Full transcript: Monty Munford on London Real
0:06 This is London Real. I’m Brian Rose. I also host London Real. It’s same studio. We get a couple cool guys in the room, try to figure some things out.
0:12 We just had astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson from the show Cosmos. He was cool. We put me in a headlock. I think he would have beat me in a fight. He’s a pretty tough guy.
0:23 Um, we also have, uh, Edward Snowden’s attorney on this week, uh, Jessalyn Raddick, she’s talking about, uh, the NSA, and then we’ve also got Nelson Mandela’s prison guard coming up on Sunday. Whoa. Um, yeah, he was actually, he’s prison warden in Robben Island, and then of course, in Nelson Mandela form, he hired him later as part of his presidential administration, so, I know. Crazy intense stuff. So check that out at LondonReal.tv, but we’re here today to talk about tech.
0:46 My co-host is none other than Mr. Bryce Keene. Hello. founder of Albion Drive, former beard or current beard. Co-founder of the Beards advisor now I guess. Bryce where you been? I have missed you I must say. I have been I’ve been where have I been I’ve been in Australia I went home for three and a half weeks I think I’ve been back since then. I went checked out the tech scene I think I came in once after that. Yeah. And then I have been working on well working on a lot of stuff with the beards so we’re doing the big big international expansion. Okay so you’re still involved with the beards? Yeah I’m I’m now a board advisor and I still do a lot of stuff behind the scenes, but Albion Drive is growing.
1:24 We’re hiring. We’re sort of eight people, soon to be sort of 11. So I’ve sort of taken a step back from the day to day, but I do a lot of the strategy and we’re now putting some of my very talented PR team to help the Beards this year. And it’s about kind of helping accelerate them, but not being a bottleneck either because I was juggling the two and it was all getting a bit sort of difficult for everyone. So sort of came back from Oz and then it was like, okay, we need to kind of figure What’s the most efficient way to help these guys grow in scale this year?
1:49 And I think the answer that was to kind of step back focus on the day job But poor resource from Albion and actually not just Drive but actually the mothership Albion whole thing They are keen to kind of help them this year which is pretty exciting because they’re the guys behind like, you know Skype and Betfair and longer. Yeah, really like Albion We have you know, we had Jason in here and then I went over and did a talk at Albion really good energy in That company. Yeah, really good fun over there and one of the last independent creative shops now Oh, you know, they’re all the acquisitions.
2:15 They’re buying them up their front and center, you see. And Albion’s one of the few. That’s why I joined, actually, because A, because I’d done 12 years of start-up work before I got there. And B, because they’re one of the last independent ones, we can actually go and make stuff, you know, and be what you want to be. And they support start-ups as well themselves.
2:28 I think Jason does that, isn’t he? He does. He’s a big, like, start-up man talent. Yeah, he’s invested in a couple of companies. He’s on the board of a few companies who’ve got co-working space in the office.
2:36 Like, he hired a whole floor in the T building, which can’t be cheap, just to put a co-working space in for startups, friends, and families. Good, exciting stuff, man. Well, thanks for coming back. Please come back more often. Yes.
2:45 You know, I get a little sick and tired of Colin Pyle, you know, too much Canadian in the house. So just kidding, just kidding. You know, before we get to our guests, I just wanted to say thanks to the Fintech Innovation Lab, one of our sponsors. There’s seven companies just gave a pitch, or they’re giving it at the end of this week, or if you’re listening to us after the delay, they’ve given a pitch at seven different companies. One of them was Pixelpin that we had on.
3:04 Oh, amazing. Yeah, a really exciting company that’s turned basically your passwords into actually like graphic remembrances of what you have and I think it’s the future of passwords. I don’t know how many of us have passwords copied down in text files somewhere. So it’s exciting stuff, if you wanna check them out, go to fintechinnovationlab.co.uk and thanks to them. We also wanna thank TaskRabbit.
3:24 I think you’re using those guys for your three beards. We are indeed, yeah, yeah, extra hands. Yeah, they’re fantastic. They’re an online marketplace, allows you to outsource small jobs to people in your community. They do a lot of the silicone real work behind the scenes so it’s not just cleaners and plumbers.
3:38 They can also do really highly skilled tasks, so check them out. We had Lauren on there, head of community. She was awesome on here about six weeks ago. Definitely check that show out. And you can use code REAL25, get 25 pounds, and try them out yourself.
3:50 She talks for a bit of a London office now as well. They do. They send them shop here. Lauren actually came out to do it by herself. Before Christmas, I think.
3:57 Yeah, they’re everywhere. So, yeah, definitely check them out. They’re a good resource for short-term health. Anyways, on with the show. Our guest today is a man I’ve heard about for many, many months from you, Bryce, who’s introduced us to a few of our guests over the years, over the six months or so on Silicon Real.
4:14 It’s Mr. Monty Munford, who is the founder of, is it Mob76? Mob76, yeah. Which is a content strategy and exit consultant for tech companies. You also write quite a lot for places like The Economist, Mashable, The Telegraph, Wired UK, BBC Future.
4:29 Yeah. He’s the Michael Caine of tech journalism. There you go. That’s how I describe him. Now you know what you mean.
4:34 Johnny Cash smooth you’ve also acted as a Bollywood villain in two major motion pictures. That’s true I Was expecting the denial somewhere Auntie welcome to Silicon real hey man. Thank you for inviting me. I appreciate it. Thanks so much for being here You know we kind of have a format that we’ve gotten into on Silicon real and it’s kind of every week We invite someone in and they tell us about their business the business model They give us their thoughts on on the city of London as a tech competitor And then we find out about them as the person but it’s nice to shake it up a bit and not be here Just just talk about one business model. Yeah, and and so that’s why I’m glad you’re here today Cuz you can maybe give us kind of your thoughts and an overview you’ve been in this business for a while We’ve had other people on like Benjamin Southworth in the beginning or I guess maybe Simon Devonshire away Rather we’re a bit more big picture guys Yeah, but it’s nice to have someone who’s not in the thick of the startup Yeah, and I think with Monty the reason I want to get Monty on is because he’s also One of the best traveled tech journalists that ever was and that’s saying something They do travel a bit but Monty goes to places most people don’t actually even consider us could be some emerging tech and he goes and writes about those companies And I think that’s the most interesting really interesting part as well, which is yeah. Well, let’s get started
5:43 You you just said you came back from Nairobi. Yeah, I didn’t know maybe for four or five days And she said you lived in Goa for a while. Um, tell us a bit more about you How long have you been involved in this in this industry and then if you could talk a bit about your emerging markets experience Okay, that’s a bit rare So I didn’t go to university and I was actually weirdly coming up to this office today I used to deliver parcels to this office or this this space when I was I was a despatcher in London for 12 years So and how long ago was that that you would so I gave it up probably 20 years ago, I suppose and you came to this building. Okay, so I remember there’s a geezer called Nick. He was a bit of a dude And he had a good-looking girl on the back of his bike and then he ended up being a chauffeur for Lincoln continentals I remember exactly coming to this building and we had a race from Soho and then coming down city road No, sorry, Clarkham Hill Road, I realised it was a short cut and I arrived here earlier than he arrived with a girl on the back of the bike and he was extraordinarily pissed off about that.
6:40 From Soho? Yeah, we had a race actually. That’s quite a feat. Yeah, well, you know, it’s a difficult job, you know, a few broken bones, broken knee, nearly lost my left foot in an accident, hit a car, my foot got stuck in a wheel arch, you know, ten days in hospital, broke all my metatarsals, broken arm, broken nose and some broken ribs. tough job did you used to hang out at the foundry afterwards or was that big back then no I didn’t this part of the world didn’t exist as it does now yeah yeah who are you delivering packages to pretty much people that lived West I suppose okay you know what I mean so it would be work from st. Martin’s Lane and so it will film basically most of the jobs will be going west and you try and get as many jobs as you could go in west so you got paid fivefold you know I did it for a load of companies it was it was a very good scene it was almost like being a waiter in Hollywood. Everyone was going to be a writer or a musician or were and it’s not like that anymore.
7:35 Okay, and then how did you get involved with tech in this whole scene? I decided to retrain as a journalist when I stopped the bikes, moved down to Brighton, went to the London College of Printing just down the road, didn’t go to uni, did a 13 week course in editorial journalism and it was an extraordinary three months, you know So I went to the independent, I wanted to write for the face. There was a great journalist called Gavin Hills that came out of the rave scene and he wrote the type of stuff that I kind of almost write about now and he’d do stuff for the face like in Bosnia, going clubbing with soldiers, with pit bulls and he wrote a brilliant piece about Namibia and I remember the opening paragraph was my cameraman’s in the toilet, he’s just banging his head against the sink, he’s bleeding got malaria, welcome to Namibia.
8:26 And then, I don’t know, I was on the train back from London to Brighton about six months later, bored, going through the paper, and then there was an obituary for Gavin Hills, and he died in an accident that drowned, I can’t remember where it was. So I don’t know, it kind of gave me the inspiration to not be like him, but he came out of the rave scene as well, he wrote some great pieces in the book called Disco Biscuits when ecstasy had changed football hooligans into being lovers and lovey type of people. And I suppose that was it.
8:55 So I wanted to write for the face and part of the deal with the three week course, you had to get two weeks of condiment somewhere. So I went to the independent sports desk because I like football. And then I wanted to try and get working at the face and then someone came down, we had to do a piece on a guy called Tony loins. He was a publisher of a weekly IT magazine called Computing and said, you know, this is where it’s all happening. This is a new rock and roll.
9:21 And I figured that I’d been traveling for 20 years, either on the bike or abroad. And this was my chance to catch up. So I did a year of computing as a sub-editor, subbing the most unreadable copy from people that knew a lot about computers, but nothing about writing. So I figured if I did that for a year, then I’d be able to move on. And then after that, it all went very quickly and I caught up quite quickly, I think.
9:45 So communications director, on the first, who was a big brother, And the company that I worked for, Victoria Reel, that was, I think, subsumed by Endemol. I think they own the format for Big Brother. And that was an amazing, amazing time. It was almost when the internet had taken over from TV. You know, there was a big scene, Nasty Nick.
10:03 I don’t know if you remember it. It was the UK version. Yeah, exactly. And it was Dutch first, I think. You know, and then suddenly, you know, I learned a lot about the media at that time, and then it just went up and down over the last 10 years.
10:16 I worked for a mobile games publisher via a company in Brighton called Babel Media, which was a games company, did a deal with Vodafone for all the games that were released, mobile games. Mobile games, as they are now, are very different to what they were then. So I did a deal with Vodafone, so every game was gonna be tested or certified by our processes. And I realized at that time that mobile games was gonna be the next thing. So I went to work for a publisher called PlayX.
10:43 In SOA, we raised quite a lot of money and we spent it by travelling and having quite a good time, lots of parties, and I suppose our claim to fame was that we failed Angry Birds. We were offered it before the iPhone channel, and because Rovio’s games were all pretty rubbish, to be honest, and they put 50 games per hour. I mean, at that time, if you were a developer, you offered it to a publisher, and the publisher kind of had the rights, and we failed Angry Birds, which is no- Swedish company.
11:12 Finish. Finish, okay. No problem. I don’t mind the fact that we could have made a billion. Okay.
11:19 But your fails are your wins, right? I mean, who would have known if you would have pitched me that in a bar in a minute? No, their games were before, and I think that they would admit it as well. They weren’t very good, you know, and they got very lucky. And then as soon as, not lucky, that would be mean to say that. But when I came back from India, three years ago, I went to Helsinki to see Rovio and I knew what was coming, you know, because we were called the Rovio Killer, that was the name of our company.
11:49 So when I walked in there, you know, Peter Vesterbackers and marketing guys, quite a very big genius, actually. And I went in and goes, oh, I want to, you always still work for Player X, so here you’ve gone to Bollywood and done the Hollywood stuff, but just a minute, everybody, shall we tell them, won’t you? We are fucking billionaires, you know. So, took it in reasonably good grace, you know. And so when did you start writing for the tech scene when you finished with that?
12:18 Well, because I went in and out from being a writer and then I kind of swapped sides really with the Victoria Reel area. Went to work for Ninky Mater and then I went as a website editor to the local paper in Brighton, which was weird. And lasted three months, we hated everyone. we all hated each other. I kind of had a feeling that digital was the future, but I don’t think digital was mentioned in those times, it was all internet.
12:47 This is what, oh five, oh six, oh no. No, I mean, 99, 2000, I think, something like that. And then I was always a writer, and I wanted to be a writer, I wasn’t a very good one, but, you know, because I did everything quite late. So when I went to India in 2008, to get away from, well not get away from Player X, but it was a pretty heavy party lifestyle and I was a bit done with it as well. So we had a five-year-old son, so we thought my wife is a good traveller as well, did a lot of stuff for the Tibetan Information Network and spent 17 days hitchhiking in China, you know, it’s a cool chick now.
13:22 Nearly 13 years married. We kind of, I said, well, why don’t we go to India? And she said, well, you know, you’re running away. But I could feel there was a storm coming, especially with the recession. And the fact that I was quite vulnerable I was kind of quite highly played and I’d have probably been the first to go, I think.
13:40 So we went there and then, so I used to write a newsletter, you know, parallel to my job called Monty’s Gaming and Wireless Outlook, which is pretty much a compendium of 30 stories. You know, it was quite a strange time, but it was basically, it’s Friday, it’s 20th to 12th, you haven’t read the newspapers, here are 10 stories about mobile games in North America, in Europe and in Asia. So it was a kind of resource for people to find those links. And then there would be four or five other words of reasonable, satirical editorial about the industry.
14:14 And there was Nokia sponsoring it quite well, put some money in my pocket. So that was something that I kind of kept going when I went to India. Then that became Monty’s Indian Outlook. And it was my stories of living in India and getting away from the recession. And then the Telegraph got in touch with me and said, Would you like to string for us and write stories about India?
14:35 So that was good. You know, it was a broad sheet. So I did that for about a year. It was very well acquainted with the Telegraph trolls who are the worst people on the planet. The trolls.
14:47 What’s that? Jesus, just the people that- It’s not trolls. Oh, the internet trolls. So for the Telegraph, the comment section of the daily Telegraph- Oh, they’re just neanderthal, I’m telling you. OK, it’s brutal.
14:55 Hyperb. I mean, it’s known as a conservative paper. That’s right, kind of right-leaning. I wrote a piece about corporal punishment in India. And the story was that parents of a private school, public school, whatever you call it, were invited to see their children.
15:13 I’m seeing my son in school play tomorrow night, Pete and Pan. But their area was, watch your children walk across hot coals. So they took all these kids from the age of five up until 11. And all these poor kids, burnt their feet, were terribly distressed. but not one single parent complains because make them hard and all that stuff.
15:34 So I wrote a piece saying corporate punishments on the statute books, why don’t they start prosecuting people for hurting children? Reason be good piece, reason be informative. The amount of abuse I got from telegraph readers, serves them right, don’t spare the rods. And it’s, what are you talking about? But do you read these things?
15:53 I would just think as a writer. It’s a good point, Mark, because at first, right? What do you need to as a writer? No, I don’t know. think you get used to it right and it’s the way you know anonymous abuse is like you know a very small player in these and these type of areas and when you when you do it for the first time you know the first few pieces and you see these comments the first thing is like you I’ll get the boys round you know I’ll come around you know I mean you do feel really angry about it and after a while it’s like well you know if you’re if you’re making comments on you know where’s your life what you’re doing it’s an interesting phenomena because we get lots of hate on London Real which is weird because you know we give free content every week, you wouldn’t think anyone would have a problem with that, but it’s weird because you kind of have to listen to about 5% of it to get a little feedback, but if you listen to the other 95, it’s never going to be helpful.
16:38 Well no, sometimes, you know, I’m not saying that everyone reads my stuff and the telegraph is evil. You know, a lot of the times it can become a great focus group for the next piece you’re going to write because people know more than you and point out where you went wrong. I mean, you know, we’re not all, you know, perfect. So it can be, you probably more than 5% but you know it could be I didn’t know that or I should talk to that company or I should find out more or I will become better on the basis of that so it’s not it’s not all negative but it’s generally you know mean right and that’s part of it’s now what do you write about these days is there is are you still more mobile guy or you know I was the mobile girl I think before I went to India and I and I was doing stuff in India as well you know the company was sold when I was away so I got a conservatory out of it not a mortgage, if you know what I mean, it was all right. And so then I started to consult, I consulted, I knew the Indian, the thing about Indian mobile companies is quite similar, at the time there was four or five big ones, so I knew the people within those organisations, so if it was Reliance or if it was on our Bharti Airtel, in India you need to talk to the man, you know what I mean, and you find out, you know, you have to go through a lot of, you know, steps to get to the decision-maker, but if you can pinpoint the decision-maker which
17:52 Which I kind of had done anyway for Biz Dev with Player X, because we had an Indian development studio in Poona in between Mumbai and Goa. So there was a lot of interest, so you know India. So I was consulting for Nokia, and I was consulting for Paramount in Los Angeles. Excuse me, they were releasing Iron Man 2, they wanted to meet a few people. So it was really interesting.
18:12 And then again, the network was upped, because I acted in a couple movies, and a mate of mine had a hotel, James, and said, do you want to be a dead soldier in a movie? And I said, absolutely, I do, because when I was traveling 20 years ago, I went to some ruins and my best mate and a girl, they were in a movie, so it kind of rankled to me. I mean, it went a bit mental, you know. So you started off as a dead body and then you moved on from- Yeah, then I became Captain Farrell and then I became Major Johnson.
18:41 Are you speaking English in these movies? Yeah, well, I didn’t speak many words. I spoke Punjabi, that was interesting. Okay, and this is why you’re in Goa, or are you traveling around India to shoot them? Well, with my family, we went up to Kashmir.
18:55 Not Kashmir, but we went up to Manali, and we traveled around the north of India. My wife and I have a massive love affair with that, and we thought it was a good thing with a five-year-old son. It was there for the first year. We were only going to stay a year. And then it was in a sweet international school for the first year.
19:13 Jump on a motorbike, go past the buffaloes, have a bet on the next animal that we would see. It was beautiful. Get up in the morning, see the kingfishers. Amazing. And then the second year, he was the only, well, there were two white kids, 27, 27 school, which is quite difficult when he went there for the first day, Indian schools allowed.
19:36 So, and then when did you come back to London? 2010, 2011? Yeah, so we came back 2010 and we were gonna say another year, so we were gonna take our son up to the eating of India called Woodstock, and then we were gonna come back after three years. And then my sister is quite a senior academic in education, and Rum, who’s Jack Scott mother’s a teacher in Bromley, they both said, you know, he’s been to a school in Brighton, he’s been to a school in India, he’s been to another school in India, he’s been to another school in India, and then he’ll be eight years old, and that’ll be his fifth year.
20:09 So that was the, so we were told off, basically. Came back early. And when you come back to the scene, does it look completely different than when you left it? Were you shocked? Was this whole story around here?
20:17 Well, I think the thing I’d missed, right, was the… Because India’s connectivity is weird and different, you know. So you have a kind of Nokia phone and, you know, it doesn’t work and you’re trying to find stuff. It doesn’t work. When I came back, everything worked and it took me a long time to realize it actually worked and I could have 3G and all that stuff.
20:38 So that was one thing. But I think the thing that I kind of swapped when I was in India, because I went from mobile to social, you know. So the narcissism of Facebook was quite good for me, like I’m in a Bollywood movie telling my mates back home, and then I was put up stuff on Twitter, I’ve been wearing this stick on fucking moustache for eight hours now, hashtag go to Bollywood or whatever. So I think that was the change. So when we came back, I used to work in the media, so I made it quite clear that I was back everyone, you know, wanted to spend more time with a job as opposed to my family, and I’d almost rendered myself kind of unemployable because I’d basically showed off about, you know, I left a recession and everything like that. So it was a really tricky, you know, six and nine months, you know, to get back, I’d go to London for five days a week, and then I swapped over from the Telegraph India work to the Shane Richman great man at the Telegraph and said, you know, can I write about tech as well?
21:40 You know, so he’s like a couple of ideas. So that relationship has gone on, yeah, for three years. You know, I write for them every week. And you write for Telegraph and then for Wired as well? Yeah, Wired, I think because Mike Butcher at TechCrunch is a good mate of mine.
21:56 He let me write a few things for TechCrunch. And I’d met his editorial director, Sarah Lacey in India, went to the first Indian Premier League cricket game and she was a guest of some mates of mine from India Games. So we had a night out drinking and talking and telling me about what London was like and Mike was a mate of hers. She’s a very good journalist and she’d written a lot of stuff in Africa, you know, as a woman on her own. Again, kind of Gavin Hill’s esque is a bit of an inspiration, you know, how you can do stuff.
22:27 And Mike was, you know, it’s a new rock and roll man, you know, like getting to it. So Mike’s been a bit of an inspiration, I’d have to say. Yeah, working on getting him on as well. Yeah, Mike would be great, I mean. Sarah Lacey, we’re referring to, who then went on a family band over there, which is a huge Silicon Valley tech site.
22:41 So what are you writing about these days? Well, at first it was like being back at computing, you know, like 12 years earlier, and I had to take every press trip and I had to try and find the stories and, you know, I was trying to do, you know, paid work, you know, proper money as well. So yes, it took a bit of time and I was used to $400 a month rent, you know, living in almost a Morocco meets LA house by the marshlands you know with a palm tree ground in the middle of the place and then suddenly living in Lewis in a very small place and yeah it just rolled on I suppose you know and then you know kind of biz dev guy you know so it’s not as difficult to you know find who’s the person that commissions at Mashmore who’s the person that commissions at this that and the other and it’s just rolled on I suppose. And what’s your signature like style or what’s your signature do you concentrate on a certain industry are you still social? Well yeah, I use social to market my work right, you know so those networks have been fostered over the last three years and are quite strong I think and I’ve been cleaned up at certain times you know the nutrients of your network are the basis of your marketing or your power so yeah well yeah so social I’m interested in but it’s just more like the stuff that I’m writing about is that I’m interested in new territories and what’s going on and what’s I mean I’m a positive writer you know if something’s
24:02 Really stupid and really bad and I’m more than happy to write about that but I’m interested in you know and almost India for me has kind of passed me by you know it’s you know I don’t know it’s you know I lived there for a couple of years that kind of kind of depleted that interest and then again Sarah’s work that she’d written about Rwanda and all that those type of places And so I started to open the African network, and I’ve been to, what it was before, I’ll tell you, is that a month before we came back, I said to my wife, saying, right, I’m, you know, I want to, you know, looks like I’m going back to the UK and, you know, summer’s seven, and we’re going to be back in the thing, you know, going to be working and, you know, mortgage and everything like that. So I wanted to go to South Africa to see the World Cup.
24:46 It’s very cheap to fly from India to the East Africa. So the idea, and I’d always wanted to to go to Ethiopia. It’s a good mate of mine, big Chelsea fan, Russell Mark. So I said to Russ, how about we meet in Addis, you know, spend three days there, have a laugh, and then we go down to Blomfontein to see England play Germany. So that was the plan. Was filming the second movie in Mumbai for a week and then flew to Addis, but I got very sick, you know, I’ve been in India for two years, and I got really, really sick. I remember arriving at the Rastafari Hotel in Ross Hotel, and I couldn’t get out of bed for four or five days.
25:25 I was really ill, puking and shitting and everything. Before you continue with the story, Bryce, can you tell me what are the pieces that you like most about Monty? Is it his perspective of the emerging markets? What do you find that he likes about this different? When I first met Monty, I think through the scenes, I think we’re getting onto it now, which is he transitioned very well from being a sort of when social, I remember a time in London where social media not too long ago was the precursor to startups.
25:55 I remember this very well. And then there was this big rise of social media and everybody knew what to do with it. And the US has had this as well, but probably a bit before, but as Monty did that and that was tech journalism, a lot of which was continuing social media before, just before the roundabout bit took off. But what I like about Monty is, he transitioned incredibly well to being known as a tech journalist for emerging markets, mainly because he would go to places that you couldn’t get someone in the UK to go to.
26:22 And he would go and he would find people and he would interview them and he would talk about it. And I think you’ve now started doing stuff for The Economist, which I think is really interesting. Yeah, well that was just- And the top three cities that come to mind for emerging markets for you are, is Nairobi one of them and what else? Lagos is probably the most interesting but quite scary. I mean, that trip, just to finish that, I ended up going to Somaliland, a country didn’t exist. So except with Russell and I had a good laugh you know in Addis and I said I’m not going down to you know to watch the football going to stay in Ethiopia and then I did some mad bus journey for two and a half weeks and I wanted to get to Berbera in in Somaliland to go to Yemen and go you know long story probably too long but I just there was one moment in Somaliland where I had to hire a soldier for two days to take me from Hagesia to these caves and I had a soldier with me and I was saying shoot the gunman. If you’ve got any bullets in that. So we ended up in these caves that were 10,000 years old and then his phone went off like a great piece of music from the Mississippi Delta. And I said what’s that? And then he said, well, do you want me to Bluetooth it to you? It’s like what? You can understand that technology.
27:30 We did it in the cave, 10,000 years old. And then you realize that Somaly lands in unrecognized country and it’s got four great operators and I don’t know I just fell in love with the place you know we’re all born in Ethiopia and that’s quite clear that’s where we came from and that was probably the that was the catalyst was was was that trip and then understanding what was going on there and how mobile was transformed Africa I mean it’s there’s 80% of Africans now have a mobile phone right that’s insane what is going on in Lagos and I keep saying that Robie is that is that well no I’m not Robie I think is easier because it’s kind of like from you know the British the plugs are the same you know you can you can arrive in Nairobi from London on the overnight red eye quite easily and that works out. There’s a great hub there called iHub. There’s a great man called Eric Hurstmann and Julia Rotich, Juliana Rotich, sorry. They had a startup called Ushyandi which was citizen journalism with the riots or the you know the killings in Kenya four years ago. They’ve now changed that into this amazing brick, B-R-I-C, I think it’s B-R-I-C, which is almost like a connector, a hub itself.
28:38 So I’d imagine there’s reasonably a head in that area, and Lagos frightens people because of its reputation. But what’s going on in Lagos with e-commerce is unbelievable. There’s 30,000 people who arrive in Lagos every week, sorry, every month, from across Africa. It’s It’s almost a migration, you know. Is anyone investing in logos outside of logos?
29:02 No, absolutely. So basically, there’s no postal service in Nigeria, so there’s a massive opportunity there for e-commerce. There’s two e-commerce companies called Conga and Jumeir. I think both of them have received about $30 million in investment recently. I think that was the second round.
29:19 I think it’s Rocket Internet in Germany as one of the big players. Do the Yanks get involved over there? Or are they so far away from home? That’s a good question. And I’d imagine there’s a scramble for Africa at the moment, like there was a scramble for Africa in imperial times at the end of the 19th century.
29:35 I would imagine that there’s, I mean, there’s also, it’s a kind of slightly more benign channel which would be going through South Africa. But in Nigeria, they’re offering, I mean, this is like between 18 and 22 million people with traffic chaos and madness after 6 a.m. And they’re offering to deliver stuff within 24 hours. And if you can do that stuff. Something as basic as the mail is basically a start-up there, right?
30:00 And then three days within the rest of Nigeria. But what’s interesting, connected with that, apart from this ongoing success, is drone delivery. You know, we’re talking about Bezos and Amazon and all these kind of PR stunts about… Have you seen that video? Amazon now, I think, is it?
30:17 Is that what they’re calling it? Yeah, something like that. I mean, it’s a PR stunt, a very good one. No, a good one. But I mean, it’s more likely to…
30:22 Lagos is the type of city where you expect to see drones in the air. You know, it’s like Blade Runner, and it’s bonkers, but it works, you know. I was thinking about it, like, can you imagine walking around London with like, you know, 500 drones whizzing by you? I mean, probably not, but you could in Lagos. Right, you could in Lagos.
30:37 And there’s a great man called Jonathan Leggard, who’s a moral correspondent for The Economist, I saw him in Nairobi this week. So I can’t, he’s in Lausanne with some type of foundation. So they’ve set up this thing called the Flying Donkey Challenge. So basically, it’s like any African startup you have to deliver. I don’t know the exact details, but you have to deliver 10 kilogram payloads and then the drone goes all the way around Monty Kenya and delivers 10 on the way back.
31:02 It’s like the magnificent men in their flying machines, you know, 100 years ago. Insane, you know, and I think that the Amazon, the new Amazon I suppose, will come from somewhere like Nigeria. Well, they do it as a necessity and then you use that in a first world. If you can make it work there, you can make it work anywhere, you know. I think the Yanks by definition have a hard time understanding Africa because they’re so far away from it and like you would never necessarily bump into someone from Nigeria in the United States but you bump into people from Nigeria all the time here and I think sometimes you are maybe forget as a former colony.
31:33 Well it’s difficult to fly direct to the US. Yeah. You know you can fly I think directly from I don’t know exactly but you can fly directly I think from South Africa but if you were flying from Nairobi you’d probably have to go to Amsterdam to change you know so it’s something it’s a really long massive commitment to actually get them in the first place. But you see Rocket getting involved down there and some other… They were one of the first, weren’t they? Because they only look at scaling rapidly in emerging markets. And Tony Davis that spoke of one of your previous editions, you just refer to that, I mean he knows more than anyone about it. He’s amazing actually, what he’s done there. I would recommend people that are listening and watching this to go back to that, because he’ll tell you, he’s an investor and he’s a bit of an old boy, you know, a veteran, but you know he’s doing great stuff in Nigeria. Great stories about there are some of the I know there had some of the pharmaceutical you know you could like text in your pharmaceutical code to make sure it was a reliable piece or you can scan that scan the barcode and you get you know there’s all the thing about it I think there’s this kind of vating about Africa you know it’s very you know very good for people to do that but really you know just Africans get on with it I mean they’re doing amazing jobs I mean they’re natural born hackers anyway you know and the stuff that’s going on
32:43 Honestly, you should go just go for three or four days, you know, and just have a look around and it’s you know It’s the future of the world and is it scared you get scared when you go to Lagos. I shit myself in Lagos Okay, I really did excuse my language. Yeah, can you tell us what that mean? Is it when you land in the airport? Are you just worried? What are you worried about? Well, I think worried about the reputation and then Kind of Lagos means lagoon, right?
33:05 So there’s says I’ve seen that movie escape from New York, Victoria Island is all that There’s this kind of area of embassies and hotels and there’s a bridge called the Third Main Line Bridge, I think, and it’s the biggest bridge in Africa and then you’re on the mainland. We were going to go out to a beach bar in Lagos with some sort of concession at the hotel thinking it would be just like Goa. We ended up in the middle of a slum and drinking heavily in warm beer and then we We went across the bridge onto Mainland and our driver was a bit of a player.
33:40 So he was kind of taking his clothes off and nothing weird, he was taking off his epaulettes and his uniform and he ended up in an outside bar and then, I don’t know, it all went off in there. I started playing this guy for money, for Paul, which was fine, then the people from the hotel were trying to say don’t play for him and then it honestly went mental. We ended up with a big fight, tried to stop it, don’t stop the fight, you idiot. And then we walked out, and then there were pimps, and there were people on dwarves, and then there were prostitutes in the car.
34:09 Okay, so it’s dangerous. Yeah. It might have just been my experience. But if you stayed in your hotel, is it dangerous? Oh, yeah, fine.
34:14 You know, you used to just start being anywhere else in the world, you know. But you know, I’ve travelled a lot, and I don’t want to dismiss this Nigeria, because I haven’t seen a lake or something, I haven’t seen that much of it. But I was worried, eh? You know what I mean? It was quite dark.
34:29 And what are your thoughts on London as a scene? I mean, we always ask everyone that comes here, you know, what do you think London has as one of its assets? And what do you think we do better than any other city here? And then on the flip side, what do you think we need to improve? Well, listen, man, when I was a dispatcher, I knew London, right?
34:43 You know, and that was the greatest beauty of that job. You know, I was living in Stoke Newton and lived east, west, south, north. It was always 15, 20 minutes away on the bike, you know what I mean? Lots of gigs, lots of clubs, you know, I love London, absolutely. And I’ve seen London go through peaks and troughs, you know, I was a punk in the day you know going up to the Lyceum and music machine and finding out London via motorbike really you know I mean and it goes up and down you know when it’s when London’s skint that’s when it’s the best you know I mean if you if you ring ring up someone to pay your bill and the other guys on the end of the phone sense of money yeah mate you know what you mean yeah yeah then you start talking about which club you went to yeah I’ve been there anyway no always mate I’ll give you six months you know there’s that kind of community where it’s three quid to get into a club not 25 quid and I’ve seen that you know and I was quite dubious when I came back to London about silicon roundabout you know it’s like app roundabout almost and you know so I was a bit and then was the Olympics and it was like London was too jolly London was too successful and there was no edge no one was skint you know jolly London yeah exactly well it has been a huge bull market yeah yeah but I think in the last year and a half I’ve change my mind I think I’m a Soho boy you know but my focus is shifting over here
36:01 You know Houghton Hotel all these great people also almost like New York you know if you’re in Soho and you go out for a cigarette or something like that you know you ask someone for a light so what do you want who are you talking to and in here you know it’s more like to be a really nice girl that chats to you gives you light and it’s just a bit social I think what London needs is an exit I think you’ve got moshy monsters slightly kind of hackneyed you you know, Acton’s doing a great job, there needs to be more of that, you know, and like, you know, if it wants to be like some Silicon roundabout thing, you know, Silicon Valley’s always kind of, it’s gone round and round because people have exited and invested their money into different things. I think London needs an exit.
36:44 What’s going to be that exit? We’ve got, we’ve got Zoopla, we’ve got Just State, we’ve got AO was quite decent. Yeah, and I suppose you’ve got kind of Candy Crush, you know, King. King. King is the king of one.
36:58 But that’s kind of Regent Street. That’s not east, you know. I mean, we used to do business with them at Player X, and they weren’t even a games company in those days. Are these, like, those three you mentioned, are those going to transform it, or are there going to be the episodes? I think Zoopla.
37:08 Zoopla will be big, I think. And Justeet’s coming up soon? Justeet’s coming up. There’s a bunch of, it’s weird actually, I’ve just been looking into this today, there’s There’s a bunch of not big ones, but there’s a bunch of health tech, clean science, like biotech, like health care and pharmaceutical. No, not around here, but just London generally, I think there’s a few, well, actually Cambridge and Oxford, there’s a bit, it’s interesting to see the trends.
37:32 I think the London companies, Halo, maybe if they do, I don’t know, they haven’t announced yet, but my money’s on Zoopla and King, if only, but King’s going to be NASDAQ, isn’t it? Those are IPOs, and so you don’t get people. Oh, you mean exit? Sorry, M&A. Sorry.
37:50 Do we need that? I mean, when you say that. Yeah, fair point, actually. Fair point. You can make the exit.
37:55 So you need 20 people cashing out. Yeah. IPOs also. Amazing. Yeah.
38:00 That’s great stuff. Yeah. Sorry. I immediately, I’ve been reading about IPOs all day because it’s been all over the news this week and last week. They’re thinking it’s all starting to get some momentum.
38:06 M&A’s, I think, well, it was the Google one for here in London, the DeepMind, the That was intelligent 500 million, which is not intimate. And for a company, let’s be honest, nobody had heard of, like, pretty much. What was the games one? The games engine? That was a, God, I can’t remember the name.
38:24 I mean, on that same note, what do you think is the asset of London? What do you think London does better than New York? Well, I mean, I’ll go back to the point, go back to the point of me knowing London reasonably well over the last 30 years from the punk days. I think it’s the best city in the world at the moment. You know, like, I’ve kind of believed that anyway, But it does go through times where it’s quiet and all that.
38:44 I think it’s amazing. And I don’t think it’s just post-Olympic gloom or anything. I just think, I just feel just coming over here. It just feels right. It just feels good.
38:56 I mean, I don’t go clubbing anymore. I might go and see the odd gig around here sometimes, but it just feels like if you want to be somewhere. I mean, Berlin, I think, is also very similar, you know? That type of thing. New York is almost becoming the ad capital of the world, like it was in the sixties and seventies.
39:14 But I think people come to London because they think it’s cooler than most cities. And I think it attracts talent and I think it attracts very cool people. Yeah, no, it does. I mean, you said earlier you like London when it’s skint and right now it’s obviously not. I mean, if you try- Yeah, but that’s what I’m trying to say.
39:28 I love London when it’s skint and it’s really rich at the moment. Super rich. But it’s also good. Do you think it’s still good or is it gonna hurt us- I think it’s great. and everything going way up. There is so much cash flashing around this town and it’s not all tech-related, it’s not all property-related. No, it’s finance-related. Well, real estate in London has become a reserve currency, right? I mean, it’s quite clear. Because it’s non-euro denominated and it’s for Russian, for Middle East, for Chinese, for anyone in Europe who wants to… Yeah. And for all the demerits that that receives, you know, it does, you know, whatever bankers make, you know, it does circulate as much as an exit circulates.
40:03 So I don’t think you should be too, they’re a prophecy, disparity of wealth and wealth distribution, obviously. But I don’t know, it feels, it’s probably the first time that London’s been flush and it’s brilliant. Right, fair enough. And what are you looking at the next year or two? I mean, are there certain industries or certain companies that you find exciting and that you write about?
40:24 Well, I suppose it would be back to Africa. You know, if I was a single guy, I would definitely be living there, doing something or other. You know, but the fact is, you know, I’ve got my eye open when I see these companies and I’m not like an aid guy or a philanthropic guy, but, you know, like being out supporting those companies on their way up is of great happiness to me, you know. So I suppose that’s my focus, really. I was in Palestine a couple of weeks ago.
40:53 Yeah, what was that? I want to talk about the Middle East because that’s the other region you’ve done quite a bit in. Because we hear about Israel a lot, obviously. of startups there, tons of exits there as well. I don’t know anything about the Palestinian industry.
41:06 Well, I mean, it’s a very tricky subject, right? You know, I was on kibbutzine when I was in my early 20s, you know, I’ve been all over as well. From the Golden Heights to the Latin works and at my passport nicked and worked on bad places in the West Bank, you know, and I remember I worked on this place, this moshab, which is a cooperative farm. It was something like 16 cents an hour and there was a right-wing Jewish settler Algerian guy who was my farmer and my politics probably similar now as they were then was for me to despise him you know what I mean he was stealing the land from the Palestinians but the unfortunate thing about that relationship was I really liked him you know what I mean and I think that was that for me is the kind of crux of it all that the politics and the stuff is just so confusing and you don’t know where you’re at but this trip I must to Palestine and you realize spending time in Tel Aviv for the first time for 25 years, a couple of times at the end of last year, it’s connected, exits, you know, I think they’ve got more companies listed in Tel Aviv on NASDAQ than the rest of the world, you know, something crazy and it is kind of self-perpetuating, there have been those exits and it’s a great vibrant scene and it’s brilliant and I think even the Israeli defence force has a great start-up kind of conduit and all that amazing great but then when you cross over into Ramallah through the wall you know this horrible horrible kind of gash between
42:33 Those two countries and then you realize that eight years ago Gaza and the West Bank I think it was I can’t remember the name of the company but eight years ago I think it’s a Kuwaiti operator or one of the major operators there spent 350 million or something like that, on 2G and 3G licenses. And Gaza still doesn’t have 2G. And Palestine or the West Bank has only got 2G. If you import hardware into Palestine, it has to go for an Israeli regulator. I mean, basically Israelis own the spectrum.
43:06 They own the oxygen. As the Palestinian IT minister told me a couple of weeks ago, and it just seems blatantly unfair. You know what I mean? Is there a taxi now? There is, but it’s very, very difficult.
43:20 Again, when you’re under those type of conditions, you hack and you do stuff and there’s, and the companies that I met there, it was about 70, 30%, 30% was, you know what, it’s impossible to do business. If I fly, even if I fly for a mine in Jordan, I still have to go through the Alembi Bridge. I still can only go through there, I think between nine and five during the week, it’s shut at weekends, So they end up spending time in the man, you know. But the 70% that were there, and it seems like they’re there for the long haul, you know, the bottom line was we’re employing Palestinian.
43:54 You know, that’s why we’re here. We wanna, you know, change the perception of this country. And I think if there’s anything, you know, if that startup scheme, I mean, as VCs evolved, you know, there’s a couple of interesting companies there. It’s very nascent in comparison to Tel Aviv, obviously. But a lot of outsourcing comes from the Israeli arms of the Hemoff’s like Intel and Microsoft and they outsource work to Palestine.
44:20 And this is the thing. Coding work and things like that. Yeah, because it’s 50% cheaper than to doing it in Israeli company. These have got to be great things. And if this thing, and I think it’s like the Israeli tech community and the Palestinian tech community, you don’t really get a fig about politics.
44:35 They just wanna hack and they wanna code and they wanna do stuff. And so in that respect, hopefully, that might be some form of optimism for the most complicated place on the planet. Yeah, I’d like to see what happens there. Before we finish up, I wanted to ask you about Russia. Is that an emerging market or a market that you keep in mind?
44:50 Obviously, we got crazy things going on with Ukraine right now with sanctions going on. And is it something you like? It’s interesting that I was with this guy, Eric Hirschman, in Nairobi a few months ago. And he was talking about the Nairobi startup scene. And he said, we take our inspiration from Russia.
45:07 And I went, really? Well, I’ve been over to a start-up village in Moscow last year and met lots of companies and it’s extraordinary, Russian. The way they do stuff, there’s a Skolkovo Foundation that’s kind of battleground between Medvedev and Putin that goes from left to right. I know a few people involved there. So some great ideas.
45:26 Some would say white elephants, some would say silicon cremin, I think they call it, and Russians don’t like that. But the reason that Eric said that about the African or the Kenyan market was because the Russians are very good at kind of getting their products successful domestically. You know what I mean? There’s a form of great engineers and great talent but not amazing experience of marketing and that type of thing. So they concentrate on getting the domestic market.
45:54 And I think that’s interesting, you know, if you can do that, and since it’s a big country, you know, lots of, there’s hubs in Yekaterinburg and Vladivostok and all that, you know, there’s a lot of stuff going on. It remains to be seen how far that will come, bearing in mind current conditions. Yeah, we spoke about Ivan Mazur earlier, who was our guest, and he outsources his tech, I think, to Moscow. I think it’s almost like an Anglo-Russian company, a metria, but they’re very interesting.
46:18 He’ll be on the front cover of Wired in two years, without a doubt. Yeah, that’s a fantastic answer. He’s a very, very charming man, I have to say. Yeah, it’d be interesting to see what happens with these sanctions, or if they block things. I don’t know if they’re really being changed.
46:28 What do you think? I mean, I think the US is posturing. I think they cannot control what Russia’s doing, and Putin’s making a smart, you know, geopolitical move on his side. but I know they’re gonna try to limit some banks and things like that, but I don’t see it really affecting the tech side. Maybe, I mean, I don’t know if there’s sanctions for hardware, but I actually don’t know.
46:48 Or travel, you know. Besides Ivan, I didn’t know of anyone who was kind of outsourcing tech work to Russia. I know Estonia and some of the former republics, but. I think that’s because of the strength for the domestic market. I mean, that’s where the kind of energies and resources are applied.
47:01 Maybe it is the model for the future. You know, get big domestically and then export. They’ve got their own Facebook, Villecom, is that called, and then they’re vk.com. The Endex. Yeah, Endex is their own Google, and they have very successful companies.
47:15 It’ll be interesting to see the companies that kind of committed to be part of Skolkovo Village. Cisco and Samsung and even Zuckerberg was over there last year. It’ll be interesting to see how they react. Yeah. And that’ll be interesting.
47:28 Definitely. Before we finish, Bryce, I just wanted to get your thoughts for what you think’s coming up for this year in London. Obviously, we got a few potential IPOs that are pretty exciting. Is there any other stuff that’s on your radar as far as things that will… What’s going on in my radar?
47:40 That weren’t there say a year ago as far as like new companies or new angles or things that you were surprised to see coming up? I reckon I’m curious to see just following on from the theme about Russia but whether we’re gonna see, if this IPO swing continues, like if we, you know, let’s be honest, this has taken years of like hand wringing and why do they, you know, if it does continue and it’s seen as successful, I’m curious to see if we start seeing some of the big European players moving in, which would be really interesting. Moving into IPOs?
48:08 Moving into London for that reason. So whether we see people from Scandinavia, which is an amazing, Scandinavia is for me, the region to watch. What do you mean big companies? I mean big tech, big startups coming in that, you know, established don’t necessarily need to move to London because they have European operations but are doing so. So I think, you know, you just need to see with Berlin, but for me, I think Scandinavia is the area to watch this year, I think.
48:31 I’m just, I just keep seeing interesting, They’ve got, they’ve had some very, very good heroes in, you know, Supercell. Chondheim is really interesting in Norway. I mean, I think Norway’s got the biggest surplus of most, well, I don’t know exactly. But Chondheim, up by the Arctic Circle, was an amazing hub of amazing companies doing stuff there. It might be one of those type of territories that kind of, you know, surprises us all.
48:54 Well, Trustpilot from Copenhagen just took 25 million, which is a massive round from a number of London-based international. What do they do? It’s a consumer rating site for businesses. So, but it does both ways. So you’re able to answer, the business can actually answer.
49:17 And so these are kind of consumer, but big across Europe, just moving in now, we’re moving, setting up and getting going in London, hoping to take the US. But I mean, 25 million is a big round. Yeah, it’s a big round. These were, I mean, you don’t get a 25 million round in Europe without having some serious big VCs to foot that bill. Right.
49:36 And talking about Scandinavia, Just Eat started in Denmark before they moved along, right? They did. They did. And in fact, the founder now runs an event called Tech Barbecue in Copenhagen. That’s apparently very, very good.
49:48 A really interesting tech conference over in Copenhagen. We had some dealings with him earlier this week. Lovely guy. Really lovely guy. Okay.
49:57 Yeah, but you’re right. It’s a very good pickup, yeah. that continues. Monty, how do people get in touch with you? How do they read your stuff?
50:02 What do they find out? I don’t know. So you can try anything I suppose of search, but it’s at Monty Munford, M-U-N, not that rubbish band Munford and Sons, which is the bane of my life. Everyone misspells from me in the back of that? It’s my answer phone message, don’t get it wrong. And then I’ve just got a blog which I’ve been writing for a few years called Mob, M-O-B-7-6, the numbers. Mob76 Outlook, which is doing very well, get 70 or 80,000 uniques a month, and just being accredited by Google News.
50:33 So hopefully there’ll be an accelerator there. It’ll probably, we’ll come back to the blog, everything that I do, I suppose. How many articles do you write a month? Once a week for The Telegraph. I don’t know, probably about 10 or 12, I suppose.
50:46 Just fill the channels at the right time and the right place. Some reasonably amazing editors, especially at The Economist, tough school to get your stuff done there, but, you know, just trying to get better as a writer, nearly up to my 10,000 hours, maybe. Okay, for mastery. Yeah, just a little bit more, just another six months. The Economist is a different kind of breed, isn’t it?
51:08 I mean, Jesus, it’s amazing. It’s highly detailed. If you try and get something published at The Economist and you get commissioned by them and the rocks that you have to walk over, you know, great rocks, great editors, great people. I think they are so smart. Are there no bylines in The Economist?
51:24 And you can’t catch them. I mean, it’s they they control what they they’re the best man I mean, I didn’t even is that the gold standard when it comes to it, right? I didn’t even know that to be honest because I always thought they were a bit right for me and you know, right, you know Left and not anarchist. Let’s just say that you know But the process in the last year I’ve only I’ve only ever had two pieces published by them in the last three or four months and I’ve walked across hot coals to Do it. Okay, but I’ve become a better writer because of that process. I’m sure and they’ve changed their their reach tremendously in the last few years and even their business model I would say but you know you see they’re too bad and you see you know it’s so many people read that magazine now. The only thing about it is if you subscribe to it you never get around to reading or you know because you could spend at least six hours going through it on every piece. I have a hard time finishing a single article because they dive so deep and I just like it’s just mind-blowing the amount of detail. That’s a massive privilege for me you’re right for it.
52:20 Yeah, I mean you have to and you have to think to yourself like the quality of the writers to put in This is a weekly publication too, right? So they start it goes out on Friday and they are in a board meeting Friday afternoon deciding the next week And they’re almost busting the model with their print is coming up through the roof Yeah, everything else is going down and it’s really nice to know that quality could still be successful You know, I mean, it’s not many examples anymore and it’s probably interesting that for me I think is interesting about them is is this fact that they are so It’s so good at making sure that it’s not about the writers or the people, it’s about the content, that you can’t even access the writers. Most people, it’s very difficult to find out who does one of the economists, just to trust me.
52:58 They must get pressure to change that. No, but I think that’s what makes them so powerful, is you never know. You could always say that you’re a writer for the economist and no one would ever know. Yeah, I had one of my ex-girlfriends. That’s a good idea, Monty.
53:08 I might use that. Yeah. One of my exes, she was a writer and she always just told me, I wrote for The Economist And then we broke up later, I was like, yeah, I could never confirm that. Yeah, well, they’re quite interesting. I mean, you have to sign a real disclaimer, you know, I mean, it’s serious, you know, to say that you won’t say no, no, no, but you can republish the stuff that you’ve written for the economist on your own blog.
53:30 They’re quite cool about that. You know, it’s not totally proprietary. OK, have you met Ludwig Siegel? The guy actually weirdly had lunch with him today. He’s amazing. Yeah.
53:41 Yeah, and he gave me… He’s the writer for it. So he’s the technology editor now, isn’t he? I think he does the business and he does me like most people in the economy. I’d lunch with him today and it was another lesson in, you know, what you should do if you’re writing, don’t be so flowery, get to the point, you know, the story, you know, and I just…
53:58 I try and get him on the show. He’s a great guy. Nice to see that you’re always learning and always trying to make the craft better. Absolutely. Because I would think a lot of people aren’t doing that.
54:06 So Monty, thanks so much for coming. It’s really nice to get out of our cycle of who you are, what’s your business model, how you’re going to scale in London, and then rinse and repeat. I love hearing about new businesses, but it’s nice to take a bit of a switch and hear about new regions. Yeah, new regions too. Good conversation.
54:22 Sorry if I banged on. No, no. It was good stuff. It was good stuff. And yeah, regions that are important to London.
54:27 You know, these regions, like you talk about in Africa, they don’t really apply to Tokyo or to New York or to San Francisco. It’s regions that we know a lot about being here. Fantastic. Monty on Twitter, Bryce is at Bryce underscore keen K-E-A-N-E, and Bryce with a Y, at Bryce with a Y. Check him out.
54:43 If you’re listening to us on iTunes, you can check our faces out on YouTube channel, Silicon Real. We’re on Twitter, at Silicon Real. Send us a message, hello, at siliconreal.com. Always looking for great guests, so please send us suggestions. And thanks, guys.
54:58 We say it’s about the people. It is about the people today. It is. I know. Thanks, Bryce, for the intro.
55:03 Monty, all the best. from your next outing in Lagos. Okay. Don’t play pool for money. Alright guys, take care. Thank you.
55:11 Cheers.
