’m doing is I’ve joined the board for city meets tech to try and help this piece to try and you know get get the city to to understand that There’s other ways to make money than just on money I think that there’s entire markets to be disrupted. There’s entire opportunities.
36:42 And there’s a huge number of companies that are 20 years old who are desperately struggling to work out how they do things. And there’s so many companies that still don’t get online, they don’t get tech, they certainly don’t get mobile, and they’re certainly not gonna get some of the new inventions that come through. So there’s a real opportunity there for I think this generation of people to explain that and to sell that and make that happen. that’s exciting. We’ve got a few minutes left here but I always want to ask you a question that I’m gonna steal from London Real and this is if you could pick up one of your phones and make a phone call to the 20 year old Ben Southwood and give him a bit of advice and it can’t be keep going Ben you’re doing a good job. What would you tell him? What would you tell him? Actually I told my dad when I was 14 just before Steve Jobs came back to invest in Apple and he didn’t and like every now and then I remind him just how much money I would have made him it would have been silly like it was 140 times yeah made it like a millionaire with two grand or so anyway I’m philanthropic I would have told myself to have more belief I was belief in in my system in your self care I was a That was a mess at 20.
38:04 I think a lot of people. What are we all? Yeah. A lack of confidence. A lack of confidence, a lack of hope, really.
38:12 I felt so weird, and different, and alone, and scared, and just unsure what the future would bring. And I never expected to end up where I’ve ended up. And I have no idea what’s coming next. But I’m reconciled to that. That’s great.
38:30 I’ve kind of begun to enjoy that. Yeah, no, it’s not so bad. And I think, you know, talking about what you care about and what you’re passionate about, you attract other people who are passionate and care about it and that energizes. And, you know, if I hadn’t have gone to a tweet-up on whenever it was Thursday night and met my two very good friends, none of this stuff would have ever happened. I would never be sitting here talking to you.
38:53 And it’s, you just don’t know, right? You just don’t know. That’s good advice. And if you are on that same note, if you had to give a bit of advice to the 20-year-old listening to this right now who wants to, you know, be like Ben some day or be like, you know, actin’ for motion monsters, what would you tell them if you had to give them like a simple set of advice? I think find something you care about work out if there’s money in it and just do it and, you know, take that risk, take that risk now before Mortgage comes and the kid comes and the partner comes and responsibility starts laying down on you Because it’s hard enough to do and I think Especially when you’re sort of 20 That’s the time like you still got whatever happens. You still got time to make it all good You know, you can spend five years trying stuff, you know, ask learn believe in yourself. Give yourself try stuff Don’t be afraid to fail, you know learn a little bit of coding. Don’t you know everything?
39:56 But a little bit of HTML, CSS, be able to throw off a website. It just helps get an idea off the ground. You can pitch stuff if there’s something people can look at. You can send anyone an email. As long as there’s a link in it, they can click.
40:10 And just read, and learn, and talk, and celebrate, and help people, and help others. And the rule will be glorious. It will all be fine. Awesome advice. Wow, I feel like we could do this for another 40 minutes.
40:25 But due to our abbreviated schedule of Silicon Reel, I’m used to it, they’re like, all right, let’s just get started here. Yeah, you want a beer, let’s get going. I know, well, it’s our abbreviated schedule for Silicon Reel, so I am gonna wrap things up. I couldn’t think of anyone better for the first one. So thank you so much for coming in.
40:40 Thank you so much, Alex, thank you. Laying sort of the foundation for where it will grow in the community. Yeah, exciting, yeah. And it’s so great you’re doing it, you know? It’s needed, and I wanna help you get as many people in this seat and telling you stories, because it’s life is a series of fascinating tales and that’s all it is, you know?
40:59 Yeah, and I just wanna emphasize that this Silicon Real project that Colin had the idea and that I’m gonna help to do, it’s really all about the community of people. So if anyone out there has suggestions, ideas, any criticisms, bring it. I’m gonna be looking for even pictures and video for like a short intro. If you got anything, send that in to me. This really needs to be a whole collaboration thing.
41:22 And next week, we’re gonna have Bryce Keene in that chair. And so he’s been really generous and he’s one of the three beards who does the silicone drink about. And we’re filming these on Friday night because we’re going to the drink about right afterwards. So if anyone sees this, you can see us there. We’re gonna be there pretty much every Friday.
41:39 And, cause yeah, it is all about getting out there and meeting these people and seeing them and getting the whole vibe of the thing. So I’m pumped. Ready to go. You ready to go? Ready to go to drink about.
41:50 There we go. Yes, we’ll head to that. We are going to be on iTunes very soon, so you can listen to this. If you want to check us out in video form, if you are listening, we’re currently on the London Real YouTube channel, we’re on Facebook, Silicon Reel, we’re on Twitter, Silicon Reel, and that’s it. Please send us, if you want to send an email right now, send it to info at LondonReel.tv.
42:10 We’ll have the Silicon Reel up for next week. Yeah, shortly. We’re starting. We’re tech start up kind of, not a tech start up, but we’re start up in this space, and yeah, we’re getting there. Well, we’ll go with the tagline to close out, it’s about the people, and thanks so much, Ben.
42:27 Thank you. All right, take care.
