Full transcript: Russ Shaw on London Real
0:00 In London, technology is the silicone roundabout. Introducing a new talk show dedicated to the people of the London technology startup scene. Silicon Real. Each week, interviewing entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, financial technology, accelerators and incubators in an exciting three-person format. Learn about the people behind the innovation.
0:31 Locally filmed, locally sourced. Silicone Reel. It’s about the people. This is Silicone Reel, the weekly talk show dedicated to the people of the London technology startup scene. I am Brian Rose. I also host London Real.
0:48 It’s the same studio, but it’s not just tech. We’ve had people like celebrity astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, a very cool dude. He put me in a headlock. We had Mr. Tim Ferriss from the 4-Hour Body and Workweek and all that stuff.
1:01 Tim was fantastic. He was sitting right there. And this week we have Peter Joseph, who was the founder of the Zeitgeist Movement. I don’t remember if you remember some of these movies from 07 and 08 and 10. It was all about, you know, questioning kind of the whole U.S. banking industry and capitalism and it kind of led to some of the Occupy Movement.
1:18 So that’s happening this week. It’s going to be a really big episode that drops on Sunday. So check that out at LondonReal.tv. But today we’re here to talk tech. My usual co-host Colin Pyle is in the States cutting deals for his coffee company.
1:32 So I bring you Mr. Debou Percayasta, who is the entrepreneur in residence for Octopus Investments. You were formerly a principal at Google for six years in corporate development, new business development, and you were part of the founding team at Google Campus right down the road. Debou, thanks for coming back. He was here last week, and he hasn’t left since.
1:52 Thank you for being here. I would move up the chair. Oh, so glad you could come in and co-host, so I appreciate that. Our guest today is Mr. Russ Shaw, who is the founder of Tech London Advocates, a group of leaders promoting London’s technology sector and addressing the issues on the horizon.
2:10 You formerly worked at Skype and Telefonica’s O2, you’ve been appointed a London Tech Ambassador by the mayor’s office and also a member of the Tech City Advisory Group. Yes, it’s another American in London. Russ, welcome to Silicon Real. Thank you, great to be here. You know, I think it was Winston Churchill said that the Americans and the Brits are separated by a common language.
2:32 You know, you have seen Britain’s tech grow up here for a while, you live here now. What did he mean by that? Well, I took it to heart, I married a Brit. So, anyway, I think, you know, we have a common affinity and sometimes that ocean can seem large and sometimes it seems really small. but we’re very different.
2:54 I certainly learned that in my relationship with my wife when we first met, getting over some of the language, even though we speak the same language. But yeah, I think we have a lot in common. And I feel, I’m not a native, but I sometimes feel like a native here. I think there’s more of a difference than we think. And when everyone compares the roundabout, the initial comparison, of course, is to the valley.
3:16 And I just wanna ask you, and then I wanna ask you, Debu, is that even fair to even try to get there? I mean, for God’s sakes, we named it Silicon. This show is named Silicon. I mean, whether we mean it or not, subconsciously, we’re always comparing ourselves to the originators. I know you spent time in the Valley de Butou.
3:33 Should we not even be having that conversation or is it healthy to be doing this? I think it’s a distraction. I mean, I think, look, Silicon Valley for me is just on a completely different level. London, I like to say that London has its own unique DNA. You know, we’ve got a vibrant, world-leading financial services sector.
3:53 We’ve got some of the best creative services here. You know, that doesn’t exist in Silicon Valley, so the companies that we’re creating here are going to have some of that kind of DNA in it. We should learn from Silicon Valley. There’s no reason why we can’t adopt some of their best practices, and I’ve pulled one or two of those into Tech London Advocates, but I think to say, oh, you know, we want to be Silicon Valley in three years or five years, well, they’ve been around for 75 years.
4:17 London’s tech scene is now, what, three and a half, nearly four years into it. So I think to compare, ultimately, could lead to more of a defeatist approach, whereas I like to say, look, we’re starting afresh here. Let’s go for it. Let’s learn from them. But let’s create something that’s unique for London.
4:35 Debbie, what you’re calling that? You spent time in the Bay Area for Google. You spent a lot of time on the West Coast anyways. Should we be thinking that way? I think, exactly as Ross says, I think of us in London being in the middle of the geographically, if you will, not exactly, but metaphorically, and we should play to that. So you’ve got the West Coast to work with, absolutely. I mean, as Russ says, it’s a completely different level, but you also got what’s happening in India, China, Indonesia, and all these places that are absolutely just cascading out right now, and I think we should understand that and play to our strengths out here on that side. We can bring both sides in, and that will be very, very powerful, and we can see a lot of the Chinese startups now really begin to power their way through, and slowly the Indians will.
5:19 So I think we should play to that. India has powerful links to the UK, and time zone, we’re closer, and there’s a lot of potential there. What is Tech London Advocates? It’s a private sector group, right? So it’s interesting, because we always hear about these government organizations pushing things forward.
5:36 I guess we can talk more about Tech City later, but why create this, and why does it need to be done by private sector? Yeah, well, I actually created this, having been part of the Tech City Advisory Group, and I was invited to meet, discuss tech with number 10. I’d met some people at the mayor’s office. They’re all promoting tech, and they’re doing a great job. But when I was looking around, I was seeing, okay, national government, city government, where’s the private sector?
6:04 And if we’re gonna build something, that’s gonna be long-lasting and enduring. It ultimately, in my opinion, has to be driven by the private sector. Why? Because the amount of capital or money that we’re going to need to support more and more startups is very significant, and government can’t fund that. And the talent that we’re going to need to run these businesses, whether they’re startups, scale-ups, or moving right towards an IPO, that’s going to have to come from the private sector, too.
6:33 So for me, creating TLA was really the solution to say, let’s really create and replicate broad tech ecosystem that we’re going to need over the next decade to ensure that we can support these businesses. And if you look at who’s in the group today, it’s startups and founders and entrepreneurs and angels, VCs, private equity, but also big corporates, big banks, headhunters, journalists, accountants, lawyers, you name it. Everybody who touches tech in their own different way is part of the group intentionally done so.
7:07 And it’s not just people in London, it’s not just advocates across the UK, we’ve got nearly a hundred overseas advocates. So folks in Silicon Valley, in New York, I’ve got a few folks in India, in China, down to South Africa, all who are watching and very interested in our emerging tech sector here. And so I’m trying to replicate what’s in the world today and do it here in London with a private sector focus. Because the government can do things in a certain way and they can’t do certain things.
7:36 I feel like we have a lot of scope and latitude to do things the way we want to because we’re the ones who are going to have to sustain it. And what is the infrastructure of your organization? Do you meet it? You’re looking at it. Because it means you meet, because there are groups of people that kind of talk together.
7:53 There’s the Ices, which is kind of the entrepreneur, startup kind of organizations that are more private. And then you’ve got something like, it’s just, I’m wondering how it works. Yeah. Well, first of all, I ask every advocate to do three things because it’s designed for very busy people. So one is to be on message about what’s happening in London’s tech scene and I helped to provide that through a variety of communication channels, Twitter, LinkedIn. I send out a monthly update to everybody about what’s going on. I then ask every advocate when they’re ready to introduce a new advocate. That was ingrained in me from my days at Skype which is about extending their network. Well, TLA is open to anyone but the way you come in is through an advocate introduction and then that links to the third aspect of it which is the ethos which I have borrowed from Silicon Valley we’re all here helping each other for the greater good so I say to every advocate look if a fellow advocate reaches out and says do you know so-and-so can you connect me can you make an introduction can you answer my question please say yes and if you can’t say look I’m sorry I can’t help you let me find somebody who can and who does that really well well a lot of the folks in Silicon Valley yeah they compete on deals they compete on their different startups, but they also work together and they also collaborate a lot. So I’ve tried to build that as part of our group mission and then we meet twice a year,
9:11 Once in the spring and once in the autumn, where I try and bring the whole community together and then the rest of it is done through working groups. So we now have 13 working groups dealing with things like immigration, education, capital and investment, women in tech, infrastructure, property, health tech, ad tech entrepreneurs under 35 and that’s where the groups meet more regularly and that’s where we try and get some things done at a grassroots level. Is that the difference between Silicon Valley and here is it the is it the introductions and is it that networking effect and what do you give us a grade from A to F I’m gonna ask you this next but what you know how are we doing and is that is that what holds us back to a certain extent? I think I think here part of the reason why this group has grown so quickly and we’re now getting close to 900 in the group, as many of the advocates have said to me, Russ, I want to be part of this group because London has not had a good reputation in terms of open doors, connecting people, making introductions, and I want this group to be that group and to facilitate that.
10:13 I think Silicon Valley does that exceptionally well, and so, again, if we can learn from that, borrow some of that, and start to make that part of our DNA here, then I think that would be a great thing. We had the CEO of Ometria on here, Ivan Mazur. Yes, he’s an advocate. Oh, he’s an advocate. There you go.
10:31 And he’s a fascinating young man, but he used to be in the property industry. And he noted the distinct difference of introductions from property to tech. As in property, it’s everyone keeps track of their intros so they can get paid and tech is ideally the opposite where everyone introduces people for introductions sake and it’s like you guys run with the ball. He noticed this distinct difference of people holding on to their leads for value and just giving it up.
10:54 And you know, this is a funny old school city, so maybe in some ways it kind of… Well, I think that’s absolutely right. And I think why I love tech and why I’m so passionate about it is it is very open. And you know, when people come and set up businesses here and they’re on the internet, well, suddenly you’re connected to the whole world. So it’s a very transparent and open way of doing business.
11:14 And I think the way people should behave and operate and the way the relationships get formulated should come from that degree of openness. So I think, I hope, over the next few years, you won’t be saying that to me, that you’ll say, actually, it feels like a really open community here, because that’s what we want to engender. Yeah, but is that true? Are they better connected in the Valley, or are we being too hard on ourselves here? I mean, the way I put it is, you know, the Valley sort of came up with this whole ethos, right, of just making sure everybody connected to everybody.
11:44 I think in London now, what I see is a lot of that definitely coming through, you know, and the property analysis is a really good one. pet guys in London and girls have a very different way of making intros. I mean, I’ve been the beneficiary of that, right? Everybody’s opened doors for me. And most of the doors have been opened without any kind of, you know, what do I get? What’s in it for me? And I’ve tried to pass it on. And, you know, that is super important as you do. I think the other thing which is there, which I really like what I see in London now, it’s the thing that you and I talked about last time. The level of ambition is changing. It is getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger.
12:22 That is a big step. Along with the openness, the ambition level is just going through the roof, which I think is really important. I think that openness and the grandness of tech reinforces itself because I think people view tech as endless. It’s big, it’s enormous. We’re seeing great startups, we’re seeing great tech companies, we’re now seeing non-tech companies embracing tech.
12:47 And we’re all kind of looking at each other saying, this can go on and on and on as the whole world becomes truly digitalized. And that’s what makes it exciting. So I think to the point of, you know, people are kind of making introductions because I think there’s an implicit understanding that if we all do this and all help each other, we are all going to benefit from an economic point of view, but from a societal point of view as well, because this tent is very large yeah and it gets better with practice I remember a couple times being like okay if I introduce and then it’s just like just introduce them just introduce them yeah and then people remember it doesn’t it don’t even count because if you try to count it doesn’t work but people appreciate great introductions they do and it all is going to come back in a big way and people will remember who introduced them to who and it’ll all you know everyone actually I get I probably know because I I’m kind of joked about as being connector-in-chief within within the advocates group and literally two, three, four times a day, I’m always connecting people.
13:43 And it does come back to you. I mean, I might sometimes get a note two, three, four months later saying, hey, I actually did meet with so-and-so, we’re off doing this deal together, or he’s helping me out on this, or she’s doing that for me, and it comes back to you. And I think people really appreciate that. Yeah, I’ve read some article recently about people giving good connections and bad connections. And as humans, we remember.
14:04 We remember that guy that gave us the loaf of bread when we were hungry, like we remember. Russ, you’re a marketing guy, you’ve got many, many, many years of marketing and I was wondering what you think, what companies are doing the marketing right here in the UK and where we’re missing the boat, you think, and compare it to tech, say, in the US? Yeah, I have to say, as a marketeer here, I think I’ve been pretty disappointed, particularly over the past 5 to 10 years.
14:30 I came here over 20 years ago and I was enamored by the advertising industry here. I thought they produced some of the best ads worldwide. And I’d go to the Cannes Festival every year and I’d see these great ads being shown and you just walk out of this big theater and think, that was the best ad I’ve seen. I think we’re missing that. I think, you know, particularly in the past five years, I don’t envy chief marketing officer role anymore.
14:57 It’s become a very difficult, challenging role where everything has to have an immediate return. So those great iconic adverts that we used to see 10, 15, 20 years ago. Does anything spring to mind? From that time. Yeah.
15:12 I mean, I was at American Express 20 years ago, and I thought we just did some cracking ads. That’ll do nicely campaign. We did testimonials with people like Richard Branson and Anita Roddick and Sir Terrence Conrad. And they were elegant ads. And Annie Leibowitz did these great portraits campaign, Just very simple, elegant photography, with the name of the card member, member since, and you just looked at it, and it just made a whole statement in itself.
15:43 I think we’re missing that. It’s tricky, because that was a brand that had been around for a long time and had a real recognition to it. And I guess companies these days are looking at three-month, six-month window. Well, I think one of the things that we’re talking about, we have, we call it the MAD tech working group. It’s one of our working groups standing from marketing and advertising technology.
16:01 And why we’ve created this group is there are some fantastic startups in the whole ad tech, marketing tech landscape. And if you look at what they’re doing today and how they’re operating today, somebody like me trained as a classical marketeer, I don’t recognize this marketing technology landscape at all. I’m learning a lot. But the way things are being done, the way, you know, ads are being generated onto your mobile phone, the tracking that you can do, the metrics behind it, it’s very scientific, it’s very data driven.
16:31 And I think the type of people going into marketing today, in order to succeed, need to be very analytical, need to be very numbers driven, and may not have so much of that kind of left brain, creative, let’s do a big brand campaign because they won’t be able to track it or see the returns. Whereas 10, 20 years ago, we didn’t worry so much about it. Yeah, we tracked the ads, but it’s such a precise science today because of the internet, because of mobile phones, because of making sure that you get a really good return on your investment because your board is down your back, making sure you’re getting a good ROI.
17:07 I mean, you look at portfolio companies every day for octopus, you look at new investments. I mean, marketing’s obviously a huge issue of everything you do. What do you tell companies to do, or what are they doing to? I’ll never forget my initial days at lastminute.com. You know, I remember going to one of our marketeers and saying, oh, there’s just so much of spend happening on online marketing.
17:28 How do you track it? And basically the answer I sort of got was, we’re putting in the money, we’re not quite sure what it’s getting in. And a good example would be something like bookings.com, who’ve only recently started doing TV ads. But they’ve just completely changed the landscape of lead gen. So the whole word lead gen was obviously not there 10 years back, you know, never even thought of it like that.
17:52 But today it is probably the most important thing if you’re in the online space, because the way you’re going to get and bookings.com just took it to a different level there’s a reason why they are so successful and why so much of price clients valuation is based on them so getting the whole lead gen piece right and just making sure that you know how you’re getting your customers and how you’re monetizing them is so so important and a good way of comparing is the way Expedia does and the way bookings.com does are two very different models both are successful but But one clearly, bookings.com has had a very high market cap for a reason, and a lot of it is exactly as you want to say. Well, it’s also, I think, very interesting. I spent a lot of time with startups and early stage startups, and one of the pieces of advice that I give is, at the start, at the top table, there’s the CEO, there’s the tech person and the engineers, there’s the product person, usually there’s the finance guy, and then I kind of say, well, where’s the marketing person?
18:49 Oh, we’re going to hire that person in six months or 12 months, and I would say stop. Get that person in your business now. Make sure that marketing is represented at the top table right from the get-go so that when you’re building your product, developing your proposition, you’re then thinking about how is this going to relate to the customer? How will the customer want to buy this? How can we monetize this?
19:10 Get marketing there right from the start. There’s a good point you make, and it goes into our next point really easily. We’ve seen some big series B rounds recently, TransferWise, 25 million, Doudil, who we just had on a few weeks ago, 20 million. Some of these London companies are now getting into this kind of a later stage. Are they going to have to start looking, I’m listening to Ben Horowitz’s book right now, which is the hard thing about hard things.
19:35 He’s talking about reevaluating your company 12 months later and saying, is your buddy who did marketing to begin with the guy that should be running a global organization? What are we going to see happen in London? Are they going to ship the Yanks in? Are they going to go out into established industries and get people from there, or are they going to grow organically? I think it’s going to be a combination of everything.
19:56 Some people can adapt, and the person who’s there early days can move on and evolve, but they’re also few and far between. A lot of those people don’t necessarily like it when it moves from startup to scale up and becomes a bigger company. They kind of say, look, this is not for me anymore, and I think that’s a good thing. stints in my career as I was the CEO of a later stage mobile messaging business and I came in what three and a half four years into it right after a series C round the investors wanted to really you know take it to a whole new level and felt that the management team really didn’t have that that right skill set so you bring that in from elsewhere I think the great thing about London is we have enormous talent pools here you know here we are sitting right next to world-leading financial services center. So when FinTech really starts to gain momentum and it’s starting to already, you mentioned transfer-wise, well there’s a lot of good talent already sitting here. The question will be, will some of those folks want to take a risk with their career, take a cut in their salary in exchange for some equity, and move to a more dynamic, exciting environment? Some people will. Some people will find that really difficult. But we’re going to have to tap into that. We’re going to have to import talent from around the world. You know, we want these businesses to have the best talent possible and let’s
21:14 Let’s grow it here at home. Absolutely. And there’s some amazing people here, but let’s make sure that we’re bringing in great talent from overseas as well. And it’s that mixture of everybody coming together that’s then going to create the next new business, the next new proposition, the next disruptive model. David, what you’re calling that? I mean, you dealt with lots of businesses you acquired when you were at Google. You’ve seen companies in their later stages. I Are we going to see London start to get growing pains here?
21:42 Growing pains are actually a good thing in a lot of ways because it clarifies your mind. It makes you just more savvy. Nothing that comes very easily over time pans out, there’s going to be some of it, some are growing pains. I think it’s really good to see this kind of money that’s being raised because what’s going to do is that kind of money has its own way of, for want of a better word, clarifying your mind, because the people who bring those kind of money in, they expect something out of it.
22:09 This is no longer, I’m taking a punt, let’s see where it goes. Series B is all about execution risk. It’s no longer product risk in the true sense of the word. There is a bit of product risk, but primarily you’re paying that kind of number for execution. And execution means just getting it through, getting it done, which means you have to have access to the best people, wherever the people may come from.
22:28 And some of it may come out of the valley and some of it may come out of the east what some of you may come out of Europe and you just have to just be open that I will get the best talent in and the throughput is my execution. And I think we’re kind of at that tipping point now where I think London has proven that we can create some great startups here. And I think up until the past six months when I was traveling to other places around the world I’d hear things like London’s great, lots of entrepreneurs, very innovative, very dynamic, but can you see a commercial exit in London with many of these businesses.
23:01 And even a little bit myself, I was doubting that. I wasn’t sure, because I hadn’t seen much of it. Over the past six months, we’ve seen some incredibly high profile exits. You’re at Google, DeepMind was acquired by Google. King floats on the NASDAQ, Justeat floats on the LSE, Zoopla floats, Market floats on the NASDAQ.
23:21 Circassia, the largest biotech float in the LSE history. 500 million pounds. These are big commercial exits. So I think what we’re seeing now is, yes, we can prove that you can go from inception all the way through to exit. We’re now kind of, if you look at the funnel, a lot of these startups are gaining traction and momentum.
23:40 And I think the focus and shift is gonna be, okay, how do we help these companies to really grow and grow exceptionally well? I know you had Sherry Kutu on, and she’s leading a great initiative at the moment called Project Growth, and she’s gonna be announcing some things later in the year, which is all around scaling up. That’s the next wave of this. We’ve got to help these businesses to scale up and then prepare them for an exit. And if we can get that virtuous cycle going, more and more money is going to flow in.
24:09 I think more and more talent is going to want to work in this sector. So it might be easier to attract the person from the city to come over here and say, hey, there are many opportunities here. Come and work in this sector. Yeah, Sherry Kutu is very plugged in. She was fantastic when she was on here.
24:23 Just great. She gave a great TEDx talk at parliaments as well. So definitely check that out. Three biggest problems right now from the standpoint of Tech London Advocates on the horizon, what are they? Biggest issue that we’re dealing with, shortage of talent.
24:37 We’re talking about all the wonderful growth that we’re seeing out there and it’s incredibly exciting. I worry about talent that we’re not getting, we’re not filling these jobs fast enough. We did a survey monkey to all of our advocates back in, I think it was early April. And the number one issue that came back from everybody, like 45% was shortage of talent. Not only for startups, you go and speak to Sarah Wood at Unruly, she’s got 20 or 30 job vacancies, but you talk to the bigger players and they’re all recruiting for the software developers, the coders, that C-suite below the founder.
25:15 If you go onto adzuna.com, how many job vacancies are there in London in software and IT? 30,000, they update it every week. And it’s astonishing. The good news is, it’s showing that all of these businesses, the tech sector, is showing signs of vibrant growth. But the challenge is, how are we going to fill these jobs quickly enough?
25:35 The education curriculum is changing, but that’s going to take several years, I think, as these kids go through the new curriculum. I’ve got three sons, and they had ICT, but they weren’t taught in terms of computer science and coding. That will start to happen, but that’s going to take a while. So then you have to look at, how How do we fix this in the near term? Well, Decoded and Makers Academy I think are great boot camps and they’re doing a brilliant job.
25:59 We need 10, 20, 30 more of those to really make sure we’re producing enough talent to fill these jobs. Number one issue by far. And is that talent going to come from the continent or is it need to really come from Britain? I mean, because everyone talks about the fantastic programmers that are coming from all over the EU. Yeah.
26:16 But do we need to do a lot more at home here? I think we need to do more at home here. I think it’s going to come from the EU. I think it’s going to come from the rest of the world. You know, when I talked to some of the advocates in the group, if you’d talked to F.E.
26:25 Chacarel, who runs Mubi.com, a video streaming business, he’s a Turkish national, went to Stanford Business School, set up his business there, came here, raised $5 million, and he said, Russ, my investor said, here’s money, go and hire the best talent that’s out there in the world. And he said, couldn’t do it, because yes, I needed to look in Britain and the EU, and there’s great talent here, don’t get me wrong, but he said, I wanted to look globally, And the challenges that I faced were very significant. Another guy called Juan Guerra, who is a Mexican national, who came here to go to university and then set up a business called Student Funder.
27:00 He’s been here for two years running that business. The stories that he would tell you about trying to stay here and work. And he said, look, I’ve turned around and I’ve hired four British nationals into my business. So I’m an overseas national coming here, creating jobs locally, and it’s hard going. So one of the issues that we’re raising through our immigration group, and I’ve had the benefit of meeting the Minister for Immigration a couple times, is to say, look, immigration policy, the way it stands, is tricky when it comes to the tech sector.
27:31 And there is a lot of noise out there about limitations and now potentially limiting freedom of movement even across the EU. I’ve said, look, don’t underestimate the negative reverberations that that will have to some world-class talent around the world. to look around and say, wow, you know, there’s some bad noise coming out of here. Do I really want to come here? So that’s another issue that we’re trying to deal with.
27:52 Yeah, that’s bad. Bad immigration press. Debou, you’re an immigrant. I’m an immigrant. We’re all immigrants here.
27:58 What’s your call on immigration? I mean, I think without that, you’re not going to build anything as simple as that. I mean, that’s just my bias. And I don’t say it because I am who I am as an immigrant. I think if that’s going to be a barrier, I think we need to rethink almost everything here.
28:14 And one of the things I’ll have to send, which is a thing I found very positive about being here, is that the government has, at least when I first came in, the government was very broad about letting people in. And they also saw it as a competitive advantage. At the time when the US actually ironically was shutting its doors, Britain actually deliberately opened it, and I was one of the beneficiaries of it. So I’ve obviously had a very positive experience.
28:36 But given what happened in the European elections recently, I worry a little bit about some of the doors just closing now. Yes, I do too, I do too and we’re about to go into an election cycle and there is a lot of noise out there around that and we just have to keep working hard at it and I like to say look this should not be a free-for-all, we’d completely get that, but let’s focus on doing smart migration, let’s really make sure that that talent that’s out there we can bring here, let’s keep nurturing our own home-grown talent. I’ve been working with Maggie Philbin, she’s been leading something called the UK Digital Skills Task Force, and it’s a great piece of work that she launched last week about how do we look at not just younger people, but people of all ages, and really upskill the entire workforce here to be better equipped for the digital era, and I fully support that.
29:28 It’s fantastic. A lot of those recommendations will take time, and we’re talking several years here. So in the meantime, how do we ensure that we’ve got the best possible talent coming into Britain? To your point, Taboo, I think that that will be a competitive advantage, is having world-leading talent and with more businesses showing great commercial exits, the funding will come through. There’s no reason why London can’t succeed as becoming one of the leading tech cities in the world.
29:56 No reason. What are the other two issues that are on your plate mostly? Well, I think we’ve talked about immigration, we’ve talked about education. I think another thing is women in tech. We have a women in tech working group.
30:08 Our largest working group, and I think we need to do much more to attract women of all ages to come into the technology sector. It’s a very male-dominated sector and there’s some amazing women in tech. How do we bring more in and how do we start getting that message into the primary and secondary schools to make sure that, you know, young girls are looking at science and math and engineering as a way to go. I’m married to a mechanical engineer and and many Many times my wife would say, look, there’s just no women, there’s no women in this place in this sector of the market.
30:44 We’ve got to change that because, you know, there’s such great talent out there. And if you could get some of it to go into tech and get even more of it, that would be a great thing. So I’d say that’s the other issue that I’m pretty hot on is getting more women into tech. Yeah. We had Clara from the co-club in here.
30:58 I know they’re doing some big things there. Sherry, too, as well with our founders for schools. Yep. from your end with Campus London, I know he does like a mother’s group where I was telling people about that, and they were like, mothers, because everyone assumes women in tech is young women in tech, and it doesn’t need to be that, right? No, it could be.
31:16 I mean, look at Mumsnet. Look at how successful that’s been over the past few years, and that was a couple of moms getting together saying, I don’t like what I’m seeing on the internet, let’s go out and do this. And so, Justine Roberts goes off and sets up Mumsnet. Fantastic. a real entrepreneur in the tech space, and a great role model.
31:34 And you’ve got younger people, and I was just speaking this morning about Katherine Parsons from Decoded. What a fantastic role model she is. She’s young, she’s energetic, she’s dynamic, she’s set up a business, and coming back to the shortage of talent issue, Decoded is filling that gap now. They’re doing everything they can to get more and more people’s skilled up on coding. Brilliant.
31:56 What’d you read on that, Deb? I mean, you come across companies all the time. I’m guessing, you know, it’s a male-dominated industry. How do we change that? I think it’s tough.
32:04 I mean, I have two daughters and my mother’s a nuclear physicist, so I have- I’m surrounded, yeah. Jesus, why am I not surprised? So I have to say, I completely, and coming out of a culture where, you know, my mother, for all very practical reasons, you know, never ever thought that she had anything to answer for, in a sense, you know, it was very, very liberating. I only realized the value of that today. I think it’s a real issue.
32:30 I mean, so Google’s been trying to address this internally and I know from our numbers that it is women engineers are easily the most underrepresented group. Just not here, but also in the valley. It is a fundamental issue out here. I just came back from a trip to Lithuania and one of the most heartening things out there was everybody talked about maths and science. It was so good to see that.
32:54 And I worry that in a lot of parts of the world, that is becoming not cool enough to do maths and science. But yeah, it’s a real issue. Yeah, I think with the amount of press that tech gets, it has a bad thing, because I think it attracts people that want to get into tech for the rock star reasons. But I think on the good part, it has the way of showing that everyone, that there’s so many opportunities for women and for boys in learning to code and all of those kinds of things.
33:19 Absolutely, and from whatever background, I mean, there’s a lot of great initiatives underway to help less advantaged folks, young people who growing up in some rough neighborhoods, this can be a good home for you. They’re all digital natives. They’ve all grown up with the internet and mobile phones. So if we can get them into programs like Makers Academy and Decoded and other great learning initiatives, apps for good, founders for schools, teen tech, hopefully it will get them to say, hey, the technology sector could be a home for me.
33:50 If I do this, do that, study a bit harder, then maybe there is a future for me in technology. And what technology does is basically level the playing field. I mean, we all know now what’s happening in Gaza, and I remember my last time when I went to Gaza, I met these young girls who were working on a digital animation project, and it was very sophisticated. And what was heartening was, you know, it was just watching how technology completely levels the playing field, that there were four women who were doing this really cool product on digital animation using old-school hand-drawing techniques, but not digitally.
34:31 And to see that come out of Gaza, it was one of the most impressive things I’d ever seen. Can you talk about how you’re involved with Gaza and what you’re doing on that? So I sit on the board of an NGO called Mercy Corps, and they typically work a lot in conflict regions. Also, when I was still in Google, I used to do a lot of work with Mercy Corps, And that’s how I actually ended up first going to Palestine. And I have a lot of Israeli friends, and I have a lot of Palestinian friends.
34:59 And both of them, they’ve been very, very supportive in helping us out. And I actually now sit on the board of a VC fund called Sadara, where Google is actually one of the LPs, as a Cisco, who fund Palestinian startups. And the most impressive thing about Sadara is the two GPs, the two general partners. One is Israeli, one is Palestinian. You cannot get a better example of how Israelis and Palestinians are working together.
35:25 Yeah. Yeah. And you’re going to hook us up with them, and we’re going to have them on the show. Let me ask you a question that some people don’t like to talk about, and I’m going to ask you. Do we work hard enough here in the UK, or do we not?
35:38 Do we need to put in more hours to get this happening here, or is the British work ethic where we enjoy our weekends and we brag about our holidays, is that just something that’s always going to be with us? I think people have a good balance here. I mean, as an American, I mean, I look at, you know, friends and family back in the States and sometimes I think, well, when are you going to take a break? When are you going to have a holiday? I think people here work hard, very hard, and, you know, a lot of times, you know, I’m on emails at the weekend and speaking to a lot of people over the weekend, but I think people also have a sense of, okay, I need to shut down a bit.
36:15 I’m going to take the evening off. I’m gonna go away for a week or a couple of weeks. And I think that balance is really good. I think, and maybe being in the technology sector, I do come across a lot of ambitious, energetic people, a lot of entrepreneurs who are putting in long hours. There is a little bit of that stereotype that you just described, but I think, at least in the tech sector, I think that’s changing.
36:39 Because the internet is 24 seven, the businesses that are being created here, no matter how small our global business is. So there are people here who realize that if you work really hard, and sometimes I have to say to people, look, you need to take a break. You look absolutely exhausted. Go home, go see your family. But there’s this real desire that they can see the opportunity of if I work hard, really hard, I can build something that’s my own, and I can be rewarded both financially, yes, of course, but also from a personal satisfaction perspective.
37:12 And I think that’s a good thing. And so I think that myth is changing and I see lots of stories like that every day. It’s a tendency in America when you’re not working to be talking about how much you’re working. And I mean I grew up with it and I can see it sometimes goes way too far and it becomes an identity and it almost becomes a you can’t be seen to not be working but let me get your call on this because you know you worked at Google and you met a lot of American entrepreneurs.
37:40 So I actually agree with Russ, I think Russ phrased it really well. And the two sectors that I’ve seen, which is banking, investment banking and tech, I don’t feel people work any less. And all the consistent surveys about the number of hours that Brits work, if you see, there’s hardly any daylight between what Britain and a Brit and an American puts in per hour, sorry, on an hourly basis per week. I know there is this myth, and I cannot speak for other sectors, but these two sectors I can absolutely speak for that, you know, there’s no daylight.
38:10 I also think, one of the things Ross said very well is, there is a sense of balance that I like, that I see. I, unfortunately, sometimes struggle for that balance, so I realized in myself that I wish I could be a little more balanced in a lot of other ways, but I like that. The fact that people know how to check out and check back in, I don’t think necessarily that’s a bad thing, because once you check back in, you probably are fresher and you are more productive.
38:38 And I’m all about that. I mean, we’ve all, three of us, come out of somewhat similar backgrounds in some ways. And one of the things I remember in one of our jobs was there was a certain number of hours you had to clock. And it still frustrates me when I think about that, that whole clocking mentality. And I’m so glad in the tech world, that mentality is not there.
38:56 The whole thing about clocking for you in a few hours. Yeah, I know. I think the balance is important. When I first got here, I never took a two-week vacation until I finally came to London. It was 2004.
39:07 Right. it finally and you know people would brag about their holidays and how did that feel when you did it it was great and it was great and now I make sure I get my eight hours of sleep and now I don’t check my email say from nine at night until six in the morning and there’s a emergency they can call me and I’ve got these patterns that I think work really well and I think somewhere between Italy and America is the right balance shutting down everything for August might be a little too far but you know also working all the way through August is too far so I agree you come back fresher if you’re working all the time you get you end up being pretty useless and I’ve seen it happen yes you know with with Americans you get no perspective you get no joy and what you do can be very lonely I mean some of the you know the entrepreneurs that I see here that are putting in 16 18-hour days it’s a tough lonely job I mean you know we are saying you know the being becoming an entrepreneur is very glamorous and you know the rewards can be there and I’ll certainly say that But I also say to people look if you’re thinking about starting a business becoming an entrepreneur Don’t underestimate how much work and effort and time you need to put into that and it’s lonely Because you’re the one who’s working there 16 18 hours a day. It’s your business Fantastic, and you know that you need to put the hours in to see the return, but it’s tough going
40:22 Yeah again back to the Ben Horowitz thing. I’m reading he he’s like you think you have problems running the company He says, no one cares. He’s like, you know, you just have to run your company and you can try to complain to this person, this person, but no one cares except for you because that’s your company. And he’s just drilling it into you, what it was like, your debut smile. Because he’s been there before, many times, I think.
40:44 Russ, a couple of personal questions for you. We always ask, if you could make a phone call to the 20-year-old Russ Shaw, give that young man a bit of advice, what would you tell him to do? What was he doing? I think he was, well he was having a great time at university, I was having a very good time, but I was serious about my studies then, I would say look you know when you have a career, and I think this is probably more in line with the first say 10 years of my career, I always had these milestones, I’ve got to you know become the marketing director, I’ve got to become the managing director, I’ve got to become the CEO, and I had my own internal clock in terms of when I And I wanted to reach those milestones.
41:26 And now I look back and I kind of say to people, say to young people, look, don’t put so much pressure on yourself. If you’re bright, if you’re talented, if you, you know, if you can work hard, those things are going to, they’re going to come, they’re going to happen. Also learn to enjoy it along the way. And I did, it wasn’t until later in my career that I did some very kind of odd lateral moves because I thought, I want to do that. I want to try that.
41:51 I’ve not done that. I’ve not experienced that. And I would say to people, look, be willing to do that earlier on in your career. There’s nothing wrong with that. Go with where your passion lies.
42:01 Go with where your heart is. When I see younger people who are not happy at work, that’s a shame. That’s really a shame because I think that’s a missed opportunity for them. We’ll all be in jobs where we’re not happy for a period of time, but if that starts to become the bulk of your career, there’s something really wrong and you got to reassess. said best advice you’ve ever received personal or business? Personal or business I would say it was probably you know be true to yourself you know don’t don’t do something don’t say something don’t behave in a way that is not consistent with who you are and your core values because it will show in terms of executing wrongly turning people off destroying relationships be true to who you are and what you believe in and you know whether it’s with your family, with your friends, or in your professional life, that’s probably the best advice I’ve received.
42:54 Finally, advice to the 20-year-old out there who’s a lot of advice here. Yes. To, you know, who’s in China, who’s in South America, who knows a little bit about tech, who doesn’t. What advice do you give to them if they want to be a part of the tech industry? Go for it.
43:10 The world is your oyster. If there’s something that you want to do, and I’m never put off by young people who are bold and determined, saying, I want to do this. Can you help me here? Can you introduce me to so-and-so?” Sometimes I’m a little bit, oh, well, wait a minute, but I think, well, good for you. I’m glad you’re doing that.
43:28 I meet people through some of these programs like One Young World. I met this one Chinese guy, Leon, who’s just remarkable. He’s in his mid-20s. He’s done so many different things in his career because he said, I want to do them. So if there’s somebody in Sao Paulo or in Shanghai or in Johannesburg who’s saying, I’d like to do this. I’d like to try that go for it You know some people we can underestimate some people have big obstacles to get through before they can get to that and fulfill that ambition But work as hard as you can to get there Fantastic, that’s very good advice How do people get a hold of you and how do they become a part of Tech London Advocates?
44:04 Is it part of my job today to introduce you to more advocates? You can so we have a website techlondonadvocates.org.uk There’s a contact us button on there or you can reach out to me on LinkedIn and connect with me that way. Or the best way to do it, I always say to people, go onto the website. Every advocate in TLA is listed. If you know an advocate and, you know, if you’re listening to this program, you probably know at least one or two, then reach out to that advocate and say, I want to get involved with Tech London Advocates, tell me about it and then introduce me to Russ and you’re in.
44:38 There you go. Boom. the next six months, 12 months. Are you focused primarily on the London Advocates? Are you doing, you’re doing lots of things, right?
44:47 I sit on three company boards, I do a bit of angel and venture investing, but I think Tech London Advocates, which has started out as a part-time project, has become a full-time job. So we’re planning our next event in the autumn. I expect us to go over the 1,000 mark in the next couple of months. There are more and more working groups are starting to form, and I really want to make sure that we’re getting our voice out about what’s happening in tech, because I think as we go through the next election cycle and beyond, technology is big, and I really want to make sure that Britain and the rest of the world understands that London tech sector, watch out.
45:29 This is great. Excellent. I love that. Watch out. Deb, thanks so much for being here.
45:34 What is on for you for the next six months? How much of your time is spent with your portfolio companies? how much your time is spent looking for new companies or contacting new companies, what’s your next six months? So, more of the same, basically. So meeting a whole bunch of companies, seeing the good ones.
45:50 And then the other hand that I wear, which is spending a whole bunch of time with them on generally getting through their business issues. I always keep 10 to 15% of my time and probably I’ll index it a little higher for the next six months at least on some of the other charitable stuff that I do in the conflict region. So that is definitely something that I wanna do even more for the next six months. Fantastic. If you’re listening to us live, there is an entire episode where Debu’s the star from last week, which you can watch.
46:19 Excellent. Yeah, you can watch that live on YouTube. The fully produced episode will be out next week and then you can see why he’s here. We were joking earlier about the House of Cards where Ken Spacey gets closer to the presidency. So next week, Debu will be here.
46:31 You’ll be in that seat. Debu will be here. I will be getting him coffee. And then the week after, I don’t even know where I’ll be. On a beach.
46:40 It’s August. It’s summer holiday time. Yeah. This is chronicling his rise to the throne. But we will be taking two weeks off here at Silicon Real.
46:49 We’re going to be running some old episodes. We might put up some of the people we talked about today, maybe share or decode it. But yes, I have learned the value of taking a break. So it’s taken me a long time. But it’s all good.
47:00 If you’re listening to us on iTunes, you can check us out visually on YouTube. This is what I love about Silicon Real, bringing really smart and open and genuinely positive guys from the sector to talk about this. Everyone loves hearing this story in London. I think this is a special time. We talked about it last time, W. In five years from now, this whole ecosystem is going to be different.
47:22 There’s going to be the people with the big exits, and there’s going to be this weird hierarchy. Right now, everyone seems to be in it to win it. Everyone wants to see everyone win, and I love it. It’s a fantastic time. We say it’s about the people, all the best to you guys, and thanks so much.
47:36 Thank you. Thank you for having me. All right, guys. My pleasure. Take care.
