Full transcript: Courtney Boyd on London Real
0:31 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. I’m also the host of London Real. It’s a similar but longer trial log format that features guests like drug smugglers and cage fighters and politicians sometimes too. Okay. My co-host is Mr. Colin Pyle. This is his idea. If you don’t like it, you can email him.
0:49 Personally? Personally, if you want. Colin comes to us via Toronto, China, and India. He’s got quite a cool story about riding motorcycles. If you want to hear more about him, we did a show with him on London Real about a month ago. I think it was called Motorcycling Across China.
1:03 Thanks, sir. I try to keep the title simple. Yeah. It’s pretty easy. Yeah. So yeah, there you go. And our guest today is Courtney Boyd Myers, who began her career writing for publications like Forbes Magazine, Huffington Post, and the IEEE Spectrum.
1:17 That one stuck out at me. Do you want to know why? Why? When I was in 7th grade at the Greater San Diego Science Fair, I won the IEEE Award for my science fair project. I was a bad little motherfucker.
1:27 Who was the project? Um, it was, uh, I built like a cathode ray tube on my own with my own vacuum pump and I was like sending electrons through it and all that stuff. I was like a serial science fair kid. I mean, I went to state level. Really?
1:40 That was my thing. Wow. Some guys- Did you get rid of Dean Kamen’s first program? No. Should I- It’s a way to get, it’s for inspiration and recognition in science and technology and it’s a way to get kids as excited about engineering as most kids are, as excited about football.
1:54 And so it’s a robotic soccer or here football game and then the kids get together in teams and build these robots as a way soccer. I like that. I know. I don’t see the science fairs here. They kill me.
2:06 We’ll talk about that later. But I got cash and a savings bond as well. Wow. I still remember it. This is a big moment.
2:11 Yeah. So anyways, back to Courtney, you moved to London fairly recently, I think from New York, and within six months she was named one of the 100 most influential people in London’s Tech City. I’m not on that list. You’re not on that list. Not even close.
2:25 Yeah. That’s pretty cool. That’s pretty cool. She’s currently a member of 10 Downing and Tech City’s advisory board, and you’re a mentor for companies like Seed Camp and BBC Worldwide Labs. And I’m not finished with Courtney.
2:38 Most recently she’s launched Audience.io and I think it’s a transatlantic company designed to help New York and London-based technology startups grow internationally and you’ve got clients like Yplan on board, which are big here in London. You’ve got Yplan app. I’m going to download mine. It’s for going out at night. It’s very cool.
2:55 And she also blogs about her smoothies in her spare time. I mean, they have to go somewhere. She was voted one of the most influential smoothie bloggers in London. I wish. In the first six months.
3:07 I might be on that list. Oh really? Thank you so much for having me. Cool. Thanks for being here.
3:13 It’s nice to have someone who knows what’s going on in New York because this is a London focused piece but we have to notice that there is some stuff going on in New York and Silicon Valley and so I think you’re going to bring a unique perspective. So I have to ask what I’d ask most Yanks, I’m a Yank, you’re Canadian so we’re all North American, moving to London, what do you miss most about New York and what do you don’t miss? What do you just like, this is better here? There is a unparalleled energy in New York City and it’s like just you feel it when you wake up in the morning, you feel it when you brush past people on the street, you feel it when you go to bed at night. I love the heat of New York, literally. The fact you don’t have to wear a jacket at night is just like amazing. You don’t? It gets cold? In the summer. Okay. The sort of serendipitous interactions you have with people as well because everyone’s just packed together so closely and you can go from the Lower East Side to Soho to the West Village and all in one night, no problem.
4:12 London’s a little bit more spread out in order to go from shortage to Soho to Clerk and Well, be quite costly and not really efficient. And I think that has an impact because you’re not running into as many people on a daily basis as you normally would. Like any good expat in London, I complain about the weather, but we’re really lucky right now and like we were talking about earlier, like London in this kind of beautiful sunny weather is the best place in the world.
4:37 Unless you’re suffering from hay fever. Oh, which I’ve been- Yeah, my entire intern staff is all really sick from hay fever. And it just destroys it. Really, it just ruins the day. It ruins, yeah, everything.
4:48 I mean, you know, Courtney came here on a bicycle, it’s sunny in London. I think London’s more like a suburb than a city because it’s just easy, it’s spread out, and it’s fun. Yeah, and I grew up in the suburbs, so there’s something about hearing the trees outside your window as you’re going to bed in tonight, which is so wonderful, and I’ll probably never have that. And not the sirens. Yeah, exactly.
5:09 There’s something really peaceful about London. And someone said the other day, why I think London’s a great place to work? Because the weather is always shit, and so it doesn’t matter if you work on a Saturday and a Sunday. When it gets dark at 3.30 in the winter. Yeah, I might as well be on my computer.
5:24 It’s not like I’d rather be doing anything else right now. I always just think when it’s a really bad day, I’m like, it’ll just clear all the suckers out. So the real people will stay in London, and it just clears the riff out for how they might be here because of the sun, because they’re not here because of the sun. There’s a greediness about London, which I think is kind of what you’re saying, that people are sticking to it, and they love it, and they’ve got a lot of pride, and I really appreciate that.
5:45 Yeah, it’s like the guys on the wall in Game of Thrones. They’re up there and it just sucks, but they’re like, we’re just going to keep doing it. Exactly. That’s a bad analogy. Earlier, before we started, you were talking about the similarity between, say, the tech startup scene now and the way it was in New York four or five years ago.
6:02 And I was just wondering if you could explain that for people that don’t know. I mean, a lot of people didn’t grow up in the New York tech scene, so. So, probably like 2009 to 2010 in New York, there was this, you know, we had companies like Foursquare that were founded, companies like Tumblr, these like really social technology companies. You know, everyone was getting on Twitter and talking there, and the media scene was getting involved with the tech scene, and it was all overlapping.
6:25 You know, people saw, okay, it actually isn’t that hard if I want to quit my job in advertising and go start a company that, you know, maybe I’ll work with the creative agencies, maybe I’ll be a social platform, and then I’ll build it off of what Silicon Valley’s built, whether that’s like Amazon or Facebook. And I think, you know, we started to see people connecting at ever increasing rates and just networking a bit more, and like more events were happening almost every night, you could go out and find a tech event. The New York Tech Meetup, which is where New York companies come and demo their new products, now has a secondary ticket market for seats in this like huge hall at NYU.
7:03 The accelerator program started coming in so we had like first tech stars was one of the big ones and then now there’s probably like 10 or 20 that are all different sizes and then the co-working spaces and so you just start to see this whole ecosystem build up and in the past like two years in New York we started to see like a number of exits and you know exits are kind of what makes this whole startup world go around. Now in London, so I think, you know, I don’t want to say that London’s like behind New York in any way, because they’re just so different, but you know, in terms of the amount of events and the amount of co-working spaces and accelerators, you know, there are some similarities to London in 2013 and New York 2009, 2010, where you have like tech and media coming over, websites like Tech City News starting, accelerators like Techstars coming over and opening up their first international campus, our first international program here in London.
7:57 General Assembly, the company that I moved over to London with, is another example. They said, well, we need to open up another campus, and they decided on London over San Francisco. We’ve seen quite a lot of that, and so London’s just kind of killing it right now, but it’s not at the point of it being too bloated. I feel like people are just, I don’t know, it’s like the sweet spot. It’s a really good time to be here.
8:21 How do you think London keeps that tradition, right? Because New York’s kind of, like you said, maybe flattened out a little bit or just kind of losing that energy. And how does London keep that? Yeah, I don’t think New York’s losing that energy at all. I think it’s just becoming like really chaotic and like everyone’s in the tech scene and you don’t have to explain to anyone anymore what you do if you say you’re a founder or a tech entrepreneur, they no longer think you work in IT.
8:48 In London, you know, I remember when I first came over here three years ago to explain that I work in tech. People’s parents said, oh, will you just sit around in your boxers all day? Whatever the female equivalent of that is. And yeah, are you homeless? Are you freelancing?
9:03 What do you mean you own a tech startup? And it just wasn’t as familiar. And now they get it. And now I’m getting, any time my friends that work in advertising or film are like, I have a question about the internet, they come to me, which is quite funny. So they’re starting to get keyed in.
9:17 And it’s starting to permeate other industries in London. New York, it’s just like, I would almost use the word saturated. It’s almost like people that were involved in it round one are kind of like, oh crap, like now I kind of wanna chill out and not go to these events every night because it’s gonna be like really crowded basically. Yeah, yeah. And it’s interesting to see like what we can learn and what we can do right.
9:40 I mean, obviously Bryce King is one of the co-hosts and he does the silicone drink about which is this really social scene. I’ve been to about three or four but I just find it kind of fun. It’s not everyone’s pitching. It’s kind of got that English relaxed vibe to it. Do we need more things like this?
9:54 I mean, I call him the lubricant of the machine because he just puts people together and people come to these things and meet each other. I mean, do we need more things like that to keep it on track or? Yeah, I mean, I have this image in my head right now of like the way cells come together and form and they form this big blog and then they break off into lots of little things and you kind of need these events to become larger and larger and larger people come to them and then people are then enabled to break off and form their own kind of events and maybe three beards with their silicone drink about maybe it does become to the point where it’s like 300 people on a Friday.
10:29 That’s wonderful and then maybe they give that to someone else to run and then the guys are doing their own kind of like 20 person things that are more creative and more involved and just different. It kind of mirrors like social media right now. Like now there’s too many friends on Facebook and now you want a more private group. going to the beer to drink about tonight and it’s like it’s at Badu which is like a social media dating company and like it’s already full they got 250 people and they got 150 on the wait list. So we’re already getting there. But you’re right to draw the parallels between social networking online and in real life networking mirroring that you know the internet is kind of like the modern day fire or electricity that people are just immediately drawn to and it’s just like kind of a network effect you know we hear about first because we’re early adopters and we love the internet and we love media and we’re always online sharing.
11:19 People in other industries are just going to take a little bit more time, but they’ll be knocking at the doors saying, hey, can I get into the drink about, hey, I want to learn to code. I want in on this too. Well, what do you think London can do uniquely? You see all the businesses here. You’re pretty well in touch with what’s happening in the scene.
11:35 Where do you see London winning when, say, the valley or the alley won’t be able to put certain things together? Are there certain business models or a few things that have really lit up your mind? Two things, well, first there’s a bit of an arbitrage play that London could benefit from and that’s when they see successful business models take off in San Francisco and New York. It’s like, why not make those work for London and start your own companies before the New York guy gets over.
12:03 And one of the things the audience say I’m doing is trying to tell the New York guy like, hey, someone’s going to copycat you unless you stick your brand in the ground over there and then vice versa. And the second thing is that I think both New York and London have to its advantages is the multitude of industries, is the multitude of creative agencies and brands. So Silicon Valley has this to a certain extent, but it is mostly these really big tech companies and then the small ones.
12:28 So while there’s probably more access to capital there and maybe more developer talent, here we have the ability to get the CMO of some big brand in the room and the head of a creative agency and then like a couple founders of startups and maybe think of a really cool way to like all work together that way that’s something I think is happening more and more in New York and London something that probably could define London in a way it’s like our creative startups our media focused ones and do you think they say it and I’ve been in London for ten years that the Yanks don’t understand Europe as in they have a hard time going from what works in America to what works in Europe and so the best way to do that that is kind of going, it’s doorstep in London, where it’s somewhere in between to try to understand that market.
13:13 Do you agree with that or disagree? Yeah, that definitely happens. I think, you know, there’s the language barrier, which is obvious, you know, in countries like Germany, we tried to go over there with General Assembly. We had an education model where we were asking people to pay money, and it was like, you know, really well received in the States because we were charging $5,000 for a 10-week coding course, which relative to your 40 grand a year tuition isn’t that much to bite.
13:41 But in London, when you’re charging 5,000 pounds for a 10-week course, that’s quite a lot because the one-year tuition is about nine or 10 these days. Take that to Berlin and it was just like… Tuition’s free. Yeah, it was kind of, it was really an uphill battle to get people to understand why they should pay for this. It was a really new concept.
14:03 So I think some American companies come over just thinking like, okay, well, what worked for us will work in London and Europe. And I think that’s quite arrogant. I think people don’t maybe do enough research on the ground and meeting people and interviewing people and figuring out how to adjust the model. Like, McDonald’s wouldn’t just go to India and sell cheeseburgers. So like, why are New York startups just coming over to London and sort of shoving in their models as is.
14:30 And we had John Collison on last week, and I know you interviewed him. He’s got four people here now in Clerkenwell, you know for Stripe And so you advise brands on how they make this stretch across the Atlantic and I mean does it take boots on the ground? Do you need people here out there making those meetings? You can’t just get your URL dot co dot UK I mean like what you know, what does it take to get your brand? It depends on the tech and like I use an example of a four-square is a very social technology company it’s Success was very much built on the fact that the founders Denz and Naveen were out in the scene, you know They were at these events They were throwing these events when they sent over to really young guys to work on Foursquare in London and and I don’t even know even knows like where their offices were or who these guys are and All of a sudden like Foursquare is available in the UK iTunes store and like they didn’t really make a splash in terms of partnering with any local brands It was it was a bit of a failure Which is why like when I walked in here and I said do you have a Foursquare on your house?
15:27 And you said, no, what? Like, it was just, you know, it could have been good. And that’s an example of a company that needed that face. They needed that, perhaps even a founder moving over and being like, I’m gonna be the founder of Foursquare Europe or, you know, using the kind of McDonald’s brand, you know, just like, okay, you know, you’re gonna be running Foursquare London, you’re like the CEO of that and give them a share. I think for some companies which are maybe like Stripe, for example, you know, they obviously have a really big team here.
15:57 And that they need that because they need to partner with all of the companies that are using their technology. Trying to think of a company that would not benefit from having someone on the ground and I can’t, nothing really comes to mind. Yeah. Just there’s cost issues and visa issues. So some of them might be like, I don’t want to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds to get the office and get this person.
16:15 Yeah. Which is why I think finding someone that’s local that gets your business model and if you have a really beautiful business that’s attractive to customers, those people will come out of the woodwork to want to be a part of your cause and build your brand for you in their respective city. I think listening to those kind of people, getting them involved early on is probably a really good idea. We’re talking sort of New York to London or America to London.
16:41 What about going the other way around? Do you see the same issues and problems and hiccups? London to New York. Or is it a little easier to kinda, it’s like jet lag, you don’t get as much jet lag going that way. Oh, that would be great if it were true.
16:56 I’ve heard of some pretty, someone the other day said that there have been like a number of spectacular failures and that investors in London are really afraid to let their companies that are even past this series be round move to New York and make an entrance there just because it’s so noisy in New York like we were talking about earlier that you literally we have to scream above the rest to get, you know, heard. And I think it’s really costly to enter the U.S. market.
17:25 Y Plan’s a great example. They’ve just raised 12 and a half million dollars to do it. And they’re, you know, running it like a military operation. Like, we’re helping them hire a huge team in New York. So they’re not, you know, they’re not pussy-footing around, if you will.
17:38 Like, we’re here. We’re Y Plan. Right, we’re not filling a Friday night party. Yeah, and the founders are like all over the place. So it does take an incredible amount of work.
17:46 I would argue that it’s harder for London companies to enter the US market than the other way around. Okay, interesting. Yeah. I definitely would get that feel. Yeah.
17:55 Just because like, you know, you can say the Yanks don’t get Europe, but you could also argue that we don’t really understand, you know, the New York City mentality and this whole entrepreneurial spirit that built this country, and where everyone’s maybe already thinking, okay, a lot about that stuff. And like you said, the noise, I mean, so you can’t get press probably in New York, But you probably can’t even get the meetings you want in New York because there’s so much going on and you’re like, yeah We’re here and it’s like well, unless you’re gonna climb the shard. No one’s gonna pay any attention Yeah, and or use not to be self-serving, but that’s exactly why I started audience It’s just like I like I’m here with these London companies my heart like I love them I’m you know Just so passionate about seeing them succeed and I I know that the way is that they could do it and you in the US And I know it’s a lot of hard work work but I would just like want to help them get over because I see these guys that are like I really want to move to New York and grow my business there and I’m like you totally should like let me help you in any way I can whether it’s getting you meetings or getting you press this you being sort of my specialty.
18:51 Just out of curiosity how do you how does like your revenue model work for entrepreneurs that want your help is it like because as an entrepreneur when you’re starting a company it’s always like lean startup or you try to do and so spending money on like PR is often seen as like oh is it really necessary is required do I have to how do you get around that yeah I know it’s it’s tricky and a lot of people in the client services business for startups struggle yeah PR companies are an example of people have done this before and when I when I said hey I’m gonna start marketing consulting for startups who were like that’s a retarded idea there’s no way it’s gonna scale and I was like all right well you know how we do it is we’re not working with companies it can’t afford to think about hiring someone in marketing.
19:34 So they’re past that level where they have a product that’s beautifully designed. They’ve got the Dev and Design team, and they’ve probably got a ton of great content that can be turned into free marketing if positioned correctly. They’re just in the stage where they need those partnerships and that help. And we found the sweet spot for companies for us to work with is when they’re past the series A round. A bit of cash in the bank.
19:55 Yeah, so they’re thinking about growth as their number one you know ambition right so yeah I’ve totally had so many conversations with people that are pre you know see even that I love their good friends and I’m just like yeah it’s like I you know they say that you should always take like 20 minutes or 10 minutes or whatever it is to help someone industry like not think about like getting paid or whatever so like I spend those coffee meetings with them and yeah and you know maybe it’ll benefit a lot further down the line sure once they get their series anything then come to you for help right but you’re not a PR company, more of like a strategy and marketing company. Like you’re working with Y Plan saying, you guys need to do this, this, this. Right, so we’re right now working with Y Plan in terms of helping them hire, which I actually didn’t think that we would be doing.
20:40 Yeah, that’s interesting. Yeah, it’s almost like a recruitment firm. Yeah, which I like didn’t want to get into, but the thing was, he was like, well, before we start anything, we need to hire a team. And I was like, actually, I know a ton of people that would love to work for Y Plan. So like, that’s a great way to start working together.
20:54 And in terms of like the PR, We actually partner with a PR company in both New York and London. So they would handle the reaching out to journalists. And the reason for that is that I’m a journalist and I don’t wanna be bugging my friends. But also, because a lot of the content strategy work I do is about placing stories. And so it’s a different kind of PR as opposed to, hey, write about this.
21:16 But that having been said, I’ve definitely hit up my friends and been like, you should write about this company. They’re really awesome. I think that gets back to who you choose to work with. Never choose a client or a member, as I call them, that you wouldn’t want to work with full-time. And then it won’t really feel like pitching.
21:34 You’ll just be almost informing the journalists and giving them this really great story to tell. When I started London Real a couple years ago, I contacted a bunch of PR firms and social media experts, and they all had one thing in common, which was varying degrees of uselessness. They were just so bad, and I almost spent like 10 grand at one point for like something that I probably could have got on Fiverr.com, you know, for those kind of metrics. And it’s really frustrating, you know, and I don’t think it’s maybe London per se, but a lot of the old school, maybe they hire a young kid and they’re like, yeah, now we do this.
22:06 But I’ve, I’ve, I can’t seem to identify someone that can really add value to my brand. So if you’re talking about getting press, like in the media, not just that, but yeah, that’s one component. Well, like I, I wouldn’t say like I’m an expert in helping someone get a story place and the telegraph, but when it comes to the tech press, where I’m from, which is like quite an insular scene, it’s quite easy if you have a good product and you’re someone that maybe reads their stories every single day so you know what gets written on the blog.
22:38 You know exactly how to marinate it and tell it right. In terms of adding to your brand, it’s really hard because it’s your brand, right? You think about this thing when you’re sleeping, when you’re having sex, like every single day and it’s like when when you have someone come in and be like oh I can tell your brand story for you or like I can help you with marketing like it just doesn’t always work right is that what you’re trying to say I just didn’t think they had any good ideas and they weren’t telling me anything new and I didn’t see if I spent money with them they would add any value that that that’s the frustration I had yeah I’m I’m sure it happens all the time but like a lot of the marketing work I do is all partnership space so it’s like let me introduce you to people you can partner with to double your user base or to exchange emails or whatever it is.
23:26 So it’s about connecting people more than having some marketing campaign go out on Google AdWords. Right. Very strategic. Yeah. It’s just about knowing the networks really well.
23:39 Maybe you have spent a week in London and you think you know some people, but I’ve spent now almost three years off and on. Like I know that many more people and that’s that’s where I would add value to a new art company. Okay You’re pretty well plugged in. Yeah You do so many things I mean like there’s even other stuff I didn’t even mention because it would have taken me like five minutes to introduce her and sometimes It makes people uncomfortable But like you have so many things going on and I just wonder how you how you multitask all of these things because you probably Could spend 110% time for audience I owe not to mention all the other projects and you’re a journalist and all this stuff So yeah, so I do a lot of work with makeshift which is They’re probably like two days before I announced launch body and say oh I had already started working for them So they’re interesting because they’re not really like a client or a member They’re just like someone that I love working with and they’re an early-stage like multi-tech product company And they’re like a really new trend in what we’re seeing with tech companies now either like a creative agency spins off a lab sometimes what they’re called or like just a startup says I’m gonna build like ten products and see what works the next three months so it’s like this rapid development prototyping very like lean startup in terms of pushing it out so I’ve just been helping them a lot in London and like love working for them
24:55 And then the other things I’m kind of involved in yeah like the journalism bits at Audience.io I have two or a few people on my team like two and a half and I say look as part of your you know I I’m not gonna send you to training or anything right now, like we’re small, but as part of your work environment you need to be writing a piece every two weeks that gets published somewhere from wherever you had violence before or I can help you get a new media outlet that you’ve always wanted to write for. Just kind of a cool part of our culture. So writing’s really important.
25:23 So I write for Wired Magazine now. I haven’t gotten my first piece published yet, but I’m working on three pieces for that, which is a little bit insane. So how I’d balance all that is I just look at my days, really. I don’t typically do coffee meetings with people to pick my brain or anything like that. What I do instead is every two weeks I host a dinner somewhere, either at my home or somewhere I’ve wanted to try and I just get 10 people in the room.
25:48 10. So like if there’s someone that’s like, oh I pick your brain and I’m like, okay cool and then see how they act socially and if they’re like, they’re a real winner then I’ll like maybe go out with them after but the benefit for them is like sometimes they do wanna meet me but even more so they wanna meet my network And so it’s just kind of killing two birds with one stone, just bringing them all to a dinner. And it’s just one event as opposed to 10 during the day.
26:12 You know, I make it to the gym every single day as well. I either do a lot on either side. And then I do work. Like, I don’t really watch TV shows other than Game of Thrones. It’s like, not sober.
26:21 So now I’ve got all this time to do work. I know. It’s frustrating. Bad men’s work. TV’s too good, though, sometimes.
26:27 I don’t know what to watch now, so. And also, I took a lot of plane rides, so I got a lot of work done on those. So five years from now, if you’re winning, if you’re doing everything you want to do within five years from now, does that mean that Audience.io is huge? It’s making lots of revenues, more companies, or does it mean something else is going well for you? Good question.
26:49 I don’t think it’s gonna be huge. It’s gonna be really helpful, I hope. And if it’s around in five years, I hope by that point it’s also me and two other people that are consistently running it almost as founders. So I’m like looking for those two people now. And I think like it’ll still be in New York and London because that was one of my initial inspirations for starting it is I never wanna give up either city and I wanna build off of the 3460 miles community that I built and see like if I can turn that into a business.
27:23 So far it’s going really well. It’s been two months though. So thinking five years ahead is like crazy. I mean, I’ll be 33. So now I feel like I got pregnant with audience I own and running around after this one year old business and when it’s six years old, or five years old, I just, I don’t know.
27:44 I just hope it’s really helpful. What school are they going to? Would you ever expand to open up and to help companies maybe go to Rio or something like that? Definitely. So help sort of connect the international.
27:57 Yeah, I love that. So before I lived in London, I lived in Buenos Aires and I’ve lived in, my parents moved around quite a bit, so I like, have networks all over the U.S. And I think that’s why I went with the new audience IO. It’s all about audience development, as opposed to a new, like my friend suggested, trans, no, Adlantastic. Adlantastic, Adlantastic.
28:20 No, so like, I wanted to keep it open, because I think, for example, right now, obviously San Francisco is quite a clear choice to help companies move to you. I won’t pretend to have the networks there that I do have in New York and London, so I would need to find someone. And there are people that have been quite excited in doing this anyway. And then Berlin right now is just killing it, and I feel like there’s gonna be a point where London becomes maybe unaffordable for a lot of startups from the States to move over.
28:49 For someone that makes dollars to think about setting up in pounds, it’s like, you know. And it’s like one-to-one, the real exchange rate, right? You have to pay someone 50 grand in the US, probably you have to pay them 50 sterling. Yeah, exactly. Actually, to that point, the payment structures for startups is quite different in the New York London scenes.
29:10 So what I’m saying is, I think Berlin is going to be a really viable option for a lot of these startups to come over and think we’re just going to be seeing a lot of cool stuff coming out of Berlin in the next five years. London’s a really unique city because the center of government is here. It’s not like Washington DC is in New York. And I know you have done some work with 10 Downing and Tech City is at their advisory board. And I was just wondering what was your biggest surprise and disappointment in working with the government.
29:35 And yes, this is recorded. It’s fine. No, I got into a ton of trouble when I first moved over to London. I was working for GA. You get into trouble?
29:43 Yeah. And I said something. I was on Reuters, and they said, well, what’s the most surprising part about being in London? And I was like, the government’s involvement. And GA looked at that, and they were like, shut up.
29:57 Don’t say anything because ten downing was actually really supportive of bringing us over. And I actually have a lot of positive things to say about ten downing’s involvement in the tech scene and tech city and we’ve seen quite a few really valuable players leave the tech city investment organization recently, which has been boring. I imagine working for government is quite boring when you’re surrounded by a bunch of entrepreneurs doing things at rapid speed.
30:22 But anyway, so the first reaction was like, whoa, what are they doing here? It’s like we had Bloomberg in New York that was really involved. He would show up to demo days and whatnot, but that made sense because it was local. And I think to have David Cameron and more importantly like Rowan Silva when he was with David Cameron coming out and being in the tech scene, it was just like, wow. Or when we’re at Tainano.
30:45 It’s like Obama showing up somewhere. Yeah, it was really intense and they were just pouring money into this one part of London. And I think the most disappointing thing about what they’re doing is that they’re making East London the home of tech in London. And it’s like, well, wait a minute. London’s a massive city, and you’re missing out on huge opportunities by not just saying London’s a tech destination.
31:08 Why aren’t we also building up different parts of London, like Clerkenwell and West where you live, right? There’s people over a nodding hill. Are they not part of the tech scene? Is that including Cambridge too? I mean, do you want to make it really big?
31:22 I mean, stick to London as a city, But yeah Cambridge has got amazing things coming out of it But then you know then it’s like kind of New York to Boston perhaps and like how those you know We wouldn’t call that all in New York so I think yeah what widening like in just embracing all of London as this tech city as Opposed to just the shortage an old street roundabout would make more sense Okay, and what’s it like dealing with the government? What do you would and what is your capacity with them and tech city? I mean it’s really just breakfasts every few months and then just getting up to speed on who’s doing what and the They’re quite formal bad coffee and good croissants I’ve been the opposite me So it’s formal there in suits you go down to Parliament I mean, it’s it’s at ten down eight So you get dressed up and I think like I’ll never get over the fact that I’m like in front of this door with the number Ten behind it like I’m eating. Yeah, it feels it feels really special special. I have friends that have brought their U.S. companies over and they’ve been welcomed at ten downing, which is like crazy.
32:22 Yeah, it is strange and Ben Southworth was our first guest here and he went from tech startup to the government and then now he’s back and he was just talking about the power that they had. He was just like, yeah, we need more 4G coverage here and they were like done. It was just like the king was like, that’s done. And he was amazed by the power, frustrated by some things that he you know he wanted to get done more with like curriculums getting coding in the curriculums and stuff for children. He was just talking yesterday about opening up the tier one visa again for engineers who and then judging their quality off of their github profiles and the government was like github you know like they just need to be educated and that that’s totally fair this isn’t their job to read TechCrunch right but they should be appointing someone to educate them on that and then kind of trust that person and forming policy around that.
33:16 And I think that they did. I think Rohan Silva was, from all intents and purposes on the outside looking in, really great for that. So yeah, I mean, I don’t have too many complaints about what they’re doing. I just think it’s really crazy because it was much more organically developed in New York and it was up to the people to kind of build these infrastructures as opposed to the government. Yeah.
33:37 Do you think Boris should be getting more involved? That’s like the most awesome guy. I want him up more tech event. Yeah, I know he was at the you know Tech Summit for the last two years, but but yeah, I he should be out a little bit more I think he’s cuz he’s Silicon drink about every Friday We’ll talk to Bryce. He would do that. I think I like Boris. Yeah, he could do more such a character Yeah, he’s a good character Um a question for you if you can make a phone call to the 20 year old Courtney and give her give her a piece of Advice not that she would listen to you But assuming she would, what would it be?
34:09 And you can’t tell her, just keep doing what you’re doing, girl. You’ve got to actually tell her something. Is there any advice you would give that younger woman as far as career advice or any personal advice? Yeah. I think I was in university at the time, paying quite a lot per year to go to a school in the middle of nowhere and sit on the quad and write poetry and smoke hookah.
34:31 I feel like I could have spent my time much better either. I did travel quite a lot, I studied abroad, but even doing more of that, as opposed to like four years down in Virginia, I did like maybe just one. And then like living in cities all over the world, I think, and then learning what I wanted to from the internet, like the way that education is going. You know, I really hope that my kids don’t go to university in the traditional sense. Like there’s just no point.
34:59 Four years. Yeah, it makes, no, I mean, especially as expensive the state have their tuition set it’s like you know 30 40 grand a year yeah that’s ridiculous when you could you could go around the world you can take cooking at Italy you can like you know go there on the Mandarin like you know just endless possibilities and like we’re sitting reading books and like a library it just outdated business model you think yeah I think like I think it’s tough though I think you learn so much just growing up in university like just getting things done on time and do you know what I mean, at tasks and getting things completed and working in groups and if you just kind of socialize around, but if you haven’t seen that in high school, it’s like what were you doing then? Yeah, I was just doing anything in high school. I didn’t learn anything in high school.
35:46 So how do we like inspire the 14 year olds in us to like get a bit more serious about things earlier and like my 20 I was like set on the right path but at 15, 16, that’s when I would like to just call myself and be like, girl, house parties on the weekends don’t matter, like, this is this. They do when you’re 18. Type stands, though. She would definitely hang up on you. Maybe just a little bit less, you know?
36:12 It’s like the time spent, I feel like. You only get a certain amount of cool points in your life. Like, don’t blow them all when you’re a teenager. Cool points, what’s a cool point? Yeah, it’s like, you know, just physical body energy, Like the ability to like, like I’m not able to go out and party the way I was when I was 16 and I’m only 28.
36:31 Like, what? That’s the worst part of growing up. No comment. If I had like maybe stayed a bit steady on, like my friends had never partied in high school are now like a burning man every summer. And I’m like, oh man, just don’t have the energy.
36:46 Left it all and you know, back of some kids, Jeep Wrangler. On that same note, What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given?
36:58 Let’s see. I’m sure it’s some journalistic advice, probably some old school writer. Best advice. There’s been so much, it’s hard to pick one. Oh, well, one thing that comes to mind is I was like really nervous to leave New York City.
37:14 And I was like, I feel like my network was there, right? Which feels like literally your network is holding you up. And my friend just looks at me and he’s just like, girl, the world, he’s like this big gay man, the world is global, baby, go enjoy it. And I was like, okay. I was like, all right, cool,
37:37 Because New York’s always going to be there. It’s not like moving anywhere. It’s not like I’m pissing people off by not being in New York, you know, like the wheels are turning. So I guess back to what I would tell a 20 year old me is just like, go out there and get as much experience you possibly can. A lot of people are scared to leave New York.
37:54 It’s the big show. I find the U.S. like that in general. People always want to go back, I think. In Americans, people from the U.S. don’t travel that much if you look, like there’s so many people in the U.S., but a lot of them don’t even have passports, which blows me away.
38:12 Just to finish this advice question, I mean, you talked about the 15-year-olds and stuff like that. I’m sure there may be some teenagers watching this, and they’re like, I want to be like Courtney one day. I mean, she’s really killing it. You are really killing it, by the way. But what advice do you give to them, besides don’t go to college?
38:25 But I mean, if they’re seeing all this excitement about the drink about it, like, I want to do this. I want to start my own tech startup. I want to do this. Yeah. What’s a simple piece of advice you would give them?
38:33 Say 15. Yeah. I mean, just like, get involved. This one amazing guy, Andrew Bracken, who I think is like 18 or 19, he came up to me. He was like this pipsqueak kid, like 16 years old, flew over from London to New York to go to the TechCrunch Disrupt Conference.
38:49 Boldly came right up to me and said, I read your writing, dah, dah, dah, dah, like love it, you’re so cool. And I was like, you’re totally not allowed to be drinking. Yes, put the beer down. But that’s awesome, and we hung out, and we followed each other on Twitter, and this guy like just became so kind of with it. And he applied to Peter Thiel’s program for like under 20 fellowships and got in, and now he’s in San Francisco, like living the dream, you know?
39:14 But, you know, just that kind of ambition is awesome, and it’s so much easier to do now, because you can just reach out to people on Twitter, you can see what’s happening on the internet, as opposed to when we and I were growing up, and we were in chat rooms, and AOL being like, ASL, question mark? It was really different, we didn’t know. I didn’t grow up in chat rooms. You didn’t? No, but I know what you mean.
39:35 Okay, age, sex, location, question mark, was ASL. I don’t know. I didn’t know that either. Oh, no. See, you said too much.
39:43 The internet really didn’t start picking up for me until I hit university almost. Oh really? How old are you? Yeah, 31. Okay.
39:52 Yeah, later for me. See like, I’m 28 so I literally got on the internet as I hit puberty at like 12 or 13. Like it was just kind of a weird thing there, right? Yeah, that’s true. Like growing up without it as a 10 year old and then all of a sudden you’re alive and you’re on the internet.
40:06 But I agree with you, never underestimate the power of your own hustle. Yeah. Because even with London Real, if I get someone coming in and they’re pitching me And then they were pitching me the next week, and they’re pitching me like, who is this kid? All right, I’ll meet you. If you’re really coming out and you put it all on the line, and I don’t see enough of that.
40:21 I don’t, a lot of people give up, they do this half-assed try. So I think- They’re getting out there and just doing it. Yeah, if you think you don’t have the degree, or you don’t have the resources or not, just the hustle and the drive can get you there. And people are impressed by that. I think New York teaches people how to hustle.
40:37 I mean, I had this one friend that was amazing, in order to start his own cooking show, he would be like doing things in Central Park like selling granola bars. Like he’d find these jobs on Craigslist which is like our gum tree. Like how to quick, you know, make a few bucks an hour just to like pay rent and whatnot to get his own thing started. You know, hopefully you don’t have to do that anymore. If you’re like over the age of 26 or 27, you’ve built up enough connections to maybe get some investment if you need to.
41:01 But yeah, I mean, when you’re 20 and you’re young, it’s just like, you gotta learn to hustle. Yeah, they hustle in New York. They teach people how to hustle. I’m going to wrap this up and I just wanted to just get your perspective on one final thing. I mean we see all these businesses building like you creating YPlans, New York Strategy and all these startups and it seems like they’re all trying to rush and to be the first one to do something successfully.
41:25 And when you have an organization of like 20, 50, 100 people like you’re hiring and stuff like what’s like the one thing? Like John Collison said they had a way of communicating where everyone was on these email groups and when the lawyers signed a document they told the whole company about a success. Yeah. The whole company found out about the success, but what’s like the most important thing when it comes to you giving advice to say why plan or someone else as far as just the communication factor and just people working together and talking and staying on the same vibe?
41:53 Yeah. So I could screw something up, right? It’s true and I’ve worked on a few global teams before and I’ve worked on one global team where we were constantly talking all day long and we had like, it wasn’t like an intranet, but I mean I guess it kind of was chatting and we were talking and sharing and what we’re reading and just maintaining company culture across these digital divides. And the other company I worked for where we didn’t have that was so different.
42:18 It was just kind of like you get this email from someone that was like, no, you’re doing it wrong. The really hard part about that is that because you’re not in real life with them, they can’t also pat you on the back on your way to like the water cooler to show you that there’s like love involved too and teamwork. So I think like just thinking about that as you’re growing your global team, like it’s so important for founders to be in a new city with their new team as opposed to just letting the expansion happen.
42:43 So, we’re not as involved with Y Plan strategy yet, but we had a conversation with their team and they’re moving most people over to New York. That’s a major part of their strategy is just to be there. And then I think the founders probably planned to live on a plane between New York and London for the next two years and that’s just kind of what you have to do. I know it’s like really hard and expensive, but it gets back to like what we were saying earlier.
43:09 It’s like, this takes a lot of money. But they have one shot to get it right. I mean, you said Foursquare probably didn’t get it right. Yeah. Can you try a second time or not?
43:16 I think Foursquare like could have tried a second time, but now it’s been like two or three years. So be a little weird. It feels like Y-Plan has one shot. I mean, probably from a financial issue, they have one shot to build that brand. Yeah.
43:27 But then the public is probably not gonna take version 2.0. So I think Foursquare, if they pivoted like their value ad could, I think YPlan needs to get it right the first time because we’ve seen companies just like YPlan in New York already start up and fail. Right. Okay. So yeah, pressure.
43:43 Yeah, pressure’s so on for them. I love it. Yeah, it’s true. But I’ve never met a team as dynamic talents that work together so well as that team. Yeah, I saw them at the web too, and that’s what I downloaded.
43:54 I heard an interview with their CEO, so it was good, he had good stuff. I have to apologize to John and Ben because Courtney’s my favorite guest. So thank you so much for being here and just I mean we could talk for hours that you have a lot of really interesting things to say and really good perspectives. Thanks for having me. And I’m glad you’re over here because it’s nice to get the New York perspective over here but you know you don’t have a everything sucks in London vibe you guys don’t know what to do in New York we got it right you know it’s it’s good to try to see the benefits of the London culture and yeah we’re talking to Bryce about that the fact that you can go to these drink abouts and it’s a relaxed day at the pub it’s not just a speed dating pitch night is there are some benefits of that. No, London’s a really inspiring like wonderful place to be and I think it’s connecting the two cities that I want to be doing more of. Awesome, what a great niche for you.
44:40 Alright, well that’s it. Silicon Reel, it’s about the people. If you want to check us out, we’re on Twitter, we’re on iTunes now, we’re on Facebook and we’re just going to be keep doing these every week. Some interesting person in the London and the London tech startup scene. This is fun as hell. It’s fun and if If you have any advice or any, you know, videos or pictures or, you know, guests, it’s for the community.
45:01 Yeah, total community feel. So tell us who you want and if you even have any footage or pictures of the scene, I’ll put it in the intro and like, yeah, we’re just doing this with your help. If it wasn’t for the beards and bends and all these people giving us ideas, we couldn’t do this on our own. So there you go. Thanks for coming.
45:17 Thank you so much for having me. Thanks. Okay. Take care.
