Full transcript: Daniel Glazier on London Real
0:00 Brian Rose: This week on Silicon Real, we have Daniel Glazier of the technology law practice, Fried Frank.
0:05 Daniel Glazier: It’s a tough story to sort of rock up in London and say, hey, I’m an American lawyer. I’m here to help the tech community. We practice law, absolutely, but it’s also being a helpful member of the community, helping to put people in touch, to make connections that wouldn’t otherwise happen. You should be able to use your lawyer and your other advisor for their network.
0:25 Network. This is an amazing time these days to start a company. In early stage fintech, London is the global leader.
0:38 Brian Rose: Silicon Real presents Daniel Glaser, Fried Frank technology.
0:45 Daniel Glazier: Don’t be afraid to fail.
0:48 Brian Rose: In London, technology is the Silicon Roundabout.
0:53 Introducing a new talk show dedicated to the people of the London technology startup scene. Silicon Reel Each week, interviewing entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, financial technology, accelerators, and incubators in an exciting three-person format. Learn about the people behind the innovation. Locally filmed, locally sourced, Silicon Reel. It’s about the people.
1:27 This is Silicon Reel, the weekly talk show dedicated to the people of the London technology startup scene. My guest today is Daniel Glaser, who leads the technology practice at the global law firm FreedFrank. Since 2012, you’ve split your time 50-50 between London and New York City, advising companies from early stage startups to the Fortune 100. You have a particular focus on helping London and UK-based high-growth startups with U.S. investment, and commercial matters, and also helping US VCs and corporates better access the London tech community. Pay attention, kids. This is important.
2:01 Tech City News named you one of London’s top 10 connectors for 2014. I met you at the Ice Group Christmas party, hosted by former guest of silicone reel Alex Hoy. That guy knows how to throw a shindig, doesn’t he? So yeah, that was networking at its finest. Daniel, welcome to Silicone Reel.
2:18 Daniel Glazier: Thank you, Brian.
2:19 Brian Rose: Great to It’s great to have you here.
2:21 You know, let’s call out the elephant in the room. You are a lawyer. You’re our first. And I find that people have interesting reactions to lawyers. I find it first is that no one likes a lawyer until they need one.
2:34 And then they love their lawyer. If you remember, say, I think 15 years ago, Eminem came up to the Video Music Awards and thanked his lawyer. And my first experience with having some legal help, I think I was in banking in Chicago. And I think I was leaving the bank. and they were trying to withhold like a third of my bonus or something, I got this fantastic guy in the legal profession, and he went in and he was just like, okay, this is why you’re gonna pay Brian, and if not, we’re gonna do A, B, and C.
2:58 And the bank looked around, they’re like, okay, fine. And then we left the room, and I was like, now I get it. When you have law professionals on your team, it’s a beautiful thing, am I wrong?
3:09 Daniel Glazier: Well, you know, we try to be helpful when we can, right, and especially when you’re working with early-stage companies. I mean, yeah, you can help them on legal matters, but really, they need a lot of assistance, let’s say, just being a business advisor, just being a friend, just being helpful, right?
3:25 And that’s certainly the approach that I think lawyers can and should contribute in this space. And especially in the space that I work in when you’re going to the U.S. I mean, the U.S. can be a bit of an aggressive business culture, a bit of an aggressive legal culture, and to the extent that your lawyer can kind of protect you against all that stuff, help guide you a bit and keep you out of trouble, you should be able to then concentrate on core business and not have to worry about that stuff.
3:51 Brian Rose: Right, and this is coming from two yanks, so we know what we’re talking about, because it can be pretty daunting going from the UK to the US, and I wanna get to that, but I wanna just expand on that point you just made is that a lot of people would see, you know, Fried Frank and they walk by your offices and they’re like, oh, we’ll call him when we need legal help. But in early stage, or even a lot of stages these days, you know, your legal advice can be, it can morph into M&A, it can morph into investors, and you’re the top connector for a good reason because you speak to all these important players and so it’s important to know that it’s not just a law firm, right? Yeah.
4:23 Daniel Glazier: I mean, certainly the practice that we’ve tried to create is that, look, I mean, if you’re going to go to the US, you’re going to get US investment, whatever, there’s the core legal basics that you need. You need some help with corporate structuring, some IP, some employment, et cetera. But after that, that’s all done, right? There’s a whole raft of other things that you got to take care of, right? other advisors like tax and accounting, insurance, commercial property, PR marketing, like all this immigration, all those different things you want to think about. You know, do you need connections to let’s say government support in the US? You know, do you need to hook up with UKTI in the US or London and partners or others who may be able to help? Even the US government now is focused on helping companies expand to the US. And then, you know, investors, right? I mean you should be able to use your lawyer and your other advisor, you know, for their network and you can you leverage their network to meet other people who could help you whether it’s in terms of making target introductions to investors who might want to talk to you make making targeted introductions to maybe corporate partners who might be interested in speaking to you you know like that’s the sort of way that I think that really savvy US entrepreneurs think right is the US entrepreneurs are thinking okay so the advisors I work with you know how
5:33 Can I sort of maximize our relationships that I think I increasingly see more of of it that I think the savvy, you know, London-based entrepreneurs are doing the same thing. And I think that that’s the right way to really develop partnerships with the people you’re working with.
5:46 Brian Rose: Right. So I think we have two audiences here. One is to the Americans in the US watching over here.
5:50 And they’re like, all right, I really need to learn more about London. The other one is for the London tech startups here that are always thinking we have to go to the US. Like so many that have been here sitting before, you know, we had Y plan on a year plus ago. And they were just then moving into New York and trying to conquer this big ocean here, which is a lot of issues. and I wanna talk about that, but you’ve said that London is the perfect place to start a business, whether it comes to the accelerators, the co-working space, the SEIS tax treatment, you know, immigration.
6:18 Why do you say that, that it’s such a great place or the best place to launch a tech business?
6:23 Brian Rose: It’s a strong statement.
6:25 Daniel Glazier: No, it is, no, and it’s sort of throwing the gauntlet down.
6:28 Brian Rose: Good, I like that.
6:29 Daniel Glazier: No, in my opinion, London is the best place to start a business.
6:33 I mean, right now, I mean, the growth in this city and the focus, both in terms of private sector support and public sector support, to helping early stage companies grow and scale. I mean, it is tremendous. As you said, the co-working space is the accelerators. You’ve got a developing community of people who are looking to help. You’ve got the government, both city and national, that’s looking to help.
6:58 You’ve got an incredibly diversified community here. You’ve got people from all over the world who are contributing all sorts of interesting perspectives. And then you’ve got an increasing amount of early stage funding, in part because of the SEIS and EIS, has made it really attractive to invest in early stage UK companies. And I think that was a very considered decision by the UK government. And it seems to really have developed a community of early stage VCs and of a thriving community of companies who are growing.
7:35 And it’s when we’re really only a few years in on this.
7:38 Brian Rose: Yeah, it’s hard to remember that, that it’s still very early days here. And if you’re not familiar with those acronyms, those are like the highly favorable tax treatment that you can get to invest in these companies. That’s really made a big boom. How does the UK government compare with what’s being done in the US?
7:52 I mean, take New York City, for example. Here we’ve got Boris, and he’s come out with this recent piece where it’s the co-investment funds. We got David Cameron doing FaceTime. And I mean, I’ll take FaceTime over no FaceTime. any day of the week and the government really acts like they’re involved and there’s a lot of groups.
8:09 I mean, how does it compare to the US? Is it much better?
8:13 Daniel Glazier: Well, I wouldn’t say it’s better or worse. It’s just different, right? And I think that historically the role of government in the UK is that they’re more involved in business than perhaps culturally the US government is involved in business.
8:28 I mean, in the US, there’s much more of a harder divide between the private sector and the public sector. In the UK, and in fairness, this is maybe an outsider’s perspective looking in, but it certainly appears that the government plays a much more active, supportive role in building up business. And we see that with just the way that UKTI provides individualized guidance. They provide events here in London and overseas, in the UK and overseas. They have offices overseas.
8:58 They have, I think, nine offices in the US who can provide individualized market assistance in New York or in San Francisco or in Miami or Boston or Washington, et cetera, if you’re going to those cities, you can get in touch with UKTI on the ground there. They’ll help you expand to those cities and they’ll help make introductions for you, help you with market research. That can be pretty effective to your business.
9:21 Brian Rose: Right, all right, let’s talk about a big success story in the news transfer-wise.
9:25 I had to have it in that chair about a year and a half ago, even less, I just emailed them and we’re going to get them back on the show. They just raised some money from A16Z, Andreessen Horowitz. Ben Horowitz is on the board. The first time he’s on a board of directors of a European company. This is a huge statement.
9:42 It’s now at the $58 million I think they invested. It’s got a billion plus valuation in dollars. This is big news, right? And this is stuff that you talk about all the time as far as American investors getting comfortable with Europe, looking to Europe for all sorts of things which could even include future tax advantages or just things to invest in that maybe aren’t overvalued. What do you see when you see this transfer-wise investment?
10:06 Brian Rose: What do you see from your mind?
10:08 Daniel Glazier: So I think that there’s three different things here, right? I think that the first is that this is increasingly validating fintech as a leading sector within London, right? And it’s huge, huge. You can say we’re the best in the world now, right?
10:22 I think I can pretty confidently say that, especially in early stage fintech, London is the global leader. I mean, look, we’ve got five, at least five dedicated fintech accelerators in London. I mean, like- It’s incredible. Yeah, I mean, it’s amazing, right? And I think that the transfer-wise, that this investment, among other things, just continues to add to the fintech story of London, and that’s great.
10:43 I think another thing about this is that it shows that U.S. investors are increasingly becoming interested in what is going on in the UK, what’s going on in Europe more broadly. And look, you know, if you’re a Valley investor, if you’re a New York investor, you get a lot of companies right in front of you, right? And it maybe takes a little bit more to look overseas and say, you know what, I’m gonna look past what’s sort of right in front of me and I’m gonna look to London, I’m gonna look to UK, I’m gonna look to Europe.
11:11 And to see an investment of this size I think is really encouraging and sends a good message to US investors in terms of interesting opportunities over here. And then just, I think a final point is to see an investment that this large also shows the increasing, the maturation of the London tech community. I think people forget, right, that the total VC investment into London tech companies in 2010, right, was $69 million, $69 million total in 2010 into London tech companies.
11:44 Last year, 2014, it was $1.45 billion, right? So $69 million, essentially a standing start, to $1.45 billion in four years. Well, you know, people, and one of the criticisms we’ll sometimes hear about London and the UK is where are all the big exits? Where are the massive investments? Well, if you think about it, we’re only talking about a community that in some respects is, you know, four years old, five years old, David Cameron’s tech city speech, right, was November 2010.
12:15 We’re only four years out from that. And that’s not to say that there was nothing here before then, right, because there certainly were plenty of companies here before then. But the real focus, London as a global tech hub really only started to come into its own in the last couple of years. And it’s gonna take a while before you see a big run of IPOs, before you see a consistent 100 million, 200 million, 300 million investments. But to get 58 million into TransferWise is just another great data point in that story.
12:43 Brian Rose: Yeah, and we’re seeing these big checks being written. Blah, blah, car, 100 million, these are noteworthy. These are big checks. These are major eight-figure checks that just weren’t happening even 18 months ago. And so, yeah, it’s notable.
12:57 Brian Rose: Another thing to note, and that’s covered in the article that you’re going to have coming out soon, including some of these figures, is that’s still about a tenth of what happens in the valley. So to put it all in perspective, and I read this in The New York Times when I was traveling to Belgium over Christmas, and I don’t think I’d seen it in black and white. And I was like, OK, the valley is 12 billion, and we’re one and a half. So it’s like, you really understand that there still is a big scale issue.
13:18 But you’re right, we’re four years old. A lot of people don’t want to hear that. I’ve been around here for a while. Right. But yeah, I mean, if you look at it from pure investment amount, it’s tiny.
13:27 Daniel Glazier: Yeah. What’s I think particularly exciting about London is the pace of change, right? So the numbers last year, I think in New York, 4.5 billion in VC investments in New York tech companies. I think it was 22, 22 billion into Silicon Valley last year. Yeah, that sounds right.
13:42 It was really, really high, right? But Silicon Valley, you know, became Silicon Valley, right? as it were 30 years ago, 40 years ago. I mean, Silicon Valley’s been running hot for a long time. New York, the original Silicon Alley days began in the mid to late 90s.
13:59 And New York’s up to $4.5 billion. And that’s great. But if you look at London’s history, again, you’re going from a standing start to $1.45 billion in a handful of years. I mean, we’d all like to think that the best is yet to come. Right.
14:12 Brian Rose: You’re optimistic. You’re optimistic. Let me ask you a question. You’re a man who spends a lot of time between New York and London. How many hundreds of thousands of miles did you have last year?
14:22 Daniel Glazier: Almost 200,000 miles.
14:23 Brian Rose: 200,000 miles. This guy goes home on a Friday and comes back on a Monday on a regular basis. And so you have intimate knowledge of what it’s like to run in London on New York time and New York on London time, what it’s like if a company from London wants to expand to New York City and vice versa, and also some of the problems of expanding to the West Coast, which is what, well, let’s be honest, Horowitz is going to have to be over here.
14:46 He’s going to have to be trying to use his brain and network on eight time zones away. That’s not going to be easy. What are some of the pitfalls and some of the advantages and some of the things you’ve learned by living that dual life between these time zones and watching companies kind of go one way or the other?
15:02 Daniel Glazier: Yeah, I mean, it’s interesting. The companies that we talk to here in the UK who look at expanding to the US, the US is a massive place.
15:09 And actually, that may be the first thing to keep in mind. The US is massive. And when you say that you want to expand to the US, you can’t just go everywhere. You’ve got to pick a place. And that being said, I would say 90% of the companies that we talk to looking at New York and the Valley, and maybe Boston as well.
15:28 Brian Rose: But that makes sense, because those are the three places where maybe VC investment is the greatest. So it’s really a simple choice of three cities, for the initial long.
15:37 Daniel Glazier: To some extent.
15:37 Brian Rose: Unless it’s industry specific or Hollywood or?
15:40 Daniel Glazier: Immediate entertainment.
15:41 You might go to LA. We see companies could go to Chicago. Periodically, there are other reasons, particularly you might want to go to maybe Northern Virginia, Washington, if you’re gonna be doing things in the government sector. Security, for example, but a lot of the times, a lot of the times, it’s really New York and the Valley, maybe life sciences and pharma for Boston as well. You go where your investors are, among other reasons, but you also go where your customers are, where your potential commercial partners are.
16:11 If you’re a fintech company, and you’re a B2B fintech company, and your customers are probably going to be the large banks, New York has a special attraction to you. There’s a reason that there are so many fintech VC investors in New York. If you’re an e-commerce company, and you need to scale quickly, and you can be anywhere in the US, the Valley might make a lot of sense. But you also need to think about, as you said, the pitfalls of going to maybe one place or the other.
16:46 And the time difference, the distance really plays into it.
16:49 Brian Rose: It’s a three-hour time difference. It’s a four-hour difference in flight, but you’re telling me that’s a lot. This is interesting, because I haven’t thought about this point before.
16:59 Daniel Glazier: So if you’re, let’s say, a London company, and you’re looking to expand to New York, or you’re looking to expand to the Valley, or if you’re going to go to New York, let’s Let’s say that you want to hire locally, right?
17:10 So you’re not going to send a founder over, you’re going to hire locally, you’re a five hour time difference, which means in the London afternoon, you’re both in the office, right? And if you had to, you can be on the ground in, you know, seven and a half, eight hours of the flight going London to New York, right? It’s quicker on the way back. If you had to, you could be there tomorrow. If an emergency comes up, you the founder can be there tomorrow and that’s fine.
17:34 You can go back the next day if you have to. In other words, you can keep your finger on the pulse of the business. If you’re hiring locally in the Valley, for example, you’re an eight-hour time difference away. When it’s 5 p.m. in London, they’re only getting started on the West Coast.
17:49 And if you want to get over there, you’re looking at a 10 to 12-hour flight. We’ve seen companies get into trouble where they launch in San Francisco or the Valley, and they launch locally. They launch with local hires. And then the local hires have a different idea of where they want to take the business. And it’s tough to keep your finger on the pulse of the business.
18:06 It’s tough to keep a consistent business culture without sending a founder out there. It’s a little bit easier in New York, because as I’m here to tell you, you can kind of make it a commute if you have to.
18:19 Brian Rose: But you must have to send a founder out there for the most success rate, right?
18:24 Daniel Glazier: Yeah, I mean, generally speaking, and this is certainly a generalization, is that we’ve seen a lot of success, especially on the West Coast when you put a founder out there, maybe combined with local hires.
18:37 Because of those pressures with the distance, it’s tough to run a company from several thousand miles and eight time zones away. And frankly, the early stage US investors especially are going to want to see that. They’re going to want someone on the ground.
18:52 Brian Rose: And on that same note, to find someone to make that move, it’s going to only be one of your founders. It’s going to be game.
18:59 We had Andy McLaughlin here from Huddle, and he decided to make the move. So you’ve got to have one of your founders that’s most likely young and single, or convince the family, or has roots there to make that move. Because that’s a big move. When we talk about it being a big distance, it’s complete lifestyle change. By the same definition, you’re no longer near your friends and parents.
19:19 You’re no longer a flight, really, away. Now it’s more of an investment.
19:24 Daniel Glazier: Yeah. It’s one of the practical issues that we’ll talk to companies about, is that we’ve often seen a lot of expat arrangements don’t fail necessarily because the individual is not happy. They fail because the family is not happy.
19:38 That you’re going to bring your spouse, maybe your kids, along with you to New York or to San Francisco or Boston or wherever, you better make sure they’re happy. Because if your family’s not happy, nobody’s happy.
19:50 Brian Rose: Amen to that. You said a few other things that people need to think about when they go over there. As you said, it’s a big country.
19:58 It’s a very regional country, too. People don’t forget, right? It’s like pockets of people, you know, everywhere. You said that two countries separated by a different language. What does that mean as far as what’s similar, what’s different?
20:07 Is that a culture thing?
20:09 Daniel Glazier: Yeah, I mean, it is a little bit more than, you know, that in the UK we use S’s and they use Z’s more or they use Z’s more in America. You know, it’s a little bit more of an aggressive business culture. It’s a lot more of an aggressive legal culture that in part because, and I’ll go a little lawyer on you for a second. While you’re here.
20:31 Yeah, because in the US, unlike in the UK, it’s not loser pays in a lawsuit. If you and I got into a business dispute in the US, and you think you’ve got a 95% chance of winning, well, if I sue you, you still have to pay all your legal fees, even if you’re going to win ultimately in the lawsuit, and that could cost you thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars. You’re going to look at that, and you’re probably going to get annoyed and say, you know what, I’m going to win this, but I’m going to have to pay him this guy $50,000 just to go away to settle this thing.
21:04 Brian Rose: Right. So it’s used as a business tool more.
21:07 Daniel Glazier: Exactly. It’s used as a business negotiation tool. Whereas in the UK, it’s loser pays.
21:12 Brian Rose: Really?
21:12 Daniel Glazier: Yeah. In other words, if I sue you and you win, I’m generally going to cover your fees too. Wow. And that’s pretty standard across business litigation here.
21:22 Brian Rose: In the UK and the US, yeah.
21:24 Daniel Glazier: Those are the differences. That’s created a little bit more of a different culture around business in the US where people are a little bit more aggressive knowing in the background that that litigation risk is sort of always there in a way that it’s not necessarily to the same extent in the UK.
21:40 Brian Rose: And it hurts a small guy usually because he doesn’t have the budgets. Right.
21:44 Daniel Glazier: And that’s what you need to be aware of. And now I’ll take a little bit more to the practical away from the legal. That’s what you need to be aware of as a startup when you’re doing business with larger companies is that you need to think practically. Your contract may say one thing, and you may have, let’s say, a non-disclosure, a confidentiality agreement with another company, and that may say one thing, but if they violate that, and you have to enforce it, you’re going to have to pay to do that.
22:10 It’s good to always think practically and strategically in your business dealings in the US. Don’t just rely on what it says on the piece of paper or what it says in your contract. You need to think really practically about what’s best for your business because you don’t want to be in a, you want to avoid business disputes to the extent that you can because it could get expensive.
22:31 Brian Rose: Okay. But well said.
22:32 Good point. What else, what else do we need to look out for? I mean, did, did the Yanks just work these crazy hours or they always on the emailing me all night long? I mean, or is that just stereotype?
22:40 Daniel Glazier: Uh, no, they work pretty hard, although they work pretty hard here in, in London as well.
22:44 I think sort of the, the best, the best perspective I can give on this, right, is that so working New York and London all the time, you know, I see things maybe in a little bit of a different way, and I can tell you that on Friday afternoon in London, or on Friday afternoon, my emails from the UK go down, and my emails from the US go up. And I think that the thinking is that on Friday afternoon in the UK, the mentality seems to be more like, you know what, it’s cool, all right, let’s just break for the weekend, will still be here on Monday, and we’ll start again then, right? And in these states, especially in the big cities like New York, it’s like, oh my gosh, it’s the weekend, we cannot lose momentum, all right?
23:29 Get it all out the door, we got to keep working on it over the weekend, let’s just make it clear that this is what we expect to have done by Monday, because just because the weekend’s here doesn’t mean that we’re going to lose momentum. I’m not saying one is better than the other, I’m not saying one’s worse than the other, those are just two very different approaches to doing business.
23:46 Brian Rose: That’s a good example. And I think that typifies it the best. I think the Yanks are thinking, oh, we’ve got two free days here.
23:51 Maybe to get some stuff done, maybe get a few hours in on Saturday, maybe on Sunday, and tackle some things that we didn’t have enough time to do during the week. And maybe in Britain, you know, because we’re right next to the continent.
24:02 Daniel Glazier: And I agree. I think people here, they definitely respect their off-time more. And you could argue around and around whether it’s too much or too little or the lifestyle.
24:10 Brian Rose: I mean, look, I’m an American. You’re an American. say that there’s only one thing that Americans love to do more than work hard and that’s to tell everyone how hard they’re working and so that was my next copy so there’s a lot of times it is the dialogue and it’s just it’s part of your identity in America and what I took my first two-week vacation when I moved to the UK like 10 years ago and I was like this is the weirdest thing and in the UK people brag about their vacations I’m on holiday for two weeks oh really where are you going in America you say that everyone’s like oh you’re not committed.
24:41 You’re not committed, you obviously don’t believe in yourself and you’re going nowhere in your life. That’s like a very general thought of what it is to be an American, a vacation. So we definitely like to talk about it and act about it and act like it all the time that we’re working. I’d say maybe the balance maybe catches up to Americans a little too much. Sometimes they realize that they really need that downtime or that family time.
25:01 Brian Rose: What’s your call on it?
25:03 Daniel Glazier: Yeah, look, I think Americans, especially Americans in tech are very, very good about self-promotion.
25:11 Brian Rose: Say the two Americans on the video screen.
25:14 Daniel Glazier: I think American entrepreneurs are really, really good at explaining, especially to investors, why their company is the best. And that’s feedback that we often get from US VCs, is that they’re used to hearing from U.S. startups who get up there and in 60 seconds tell you why they’re the best, they’re going to be the world beaters, and why you, Mr. or Ms. VC, need to give me $10 million, $20 million, $50 million, whatever it is.
25:48 That’s not, again, this is the outsider looking in, doesn’t seem to be sort of the culturally the way that companies work here in the U.K. Again, it’s not better, it’s not worse, it’s just a different way of approaching approaching business.
26:02 Brian Rose: Very well said.
26:02 Daniel Glazier: Right, and I think but you know when in Rome as they say you kind of have to do what the Romans do and if you are looking to raise in the US you need to be prepared to be able to pitch your business and explain your business in terms that a US VC can understand and that means having confidence in your proposition being able to explain it efficiently, quickly, effectively and believing right that you are going to to be the world beater, right, because if the US VC is sitting there and doesn’t think that you believe that you deserve the 10 million, then they’re not going to think that you deserve the 10 million.
26:37 It has to start with you, the company, convincing the investor or your potential commercial or corporate partner why they need to believe in you.
26:45 Brian Rose: Right. Well said. I guess you’ve given this kind of talk to a few people in the UK that are looking to raise money in the US a few times. Have you given this advice?
26:53 How would I take it?
26:54 Daniel Glazier: We do a lot of work with trade missions that UKTI and others put together to bring companies across from the UK to the US. In fact, we’re working with the upcoming FinTech mission that UKTI and the mayor’s office are putting together in connection with Boris Johnson’s visit to New York next month. And we’ll often meet with the companies ahead of time here in London, sort of prep them for what to expect when going to the states, some of what the differences are, what the expectations are among investors.
27:24 And then what we see is a little bit of our USP is that we’re also able to be on the ground with them in New York or the Valley or wherever that they’re going to go. I mean, that’s the whole issue of having a transatlantic legal practice. You’ve got to be on both sides of the Atlantic. But that’s where we feel that we’re really helpful, that we can help them here and that we can travel with them to the states as well. Right.
27:44 Brian Rose: Talk to me about accelerators. You spend a lot of time with accelerators, including Techstars, Seacamp, the Barclays Techstars over in Whitechapel, Level 39, Startup Bootcamp, Wehrer. We’ve had most of these people on the show. You just mentioned there’s five different fintech startups in London, Jesus. Sometimes I ask the question a lot on the show, are we over-incubated?
28:03 Are we over-accelerated? They’re everywhere. What’s your read on it?
28:08 Daniel Glazier: It’s interesting. I think it was the Wall Street Journal did a piece on this, I think, in the fall.
28:15 And they favorably contrasted London startups to Valley startups. And they were talking about how, in the Valley, that there was a bit of a bubble, and that companies were getting overvalued, and they were over raising. And they would do a big raise, and the next day, the founder would show up in the new company car, which was like a Porsche. And they were favorably comparing how London startups were more frugal. And one of the examples they used was how even later stage startups were using in co-working spaces and using accelerators to sort of get the most value that they could out of their property spend, out of their real estate spend, right?
28:58 That it wasn’t just getting the biggest office with a hot tub and a billiards table in it, or a snooker table in it. It was rather, they found an appropriate space where they could work with other entrepreneurs who they could learn from, who they could leverage other mentors who would come in, other advisors who would come in and talk to them, and leverage the networks that the co-working spaces or the accelerators could bring to bear. I think it’s a really positive development, especially for a tech ecosystem here that is still relatively young.
29:31 Brian Rose: Okay, so the more the better in your opinion.
29:34 Daniel Glazier: The more the better, I think they have a specific role to play here in London because we don’t have the massive ecosystem that say the Valley has or even New York has. We’re getting there. There’s no question that we’re getting there, but accelerators and co-working spaces can help grow more quickly.
29:51 Brian Rose: Right, I mean, I say the more the merrier, but when I hear about Insert Fortune 100 Company is starting their latest incubator with maybe tech stars.
30:00 I love the guys of tech stars. John Bradford, I’m a huge fan of him and everything they do, but when I hear that the next 10 corporates are getting into the incubation space, part of me is like, really? It’s a bit late, but maybe there’s all good there. Maybe it can’t really do any harm, right?
30:18 Daniel Glazier: I’d like to think that corporates, when done right, can really play a very positive role in this space, and whether it’s with accelerators or corporate venturing divisions or otherwise.
30:29 I think that increasingly large companies are looking, realize that they need to be a little bit more nimble, realize that they need to be ahead of the curve, understand where the next great technology is coming from, and also just from a branding standpoint. They want to be seen as being with the times and being up to date. What works for different companies may be a little bit different. Maybe it’s just simply putting your brand in an accelerator. Maybe it’s getting involved with a corporate venturing division, maybe taking investments.
30:58 Maybe it’s getting out there into the community and finding potential commercial partners and signing up deals with companies, helping guide their growth by being one of their customers at the same time. I think it can be a very, very positive development as long as it gives more opportunities for startups and scale ups to find customers, to find potential investors.
31:18 Brian Rose: And you’re basically handing out free legal advice at these things, right? I mean, you’re helping people out with their legal structure and guessing at all times.
31:27 Daniel Glazier: Yeah. I mean, it’s absolutely something that we see as an investment. It’s an investment in the particular company much more broadly than that. It’s an investment in the London tech community. And this is something that I and my team certainly feel very passionately about.
31:42 I had done business often in the UK over the years, but I started going back and forth regularly in early 2012. And when I got here, I remember thinking that this is like being in Main Street Palo Alto in 1979, given where the community was then relative to, I think, where it’s headed. And to be able to, that’s a once in a generation opportunity to be involved in an ecosystem at that stage. And to be able to help it grow and to be able to get involved, we think is, we feel privileged to be able to do that.
32:18 Brian Rose: Right. Well said, amen. And I feel privileged, too, to do this show. I mean, I’ve watched it evolve in 18, 20 months since we’ve been doing it. And we were not seeing these valuations or these investments even 18 months ago.
32:28 And so it’s changing in front of our eyes. You made a reference to the guy that shows up in the Porsche after the fundraise. One thing about London, and if you don’t live here, you’d find fascinating, is that it’s really all one tier right now. We don’t have a PayPal mafia. We don’t have guys that have exited that are walking around with big money.
32:45 Everyone is really working together to help us all take the city to a next level. I don’t know what it’s like doing business in New York or the Valley, but the vibe here of contribution is just amazing. There aren’t any special people, and I can’t think of one tech startup driving around a Lamborghini or even spending money. is concentrating on getting to the next level with their companies that I’m aware of. And I talk to everybody.
33:08 So that’s fascinating, right?
33:10 Daniel Glazier: Yeah, and I think it’s really underscored by the investment numbers when you dig a little bit deeper. That $1.45 billion last year into London tech companies, I think something like 45% to 50% of that was early stage seed and low series A. It’s not a disproportionate amount of money going into a couple of big rock stars. It’s that the ecosystem is sort of growing at a steadier pace in that regard, right?
33:39 I mean, when we first got here, when I started working in the space here in London, I think in early 2012, you saw maybe a few larger series A’s and maybe some series B’s, but now everything’s grown where we sort of regularly are seeing companies at that A and B stage. And it’s sort of moving as you would expect, right? as it develops, you see more and more companies at that larger and larger investment stage. And as a result, it’s not that a couple of companies are breaking away, it’s that the community as a whole is sort of growing at more of a, almost a lockstep, but I mean that in a positive way, almost at a lockstep pace.
34:18 Brian Rose: Yeah, it’s gonna be fascinating to watch, and it’s gonna be this way, at least for a couple years, which is fantastic. All right, let me ask you a question. I’m in San Francisco, and I’m the partner or the founder of, say, Sequoia or Benchmark, and I roll out of bed today, and I check out the headline And I’m like, oh, Horowitz is invested into this foreign exchange peer-to-peer company in London? Jesus Christ. Maybe we better get on this.
34:39 Brian Rose: What do you say to that VC guy who’s in the Valley who’s never invested in Europe or London before and says, maybe it’s time I open my eyes to this? What do you tell them as far as if it’s a sell or a pitch or just the reality?
34:52 Daniel Glazier: I think that there are some unique things going on here in London. I mean, London doesn’t look quite like the Valley. It doesn’t look quite like New York.
35:00 It’s a little bit different. I think part of that is maybe the mix of public and private sector support, maybe it’s the mix that we’re, as I’ve heard people say, London is L.A., Washington, and New York all rolled into one, right? So-
35:17 Brian Rose: I’ve been guilty of saying that exact quote.
35:20 Daniel Glazier: Right. So it’s a little bit different, and there’s a couple sectors here that are clearly breaking way as global leaders, fintech being one of them, seeing a lot of interesting things in health tech, in ed tech, advertising tech, fashion tech, and what I say to them is it’s worth having a look because among other things, valuations are pretty good here.
35:45 It’s not overheated like some other markets. Sometimes say to US VCs, look, if you just decided to come here and do a trip to London and hang out a shingle outside your door and says, you know, USVC here for the week, you’ll get a lot more attention than you would than if you were in the Valley. And you don’t necessarily have to sort of jump in with both feet and say, okay, I’m gonna dedicate a fund solely to UK companies that are solely UK-based companies tomorrow.
36:15 There are a lot of UK-based companies that are going on trade missions, that are just going on fact-finding missions of their own accord, who are turning up in New York, turning up in the Valley, turning up in Boston or Chicago. Just looking to network, looking to meet people. And that is sort of the easier way in, is that investing in and meeting UK companies that are looking to become great global British-based businesses. And in order to do that, you really need to sort of access, not need, but most do end up accessing and growing in the US.
36:44 Investing in those types of companies is sort of an obvious and maybe easier first step for US VCs who are just starting to get their minds around what’s going on in the UK and Europe, right? Investing in companies that have significant growing US presence, but at the end of the day, are great British or European-based companies.
37:00 Brian Rose: Right, and I mean, just from an investor standpoint, if you look at, say, correlated portfolios, et cetera, I mean, take a group of four guys in London that are working on some fashion tech issue, and maybe you’ve got a programmer from Romania and an advertising guy from Spain, and they’re in this little bubble separated from the valley.
37:17 I mean, it might be in your interest to place some bets over here, because they You might be coming up with something that’s completely different from what you’re thinking of, a different perspective. Like you said, valuations are cheap. If you’re in the U.S., a lot of your companies are going to have to expand over here sooner or later. Europe is a complicated place. And I will quote the CEO of BlaBlaCar, Nicholas, he said, Brian, when you want money, ask for advice.
37:43 And when you want advice, ask for money. And so that’s always good. So you don’t have to come over here looking for money. to go for some advice and start talking to people, right?
37:52 Daniel Glazier: Look, another thing that I think the VCs are increasingly starting to see is that just look at what some of the larger tech companies in the US are starting to do.
38:00 And the larger tech players are starting to acquire non-US-based companies, right? And I think, in part, that’s starting to happen, because I think it was Bloomberg reported late last year that US tech companies have something like $2 trillion offshore so-called trap cash profits. In other words, money that they made overseas that they can’t necessarily bring back to the US without a massive tax hit. Because you may or may not know that the tax rate, the corporate tax rate in the US is double. It’s about 40% state plus federal relative to the UK which is about 20%. The UK is a low-tax jurisdiction relative to the US, right?
38:39 So you’ve got these tech companies, right, the large tech companies in the U.S. who are looking to put that offshore money to work. And one of the great ways to get value for that is to acquire companies that have a non-U.S. top company. So a U.K. and this is sort of as we’ve seen play out in the market recently, if you’ve got two companies with an equal U.S. presence, one of them is a homegrown U.S. company and And the other one is as a US subsidiary of, let’s say, a UK company, arguably, that UK company is more valuable because from the VC standpoint, the potential pool of acquirers has now been expanded to include all these companies who are looking to spend their money overseas.
39:28 I mean, that could be pretty powerful.
39:30 Brian Rose: Yeah, and that’s made certain mergers even happen, right, from that tax arb. You should be very well aware of that because that could change your partners going forward.
39:41 Daniel Glazier: Right. As you said, the tax dynamics have been interesting lately.
39:45 There have been these transactions in the United States that have gotten a lot of popularity, maybe infamy, depending on your perspective, called inversion transactions, where US-based companies are looking to merge with non-US-based companies in a way that they end up with a non-US parent company. I think Burger King Tim Hortons was a good example of that. The Burger King and Tim Hortons merged so that now Burger King is a Canadian company, right? is it as a Canadian top company, because Canada is a much lower tax jurisdiction than the US is, right?
40:18 And the US government has come out complaining about this, and there may or may not end up being measures taken to curb this. But if you’re a UK company looking to go to the US and you expand through a subsidiary, you end up with that same structure, right, with a non-US UK parent and a US subsidiary. But you’ve done it in a way that you’re not looking to escape the US tax net, which is what’s getting, I think, the US government angry. But you’re actually looking to enter the US tax net, but enter it in the most efficient way possible, and the way that maybe makes you more attractive to potential acquirers down the road, and maybe even makes you more valuable as a long-term IPO target, or an IPO candidate.
40:59 Because the more money that you can keep internally without necessarily paying as tax, the greater that your valuation becomes.
41:05 Brian Rose: Yeah, because you might decide to IPO on the British markets for tax reasons for that. So you have the hidden asset there, is what you’re saying. So take notes here for anyone listening in the UK. Let me ask you a personal question.
41:17 You do this crazy commute and it’s a lot of flying. I’m not a big fan of flying back to the States and jet lag kills me. I’m off to LA on Friday and I’m already dreading it. But you go back and forth, obviously you see your family, but at some point I guess you have to throw up your hands and say, I can’t do this all the time. You said you had a moment, like on a Father’s Day, where you couldn’t make it back for the Father’s Day, and then you had a moment where you were like, wait a second, I’m going to have to make some commitments to the family, but still make my commitment to work.
41:43 What was that like?
41:44 Daniel Glazier: Yeah. I mean, when I first started, I wasn’t sort of going back and forth so much. I was sort of coming over to London for maybe two or three week chunks, and then going back to New York for two or three week chunks, et cetera. And then, as you said, I had this one rainy Father’s Day Sunday here in London, and I was on the phone with my daughters.
42:05 And I’m like, I got to figure something out here. That is not a good result. So that’s when I kind of committed to going home on the weekends, right, which as I’ve sort of thought since then, my airline is a big fan of that arrangement. They thanked me.
42:22 Brian Rose: So you’re back most weekends or a lot of weekends?
42:25 Daniel Glazier: No, I almost always go home on the weekends.
42:27 Brian Rose: That’s fantastic. And you can do it. You’re living proof that it’s doable. It’s doable.
42:32 Daniel Glazier: People ask me, what’s the trick to avoiding jet lag? And I think what it is is that you just commit to working both business days. So I’m usually on Skype or calls in New York, probably like 5 AM local time in New York, 10 AM here in London. And similarly, I’m on calls with New York late at night here in London. So it’s working the exact same hours, no matter where you are.
43:01 So it just ends up time-shifted.
43:03 Brian Rose: Right. So you space them out during the day.
43:06 Daniel Glazier: Yeah. Or in sort of universal time, you’re always working the exact same hours.
43:11 It’s just that in relative time, it’s different hours when you’re in New York and it’s different hours when you’re in London. But it’s the same total chunk of time that you’re working. You just sort of time-shift your sleep. So it’s a little bit earlier in New York, a little bit later in London. So you work twice as hard.
43:27 Brian Rose: You’re just like a self-promoting American talking about how hard you work. We’re both doing that today.
43:32 Daniel Glazier: Hey, I’m not working half as hard as all these people start in companies, so it’s sort of the least I can do.
43:36 Brian Rose: Right, right, right. What’s next for you in the next couple of years and for Fried Frank technology here?
43:41 Like, you know, how do you want to be part of this ecosystem? What if the ecosystem doesn’t grow as much as we want, and I mean, you know, you can’t give all this advice out and still run a practice, you still need, you know, those big customers to come back to you. I mean, that’s still a gamble you’re an investment you’re making, right?
43:58 Daniel Glazier: Yeah, look, I mean, for us, I mean, there’s a lot of different types of value here. I mean, we’re making wonderful relationships with early-stage companies, we’re making wonderful relationships with some fantastic people in government, we’re making fantastic relationships with VCs and private equity firms that are interested in what’s going on here, we’re making fantastic relationships with corporates, including a lot of our corporate clients, who are really interested in what’s going on here.
44:24 I mean, sure, you know, if the next Facebook we ended up working with, that’s fantastic, but it’s a lot more than that. I mean, there’s a lot of different ways for us to interact with a lot of the different members of the community, and to us, you know, that is overall valuable. I mean, do we think that, you know, it’s just going to sort of fizzle out? No. If that does happen, you know, we’re still making, again, a lot of wonderful relationships with a lot of, you know, very wonderful people and wonderful companies, which we expect to last.
44:56 Brian Rose: You were voted one of the top 10 connectors by Tech City News. One of the other ones was Bryce Keene, I think, who was one of our first guests on London Real and then helped start Silicon Real. What makes a good connector? How do you do it?
45:10 Daniel Glazier: In a very self-promoting way, selflessness. It really is that, yeah.
45:14 No, I’d like to think that how, you know, I and we can be helpful here is to think about, okay, when you come in and talk to us, let’s say you want to go to the US, my first thought is, OK, who can we put you in touch with to the benefit of both of you? And frankly, that’s how Silicon Valley became Silicon Valley. And when I got here, I said, you know what? I want us to create a Silicon Valley style legal practice here in London. And what I mean by a Silicon Valley style legal practice is that, yeah, we practice law, absolutely.
45:50 But it’s also being a helpful member of the community, helping to put people in touch, to make connections that wouldn’t otherwise happen, and taking sort of a rising tide lifts all boats approach. So to us, if we’re able to put a startup here in touch with a corporate that we know in New York who said, I’d really be interested in meeting a company that has this type of technology or who’s solving this type of problem, even if we’re not involved, let’s say, in any eventual transaction that comes out of it, we’ve helped out a large corporate, which we wanna do. We’ve helped out an emerging company, which we want to do.
46:24 And we’ve helped out the community. But it’s selflessness in that don’t go into it expecting that something is immediately going to come back to you. It’s about giving back and being seen appropriately, incredibly, as someone who is willing to support the community. And we’ve seen that, and we’re very grateful for it to come back to us in a lot of different ways.
46:44 Brian Rose: Yeah, it’s big.
46:45 It’s almost a Buddhist thing. You have to go in with no, you can’t be invested in the consequences of whatever do and the more that you are the more people feel it and the more you come off as an opportunist and the less you are you really you do connect and you enjoy this kind of you know zen bliss of being in the flow and you know it does come back to you but that’s not why you’re doing it but it does you know and people especially in tech are very very good at identifying phonies right and if you’re not truly invested in this if you’re just if you’re just sort of looking into a quick hit and say, look cool, say, hey, I’m working in tech, right, for some reason. People are going to see that.
47:26 Daniel Glazier: I got to tell you, it’s a tough story to sort of rock up in London and say, hey, I’m an American lawyer, I’m here to help the tech community. As somebody who’s now a very good friend said to me in early 2012 when I first got here, or he told me later, he said, Dan, when I first met you, I said to my friends, I said, this guy’s lying or he’s lying and he doesn’t realize that he’s lying. He says, came back to me, he says, I believe you. But that sort of skepticism is completely warranted and healthy, because there are people and entities who are just looking to get in, get out, as in any industry.
48:02 Brian Rose: Yeah, and especially now with the headlines. Do they call them a carpet bagger? Is that what they call them in America?
48:06 Daniel Glazier: It’s a carpet bagger, yes. That’s the one term they used to use in the South.
48:08 I think when people were coming down trying to exploit certain things.
48:11 Brian Rose: But yeah, they will smell it a mile away in tech. I’m sure I got some of that reaction when we started off on our show, and people were like, OK, why are you here? And you just do what you do and you put in the time and the genuine efforts every day and after a while then you’re part of the community. I’m sure that’s what you feel as well.
48:25 Daniel Glazier: Yeah. No, I mean, it’s all about just giving back, giving back, and it’s having faith that that’ll be rewarded eventually.
48:31 Brian Rose: It’s a faith-based legal practice. Yeah, it is. Gosh, that’s crazy.
48:35 And if you want to think about your own self right now, are you a good connector? The answer is probably not. And so you should really think about, I think there’s even good drills, you should be connecting people every day from your network and just do it and think about how how it’ll help both people and if you, I know someone that does one a day, I’m sure you do 10 a day, and just, you know, you’ll turn into that connector and it’s amazing the great things that will happen when you just start connecting people and I know some selfless connectors from London Real and even Silicon Real and, you know, they have huge credits built up and I’m always thinking of them for some reason, you know, when something’s gonna happen because they’re just selflessly connecting.
49:10 And the funny thing is in London, and Ivan Mazur brought this up, which is what he’s been, he runs Ometria, He’s been our guest, a fascinating, really like him a lot. He said, Brian, if you look at the property industry, people are doing the intros, okay, I get the finder’s fee, and it’s like a sharp contrast to tech, where tech is like, you guys would love to meet, go meet coffee, see you later. And then in these old school industries, it’s like, okay, we’ll talk about the percentages later.
49:31 And so, yeah, that doesn’t play in tech. So, yeah, there you go. Good connecting advice. Let me ask a couple questions with you. I always ask our guests here.
49:40 If you could make a phone call to the 20-year-old Daniel Glaser, I guess he was up in Dartmouth, maybe doing some partying, I don’t know. And giving him a little bit of advice, what would you tell that young man?
49:52 Daniel Glazier: Well, if it was today, I would tell him to start a company.
49:55 Brian Rose: Okay, all right, all right, all right. You know, I- Like a startup.
49:59 Daniel Glazier: Yeah, I mean, look, this is an amazing time these days to start a company. I mean, the barriers to entry are low, right? It’s just in sort of an acceptable model now to start a company, I mean, just sort of culturally and socially in a way that it wasn’t maybe a generation ago. And I think that things have changed, right? Since the 0809, great recession, as it were.
50:21 I mean, people don’t go to, you know, grads at a university don’t go to companies and stay for 35 years and get their gold watch and retire for the most part anymore. I mean, it’s much more about trying to carve out your own career path. And I think that that’s really exciting. I mean, and I think that you’re, why you’re gonna see the pace of change in tech and other industries, speed up more and more, because it is now acceptable to come out of university as a top student and say, you know what, I’m gonna go build my own business.
50:52 I can tell you that when I graduated, now I’m aging myself, but graduated in the mid-90s. I was an option. Yeah, I was not an option. Now, you’re seen as sort of a shining example of what’s great about being young. So actually, if I could go back to mid-90s, Dan Glaser, I would have said, think about how you can create something, whether that’s in the context of doing something interesting within a larger company, or starting it on your own.
51:26 Think about what you can contribute that might be new and different. Because I think that that’s where the economy is going. Is it what can you bring to the table that moves the needle and changes things in a real way? One of the things that tech brings us is I think it makes everyone think more entrepreneurial. Even if you’re working in Pfizer, you have to be thinking, okay, well, what value am I gonna bring to the table next year?
51:49 What do I need to start? What do I need to? So it makes you do that. It also brings customer service way up through the roof. My guys at Virgin Media are extra nice to me now that there’s all this competition.
51:59 And so like the tech sector brings a lot of things up just because I think it’s fast, it’s entrepreneurial, it promotes great ideas and it makes everyone kind of get better in that way. And the best companies, the best corporates are finding ways to bring that approach, to bring that sort of ethos within the corporate structure.
52:17 Brian Rose: Right, somebody accelerated, so I take it back. So yeah, no, no, there’s a lot of value there, and it’s not just the acceleration.
52:24 It’s the ideas, it’s what they can learn, it’s a lot of things there.
52:28 Brian Rose: Second question, best advice you’ve ever received, business or personal?
52:32 Daniel Glazier: Don’t jump off the bridge at Dartmouth. That’s a question. Don’t be afraid to fail.
52:36 Brian Rose: Okay. Don’t be afraid to fail.
52:38 Daniel Glazier: Have confidence in yourself, and don’t necessarily think that because nobody has done what you’re doing doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s not worth doing.
52:49 Brian Rose: Does this describe your mission coming to London two, three years ago?
52:54 Daniel Glazier: It might.
52:55 Daniel Glazier: OK, right. I mean, I think that there’s certainly an entrepreneurial aspect of it, and I can certainly tell you that telling people three years ago, especially in the States, that I had this real excitement about what was growing in London and this real vision of how we could be on the ground in London and on the ground in the States by helping to build a bridge between the UK and the US sounds a little bit audacious. And to the US, they say, well, why are you going to bother in tech overseas?
53:29 You’ve got everything you need right here. But that’s what’s so exciting about it, is because it is new. And there is something to be created and you can, you have the opportunity to, yes, there might be failures along the way, but your opportunity to really shape something and create a legacy, frankly.
53:44 Brian Rose: Right. You know, you mentioned audacious.
53:46 I mean, I’m guessing that an old school law firm suffers from innovator’s dilemma just as much as anyone else. I mean, that’s a big move for you guys, for you to convince someone to make that investment and do that.
54:01 Daniel Glazier: Right? firm has been very, very, very visionary. And I think it’s a great credit to them that we’ve created this practice, which is very different than what most traditional Wall Street law firms would have.
54:16 And that is what we’ve done, is create a classic Silicon Valley-style US-focused legal practice within a great global Wall Street law firm. And they are both coexisting. And hopefully, that’s to the benefit of both the large corporates that we work with, who then were able to speak credibly about what’s going on at the early stage. And then also, hopefully, it’s helping the early stage companies that were able to tell them very legitimately what they need to think about when working with larger companies.
54:51 I mean, to give you an idea of the range that we’re working in, I think it was in 2013, we represented Virgin Media in the acquisition by Liberty Global, and then later that year we advised the Virgin Media pioneers incubator and the companies in the incubator on their trade mission to New York. Being able to do that, to work on both ends of the scale there and be able to do that credibly and legitimately, I hope is able to bring value to both sides.
55:19 Brian Rose: Definitely, last part of that question, to the 20-year-old listening to us that wants to get into tech.
55:25 I know that this is not the best frame to come in, but hears us and says, OK, I’m going to do what Dan just told himself to do. I want to do a startup. What do you tell them? What’s the advice you give them?
55:38 Daniel Glazier: Plan, don’t just jump in. It’s worth having a good plan, doing your research, doing your homework.
55:45 Brian Rose: This is a man who works with incubators and accelerators so you know what you’re talking about.
55:51 Daniel Glazier: Yeah, do your homework and plan and speak to people who you trust and take as much advice as you can and then process it. No one person is going to know everything about everything, but the more that you speak to different people who have been there before, the more nuggets of good advice that you’re going to be, and then it’s your role to synthesize all that, make it all part of your business plan all part of your approach, plan, be prepared, and then launch.
56:22 I don’t mean be over cautious, but what I mean is take a thoughtful, considered approach to launching your business. If you’re at the beginning of university now and you’re thinking that you want to launch when you leave university, spend a lot of time during university doing as much research as you can on whatever it is that you want to do. If you want to go into B2C FinTech, well, then you want to take all your time in uni and talk to everybody that you can, do as much research as you can to make yourself the best B2C FinTech business plan that you can.
56:55 And then just recognize that you’re going to have to pivot anyway.
56:58 Brian Rose: Yeah, that’s good advice. And then once you’ve done all that research, then choose an idea and then just go do it. And then you’re going to have to stick to your guns for a little while. Because even Y Combinator said that they thought that Airbnb was the stupidest idea they had ever heard.
57:10 People are going to sleep on your sofa? And yeah, Google was the ninth search engine created, et cetera, et cetera. So that’s fantastic advice. Daniel, I know you’ve got an article coming out soon in a major publication that’s going to be talking a little bit about this. How do people follow you, get in touch with you, if they want to go to the US?
57:26 Yeah, what’s the best way? Yes, so Fried Frank is right on Old Street Roundabout. Right down the way from me. We are in the Inmarsat building. There’s that picture that seems to always be in the newspaper about the aerial view of the roundabout.
57:40 I think someone scaled on the outside of our window and took that shot. Yeah, that is, that is, yeah. We’re right on the roundabout. We’re on the web at tech.freedfrank.com, and I’m on Twitter at IP transactions. Right, I like how you guys have your own tech Twitter account.
57:55 That’s nice. That just shows what you’re doing over here, right? At FreedfrankTech. At FreedfrankTech. Awesome.
58:00 Daniel, thanks so much for coming on. You’ve got articles coming out, and I love your coming to America kind of white paper or whatever it is that you wrote. I like, this just makes me laugh, because it’s really well said, and then also it’s a great movie. It is a great movie. So there you go.
58:16 If you’re listening to us on iTunes, you can see two Americans in full live color on our YouTube channel. Thanks so much for being here. We always say it’s about the people in this community. I mean, you’re living proof of that. You came over here three years ago, and you have invested in here.
58:31 You’re now one of the connectors, and it’s such a crucial role. And I agree, this is something that only happens in a generation. And so, I guess sometimes it’s actually not hard to forget about that in tech here because there’s always so many cool ideas and stuff. And yes, we are the stepchild a little bit to the Valley. And yes, we are always talking about the Valley, but that’s okay because we’re having our own successes and I think it’s gonna make us pivot as a city and us get better.
58:54 And this news today, it’s just great because like you said, size of the investment, who’s involved, where we’re going, it pretty much cements us as the leader in FinTech, hard to argue now. And there’s so many other companies too that I’ve had on this show, whether it’s a nutmeg or a doodle, or these companies that are just, I mean, talk about fantastic ideas that are happening here in the UK that at some point will be scaled around the world. Don’t get me started.
59:20 So there you go. Daniel, thanks so much for being here, and I wish you all the best. Thanks a lot. Thanks for having me. Okay, take care.
