Full transcript: Sarah Drinkwater on London Real
0:01 Brian Rose: This week on Silicon Real, we have the head of Google’s Campus London, Sarah Drinkwater.
0:06 Sarah Drinkwater: And I think the scene right now is so fantastic. There’s so much going on. You know, if you’re fintech, you go to level 39. If you’re already creative, you go to second home.
0:16 I suspect a lot of those would have happened without campus, but I think what we’ve done really well is the perception that the valley is kind of very male-dominated, very white-dominated. You look at campus with 99% female, very age-diverse, I think. I think London, you know, being so multicultural has that, has that to offer, you know.
0:36 Brian Rose: Silicon Real presents Sarah Drinkwater, Google Campus, London.
0:40 Sarah Drinkwater: For me, the biggest thing we should be careful with is comparing ourselves too much to the valley.
0:46 Brian Rose: This is Silicon Real, the weekly talk show dedicated to the people of the London technology startup scene. My guest today is Sarah Drinkwater, who heads up campus, which is Google’s physical space for early stage entrepreneurs, offering founders a support network, mentoring, workspace, and even more. Previously, you ran the global team of community managers around Google Maps. I was at campus exactly a year ago and got a tour from Easy Vidra, who was formerly head of that.
1:13 And now I’ve been back there today. It’s like full circle. You just gave me a great tour. Sarah, thanks for that tour. And welcome to Silicon Real.
1:21 Sarah Drinkwater: What a fantastic introduction, Brian.
1:23 Brian Rose: I’m known for those. I’m thinking about just outsourcing intros. I mean, I think. Calling you a business model.
1:29 You have a big date coming up next week. I was wondering if you could tell me about that date and what it means to you and how long you’ve been involved in this crazy creation that most people don’t understand that well called campus.
1:40 Sarah Drinkwater: So I guess I’ll start with what campus is and what it’s all about. We started campus three years ago as a connecting space to startups. So I joined Google from startups and in every case I was the only woman, I was the only non-developer.
1:52 Events were always in pubs. It was really hard to get education. And when I met investors for the first time, it was often when I was asking them for money. I didn’t know what I was doing, frankly. I mean, a lot of that stood with me rather than the scene.
2:03 But I think the idea of campus was that people matter. Asking for advice really helps. Groups can always do what individuals can’t. And with campus, what we’re trying to do is really put together a space where you can go and ask those questions, get education, run an event, move in full-time for our partner’s tech hub if you want. And I think we’ve been really successful.
2:20 It’s our third birthday next Thursday. Really exciting. You know, we’ve now had 40,000 registered members. We’re about to launch our third campus in Seoul. We’ve got three more coming up this year in Warsaw, Madrid, and Sao Paulo, and I think it’s a really good moment to kind of look back, celebrate what we’ve done in London, and have a great party with our community of startups, investors, founders, and more.
2:38 Brian Rose: What do you think that the scene would look like here if there wasn’t a campus, you know, if you weren’t there or there wasn’t this base? Because I know a lot of people really start off by just coming by campus and registering and using the broadband and trying to get all these ideas, but how do you think it’s affected the ecosystem? I mean, if you can be honest, and you don’t have to be humble.
2:57 Sarah Drinkwater: You know, I think we launched exactly the perfect time. We were so lucky.
3:01 The government was talking about Tech City. There was loads going on in this area. This area, for me, is so perfect, because you’re right in the middle between all the money and the city and all the creative agencies of Soho. Something else London is really known for that I think the tech scene sometimes forgets about. 2012 was massive.
3:15 It was a big year for London. For me, having spent the previous two years in startups having come from journalism, It really was. We were all dotted around London. No one was talking to each other. There was really kind of a lack of education, a lack of knowledge.
3:27 And I think the scene right now is so fantastic. There’s so much going on. You know, if you’re fintech, you go to level 39. If you’re already creative, you go to second home. I suspect a lot of those would have happened without campus, but I think what we’ve done really well is we’ve made that home for when you really are first starting out.
3:42 You looked in our cafe earlier today. A lot of those guys are still working part-time at their day jobs, and I see my job as making them quit that job and go full-time.
3:50 Brian Rose: Right, when I first started covering the scene when we started, you know, Silicon Real about two years ago, it was kind of the place where if you didn’t know that you wanted to get into tech, you would just go to the campus. You know, it was like a welcome to all, you come in, it’s got a really great vibe to it, fun vibe, lots of room, lots of mentoring options and things like that, and it was kind of like, yeah, when people didn’t know where to go, they went there, and this is, let’s go back, this is before there was a lot of incubating options, a lot of, you know, accelerator options, there wasn’t a lot out there.
4:20 Sarah Drinkwater: So I think that’s, I mean, first of all, that’s really flattering, and I love it when people say that. I meet people in the cafe the whole time that moved to London the previous day, and they’ve come to campus to, you know, find a flatmate, get the education. I think what’s really exciting about the scene now is you’ve got the early stage offering at campus. You know, you can come there, you can go to any of our events. We did 850 last year, two and a half a day.
4:38 Brian Rose: That’s hard to even register my brain.
4:40 Sarah Drinkwater: I know, it’s crazy. Well, so my team run probably about 5% of those. So most of them are run by the community themselves. And we’re talking hackathons, conferences, demo days, workshops, all sorts.
4:50 I think what’s most exciting about the space is anybody can hire it. And the only criteria is the event has to be free and aimed at startups. So tomorrow we have an event around, be a founder. And that’s aimed at people with full-time jobs who want to kind of really quit. It’s about inspiration and education.
5:03 We’ve also got a day tomorrow around e-commerce and making the most of your kind of WordPress plugin. We had a Colombian accelerator there yesterday showcasing their startups. I think what’s exciting about that for me is the variety. You know, it’s bringing people through the door the entire time, whether they’re based in London, when they’re based in the UK, no matter what stage they’re at. And I think what campus does best is that convening piece.
5:22 I think what’s exciting about the other spaces that open now is it means entrepreneurs and founders around the UK and around the world have more choice than ever. And for me, that’s a fantastic thing. It’s all about the support that you need to get where you want to be, whether that’s funding, mentorship, finding a co-founder, all of those things.
5:37 Brian Rose: You know, I was just reading this book called In the Plex, which is a great history of Google. And it’s amazing when you really look into the history of organizations, you learn so much about that organization and why they do what they do.
5:48 And it’s a great book, a great read, and I think it’s a fairly objective one as well, as kind of taken from an outside journalist that recorded it. And you see why kind of Google is Google and how they started and how Sergey and Larry did the original pieces. And so I was wondering with campus, do you remember why it was done and you chose that word campus, which is an important choice that you made. You also didn’t brand it with Google, it was campus London.
6:13 Brian Rose: And I was just wondering what was some of the thinking behind that. Can you talk about the space that anyone can use? But like you could have easily made the wrong choice.
6:20 Sarah Drinkwater: I think we were super sensitive to that. And I mean, obviously EZ was in charge of campus in those days I joined later.
6:25 But in terms of from our point of view, Google began in a garage. Our founders are still running the company. They’re still pretty young, under 45, which to me makes me feel like I’ve not done enough with my life. And I think- I wanna ask how old you are.
6:37 Brian Rose: Well, not 45 just yet, but you know, heading to- I’m almost 45.
6:40 Sarah Drinkwater: Well, in that case we should be, I can be Larry, you can be Sago. But I think with campus, what we’re really trying to do is avoid that idea of a big company comes into a scene they don’t know yet and says they have all the answers. We’re still learning every day and I think what I find so fascinating is when corporates approach me and say, how can I work with startups? Sometimes they’re still assuming that they have nothing to learn. And for me, there’s so much there that a big company can learn from small companies.
7:05 With campus, we always made it all about the community. That was very important to us. Before we launched, we talked to the community and I’m talking VCs, small companies, big service providers, government, everybody. And we said what do you need and we use that as really a guide for how we set the building up. So the fact that we have event space, two event spaces, that came really from the community. I don’t know whether we’d identified that beforehand.
7:25 And when we launched campus itself, we moved the startups in first. Then we had our PR and policy launch. And I think for us, we’ve always tried to be really thoughtful about how we’ve launched and run campus. We very much chose to call it Campus London. We wanted a name that was exciting, fresh, energetic, gave the sense of community, gave the sense of meeting new people.
7:45 And I think we can all remember that first week at college, or universities we call over here, when you’re reinventing yourself. You’ve got no clue what you’re doing. You’ve come from your parents’ house. You’re refreshing yourself. It’s a new opportunity to learn, to grow, to meet people. We were trying to really capture that sense. And what’s really interesting for me is we’ve never called it Google campus. Loads of people do.
8:04 And I’m completely fine with that. I think we always chose to call it campus London for that reason.
8:08 Brian Rose: Right. Yeah, I’ve been corrected a few times. Maybe it was easy here.
8:11 Brian Rose: I was corrected. Sorry. You mentioned the word campus, and it’s funny. I’m thinking right now when I first went to university, and you get there, and it’s all about the learning. And so it’s this weird thing where everyone’s just trying to learn.
8:20 But how do you balance that with the fact that these companies need to turn into, ultimately, revenue-generating entities? I know SeedCamp is located on a few floors there, and you constantly have days, like you said, tomorrow, where how to be a founder for people like that. How do you balance that learning versus building a company?
8:39 Sarah Drinkwater: The way that I see it is 80% of our content, and by content, I mean the events we run, the ethos we have, is all about starting.
8:46 We know that’s really hard. 20% is all about scaling. And I think scaling is really such a big phase, such a big kind of theme of this year with Sherry’s report, a lot of the government focus on that. Scaling for me really is when you’ve got more than a team of two or three, you know, you’ve moved past the founders alone, you’re building your team, you’re creating a culture, you’ve got some traction, you’re probably post accelerator. at that stage. We do run programs for that stage, but they tend to be less frequent. That is 20% of our offering. We have things like Campus Exchange next week, and that’s bringing six e-commerce startups from around the world to London. So we’ve got a company from Korea, a company from Spain, and these are fantastic companies that are really well-known locally with decent traction heading towards Series A. And for us, it’s a week of intensive mentoring, intensive connections, meeting investors, design sprints. I think at that stage, there is so much great support in London. And again, I’m thinking about the vertically based accelerators, the tech stars, the C-camps. I think our core will always be the starting up piece, but we’re increasingly thinking about how we can support scale-ups.
9:41 Brian Rose: Right, because when you mentioned that to me today about these Series A pitches and stuff, I was like, whoa, I always thought of campus as this, you know, pre-angel type of a piece as opposed to like the Series
9:50 Brian Rose: A thing. Is that something that you matured into or did I just misconstrue?
9:54 Sarah Drinkwater: I think part of that is our community is growing up. I mean, you know, every, our membership grew 70% last year, and as we as we as we grow up I guess we’re now in our third year heading towards the third year every year the community gets more diverse every year they raise more money so our funding survey recently closed and startups on the network last year created 1200 jobs they raised over 40 million in funding 40 million pounds that’s a lot of money but interestingly only 13 percent of that came from vcs every year we’re seeing a rise in crowdfunding we’re seeing a rise in angels for me that’s really that’s a really positive message in terms of the uk funding landscape But it also shows that our companies are. That’s double the amount of funding last year, double the amount of jobs last year. You know, there’s a potential for a couple of companies that began. So Transfer Wires who moved into Sea Camp in our first, they joined, they won Sea Camp Week in 2011 and moved into the building when campus first opened with Sea Camp in 2012. I mean, you know, valued a billion.
10:47 Brian Rose: Yeah, I didn’t realise it was that recently.
10:49 Sarah Drinkwater: Well, even Co-club, they began at campus as well two years ago. I think we have got a couple of of those really great success stories. I think what concerns me occasionally is that I’m still being asked questions about where our campus is exits. And I guess for me, that’s kind of comparing it directly with Silicon Valley.
11:04 I think the London scene, we know it’s distinctively different. I think increasingly we’re seeing late-stage funding replace the exits that might be typical in the Valley. We’re seeing a lot of these companies really build sustainable businesses for the future.
11:17 Brian Rose: OK. You worked at Google for a long time, 12 years, 10 years?
11:20 Sarah Drinkwater: Actually, no, three years.
11:21 Brian Rose: Three years, OK, before?
11:22 Sarah Drinkwater: It feels like 10 years, but I think that’s a good thing.
11:25 Brian Rose: And ultimately, we can call it campus, but Google owns campus and is in charge of funding it, et cetera. What do you tell people when they say, OK, Google owns this?
11:32 Does that mean they are looking for companies? And then how do you manage it internally? Because you used to work there, and now you don’t work there. How do you manage that relationship? Because it could get blurry at some point.
11:43 Sarah Drinkwater: Yes. No, no. And I get asked that a lot, and I’m always happy to clarify. So I guess from my point of view, we’re not a building for Googlers. We’re not a building to hire people.
11:51 We’re not a building to fund people. We genuinely are doing this to help startups. I report into Google for Entrepreneurs in the US, my amazing manager, Mary Grove, and I think a few of my team are tuning in, so hi guys, they love watching me kind of stumble over my words on that.
12:05 Brian Rose: Well, they won’t have that chance today.
12:07 Sarah Drinkwater: Well, I hope not.
12:08 I think in terms of the relationship with Google, so I have both sides of the coin experience. So when Google first launched campus a couple of years ago, I began volunteering. We have this really fascinating thing at Google, which I wish more companies would take up 20% time, And it means you spend four days a week doing your day job, one day a week doing a passion project. For me, having come from startups, it was always campus. I was always really excited by the idea.
12:29 And I was part of a cohort that run various programs here, Campus for Mums, the baby training startup school that I began the UK version of, Women at Campus. And when I joined the team over here, we worked very cross-functionally. We couldn’t get what we get done without, there’s only three of us at campus full-time. Without those, it’s crazy. Without those volunteers, we wouldn’t get anything done.
12:49 And I think, particularly, things like our Friday mentoring, every Friday morning, 10 to 12, 30, we do mentoring around. Sometimes it’s Google products, like AdWords or Analytics. But more often, it’s things like marketing, branding, how to pitch to investors. We did 1,100 hours last year. We had 10% of all London Googlers came and mentored.
13:08 That entire program was run by a volunteer. And every week, that team of volunteers hassle Googlers to come and get involved over at campus. They hassle startups to sign up. So much of what we get done is done by those volunteers. And I think I’m so deeply grateful to them giving us their time.
13:21 I also work a lot with marketing, PR, policy developer relations, who run their amazing program, Launchpad at campus. I think for the most part, it’s, Googlers get very excited about what we’re doing at campus. They get very excited about startups. So many of us come from that world anyhow, something we really are passionate about. Right.
13:38 Brian Rose: Is this something, I guess it is something you’re scaling at this point. I know you’re launching in Seoul, Sao Paulo, Warsaw, Madrid. Is there a campus in the US? and what, you probably get asked that a lot, and what is the plan for campus, and can you replicate it in other cities, or is it really specific to the personality of that city?
13:57 Sarah Drinkwater: I think it’s so specific.
13:58 So the reason that we picked those four cities, and you know, it’s campus London that’s been going for three years, we have campus Tel Aviv that’s been going for two years, which is a bit smaller. We’ve always been very thoughtful about how we scale campuses. It’s such a distinctive thing. It’s such an intensive offering in terms of time and money. And also, particularly with North America, I don’t think there’s a need in the same way.
14:17 So the team that I work for, Google for Entrepreneurs, we support startups through two ways. The first way being that kind of owned and operated campuses. The second way being, we kind of support best-in-class partners around the world. And those are people like Seacam and Tech Hub in London, but also amazing projects like Gaza Sky Geeks, Gaza Zoning Accelerator. We’ve got something like 24 tech hubs across North America.
14:35 So, you know, Galvanize in San Francisco, Capital Factory in Austin. For me, when I look at Galvanize in San Francisco, and they have the most amazing building in downtown on Howard Street, They’ve got their G school based there for coding. I don’t think there’s a need for campus in the same way there. I think the culture over in many of the US sort of very brilliant tech cities, it’s always been collaborative. It’s always been about learning.
14:56 You look at London, I think one thing campus has done really well, and I will take a tiny bit of credit for this, is we’ve put people together who might not have met otherwise. We’ve got them talking to each other. You know what Brits are like sometimes, Brian. We’re not always as friendly as we could be. We’re not always as collaborative as we could be.
15:13 I think we’ve really worked to challenge that perception, I guess, and I look at all of our new locations that are very particular reasons why we’ve picked them. You look at Warsaw, they’ve got the most amazing technical talent, but potentially, what we’re hearing from the community is there’s no connecting space, there’s very few co-working spaces there, there’s a real dearth of business knowledge, perhaps. You look at Madrid, and there’s massive youth unemployment, but a huge amount of talent, fantastic universities across business and technical talent.
15:40 And a lot of the, you know, the money goes a long way there. I met a guy who built a hack space with a thousand euros. They’re really looking for that connecting space to get together, you know, all the events they’re having now are massively ever subscribed, held in pubs, held in parks. I think what we’re trying to do with those kind of European campuses is, we don’t know if it will have the same impact as here, but we’re really trying to kind of promote that kind of culture, get people excited about being entrepreneurial.
16:03 Whether that means founding companies, whether it means working for startups, whether it means just educating yourself within a larger company, All of those process successes, I would say.
16:12 Brian Rose: Okay, let’s talk about three letters that Eazy brought up last time, and those are OKR. And Sarah probably knows what those are if she’s been in Google for a while. This is something that has been run at Google for a while. It’s actually brought up in the book in the plex, and this is the objective in Key Reports that I believe everyone at Google, Key Results, sorry, is responsible for quarterly, perhaps?
16:32 Sarah Drinkwater: So we have company-wide OCLs, team-wide OCLs, and personal OCLs. And personal OCLs. And these are all public, as in, you can go see Larry and Sergey’s. But that’s what I love. I think something that strikes me, I’ve been at Google for three years now, and I’ve been three and a half, almost four years.
16:45 The transparency internally is massive. I think that’s something culturally that I really respect, admire, and love, and it really works for me. So yeah, OK, Oz, it just means you know where you’re going. And I think we’re very empowered internally to ask questions, take coffee with anybody, really kind of go searching, meet teams, work out collaborations ourselves, rather than have some invisible leadership figure come down and say, oh, this is what you’re doing.
17:09 And I think particularly with campus, we’re very data-driven as a company. That’s how we kind of assess our success. There are certain metrics that I really care about with campus, we’re shifting them all the time, and I’m sure Izzy talked about this with you. So for example, with the funding survey, for me, that’s a really good sign of our community health.
17:25 Brian Rose: Right, and the fact that the percentage of VCs and non-VCs is a big one as well.
17:29 Brian Rose: What are your OKRs? What’s the OKR of campus? I mean, you don’t have to be specific, but you know, or for example, in Warsaw, what will that OKR be for a year? I mean, I always think, like, How does Google try to justify starting here? Yeah, I think so.
17:42 Sarah Drinkwater: There are certain things we take into account with new locations. And in all those four locations, there are three key figures that we came up with. The first one being density of startups. So when we looked at London three and a half years ago, the number of companies starting in this particular postcode, every year in EC1, EC2 was increasing. Density of startups, but a lot of them weren’t doing that well.
18:02 So we saw that there were startups starting, but not succeeding. Second of all, the number of established companies. So you think about the US, we were talking about this earlier, and you’ve got SF for tech, LA for film, you’ve got New York for media, finance. You look at London, and really it’s got it all. It’s got all of those companies in a geographical space that’s comparatively small, particularly this part of town.
18:22 You walk around quite small, crabby streets. You will meet someone you know at some point, which I think is great, compared to the valley where you are driving like five miles to go and get coffee. You’re having to drive to meet people here. It’s so much easier. And I think thirdly, we had an office here where we had Googlers, that’s what we call ourselves, it’s embarrassing.
18:40 We had Googlers across sales, marketing, engineering, leadership, all these kind of functions. And to get the value for the startups, we really wanted to be able to take that knowledge and bring them to campus and get them helping out. So with our new locations, really, with Madrid, strong history of entrepreneurship, lots of established industries, particularly around kind of e-commerce and retail, and we had a team there locally that was very supportive and very excited.
19:03 Brian Rose: Okay, that’s a good enough reason. Tell me about something practical. got a lot of people that are listening that are on the edge of starting something up. Maybe they’re like me, they were a former banker or consultant and they haven’t pulled the trigger. Maybe they’re going to beat your class on Saturday.
19:14 What do you see as some of the biggest mistakes that startups make or something that they should just watch themselves? And I’m guessing this has changed in the last year or two, maybe as people become more educated, but just to give people a little bit of knowledge, what are just some things you see right off the bat where you’re like, don’t do this or make sure you do this or that?
19:32 Sarah Drinkwater: You know, I was thinking about this recently. I think the things I get asked the most, alongside the obvious money, how do I hire a developer, the number one thing I get asked is about hiring.
19:41 How do I find a co-founder? How do I find a technical co-founder? What kind of contract should I have? And particularly being based at campus full-time, I’ve seen a couple of nasty co-founder breakups. Heartbreaking.
19:52 I’ve seen my dad go through a nasty co-founder breakup. That was really heartbreaking.
19:55 Brian Rose: Your dad.
19:55 Sarah Drinkwater: My dad.
19:56 Brian Rose: Right, and we’ll talk about that later.
19:57 He was a coder, right?
19:58 Sarah Drinkwater: He is, yeah. Okay. Yeah, he works in InfoSec now. I think getting the people right is so critical and particularly something I see a lot of, and I think because this is because London doesn’t have as much, we have a lot of technical talent but it’s nowhere near as strong as a mall at Warsaw.
20:15 I see a lot of founders who are not technical, who have an idea, who’ve left their jobs full time to work on the idea, and they’re still searching for CTO. To me, you can’t validate your idea and know if it’s worth pursuing full time until you’ve built it. And I think you can’t build it until you’ve got someone who can build it for you. So I think really take your time, build out your idea, get the feedback. Validating your idea isn’t just building it, it’s finding the right audience base.
20:40 And I think particularly we’re seeing a lot of companies who, I saw one recently where it’s two very young guys building a company that’s aimed at women in their 50s and 60s, which is great, but they have nobody on their team of that age group. They’ve got no advisors in that age group. And the one thing I said to them is go and meet more of your customer base, talk to them, find out what they care about, Because if that’s not what you care about every day all the time, you don’t really know how to solve it yet.
21:05 So for me, the best founders, the best founders, the ones that I really get excited about are super energetic and passionate. Even when they’re going as tough, they really care about culture and people because it’s all about the people. And they’ve really taken the time to get to understand the pain points they’re trying to solve. So for me, it’s-
21:20 Brian Rose: So before they go technical, they should really hone their business model first or the feedback loop?
21:25 Sarah Drinkwater: I think if you’re not a technical founder, you need to find someone.
21:28 You need to get someone to believe in you really early on. I think it’s very hard to outsource your idea when you’ve already quit your job, when you’ve already decided you’re gonna work on this full-time. I think really it’s an exciting time right now. There is so much support out there. There are so many events where you can meet co-founders like General Assembly have run an amazing developer showcase at campus.
21:47 And it really is, you go in the room and there are 30 nervous junior developers waiting there with their portfolios who always get hired. There are easy ways to meet developers, but I’m still hearing the whole time, I can’t find a co-founder and I always challenge that and say, do you want a co-founder or do you want developer? What are you really looking for?
22:02 Brian Rose: Okay, so that’s a mind shift that should happen because there’s all the business types, right? There are all the MBA guys at the startup things and none of the tech guys.
22:09 Brian Rose: And you’re saying that they should be thinking more about a partner as opposed to just hire a developer. Is that the wrong way of looking at things too?
22:14 Sarah Drinkwater: I think it’s more about working out what you want. I mean, I personally always prefer partnerships just because that’s how I’m wired. I like collaborating.
22:20 I think the happiest teams I see are teams where everyone really believes in it. Everyone’s really brought into it. there’s definite things each individual can contribute. If you’re a solo founder who’s not technical, trying to communicate with a developer who doesn’t live potentially in the UK, there are challenges there. So I think it’s about being thoughtful, getting customer feedback, building thoughtfully.
22:41 I mean, really thoughtfulness always, compassion and thoughtfulness.
22:44 Brian Rose: Right, okay, so the big things, I know you’re doing a class or something about finding developers, right?
22:49 Sarah Drinkwater: Yeah, always.
22:50 Brian Rose: And then raising money and hiring, you’re saying those are the hard, the pain points.
22:54 Sarah Drinkwater: Well, the pain points in terms of London, I think there are pain points.
22:57 These are universal pain points. And also right now with accelerators, it’s which accelerator do I go into? There are so many options in London and around Europe.
23:05 Brian Rose: And for a lot of people at campus, is that their next step into an accelerator?
23:09 Sarah Drinkwater: Often, often it’s some full-time co-working space.
23:12 So you look at Tech Hub in campus, it only has 150 desks. It’s comparatively small. They’ve got two other Tech Hubs in London. They’ve got one at Old Street, one in Spitalfields with 500 desks each. So what we see a lot of is, say, Take Flat Club, for example.
23:24 Nitsan, he’s an amazing founder. We got a campus with one desk, now has a team of 25 or so basic tech up in Old Street. And what’s nice is he really kind of comes back, shares his learnings, goes to events at campus still, and is able to kind of mentor, you know, people who are kind of six months behind him. But I think at the same time, many of our startups go to co-working spaces that perhaps are more suited towards their vertical. You know, whether that’s the trampery, the bakery, there are so many co-working spaces now.
23:47 That’s exciting because that wasn’t there five years ago, or even three years ago, I think.
23:52 Brian Rose: Right, and I mean, it’s interesting, I just wanted to know what your take was on these co-working spaces, because we’ve had James from Central working in here. I had the trampery. I was at second home last night for the first time, and I walked around there. I was like, wow, cheers to Rohan for setting that up.
24:08 I almost walked into some of the plexiglass. There were so many plants in there. I was like, what’s going on? It’s quite a unique space, but how do you choose on where you go next? How do you choose an incubator?
24:19 How do you choose co-working spaces?
24:21 Sarah Drinkwater: It’s so tricky. I think it’s people, culture, community, and I wanna add that I’m a really big fan Second Home. It is the most beautiful building, so stunning. But it’s all about the culture, right? It’s all about the ethos you get when you get there. So for me, co-working spaces, I think there’s a lot of thought around this that needs to be done. For me, it’s a little bit like we’re trying to, we should move beyond just co-working. For me, co-working as a term alone suggests this very transactional approach of here’s your desk, we’ll leave you to it, here’s a locker. I think what’s really exciting about the new wave of co-working, and I’m talking about like Second Home, the trampery, and all of their, all of kind of expansions and partnerships, like the new publicist one at Old Street, is the publicist one, they’ve got creative agencies working from there full time. With Second Home, you’ve got this very particularly curated selection of companies that Rowan and his team have put together.
25:09 I think what’s exciting about that is there are all of these dizzying options, you just need to really work out what’s most important to you. For some companies, where they’re still growing, it’s flexibility of space. For others, it’s cost. For others, it’s the program of events. I think tech cover particularly, you know, they have a fantastic program of events like startup funeral where Founders get up and talk about how much they failed and why they failed
25:30 Brian Rose: startup funeral funeral. It’s like a premortem Is that what that is that concept?
25:33 Sarah Drinkwater: It’s a total pros. It’s a total post mortem But it’s kind of led by a guy wearing a dog collar holding a copy of the lean startup. Okay, it’s really fun Okay, and it’s failure stories failure stories real failure stories found a failure stories Okay, I you know Shawn’s of Innis from tab who wrote a fantastic medium post about why they failed and how much they failed And it was pretty spectacular standing up and talking about, you know, sharing this message that failure is something to learn from and that’s been another massive cultural shift I think in the UK is For me having changed my career two or three times There was a lot of anxiety from people that didn’t you know, my parents for example friends who perhaps have had more linear career paths Nearly everyone nearly every founder that I know right now who who is posted of 30 or so That’s really exciting has done the same shift.
26:13 Brian Rose: I know you have to it’s about flexibility
26:15 It’s about pursuing what you really feel passionate about right, but it’s kind of hard to educate that especially to the British public
26:21 Sarah Drinkwater: Oh yeah. The concept of failure. We’re still learning. We’re still learning.
26:24 Brian Rose: It’s strange because we talk about the British culture and the American culture, and obviously in tech everyone does look west, right?
26:30 Sarah Drinkwater: They do look to the valley. That’s changing, I think.
26:32 Brian Rose: It is changing, but in a weird way that’s, in the back of your mind, kind of the right way to do it. But then there’s so many wonderful things about British culture, and we’re doing things different over here, and perhaps this is the right way to do it. How do those two conflict?
26:44 I know you’re heading back to San Francisco in a couple weeks to go back to Google and speak with your people. So you have weird umbilical ties over there. How do you deal with this constant Valley versus Valley?
26:56 Sarah Drinkwater: I guess I was reported to San Francisco in my time at Google. I love San Francisco.
27:00 It’s an amazing city and an amazing culture. But I kind of struggle with the way that we’re always comparing and contrasting. For me, every city is different. And what I find exciting is local ecosystems with kind of global ambition and global ties. So I think with the Valley particularly, there are so many factors that we haven’t even worked out yet as to why it’s been so incredibly successful.
27:19 It’s extremely weird if you look at it. You’ve got this tiny area where they’ve had such a lot of success. And I look at what’s happening right now in like Berlin, Stockholm, London, all around the world and it’s really exciting, but it’s different and markedly so. The verticals that we’re pursuing are different. The models are different.
27:37 The culture is different. I think that’s a good thing. I think particularly we shouldn’t be trying to replicate. We should be focusing on what makes our kind of local system really great. And I do kind of challenge that point that we’re always looking west.
27:49 I don’t think we’re necessarily seeing that anymore. I think companies increasingly, and I’m thinking of companies at campus who are particularly working in e-commerce, they’re looking to Spain, they’re looking to Poland. Some of them are looking to China and Russia, which to me is really interesting because I have so little knowledge of those markets and I really would like to learn more. Increasingly what we’re seeing is our minds are open. I think the culture of the valley, that kind of the confidence, the vision, I think we really wanna extract that.
28:14 For me, the vision, the kind of 10X thinking, the moonshot thinking, is totally aspirational. We should always be trying to replicate that. But I think we’re coming at it from a slightly more humble perspective, perhaps. And I think also you look at our community at campus. It’s getting more diverse every single year.
28:29 You know, the 29% women this year versus 20% last year. But then you look at YC, the latest cohort. They took Y Combinator, of course. The latest cohort they had over there in America, in San Francisco, in the Valley. The age range is 20 to 65.
28:44 I think we’re seeing that over here too.
28:46 Brian Rose: Right, culturally diverse as well. Mexican population, black population, it was all these big numbers, right?
28:50 Sarah Drinkwater: And I still worry about the Valley being, and I think it’s changing as well over there. I don’t know the Valley, so I really can’t talk about this, but I still think there’s a perception that the Valley is kind of very male dominated, very white dominated.
29:01 You look at campus with 90 nationalities, 29% female, very age diverse, I think. I think London, being so multicultural has that, has that to offer. And I think there’s something about if you’ve moved countries, there’s a certain boldness there that makes you an amazing entrepreneur.
29:16 Brian Rose: Yeah, I call it the immigrant mind. Oh, yeah.
29:18 It’s something that I’ve talked about before, but that whole concept when you move somewhere where you’re willing to do anything, you don’t have a safety net and you’re just kind of, you know.
29:26 Sarah Drinkwater: Isn’t that a bit like going to university? It’s like you’re breaking away from what you know. You’re on your own for the first time in your life a lot of the time. You’re going into the unknown.
29:35 It’s exciting, but it’s terrifying. It’s uncomfortably exciting in that way.
29:38 Brian Rose: Right, top tip for raising money. What is the one thing you can tell people to look out for or to not look out for? I’m sure you’ve seen people do it the right way, the wrong way, not to put you on the spot for one thing, but in the conscious of time.
29:49 What is the one thing?
29:50 Sarah Drinkwater: Work out what kind of funding you want. I think people obsess about getting VC funding, but unless you have a company that’s super high growth, really scalable, and will appeal to a very particular kind of VC, look at your other options.
30:01 Brian Rose: Right, yeah, people ask me all the time. They’re like, Brian, Brian, which VC should I talk to?
30:06 And I’m like, I don’t really think you should be talking to VCs, or they wanna talk to you now. They’re looking for the 10,000X, they’re not necessarily looking for your 100x idea, so it’s for certain things.
30:15 Sarah Drinkwater: Yeah, and I think there are so many, every year our funding survey gets more diverse. I think for those who are seeking VC funding and have a well place to do it, just make your deck really clear. I see a lot of very long, very text-heavy decks.
30:26 I think you need to make sure you have the balance right between getting all the information that you need, all the projections you need, while also making sure it’s uncluttered, visually appealing, communicates very, very clearly what you do, but also what you can be. sometimes companies are still going into funding, not having that long-term vision of where they wanna be in five years’ time. It’s not a straightforward of saying you’re the Uber of broadcast.
30:50 You need to really work out exactly what that means.
30:52 Brian Rose: Right, well, something’s come up recently is too high of a valuation that’s gonna hurt you at later rounds. And it’s something, I guess, it’s due to the frothiness of the market. But a lot of people are saying, yeah, that’s great, you got your Series A at this, but your B is gonna be impossible, or it’s gonna be just impossible because you’re such a high valuation. I think Alicia said that from some skim links.
31:12 And so it’s an interesting thing to tell people, although it’s very hard to tell a founder to raise money at a lower valuation, right? But it’s something to think about.
31:19 Sarah Drinkwater: I think also there are so many pitfalls. This goes back to my co-founder point. Whether it’s equity share, whether it’s term sheets, there are so many pitfalls in the funding route, and I think it’s just worth really educating yourself.
31:29 And also, raising is a full-time job. I’ve seen that so many times where startups take a good six months to raise. And I’ve seen recently, in the last month alone, two startups at campus that I love and think are really great, have to fold because they were too busy fundraising and their runway got too short. And that’s devastating to watch. I think if you’re gonna be fundraising, work out with your team who else can take care of all the operational stuff.
31:51 Don’t let it slide.
31:52 Brian Rose: Right, well said. Hiring, let’s talk about hiring. Airbnb was a Y Combinator company and I think they spoke recently at this How to Start a Startup lecture series. Five months of their first hire.
32:02 Yeah, five months, and that was their fourth, or their first hire, because I think it was a three person group. And yeah, until then they ran it themselves and that hire was crucial because that first few hires can make or break the company. How do you tell people to hire?
32:19 Sarah Drinkwater: That is such a million dollar question. I’ve hired a lot.
32:22 I’ve got it right sometimes, I’ve got it wrong sometimes. Things that have worked for me, and it’s hard because when you’re a startup, sometimes you need someone yesterday. I think really get to know them, seek a lot of peer feedback. That’s why, particularly in the close-knit London community, people get hired by reputation. That’s why you have to really be thinking about that the entire time.
32:45 I see a lot of people come to campus who want to be founders and shouldn’t be founders and learn that in time. I know very well that I wouldn’t be a great founder, but I’m great at supporting startups. That’s what I think I’m good at.
32:55 Brian Rose: I think you’d be a great founder.
32:57 Sarah Drinkwater: Well, but it’s having that self-knowledge to be like, okay, it’s very hard being a founder, I think.
33:01 And when your company doesn’t work out, the great thing is you can join another company campus and do really well and really excel at that. So I think peer feedback is critical. I think taking time to get to know the person. I’ve heard of a couple of startups that only have one interview and then they offer the job out. To me that’s hiring is time-consuming and you have to be okay with that. And I think things that have really worked for me is setting straightforward tasks. You know it’s hard to get the balance right between taking up too much of somebody’s time but getting them to do a tiny project showing what they what they would do for you. And also chemistry. Chemistry is so crucial. I’ve I’ve heard of so many Silicon Valley companies who are doing, you know, you come out for drinks with a team, go and have lunch with a team.
33:37 Sometimes I don’t know how I feel about that, but I think certainly every time I’ve hired someone that’s been amazing, I’ve known straight away that it’s that person. And the rest of the interview is just. I’m just going through all of my hires. But yeah, I mean, it’s hard because you want someone yesterday. And so, but you need to spend time with them and you need to spend time with them in different situations because you can have one meeting and it’s great.
33:57 And then that task thing is really important because in your mind, you’re like, they’re a developer, that means they can do all these things, but they might not be able to, or they might not have time for your task, and so just having them do some simple tasks will tell you right away if they can do A, B, C, and D. It also tells you, first of all, I mean, really basic, but I’ve had people before who send me a task two weeks late, and I’m like, okay, that’s never gonna work out, if you’re not excited enough about working for this job. Also, on a very basic level, every startup really early on tends to need generalists, you know people who can jump in when needed, whether you’re a product manager slash developer slash sales, finding people who are comfortable with that and are okay doing that is hard. Again, how do you find those kind of people? You look for CVs with a lot of flexibility. I love CVs with a lot of career changes and I personally I think I’m unusual in that but it’s increasing increasingly popular over here. You look for CVs where they’ve taken risks and a question that I always ask in interviews and anyone who’s worked for me will confirm this.
34:57 I always ask them to take me back to their education and tell me about their journey. Because a CV doesn’t always represent why they did certain things at a certain time. And also, I love hearing it in their words. It tells me whether they’re concise. It tells me about how passionate they are.
35:10 It tells me how they assess jobs that haven’t worked out. I think it tells you a lot about a person, about how they talk about themselves.
35:17 Brian Rose: Yeah, and how they remember the past. And then the keywords they use. That’s always fascinating.
35:21 Brian Rose: Talk to me about mothers and babies at campus. It’s funny because I remember easy alluding to that program a year ago, and I don’t know if it was developed yet. We talk about this, you know, let’s be honest, we talk about this key white male demographic that’s typical startups, and now I’m here and there’s babies around campus. What was the whole idea behind that? I remember I mentioned it to my girlfriend.
35:40 I was like, yeah, they’re doing like a mom’s program. She’s like, what? For startup? I was like, yeah, why not? So tell me a bit about it.
35:45 Sarah Drinkwater: So Campus of Moms, Baby Friendly Startup School began at Campus Tel Aviv, exported to London. The idea behind it is very straightforward. We know that women in their 30s and 40s make great companies. They don’t often come to spaces like ours. And particularly looking at, you know, we have a very diverse audience.
36:02 We have loads of those guys and hoodies working really hard at night, you know, drinking beer, eating pizza, that’s fantastic. We also have loads of older founders, but we have this gaping hole around women of a certain age. And we kept thinking, you know, what are they doing at this age? Why are they not coming? And Tel Aviv, really, they had this fantastic program that I kept looking at and thinking, oh, this is amazing, we should try this in London.
36:20 And really, it’s nine weeks, one morning a week, you bring your baby up to 18 months old, over that and it gets quite stressful. And it’s 35 moms and dads, yes. The first session I ever ran, I’m not a parent, the first session I ran, I completely freaked out. I was like, there are babies everywhere, I can’t deal with this, what should I do? We have a lot of bean bags there and the babies just get chucked in a bean bag.
36:38 Brian Rose: Right, so when they’re under 18 months, they’re not mobile.
36:41 Sarah Drinkwater: Yeah, exactly. So it’s a non-mobile friendly. When they start running, it’s quite scary because they can run so fast. So it’s nine weeks really of support network, education, mentoring.
36:49 The first time we ran it, it very much was a pilot. We were running it to get feedback and we were amazed by the level of applications we had. These are high-flying moms and dads, because dads are also welcome despite their name. That’s very important to us to have a mixed group. We normally have about 10% dads in the room with their babies.
37:04 The first group we had, people like Apple’s Director of Marketing, BBC’s Head of Sales, people who had high-flying careers or have high-flying careers, who have MBAs with an amazing idea, and increasingly the course has become more and more selective. So today we picked the finalists for our fourth round, launching April 22nd, And these are people with ideas that are kind of at the beta stage. You know, they’ve got an idea, they’ve got some kind of customer feedback.
37:28 And what we’re hoping is by the end of the course, they have a wireframe business site, they’ve got better customer feedback, they’ve got a business plan. And what we’ve seen, so I actually met one of our startups today for a kind of check-in. She runs a company called PTA Social and it’s a social network for volunteers of the parent teacher organizations, which I didn’t realize what a massive deal this kind of audience is. She’s provided the back end for Sherry Kudu’s founders for school sites.
37:53 She’s being mentored by Dr. Sue Black. It’s going really well for her. We’ve seen graduates, we have one campus Tel Aviv graduate sell for 25 million recently. I think what I’m most keen to get across is this is not about kitchen table businesses, although they are great.
38:05 This really is about business as usual, scalable startups, this group of very particular needs. They’re very particular questions. The last time we ran the course, the first time around, we had a particular woman who had the most amazing CV, the most incredible background. And in the first session, she was like, what’s an accelerator? And it made me realize there’s such a barrier to entry for these people.
38:25 They’ve got, they can bootstrap quite late because they have the money behind them. They’ve got amazing experience for the most part. They’ve got great contacts. They have the ideas, but the field that the kind of start up scene can be a bit excluding. If you’re saying to someone with a two week old baby, go to silicon drink about, they’re gonna be like, of course I can’t do that.
38:41 It’s in the evening, it doesn’t work for me. So for us, we start at 10 AM because they’re taking their babies on the tube. That’s very stressful. And it’s worked out really well so far. I think what’s most exciting for us now is we’re now running it in Tel Aviv, Madrid.
38:53 We’ve run it a few times in Krakow. We’re gonna be running it in campus Warsaw when it launches. I’m most excited about running it in campus Seoul. You know, despite having a female prime minister, they have less gender diversity over there than perhaps we have in the tech scene there. And we’ve had so many delegations and press visits from Korea.
39:09 And every time they come, that’s the program they’re most excited about. So I can’t wait to try that in Seoul.
39:15 Brian Rose: How important is it to have a female as part of your founding team as a company?
39:20 Sarah Drinkwater: The data shows that ultimately it’s good for business. You know, you look at all the data around exits, you look at data around balance teams.
39:28 It’s important in terms of business. And I think for me, I’m really keen to get that across. I think I talk a lot about women in tech and it’s always worth bearing in mind. It’s just about making sure that your customer base is represented. Unless your product or app is only aimed at men, in which case, knock yourself out, have a male team, that’s great.
39:45 You know, the example I always give is, YouTube released a new product last year and couldn’t work out why 11% of the audience couldn’t get grips with it. And then when they got feedback, they realized that 11% were all left-handed. And the entire team that built it was right-handed. So again, it’s basic stuff like that, like the Apple Watch when it came out. Amazing product, visionary, everyone’s really excited about it.
40:05 Particularly the health tracker tracks everything except periods because the team that built it are male. So for me, it really is about if the audience out there, If you’re expecting it to be diverse, have somebody internally who can validate that idea. Have a culture that welcomes applicants from every single, you know, from whatever background. And I think that’s how I think about it. If you’ve got a team of four and they’re all guys, when you’re interviewing for your fifth member, the way you phrase the advert, the way you take the interviews, all of these things influence the kind of applicants you get.
40:34 So maybe by many, you wrote a great blog post about this. They’re a design studio. And Isaac, the founder wrote, they had, I think it was a UX designer, they were interviewing for somebody And they realized that every applicant was a man. They went back, tweaked how they’d written about the job and had so many more female applications. And it was things like aggressiveness of language, the suggestion of having nights out once a week with PlayStation, silly tweaks like that, which made it just much more accessible to a wider audience.
40:59 I think for me, it’s all about, again, thoughtfulness, compassion, thinking about the scene now. Hitch, a dating app based at campus, they’ve got a male founder, and they’ve recently hired one female dev and one female community manager because they realize their core audience is female. The person they’re talking to, the founder doesn’t, the founder obviously has a lot of users already in the audience, but he thought, wouldn’t it be great if I can have two team members who know that perspective innately well?
41:24 Brian Rose: That phrase, women in tech, I was asking the members here, like Sherry and everybody, about that, and then I stopped asking that question because it was just so trite, and I was like, I know, I know. But I was like, what’s the question we should be asking, or what should we be talking about? I mean, you talk about 29% women at campus, that’s amazingly high. But what really should we be talking about when it comes to women in tech? I mean, you just talked about it there.
41:46 Sarah Drinkwater: I have the same struggle. I have the same struggle with finding that question. I do get asked that a lot. And when I look at the kind of stats of young girls studying tech subjects, I studied English myself. I was put off tech at a very young age and came back to it later.
41:59 That’s why it’s still important we’re talking about this. I know it’s a topic that I know many other of my female entrepreneur friends and community friends also have challenges with too, but I think it’s important we carry on talking about it. I guess what I’m excited about is how can we get really young girls excited about tech, about thinking that tech is creative, how can we get arts and science working better together for both genders, how can we get people working together in teams at a young age, how can we stop them thinking that traditional education is always the route to go.
42:28 I think increasingly we’re gonna see 16 to 18 year olds choosing not to go to university because it’s so expensive these days. And a lot of the educational models in the UK are not equipping students for the kind of world that you and I work in. I think there’s loads of things around women in tech that we should be talking about, and I think particularly the things I’m most keen on are both ends of the spectrum, so young education and board membership and women over 40.
42:50 Brian Rose: You mentioned art and science and how as a child you had to choose between the two and then later you realized that they’re the same thing and so I have to talk about this because this is a fascinating concept. I would argue that I had to choose when I was young and I had to choose science because I didn’t understand what art was and I became a mechanical engineer and went all that route. And maybe now I’m getting a little bit more in touch with my artistic or expression routes.
43:12 But what did you mean by that? As in, you thought they were different and you had to choose one, but then they’re really the same. What did you mean?
43:18 Sarah Drinkwater: So I guess there are two things there. There’s my kind of personal story and also the landscape.
43:22 I think English universities make you like a major subject. It’s not like US universities. You specialize really early. So for me to do an English degree, it meant that I had to have certain subjects at 18. To have their subjects at 18, you have to pick them at 15 to have their GCSEs.
43:37 You’re really encouraged early on to specialize. And I think increasingly for the landscape we’re looking at, the future world will need generalists. It will need people who are very flexed. And I don’t know whether right now the kind of schools and universities out there are doing that enough. So for me, my dad was a programmer.
43:53 I’ve always had computers in my life. I don’t remember not having a computer, which is crazy. I’m born in 1980 and I don’t ever remember there not being a computer in the house. And for me, my mom was a scientist. my siblings, either programmers or science graduates.
44:06 I was the arty black sheep, you know, I wrote plays, I wrote books, I was always very creative, and I think, I don’t know whether it was school, I don’t know whether it was my parents, I think there was a lot of things that made me think I was the creative one, and that meant that I couldn’t be good at tech. So, you know, my brothers learned to code, I never did. I went on and did, you know, I did a lot of, I had a theater company when I was in my teens, I went and did English at university.
44:30 At the same time, I always blogged, I was always on internet chat forums from a very early age, but it was kind of an embarrassing secret. I didn’t talk about it in public in those days. You didn’t really talk about the internet. And the awful thing is I was embarrassed of my dad. I was like, oh, my techy dad, he’s such a nerd.
44:44 Why doesn’t he work in advertising like my friend’s dads? Sorry, dad, I’m really embarrassed by that now. And I got older, and I was always, when I was a teenager, I loved black and white films. I loved His Girl Friday with Cary Grant, Rosalyn Russell, like Bratat dialogue in the newsroom. I was always obsessed with journalism.
45:00 So I graduated, I took a wrong turn, I kind of went to, you know, I managed to shop for a while, you know, worked in kind of close buying, came into journalism and was just very disillusioned by it when I finally got there. It wasn’t what I expected, it wasn’t a very supportive environment, it wasn’t actually that creative for me at the time. I think it’d be different now with like BuzzFeed and the kind of user feedback loop is very different now. And I suddenly began thinking about tech and realizing how much I’d always respected and admired it, how much I always loved hearing about what my dad does all day.
45:29 And I guess for me, that was when I began working in social media. And then I got an email one day from a guy who said, I’ve got a startup, can you come and do some writing for me? And I had to Google what startup was, I didn’t know what it was, I was completely clueless. And this was in like 2009 or so, so like post bubble. And I remember having going to a party at like, my friend’s brother was an internet.com billionaire the first time around in like 1999.
45:52 I remember going to his flat in Bow, drinking black current vodka, thinking about how cool he was. That was literally the only connection I’d ever had with startups previously. I was so clueless. So 2009, I began freelancing for startups and just fell in love. And particularly the last startup that I worked for, Quipe, they’re a German review site.
46:08 And I was working with engineers, product managers. I was managing the community wing. It was a very small team and we got a lot done and I’m really proud of working for that company. It was a company that I really believed in. The founder had a lot of vision, a lot of strength.
46:21 And it really made me feel, we made so much happen as a very small team. It made me realize how much happier I was in that environment. particularly the kind of tech side of things. It was fascinating working with the engineers, coming up with an idea for a feature, watching them build that, UXing it, QA testing it. And then when I ended up going to Google, I worked on the engineering floor as a non-engineer, which again, was fascinating.
46:43 So for me, it’s coming full circle. All the end jokes the engineers have, the way they like to work, the way they like to live, the language they use, it reminds me so much of my dad and my brothers. And that’s lovely, I think. And if I can help any other boys and girls, I think it’s both. Defeat this notion that science isn’t creative.
47:02 Defeat this notion you have to pick and choose. I feel so sad that I never learned properly to code. I feel so sad that I didn’t let myself do that.
47:08 Brian Rose: Yeah, there’s such a divide, classically. It’s like the arts people do this, the science people do this.
47:12 And I guess there’s more of a mix now, but I would say, yeah, we’ve got a long way to go. As far as across all disciplines, I mean, then the sports people are separate and the music people are separate. I mean, you know, you see, look at the old, like who, you know, Jobs used to hire at Apple for the Macintosh project. and it was like all these strange disciplines. Again, they had either opera singer, and again, maybe that’s why you want a woman on the team or someone in music on the team or all these different kind of creative ideas.
47:35 Sarah Drinkwater: I think it’s different perspectives. You look at our cafe, and I think the best thing about the cafe is between the nationalities, between the differences in terms of background, there’s every perspective there, and that drives an idea forwards. So, you know, the guy that we met today, we met a guy called Jonathan today, who has a company called Brothers We Stand, and it’s an ethical menswear site, an ethical menswear e-commerce site online. He’s been doing a lot of work recently around revising the site, UX testing the site.
47:58 If he can ask 30 people from around the world, from Colombia to Budapest, what they think of the site, if he can ask a bunch of guys who care about fashion and will spend money, that’s great feedback for him.
48:07 Brian Rose: And it’s all about the feedback and the perspectives, right? Right. So that’s what you guys provide. Let me ask you a question in that same book in the Plex.
48:14 It starts out in the beginning, and there’s a journalist there. And I think they’re touring around the world with a bunch of Google employees. And they’re like, eh, in three years they’re not going to be there anymore. And there’s a history of Google employees of moving on. and Google saying, yes, we think you should move on because they’re usually highly driven people, project oriented, you know, they always wanna learn.
48:31 And so I was curious, what is your future? And then could you comment on the future of campus? I mean, campus was like at the right time, at the right place, is campus gonna change? Will campus always be there? And so I just wanna know both of your futures.
48:45 Sarah Drinkwater: I mean, I think, I’ll talk about campus first if that’s okay. It’s always very hard to predict the future. I don’t think anybody ever has that magic ball, right? and anyone who says they do is lying or delusional. I hope that campus has a really long and healthy future, but who knows?
48:58 I think ultimately campus will be there while there’s a need for it. For me, things I’m really excited about right now, first of all, scaling up. I think there’s a lot more work we can do in that area to understand what those needs are.
49:07 Brian Rose: Scaling up in London or another international city?
49:09 Sarah Drinkwater: Scaling up in terms of what we’re offering startups in London. In London, okay.
49:12 Sorry, I wasn’t clear there. So with our companies, like a flat club, when they’re at 25 employees or so, what do they need at that point in time? How can we help them with that? How can we connect them dots? Second of all, the international piece.
49:25 How can we connect all the campuses? And to me, that’s really interesting. You look at Korean startups and at the moment, their route to market post-Korea tends to be China. What about if it was the US? What about if it was the UK?
49:36 What if it was Europe? How can we help founders get what they need and move around the world more easily? I think thirdly, more diversity. We’re testing out campus for older founders this year, which that’s the working title, by the way.
49:45 Brian Rose: You need to work out a great title for that.
49:47 Sarah Drinkwater: For me, I’m really fascinated by this, Like my dad, he’s 60 in two days’ time. He’s worked for the Ministry of Defense for a long time. He works in information security and systems architecture. The traditional workforce is telling him he’s got five years left. I mean, I know my dad, he’s not gonna quit.
50:01 He should join a startup, he should do a startup. He should launch something. I think it’s capturing people who’ve got amazing backgrounds, amazing context, amazing experience, and giving them that support network. We know there are founders out there right now who are doing really well but want a peer network. So I think the future for us really is diving into those three areas, connecting the dots with new campuses.
50:22 I hope, I think there’s a lot more work for us to be done around Europe. So at the moment we have partners in, we’ve got the factory in Berlin, we’ve got Numa in Paris. I think there are loads of opportunities for us, all of the places in Europe when the new campus is open to kind of tie together, run campaigns, run programs across those locations. And I think for me, I’m so happy doing what I’m doing now. I think what I’m most excited about, education for me is always the key thing.
50:42 I think if I wasn’t doing what I’m doing now, it definitely would be something in the education space. I’m particularly fascinated by boys and girls, like the age group eight to 14. We ran an amazing hackathon two weekends ago, where, with Stemmets, around International Women’s Day, the theme was make it happen. And it was girls six to 14 building apps over the weekend. When you’ve got a six-year-old girl on stage pitching, that’s very powerful.
51:04 She’s got another, what, 10 years left before she’s in the workplace? I think that’s 10 years of confidence building, 10 years of knowledge. I mean, imagine being six years old and knowing kind of pitch. It was incredible.
51:14 Brian Rose: And what was this club for girls?
51:16 What was it called?
51:17 Sarah Drinkwater: It was a one-off hackathon, so Stemmets are an amazing organization, they’re a not-for-profit, and they help young girls get education through coding classes, hackathons, in STEM subjects, so it’s not just coding, it’s also like medicine, pharma, that kind of thing.
51:29 Brian Rose: Okay, I got a 10-year-old, so I’m going to push her that way, and you answer the question about you, I think pretty well. What’s the one thing in London we have to look out for?
51:37 Brian Rose: Everyone’s enjoying this kind of wave we’re on right now, as you mentioned TransferWise It’s just got the billion dollar valuation. Adresin Horowitz, you know, Antinup Ben Horowitz, his first European board seat. You know, we see the fintech, but we see things happening in fashion. What’s the one thing we have to be careful with?
51:55 Sarah Drinkwater: That is such a good question.
51:57 That is such a good question. I guess for me, the biggest thing we should be careful with is comparing ourselves too much to the value. I think I still, I don’t think many companies that are doing well right now are doing that, but I think the press is still focusing on that too much. The fact that I’m still being asked that question, of course, you have to, but it’s still something that I think is too much on our minds. The more that we’re looking over our shoulder, that us will move forwards.
52:21 Brian Rose: Fair enough, and I’m guilty of that. I bring it up a lot. Maybe it’s because I’m from California. Maybe it’s because I’m secretly being paid by Silicon Valley. I don’t think so.
52:28 Sarah Drinkwater: Do they have a great PR machine, huh?
52:30 Brian Rose: Yeah, they are, right? Yeah, so one of our early guests said Silicon Valley isn’t a place. It’s a marketing concept. Just like Tech City, right?
52:36 Sarah Drinkwater: Just like Tech City and Silicon Roundabout.
52:38 Brian Rose: Right, yeah, same thing. You don’t wanna see Silicon Roundabout. It’s not as sexy as it sounds. Sarah, I always ask everyone here a few questions at the end I’m going to ask you.
52:46 If you could make a phone call to the 20-year-old Sarah and give that young lady a bit of advice, what would you tell her to do?
52:53 Sarah Drinkwater: Step up. I was a deeply weird 20-year-old, and I was not OK with being weird. My weirdness has got me where I am today. I’ve done pretty well with it.
53:01 So I think embrace who you are. Don’t ever hide behind things you’re not.
53:05 Brian Rose: Good advice. Wow. Best advice you’ve ever received could be business, could be personal.
53:09 Sarah Drinkwater: You know, the best advice I ever got. So years ago, I managed a clothes shop called Bang Bang. I was a vintage clothing buyer. I love clothes, I always have done. I really wanted to be a journalist and I don’t have any contacts in that area.
53:20 I was just scared, basically I was scared. And I had a great appraisal with my then boss, Lucy Harford, who is a straight talking lady. And she was telling me off about something that she had every right to. And she said to me in passing, what you have to realize is that you’re not a journalist, you manage a clothing shop. The next day I quit my job, I was working for The Guardian two weeks later.
53:42 What I loved about that advice was it made me realize I’ve been deluding myself. She basically gave me the massive kick-up of the bum to get where I am now.
53:48 Brian Rose: Right, okay, so stop thinking you’re doing it and do it.
53:50 Sarah Drinkwater: Well, just stop deluding yourself, but I think that advice and my 10-year-old advice is kind of the same thing, right?
53:55 Brian Rose: Right, right, I think so.
53:56 Brian Rose: The last bit of advice is to the 20-year-old that’s listening to us from somewhere around the world that doesn’t have a campus right down the block, what should they do or what can they do if they want to get more involved in tech, learn more about tech.
54:09 Sarah Drinkwater: I think there’s never been a better time in history to start up, ever. There is so much education online, you know, you look at Sam Altman’s Y Combinator classes, that’s my first starting point. If you’re 20 and you haven’t seen that and you wanted to start up, get there. It’s basically Y Combinator opened up all of their classes online, they are so inspiring.
54:27 I’ve listened to all of them on my bus ride to work, it’s so great. I think get educated, ask the questions, meet other founders and I think all it takes to start a cluster is you and one other person. All it takes is enthusiasm and willing.
54:39 Brian Rose: Yeah and it’s such a wonderful community. I’ve been so fortunate just to be involved with this and if I if I didn’t have silicon real I would just have London Real and just to be involved in people that are starting things, pushing themselves to the boundaries, doing scary things and then really thinking about this whole product you know you know market fit and really iterating and just that whole thing really steps your game up in a lot of other places in life I think and just get your brain working differently.
55:06 Sarah Drinkwater: It’s so exciting I feel like so many things that are happening now and I guess you know for me I love culture you know so I’ve got a couple of like the protein journal came out yesterday what I love is the increasing intersection intersectionality of things so you know you’ve got tech people who care about culture you’ve got sports people who care about the art you know it’s that’s exciting and I think that’s a massive culture shift that I’ve seen in the last five years in London
55:30 Brian Rose: long may it continue indeed Sarah they know how to pick them over at Google for entrepreneurs you’re just as cool as Zizi Vidra which is a strong statement
55:38 Sarah Drinkwater: indeed he’s one cool dude thank you so
55:40 Brian Rose: Much for being here thank you so much for the work you’ve done at campus good luck on your birthday next week at least the campus birthday hopefully we’ll see you there yes and I hopefully be there as well and quite simply how can people check out campus here in London and how can they get involved and should they just stop by for a coffee or people don’t know what to do with it
55:58 Sarah Drinkwater: it’s completely open access go to campus London comm sign up you get a a membership card, it’s completely free, very simple, we don’t use your email for anything else. Come down, get a coffee, look around, look at our events calendar, all of our events are free. It’s just worth getting involved and coming along and seeing what it looks like.
56:15 Brian Rose: And they have some sick broadband as well, right? If you ever walk by there. So there you go. Sarah, thanks so much, as we say, on Silicon Reel, it’s about the people. It really is about this community and the fact that campus was there three years ago and even two years ago and even one year ago, it’s just, I think it’s just such a crucial institution when, like you said, back in the day, I joke there used to be tumbleweeds going around the roundabout here because there just wasn’t anyone that you could go to for information or just this concept of having a free space for everyone to have.
56:43 I remember we hosted Tim Ferriss here, like two years ago, it was a big episode at the time, and he went to campus after that. And I remember thinking, what is this campus? And you just go there and talk, and it didn’t have an agenda, it didn’t have a corporate agenda, it was like that. So, just a wonderful resource, and yeah, just exciting to see what you guys are doing. So, there you go.
57:02 If you’re listening to us on iTunes, please come check us out on our YouTube channel. Sarah has orange nails. It’s pretty exciting stuff. And I’m in a suit if you want to come check us out. If you’re watching us on YouTube, please subscribe for more of these.
57:15 And give me some feedback. It’s helloatsiliconreal.com, who you want to see. We’re always in tune to who’s next. I was just actually, last night I was at Second Home for the CEO of Just Park there, Alex Stephanie. He had just written a great book, great story there, Index Venture Funding Company, and then they went the crowdfunding route, and I think had the biggest crowdfunding ever, like just under 3,000 people.
57:37 And it’s just a crazy concept to have VC funding, and then crowdfunding after that. And so many of my friends used Just Park, and I was just like, what? It’s a parking, no, it’s a parking. So again, the whole sharing economy, who would’ve thought? So yeah, there you go.
57:50 Anyways, I could go on and on, but Sarah, thanks so much for being here. I wish you guys all the best, and thank you. This week on Silicon Reel, Matt Berry, freelancer.com.
58:11 Matt Barrie: The GDP of Freelancer is actually larger than some nation states. This is like an eBay for jobs. We have a population that just overtook Sweden and Norway. This is really an aspirational brand in the developing world. It’s just amazing company to run in terms of what we’re actually doing in the world.
58:24 We empower entrepreneurs on two sides of the world. All the pain, the time, the hassle, and the cost of turning your ideas and inspiration into reality, we take that away. The cost is about 10 to 20% of what you would normally expect to pay. We’ve been cashflow positive in this business ever since it began. We had about $300 million of interest in a $15 million IPO.
58:44 The business is flying. Every single industry is waking up somewhat disruptively to discover it’s now dominated by a software business. Every job that you can think of, particularly white collar jobs, is heading to software. We are in the very, very, very early stages of replicating the first country in software.
59:09 Brian Rose: On Monday, Silicon Real presents, Matt Berry, Freelancer.com.
