Full transcript: Simon Devonshire on London Real
0:28 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. I also host London Real, which is a similar three-person tri-log format. We have guests like Tim Ferriss from the Four Hour Workweek, futurist Jason Silva, drug smuggler Howard Marks was sitting in your chair, Simon. And yesterday we had Bruce Perry from Tribe, who was here. He was intense, man.
0:45 I’m just talking about going to Africa and doing all this crazy shit. So check that out if you like. My co-host today is entrepreneur Colin Pyle who comes to London from Canada, Toronto. We’re not holding that against you. You’ve also spent some time in China and India with these massive motorcycle rides which are very cool to watch. Hopefully.
1:06 Hopefully. I love your China bike ride and India’s coming soon, right? Yeah, it should be on Travel Channel end of this year, hopefully. Okay, cool. And Silicon Real is your brainchild. You’re the reason we’re here.
1:16 Episode 13 It’s fun. Is that a lucky one or yeah. Yeah, I’m always a big fan lucky lucky 13. Yeah, so it’s it’s all good Our guest today is mr. Simon Devonshire who is the director of new business ventures for Waira Europe?
1:31 Waira is a startup technology Sorry startup accelerator owned by telefonica The global communications company, right? It you guys launched in Latin America in Spain in 2011 and you now have 14 academies in 12 countries Yeah, that’s big. Um, you the startups that you accept or see funding up to 40,000 pounds plus office space and mentoring Yes, okay. Welcome to Silicon real. Thank you. Thanks for being here. Thank you It’s it’s good to have here. You know, it’s interesting I’m calling and I’ve kind of been around the block now when it comes to the Silicon roundabout, you know We’ve talked to VCS. We talked to startups some equity crowdfunding and even a couple small small So we kind of know our stuff but I mean I was looking at Weira today and you know you guys are a different animal you know you’re bigger you put up bigger chunks of cash I think you just accepted ten people into into your is it your unlimited Academy exactly and so like that’s kind of big news and like it seems like you got a lot of people that are helping out you got big open office space you know top and court road and and I wonder if you could just tell us about Weira because some people haven’t heard of it so I never assume Assume that people have heard it.
2:41 In fact, I’d then assume that people have heard of Telefonica, frankly, in the UK, obviously Telefonica is famous for the O2 brand. As you said, Waira is the business accelerator of Telefonica. We’re wholly owned by Telefonica and it’s a very simple concept. We build a physical space, we run a competition, we find the best digital talent, we invest in it and we accelerate it, we take an equity stake and our whole purpose for being is is to see those businesses grow.
3:11 So that’s a measure of success, that’s our performance metric, and that’s what we’re measured for and by. I think it’s important to really emphasize that because I think people think that maybe this is some kind of corporate social responsibility or marketing activity or something to do with sustainability or maybe it’s a youth program or something of that nature. And it’s none of those things. This is a commercial venture, it’s about investment, And it’s about working hard to grow the book value of that investment.
3:45 So with regard to age, for instance, WIR is a very inclusive program. So I’d say that typically the average age is 32 in London. It’s probably near 37. They’re not chosen by me. And they’re not chosen by Telefonica or O2.
4:01 These startups are chosen by an expert panel of judges who we appoint. And what’s interesting about that is They tend to choose people who are a bit more seasoned, a bit more experienced, been around the block, got a bit more life experience, and that’s reflected in the type of businesses that we invest into. The thing that unites them is they’re all digital. They’re not just telco or mobile, they’re not just apps. They’re very diverse, very eclectic.
4:30 What we’re looking for really is stuff that we think we can add value to at the end of the day. Now you say it’s digital, what makes it digital? I mean, it can’t be like a juice company startup. There has to be some angle. Well, it could be a juice company, provided that there is a sufficient, provided that digital is at the heart of it.
4:47 So for instance, if it was a juice company that enabled people to, aggregated recipes from around the world, that in choosing the juice of your choice, that you could walk down Tottenham Court Road and not have to queue to order it, that those predictive intelligent convenience built into some kind of platform that kind of predicted that you were in need of a juice and you could just roll up and your whole transaction was automated and everything else, then we’d be kind of interested in that. So provided that digital is a fundamental component of whatever the venture is, then that’s cool from that point of view. You know, it’s weird because you don’t see a lot of huge corporates, let alone telecommunication giants setting something up like this unless I’ve been misinformed you don’t even see a lot of big companies banks consultancy firms I mean it seems like everybody wants to get into this but no one seems like they’re cutting the check or setting up an independent way of doing it yeah I think you’re right why I mean you don’t think it I’m sorry I don’t mean to be telefonica you don’t think of them as being the guys that are way out in front but they are in this case well they they I think they are I think and I want to change that I don’t want that so I look around a lot and and you’re right I didn’t don’t see anything that’s quite comparable to this yet But I want there to be more many more and I’ll explain explain why I think we have a unique asset and it’s to be honest
6:09 It’s my boss and my boss’s boss They’re very visionary guys and Jose Maria effectively. He’s the the CEO now of telefonica globally and it was really his brainchild and his championing of this that makes it possible because believe me it’s really hard to be that entrepreneurial within a corporate environment so unless you have somebody who is constantly there to in many ways protect it if I’m honest it could quite easily get swamped by the corporate monster and I think some of the things that corporate peers struggle with is getting through all of that bureaucracy necessary to make something like this happen so I see a a lot of enthusiasm. I’ve had conversations with corporates as diverse as a Formula One motivating team through to household, grocery goods, manufacturers, even high street retailers, household names. Frankly, they’ve all been in to the academy at some point or other.
7:08 When I say they, I mean CEO level, to the extent that now it’s a weekly thing, literally every week. But getting them from that enthused impassioned conversation into, as you say, writing a check and actually making this happen is clearly a big step. Now, I think Microsoft are doing some great stuff now, I hear, that they’ve got some incubators that are starting to launch. What about Google? They kind of have like Google Ventures. Google Ventures, they’ve got campus. That is quite different. So campus describes itself as an open source building and I think that’s magic, you know, there’s no doubt that that is a real gravity point of absolute density and I do believe that density is a core component of this ecosystem and I think Google have done an incredible job of driving that easy especially, you know, his championship.
8:00 I think also just the name, the brand, their investment in Tech City and in Shoreditch kind of validates everybody else’s conviction to be here so I think that’s really awesome And they’re a house now that contains loads of really interesting rooms. They’ve got all sorts going on there, including incubators. Why is it quite different to that? We’re not an open source building. We have 24 security.
8:24 We’re closed. And you’re not in shortage. We’re not in shortage, yeah, which is a big decision, and one that I’ve gotten quite a lot of trouble for. But it’s a decision that I’m really proud of. I think that the location we’re in is fantastic.
8:38 And what it gives us is an amazing office space where effectively everybody is on one floor. So we don’t have that kind of divisiveness of one floor playing off another floor kind of thing. I mean, I’ve now, I’ve contradicted that because we’ve just opened another floor in the building, which is to house the unlimited things. For the new grads, right? Yeah, so that’s, you know.
9:01 But, you know, I’m making a massive investment to literally, in the next couple of weeks, we start work to cut the concrete between the two floors. We’ve designed a staircase. For a slide. Yeah, it’s a massive staircase, we’re putting it to connect the two together, yeah. So, you know, the space is really important and we invest a lot of money in the space, which is really important, because we’re leveraging goodwill and discretionary effort everywhere.
9:27 And when you guys come, I mean, you’ve been on me. If you were to have a meeting there, basically, if you chat up the team who run it and they’ll let you in kind of thing, if you have a meeting there, you might be compelled to bring other people who are key to the ecosystem into the building. If you do that and the building’s a bit shit, that’s just not cool. So one of the reasons why we create an amazing space is to, and I hate the term elitist and elitism, but frankly, we’re trying to draw in the best talent we can, the best startups, the best entrepreneurs, the best coaches, the best mentors, and the best investors.
10:10 And my experience is, you know, O2’s headquarters is in Slough. It’s a pretty tough job to get the investor community to come out and engage, and I think it’s quite unlikely I’m going to get them to Slough. To someone who’s not listening to us in London, how would you describe Slough and be very careful? Yeah, exactly. So I went there, I ran the business, the B2B division of O2 for 57 months, so I went there pretty much every day.
10:35 Counting every month. Yeah, it’s important because the average tenure in that industry is nine months, so 57 is quite some record. And I have to tell you, the O2 campus there is incredible, it’s a beautiful place to be, But because of the nature of the work and the people who you work with, you never get beyond the campus. So I can’t actually answer your question, Wally Slough, because I never actually went into the town. I only went to the Bath Road Slough Trading Estate, which is famous from the office, and that was at home.
11:14 Yeah, yeah. So the office, yeah. The original office. The original office, yeah. Not the American one.
11:19 That was second. They’re based in Slough, right? Yeah. There’s an old poem about Slough. There is.
11:24 Yeah. I mean generally in summation of the poem it’s best avoided but it’s kind of like the staff canteen until recently. Were you inspired by like Google because Google I think was made famous by the design of their workspace as far as the proximity of people you know the beverages and everything making everyone communicate and work together I mean what did you study to create the wire building? So I didn’t design it I probably had too much of a hand in its construction but it’s only because I interfere a lot and I’m, you know, fairly, yeah, kind of maybe slightly on the borderline edge of obsessive on the detail thing.
12:05 It could be a compliment. Well, I’m not sure the team would regard it as that. But anyway, I could show you the 28 emails about the expansion strips in the concrete. To your point, we use the same team of architects, a company called QA, an incredible, relatively small practice based in Madrid and they’ve designed all of our academies globally and we’ve learned exponentially from having that consistency. What we tried to do is kind of McDonald’s-fy that in terms of standardization so there are several bits of furniture that literally are identical in every single academy because we want that it’s not just who we want uniformity it’s that we want to really leverage the fact that we have this global network because I I think that is really unique, and I think it’s really important because, for instance, in Ireland, the economy is still having a pretty tough time, but two of our start-ups in Dublin, in the first cohort, are now actively selling in Latin America.
13:05 Now that’s important, it’s important for several reasons. One, the economies in Latin America are now growing exponentially, so Brazil 5% growth in the last year, which is great. So relative to Ireland, that’s really important. it’s important because for those particular teams, setting out there, setting in Latin America is pretty much unimaginable before they joined Wirer. And then it became a high priority. So to go from unimaginable to a high priority and then to actually kind of happening is quite an amazing thing. And the third reason it’s important to Ireland is we laugh with our colleagues, particularly Carl and Gav, who run Wirer Dublin, that they never see the sun. So that, you know, that connection to Latin America is all the In fact, if we find them right now, I’m sure it’s raining.
13:50 I never thought of it that way. How do you manage to connect all the, because you know, 14 globally, that’s a lot. Is there 10 in each one? Is that? So it’s all good questions.
14:04 So in terms of the number of businesses in the academies, 10 in each apart from London and Sao Paulo who have 20. And it’s exponentially harder work. It’s not just the doubling. It’s quite incredible the effect that has. In terms of the connectivity between them, we work hard.
14:22 We have a global technology platform that enables that integration, a global kind of, if you like, a data management repository. We have a global management team headed by my boss in Madrid, and that’s their job to really get that coordination. I’m really focused on just Europe, and I concentrate exclusively on that. We bring the academy directors together as frequently as we can, so we’re all meeting in Barcelona on Monday, but that’s a global meeting, so that’s literally coming from all the Latin academies as well.
14:57 That’s a tough business trip, Barcelona. Well, actually this is the thing, I’m so lucky. In Europe we have London, Dublin, Munich, Madrid, Barcelona and Prague, and we’ve got – well, I would describe Grade A1 locations in every one of those cities as well, we purposefully in their equivalent of the West End. And there are all sorts of reasons why we’ve chosen that. But we also integrate the startups by virtue of the different events that we attend.
15:22 So one of the things that’s great about this ecosystem is just how collaborative it is. And it was only a week or so ago we had a campus party in London. So we invested in bringing in some of our team from all across Europe. And then the teams themselves pay their own money to attend. So we help them with the tickets and all that kind of stuff, but they’ve got to warn it.
15:43 So they pay for their own travel and an accommodation and everything, and they come. And they genuinely hang out, and there’s a lot of cross-pollination, cross-fertilization. And that’s the key ingredient for Wira, because before they come, they’re the best of the best, these guys. They fret and they worry about the quality of the coaching and mentoring. The truth is they get more from one another than they will from anyone else.
16:06 Interesting, because you hear incubators talk about what they’re gonna give you. But I rarely hear that angle. They’re gonna be collaborating with each other. You’re obviously probably a cost center for telephonic. I mean, you probably are gonna be losing money for a while because your percentages in these new companies could take seven to 10 years to come to fruition.
16:26 Do you have a certain amount of time before they’re gonna come in and shut you down? Because like you said, it’s hard to get an investment like that. If it’s growing exponentially, I’m guessing your costs are growing exponentially. So we’re managing to control the costs, interestingly. I mean, obviously, in the initial period, I negotiated some really interesting deals on the rents and that kind of thing.
16:53 But we are keeping really close control of the costs. And relative to the multibillion scale of Telefonica, the total cost of Waira globally is not much more than a rounding error, frankly, for a corporate of that size. But that’s not to say it’s not trivial, and we are under a lot of pressure. So are the operating businesses. It’s quite well known that the telco industry, generically, is having a tough time of it.
17:18 There’s a lot of competition, there’s regulation, and there’s all sorts of pressures and strains within that industry. So if you’re in the front line running that business, and then you look at, there’s this dev and share guy with this flamboyant office that he’s got. There’s a lot of pressure, there’s a lot of pressure on that. But to your point, you know, we’re two years in, we’ve seen an exponential shift in the quality of the businesses that we’re working with now.
17:44 Last year, we were investing 40,000 euros for a 10% equity stake, which would value those businesses pre-money at 400,000 euros. Today, we have businesses that are being valued literally in the tens of millions of euros. And, you know, to see that seismic shift in such a short period of time, which a year ago we were having conversations with VC and it was quite apparent that we are pre-VC, that our startups, even when they leave us, are pre-VC. Now we’re having meaningful conversations with VCs because we’re not, we’re actually in their heartland now with some of our startups.
18:19 So- So maybe you are making a profit. Well, we absolutely intend to. The problem is you well identify is that you need a track record of probably four or five years And so in many ways, I guess part of my job is to keep the thing alive because at the end of that kind of time period, the numbers should stand for themselves. So, you know, that’s that’s why I work as hard as I work to keep this thing motoring on. And I’m confident in it. You know, if I I can see differences in every country, I’m very lucky by virtue of my job to have that perspective right across Europe.
18:59 And there is significant cultural differences in each country, but we have some countries where I think unequivocally, you know, wire is working, and London is one of those, Dublin is another, and we get that computationally through all the metrics and mathematics of what we do, so the physical number of applications, the scores that those applications achieve through the filtering process, the quality of their pitching, which again is scored, and then the number of investor conversations and the amount of money they’re raising. All those metrics are going through the roof. Hard to look at the actual startups who are with us right now, because they’re so embryonic.
19:40 But if you look at the alumni, we’ve got nearly 100 startups now who have moved beyond Wira. We’ve invested 4.6 million euros in them. They’ve attracted 11.3 million. So already, we’re more than doubling the money that’s going into them. And I think that that is a leading indicator of where we’re gonna see this going.
20:02 No, one question that Colin and I always ask, whoever’s here, whether it’s a VC or a startup, is we ask, you know, why will you win in this space? And it’s a little bit different, I guess, with an incubator. But you must hate getting lumped in with a lot of incubators, because they’re everywhere right now. And you’ve touched on a few things why you think Wyra is different, but why will you guys win? I mean, what do you do differently at a core or at an advice level or something?
20:25 Because a lot of people seem to get it wrong, this space. So I think we’re still learning a lot. And I’m not proposing for one moment that we’ve cracked it and then we’ve got the magic ingredient. I don’t think yet there is a formula that guarantees business success or startup success. I do think that we are learning a lot, though.
20:43 And I do think we’re getting nearer and nearer to a formulaic approach. If you do these things, you well out turn a successful business, genuinely. I think we’re approaching that kind of science. But in answer to your question, why, why, why, why telefonica? Simply put, fast track access to potentially 300 million customers.
21:02 So television took, repeatedly, according to the internet, 38 years to reach an audience of 50 million people, Facebook took less than two. Theoretically, with our resources, we could do it in a heartbeat. It’s not easy, and it’s not trivial, and we’ve got to get the right proposition, the right entrepreneur. You’ve got to create a perfect storm. And if it were easy, we’d have done it ourselves.
21:23 Telefonica had done it themselves. But the reason why I’m so passionate about corporates being in this space is there are loads of different investment vehicles, VCs, you mentioned institution investors, angel investors, whatever. The thing that we’ve got that they don’t have is that fast track route to market. Now, if you take Telefonica, we invest in a music startup and as a result of our investment, they’re worth X times what they might have otherwise it’s been worse. But imagine if they were backed by us and EMI or and Universal, you’d probably double it instantly again. And the global resources that you could then bring to that start-up, as I said, you can’t guarantee their success, but what you should be able to do is really motor them if they’ve got the right ingredients.
22:11 Yeah, Telefonik is a big company. If you don’t know it, look it up. How hands-on are you with, like, so you bring Telefonica and the, you know, international network and access to a huge market, but are you guys actually also very hands-on with your entrepreneurs? We increasingly so, and so I’m thrilled that we were able to recruit. We’ve had some amazing Academy directors run our cohorts, okay?
22:39 So we had Ashley Stockwell run the first cohort for London, and now we have Sharman who is incredible. Charmaine’s philosophy is leaning, and so she’s absolutely gone from a relatively passive program to a highly involved program, and she’s actively coaching and mentoring those businesses at a very personal level on a weekly basis, so they are getting quite a lot of intervention, which is a positive thing. I personally am not so involved. I was originally, and it breaks my heart.
23:06 So I now walk into academies and meet people who I ought to know, and frankly, frankly, couldn’t even place what startup they’re in. But my portfolio is, I have more than 120 startups now in my portfolio, and I just physically, personally can’t keep track of all of them in that personally connected way. So I get all the reports and analysis through. But what’s interesting is, when I speak to people, the extent to which people are compelled and want to fuck around with startups, it really amazes me.
23:38 And I’m really keen to not do that and not be party to it. I think if the guys need help or want help, they’ll ask for it. I think you need to lay out a program that they can actively engage in and participate in that adds value to them. But they ultimately run their own business.
24:02 If I can impart some wisdom, it’s partly to do with hindsight because I’ve got a ton of relevant experience in there. I know exactly what it’s like to be in their shoes. I’ve co-founded seven startups now. And, but it’s more about foresight than anything else. It’s, you know, how can you save them from some of the pain that you might have experienced before in your kind of lifetime?
24:26 But I don’t feel compelled to just go up and reach to them. It’s sort of quite the opposite, really. It’s been hard to resist yourself sometimes. And what about your alumni? Because your alumni, in theory, is just going to continue to grow, grow, grow, grow.
24:40 Do you have to hire, like, every year a new team to help the alumni? We haven’t, and I think we need to. So we’re still debating what best to do there. They vary a lot in terms of their level of engagement. And at the moment, we’ve absolutely left that to them to determine.
25:00 So we’ve asked them to adhere to a rigid structure of interaction with us. and some have, others haven’t. Now, I think without wanting to become heavy-handed with the alumni, I think what that indicates to me is we haven’t quite got the formula right yet. And what we need is for them to be compelled to because of the value and benefits it brings to them. And I think it’s relatively low touch.
25:26 As an investor, it’s not unreasonable for us to expect them to submit all their reports and management accounts to us and so forth and you know I guess you know in the world of a startup shit happens and sometimes reporting back to you your investors can be a relatively low priority when you’ve got you know yeah when you’ve got a burning platform sure no we always try to hit you with a couple like devil’s advocate questions so I’m gonna start if you don’t mind yeah um but uh you know the one thing well two things actually sometimes people have told me that London is over incubated. There’s a lot of different programs that are accepting people and putting the money in and then keeping their hopes up or wasting their time. We had a couple of VC guys even said that.
26:13 Of course, maybe they would say that. And the other piece I was wondering about is ultimately you do have this huge communications giant, Telefonica, that kind of gets looks at maybe investing more. And so how do you balance this huge corporate coming in and doing what they want to, having their way with these startup companies. Yeah, those are two questions. So the first one is London over-incubated.
26:40 Categorically and mathematically, no, it’s not. So when we opened Waira, we received 1,031 applications. This is two years ago? Yeah. So last May, I think it was May 2012.
26:55 So one year ago, or one year in the fall, I’ll tell you that. So, and now we’ve moved to a global call process where we typically get more than 3,000 applications. Just for the London? No, so that was now an international call. But what we’re seeing is an exponential number of startups wanting to be part of an acceleration program.
27:17 And I think that mathematically, what that suggests to me is there’s ample scope for more accelerators, in my opinion. But, it’s a big but, It’s not about the number and the quantity and the number of spaces available. It’s about the quality. And I am acutely concerned about just how many accelerators there are, how many spaces are available, and how good they are. And frankly, the EU are going to pour a ton of money into this, which means that a load of really well-intended people are going to be really compelled by it, because as I said, everybody wants to fuck around with startups.
27:54 So we’re going to see accelerators and incubators popping up everywhere. some might be very good. I think generally the quality will be really poor and I think that however well-intended they are, unless they leverage the kind of differentiators and value ads that you know a big corporate can bring with their corporate muscle and all their customers, then they’re just going to muddy all the waters frankly. Now it’s very easy to point the finger and say, oh, that’s just an incumbent being defensive of maintaining and protecting their current state. And it isn’t. I talked to the VC guys as well, and they share the same concern. And actually, the EU money is well-intended also, but it’s pointing the wrong place. We have what we call the missing middle, which is the bit post-accelerator, pre-VC, there’s just the gap. There’s a gargantuan gap. And if any money was going to be poured anyway, actually pulled into that gap, in my opinion.
28:50 With regard to big corporates fiddling around and doing unspeakable things to- Tricky, I mean, the power of the purse. They are paying the bills. Yeah, they’re going to fiddle around with these guys and do horrible things to them, and then abuse them, and all that kind of stuff. My own beating. Yeah.
29:07 Well, I have to excuse my language, but not on my watch because I’ve invested my reputation in this thing to such an extent that I’m not prepared for people to fuck about with these guys whilst I’m around. And I’ve got no intention of going anywhere. And even if I did, I’m so connected to the whole thing, I would trust that people would sort of pick up the phone. And I am aware of it. I think that there’s a lesson for all small businesses that I describe, you know, small businesses versus big businesses, a bit like boxers, you know, and I think, you know, the corporates are the super heavyweights, the start-ups are the flyweights. Now, I don’t think the corporates know the power of their punch.
30:00 I don’t think they deliberately set out to annihilate small businesses. What they don’t realise is one cancelled order could basically bankrupt the small guy. And so the thing that small businesses need is a champion, an advocate. And they should think of that champion as a fire alarm. So what you want in the event of fire is not somebody who’s really senior. So everybody thinks that they need a director or the CEO to be behind them.
30:27 It’s not what you need. In the event of fire, you need somebody who’s going to shout really loudly. That’s what’s going to save you. And if you’ve got somebody there, I’ve helped encourage some start-ups directly into Telefonica before I was doing WIRR. Inevitably, unfortunately, things went wrong.
30:47 I was able to protect those small businesses and got things put right again. And nearly always when that happens, when you actually get through to the person at the very top of that chain or whatever, when you explain to them what’s happened, they I never even knew, because if you’re a telefonica or a Microsoft, you’re used to dealing with like a Nokia, you know, and you’re not used to dealing with a guy who employs three people. So you know, it’s sometimes, and I think that, you know, there’s a lot of talk about this.
31:24 I went to a political thing and they were saying, you know, terrible corporates not doing enough to support small businesses and they should do more with more small businesses. They’re fundamentally not engineered to. They’re engineered to go and hammer out a corporate deal with Google, do you know what I mean? Yeah, and keep their market share. I mean, we always knock into innovator’s dilemma here and why it exists and why it will exist forever.
31:49 Do you think, before you go Colin, do you think the wrong incubation can kill a company? Not delay it, but just kill it. I think actually that’s a very good question, sometimes it should. So our job is not necessarily to define the destiny of a company, but it’s to help get them to that destiny quicker. Now fail fast is not a bad thing and if that was basically an unviable business, helping them and supporting them, particularly supporting them financially through that process to explosion, you know, sometimes that’s okay, in my view. Where I think, you know, do some accelerators or incubators have the wrong methodology? Absolutely. I’ve spoken to several who talked to me about, you know, their theory, and I’m amused by some of it, you know. I can’t see how you can, our programs are really quite long, chronologically.
32:46 One year or more? Well, we’re moving to a cycle of rotation every four months, but the idea is to extend. So if you’re a really good start-up and you’re meeting a milestone, we’ll extend you from four to eight months, and then from eight to 12. So the idea is we’re trying to get people to a long period, but frankly, if they don’t meet the milestone sooner, then we can park company quicker. But typically, we’re working with these guys for probably the best part of nine months currently is our current average in Europe.
33:18 But there are startup accelerator programs out there that are three weeks. And Christ, we’d better even get to know them in three weeks, let alone accelerate them. That’s short. That really freaks me out when I hear about these programs. And that’s why I worry about some of the other programs, because we are very much a location-specific program, because we’re very participative.
33:43 You’ve got to be there. So unless you’re there, you can’t get the benefit from it. And then you’ve got to be there, and it’s like a long time period, because we want to really grow your business. And that’s the decision we’ve made. Now, I’m not saying it’s the right choice, and I’m not saying that other people can’t do it in other ways, but there’s a real logic to how we got to where we got to.
34:02 So anybody that says, right, well, we’re virtual. Instantly, I’m thinking, well, how are you going to get all the cross-fertilization, cross-pollination of your talent from peer to peer? They’re not physically in a room. How do you make that happen? It’s possible, but it’s harder, right?
34:16 And if you’re only gonna do it once a week for six weeks, how are you gonna get that exchange? So we’ve come at this from a point of view of what we think is the most appropriate methodology. What’s great about having 14 is if we only had one, we could only evolve our program at the rate of one. But we have 14 all led by amazing people. So we’re actually evolving and iterating wire at a rate of about 20.
34:44 So the problem I have is keeping up with the damn thing. Sounds like a busy day. What did I miss, Colin? Yeah, you guys invest 40,000 euros. Do you ever think that’s just not enough?
34:56 And that, you know? It’s deliberately not enough. Right. So we invested quite a lot more at one point. And I thought about it hard, and we debated it a lot harder.
35:05 And ultimately, my thought was it’s enough to get rid of the obstacles that might prevent you from joining Wira, but it’s not enough for you to live off. So the idea is you’ve got to come preconditioned to having either you’ve either decided to compromise your lifestyle and only live off baked beans, or you’ve got savings, or you’ve got a friend and family investment, or you’ve got an angel investor, or you’ve got revenue. But if you haven’t got one of those five things, you’re not gonna survive the time.
35:38 So we’re looking for people who figured that out and are on it. That doesn’t mean they have to have solved it, but they need to be on it. So is that why they’re older, typically? I guess, I guess.
35:54 It’s a self-selecting thing. I don’t want people who rock up, hey, let’s start a startup, because it’s like they haven’t got a job, basically. That’s the wrong motivation, you know, I want people who are, you know, made a life decision to pursue a dream. It is a danger these days, and I find myself, even the more shows we do, is that a lot of people we meet a drink about, it’s like, it’s the new rock star, you know, I wanna do a startup, it’s gonna do this, it’s gonna do that, look at the exits, and then you visit them, and Colin and I have, and you realize, it’s a grind, man.
36:24 It’s grind, it’s a stressful, you don’t know where your payroll’s gonna come from, you know, you’re living off savings. It’s hard, it’s really hard. the vast majority are going to fail. The mortality rate at early stage is just ridiculous. But it’s ridiculously hard work.
36:41 It’s not just a bit hard work. Why would anybody do this? It’s just nuts, right? But it is amazing. And what I think, we’ve got the best opportunity on Earth right now.
36:53 There’s never been more opportunity than there is right now. And that’s why it’s so exciting. What I see in our cohorts is it’s not just collaboration. These are comrades who are fighting to change the world. And absolutely, my passion isn’t necessarily for entrepreneurs or for startups, it’s world changes.
37:11 And that’s what I’m saying. And I think that that’s the, if you’re compelled to do anything, I’m compelled to help them do that. And actually, it’s nothing to do with the money, if the truth be known. Yeah, the energy is infectious. It’s like why we started this show, because it’s really hard once you go to some of these events.
37:29 It’s just nice to see people excited and change. And I always joke with Colin, it’s like you meet people that enjoy their jobs, which is rare. So it’s like, it’s refreshing. I was wondering, I mean, I looked at your 10 startups and it’s everybody from genomics to job skills, to skin analysis. And you mentioned that one of your, the reasons you’re going to succeed is that you have the whole telephonic enterprise, but do you find yourself trending towards one way or another?
37:53 You know, obviously we know Fintech’s big in London. and something comes a lot on this show, doesn’t look like you’re looking to specialize that. Is it something that ultimately leverages Telefonica’s assets? So at the moment, we’re really generic in air calls. So digital, but can be really eclectic.
38:09 What I love about the cohorts is there are always surprises. Unfortunately, that’s both good and bad news, so. You say cohort, you’ve got to describe the cohort. Cohort’s the group, it’s the group. It’s like a semester, if you like.
38:24 It’s like, at the moment, they’re coming in, in bands. So we have like, you know, 10 teams have just joined WARA Unlimited, and that’s at cohort. Okay, land. They say language is everything. And you call your place as academy.
38:37 Academies, yeah. It’s very important, language is a cohort. So there’s a group. It’s a group of 10. It’s a group out there.
38:43 10 different startups, okay. So what’s amazing about them, and part of this is joyful, the other part of it is heartbreaking, is you can’t help when you get to know them to form an opinion and have your own view. You want to love all of your children equally, but it’s just inevitable. Some you think are rockstars and others you think, well, that’s not gonna work. What’s incredible is in the journey, always without exception, there are some that literally swap those counts.
39:11 And they go from rockstars to maniacs and completely implode. And you got other ones, I’ve got this one team who are incredible, to very unassuming guys who talk about what they’re doing. And then you ask them, so who’s your competition? And they say, Microsoft and Google. And you think, oh God.
39:35 And then they show you what they built and you think, actually, they might have just done it. And literally the investors queue up outside there. We call them a pod. So they’re at the home that they’re in. Investors, after a while, you see two or three investors hanging out and then the others see that.
39:51 And then they form a bet for Q. And you think, these guys are definitely on to something. And what they’re gonna do, it’s called Heria, it’s in Dublin, and they’re gonna transform corporate email. And they really are gonna transform corporate email. I’m sure of it.
40:04 Good, it needs a transformation. Email seems like it’s stuck in the dark ages, right? Totally, totally. Yeah, it’s like this list. It’s just not intelligent.
40:12 You know, it’s not personal anymore, I find. It’s got my name on it when you email it to me, but then it’s just, that’s all that happens. It’s not like, okay, well, you’re actually gonna care that one and not about this one. If you had to, say God forbid you got sacked tomorrow and you had a non-compete and you can’t do what you do anymore, I don’t mean this in a bad way, and we gave you some capital to go start your own business, what’s the sector that you find very exciting right now and be specific as you can? Yeah, I’m very lucky I have a multitude of interests outside of Telefonica and Outside Wire and recently my portfolio has just grown in the last three weeks. I’ve taken the decision a while ago to kind of stand down from some of my long-standing commitments and I’ve taken on some new ones and there are various reasons for that.
41:06 Commitments as in like board members or? Yeah, so I’ve taken four new board appointments just in the last couple of weeks. And you’ve gotten rid of some? Yeah, I’ve stood down from a few, which is a very difficult thing to do. So in terms of answering your question, you know, the areas that really interest me, I’m fascinated by technology, particularly the digital economy and the revolution that it brings.
41:28 I think that it’s the most profound thing to have happened in the history of humanity. I think it’s more profound than the industrial revolution. I think it’s not yet commonly understood. I think that we will look back at this era and this time and we’ll realise how incredible the changes are that are happening and some of those that interest me most are really passionate, for instance to be really specific, driverless car technology. I think it will change our lives immeasurably. People stop at the incredulity of being in a vehicle that doesn’t have a driver and they don’t go beyond that but But it’s going to change absolutely everything.
42:11 Why would you bother even owning a car when you can summons one at your beck and call? Traffic is such an inefficiency. What’s the drag on GDP in London of just traffic? Inefficient movement of cars. And then it’s not just that though, is it?
42:27 All of the infrastructure behind it, traffic lights and everything else, become completely irrelevant. The parking, in my street, we cleared the street for the Jubilee last year and we realized that we’ve actually got a motorway down our street because we have two lanes that are just full of stationary vehicles. So every house that’s got between 20 and 40 thousand pounds worth of idle acid just sat there doing nothing. Why would you have that? So new economy is going to be built, not only in the creation and maintenance of those vehicles and how that’s going to work, the repurposing of all our parking and car parking facilities and car parks and all the rest of it, even the repurposing of petrol stations, why would you bother going to a petrol station when the car can go and fuel itself? You wouldn’t bother, you know. So, you know, and I love the idea of claiming back those residential streets and greening them and enabling our children to play on them. Do Do you know, in Britain, something like, is it 9,500 people a year are critically injured in motoring accidents?
43:31 You know, you think about all the medical costs that go related to that. These cars are going to become literally uncrashable and I mean it, you know, the mortality is going to become microscopic. And thermal countries is tripled. Sure. I drove around China.
43:47 And I think India last year had about 130,000 deaths. That’s what I think of medicine. Terrible. So people think about, oh, golly, there’s going to be nobody in my car, but it’s going to change our lives. So if you think about what’s happened in the music industry, where digital music has become almost worthless, but then you look at the value of the live performance, because you can’t freak the live performance, right?
44:14 So people now pay, a friend of mine just paid 150 quid to go and see Rod Stewart. I think the same is going to happen with conversations. We currently have all these different devices and we currently call one a mobile phone and another a tablet and another a television, but the reality is my television in my front room now can pretty much do everything my mobile phone can do. So why are we calling it those different things? Just screens, different sizes.
44:40 If you can have an intelligent conversation with anybody, anywhere, anywhere in the world at any time. And I don’t just mean the people in your phone directory who you know, but also the connectivity, you know. I can’t believe there’s so many people following me on Twitter and that kind of stuff, and they have immediate access to me 24 hours a day. It’s going to change the conversation. So what that then means is who you choose to be with right now is going to become exponentially even more important. It’s going to become the equivalent of the concert ticket, and I think, you know, so what we’re gonna see is with three-dimensional, with 3D printing, you’re gonna see a complete transformation in the aviation industry.
45:24 You know, I think it’s incredible, the debate that’s being had in London right now about, you know, the possibility of another runway. We don’t need to be predicting and planning for, you know, a doubling of air traffic. We need to be planning for 100-fold. My colleague Ann Parker, who helped build WARA, has just yesterday landed in Australia for her new life to build incubators and accelerators for Telstra out there. It took her almost a day and a half to fly there.
45:57 In the future, we’re going to be flying to Australia in four hours. It’s the Hyperloop thing? Well, it’s not just that. It’s the fact that if you think about aviation, The plane weighs so much, and it burns so much fuel just physically getting in the air. But if you can 3D print it, you can cut that weight to a fraction of its current weight.
46:16 When I was a kid, as cars evolved, they were really notable. When Ford launched the next Cortina, it was a big deal. And also, when the registration plate changed, it was a big deal. You’d look out for the new license plate. We just had a new license plate this week.
46:32 You got any idea what it is? I have no idea what it is. Have you seen what it is really? But the new Dreamliner is going to fundamentally affect jet lag. So we went from eight-hour flight causing significant impact on personal welfare to an eight-hour flight not having a significant impact.
46:52 We’re going to be as interested in the next plane technology as we were when I was a kid in the next Cortina. Now, you know, the Delta, the incremental improvement on cars is tiny. When I had a Ford Fiesta, when you hit a hill, it literally slowed down. Now Ford Fiesta, it costs you £2, they go 120 miles an hour, they have air con, central locking, sat nav, MP3 players and God knows what else in them. It’s really, it’s incredible and they all drive like Ferraris. So I think we’re going to see just the fundamental change in how we live our lives and I think I might see that in my lifetime but I know for certain my children absolutely well and you know I remember the impact that iPod had on music.
47:48 I think we’re about to see the same transition happen to for instance cash you know keep some it’s a souvenir because it’s not going to be around for much longer. If the technology companies applied the same endeavor to cash as they did music, it would be obsolete. Not in our lifetime. It would be obsolete by 2016. A lot of young people don’t carry cash.
48:12 Like the whole concept of leaving the house with money, which my grandpa always taught me. They’re like, whatever. It’s my debit card. It drives me crazy. I was wondering if you could tell us one of the failures at Wira and why it failed and why that won’t happen again.
48:26 I mean, you were a new company, Jesus, 14, 16 months ago. Did you get anything wrong? Oh, golly, man. The list is too long. And I think this is one of the real problems with entrepreneurialism within a corporate.
48:42 Corporates tend to like everything to be done brilliantly and to perfection. Let’s be really clear. The Wire Europe team is three people. It’s me, Maureen, who’s my EA, worked with me for years. and one other person.
48:57 So I’ve currently got somebody on secondment. We don’t have armies of people. So that means that we’re choosing very carefully the most powerful action that’s going to move wire and our businesses and our book value forward. And there is a ton of things we’re not doing, a ton of things. And if my corporate colleagues came in and lifted the lid on it, I’m sure they would find all sorts of reasons to complain at me about the deficiencies that I have.
49:25 And I think that’s an uneasy tension. I’m confident that we’ll get there, and I don’t want it to sound like we’re in absolute freefall chaos. But this is a difficult thing to do. And we are evolving and learning. And we’re a startup ourselves.
49:42 Yeah. Would it ever spin off? Wouldn’t you, Harry, ever spin off and get your own VC funding? When you said we’re talking to VCs, I thought YRO is talking to VCs. You know, I see you talk about that huge gap.
49:53 And as you have this alumni, and they’re looking for funding and you know them you already are invested in them and you have you know a massive telefonica in the background potentially be a series A for a lot of these guys. I think listen this is my personal opinion I’ve not got any indication from telefonica I cannot imagine wire staying in telefonica indefinitely it just doesn’t it doesn’t fit in my head you know this current kind of if you like a renaissance in accelerators actually there are lots of lead indicators that have gone before there was a massive corporate venturing movement about 10 years or so ago 10 15 years ago every big corporate had a venturing division many of them spun out you know I think the same thing will kind of inevitably happen I think I don’t see it happening in the immediate future but I do see it happening longer term and I think it would be a good thing and I hope that it doesn’t happen with a complete suffering of the connection and value exchange that exists between wire and telefonica. I hope that we can always maintain that. But we have to affect change because for loads of reasons. I got asked twice yesterday, how am I remunerated publicly in front of big audiences?
51:14 So you have to tell the truth. Yeah, well, I’m saneried, you know, and to a lot of people it just doesn’t work, you know, if I’m passionate about the book value of our investments then, you know, logic sort of says I should put my money where my mouth is and be remunerated against that book value. But I’m not, and that kind of methodology right now doesn’t fit with, you know, if I went to the corporate HR team and said, you know, let’s do that then, they kind of scratch their heads and say, well, that’s not how we do things around here.
51:44 So I think the longer term it will go, and in terms of my biggest failings, my biggest failing was the euphoria of building the first academy. Everybody said that it would take approximately 18 months and we did it in 100 days, including the launch of the actual programme and selecting the start-ups. Where was the first one? My first one was London, so the very first one was in Columbia. My first one was London, and it was incredible.
52:14 We had a monster of pressure, which was the Olympics. We wanted to get out pre-Olympics. We opened the doors, great, all these amazing startups who I thought were the best ones ever. And then I thought, Christ, now what do we do? And literally it’s like, Carly, what do we do now?
52:33 Now I’ve got to accelerate them. And, you know, bless them, they forgive me all my, you know, deficiencies and all the rest of it. And we learned together, and they helped craft the very first program that I was responsible for. And now, I think we’ve really nailed it. But, you know, it’s a, yeah, it’s a constant, it’s a constant journey.
52:54 You know, we always hear that people in London compare themselves against Silicon Valley, Silicon Alley, and they would talk about a complaint that London hasn’t had exits that they’ve had in the Bay Area and therefore those founders haven’t reinvested the capital into other things, the PayPal effect and all that stuff. You have a unique perspective because you see Latin America too, you’re not just in London, but what do you think about that? Is it taken too far sometimes?
53:21 I think it’s a lot of validity to it. Let’s be really clear, Silicon Valley has got some amazing successes under its belt and in many ways what we’re doing is trying to replicate their success. We describe ourselves as trying to create Silicon Valleys all over the world. We’re trying to prevent people from feeling compelled that it’s their only option, their only life choice is to go to California, that it’s viable for them to incubate their business indigenously in a country where they’re from.
53:50 And I think that I’m curious to see the effect that that’s going to have. I think that could be really quite colorful. What happens when a social network is born in Buenos Aires? You might look and smell completely different to one born in the States, but your point is well made, you know, we haven’t had those Remarkable exits and I think that a major part of that in Europe is because we’re not yet a united Europe We’re still very fragmented. So in America, you know when they really get their shoulder behind a business boy Do they do it? Well, I mean they’ve got hundreds of millions of customers and who all speak the same language and all You know embrace it, but over here everything is fragmented and in fact many of the startups in my view in Europe are mistaken In their endeavor by just simply copying and creating a local me to version of a bigger entity I understand absolutely their strategy They’re thinking methodology and often it’s because they they think if they crack it they’ll just instantly be bought But actually what we’re all we’re doing is fragmenting the market even further So, what we’re not getting is the natural escalation that you see in America where these companies go from being small to big to huge, you know, in Europe they kind of do something interesting and then they stop.
55:07 Right. Because they can’t scale the same way. They can’t scale. And it’s… And actually scaling is more important than starting.
55:13 So I think that there are more jobs, more… It’s a corner of the episode. Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s…
55:20 You know, I think more economy is generated from scaling up than starting up. And I think in Europe, we’ve got to find better mechanisms that generate vast scale more quickly. And it could be as simple as language translation. It could be as simple as currency. I’m not sure what it is, but right now, I think that bit in Europe is broken.
55:40 We’ve had a few startups that walk on out, and they’re like, yeah, we’re launching our German site. It’s got to be in German. We got to go to Munich. And it’s like, Jesus. And it can’t be dot com.
55:49 Do you know what I mean? They want their own .fr. And that’s just one country. I really apologize for the flute, by the way. We all have a bit of it.
55:58 Before I hit him with the advice question, Colin, does anything I missed, any gaping pieces of this story that we’re not covering? No, I think, you know, essentially, wire is collecting a ton of data, too, about startups. And I think that’s a really interesting thing. So maybe that’ll lead into the advice question about what are you seeing sort of common themes of success and failures of the different people and companies that are going through WYRA? So, I think on the successes side, in terms of valuations, the area that seems to be generating the most interest and the strongest valuations is in the space of identification, security in e-commerce. And there is a clear, you know, that’s rapidly sort of emerging itself as a giant, frankly. So very well-intended startups with great entrepreneurs who are doing something much more eclectic and representative of themselves aren’t getting anywhere near what those guys are doing. Is that security in e-commerce or just pure e-commerce?
57:04 Really it’s a blend of those things and what I love about that is the opportunity for Telefonica to really add a new level of input and value into that so for instance Apple have made a lot of noise with their biometric stuff the fingerprint technology whatever but theoretically your device you know it knows where you said you were gonna be according to your diary it could know all your banking details and everything else, but the one bit that we can add into that that nobody can easily frig today is your proximity, possibly between your devices, and the proximity of those devices relative to our mobile mast. So you said you were going to be in Barcelona. Are your devices in Barcelona or not? And I think that kind of stuff is quite interesting.
57:58 We’re not actually mining that yet, all the stuff we’re seeing is other more inventive solutions than that. Your phone is always within this proximity of your laptop, right now it’s two miles away. It’s a good secondary security check or something. The whole notion of quantified self, so at the moment we’ve got Fitbit and technology that’s helping people to improve their lives and their well-being, but actually the data that’s coming out of that could actually establish patterns that you are typically on a train at this time of day.
58:33 So if somebody’s trying to transact your card in Glasgow, it’s probably not you. So we could use those metrics for people’s advantage and I think that that’s something that’s got a huge amount of potential. The other one is in London we have a team called Norato and they are all about quantified self and they’re taking that to another level again. So it’s not just the kind of stuff you saw with the Nike wristband, it’s really taking a holistic view of all of your data and mapping that out again for your advantage.
59:07 Okay, I’m hitting you with the advice question. Everyone has answered this question. So I’m gonna ask you, if you could make a phone call to the 20-year-old Simon and give that young man a bit of advice, what would you tell him? There’s a scene in Little Miss Sunshine that should pay great attention to him. Yeah, pay attention to all that.
59:27 But apart from that, I don’t know. I mean, to the younger version of me, I’d say go and find Mrs. Devonshire sooner, because that was a good move. Punching so much by my way, it’s unbelievable. It’s good to feel that they’re always in a relationship.
59:46 Yeah. Shiching, those are some points being counted there. I can’t. She’ll never see this. What are you saying?
59:54 I don’t know, I think, so I’m really lucky, right? So I’ve achieved, I’m 197, constantly telling everybody I’m 27, but it’s not working anymore. I’ve achieved more in my life than I ever imagined possible. So I’m pretty cool with that. I think in terms of
1:00:16 Two younger people generally, it’s funny, O2 have got this advertising campaign called Be More Dog. I was just unbelievably hungry, you know, I started off as a runner. I had no qualifications nothing for who I Started for a family-run marketing advertising agency. Okay, and my job was to deliver artwork in London And I just worked my way up through the advertising industry until I got to the point of running an agency pretty much and You know, I worry that the kids just don’t have that hunger. I’m not saying that they all need to aspire to be Zuckerberg and to create startups that isn’t the point you know just really apply yourself unreservedly and I’ve always been really lucky I’ve always known what I wanted to do so I always wanted to be marketing that’s the start point and I think having that focus was really helpful so I’d say be really really focused. Be the dog is that the marketing? Be the dog. Be the dog. Be the dog. Be hungry. Be ready to be hungry and be ready to take some lumps and do some things you don’t want to do like run all day. Just go for it. Everyone has to start somewhere. I think a lot of kids now that you meet they just think they’re gonna sort of skyrocket into a successful startup. It’s just like it does happen but a lot of the time you got to work for free places you have to learn the ropes and you have to just network and meet contacts. I love air-cooled vehicles but what happened
1:01:43 And when young people just felt entitled to have a Porsche, that didn’t happen when I was their age. And I kind of sense that now, I think. Do you not think that? Now we sound like grumpy old men. Colin and I say this all the time, and I noticed it with the gen me or gen we or whatever the gen it is right now.
1:02:02 Yeah, this whole self entitlement, like, oh no, I should be doing this now. And maybe I’m remembering my past in the wrong way, but I was like, I put in the time, I took the lumps, I took all, You’ve got coffees for people, you know. Brian and I are both from, I used to be a currency trader and Brian was derivatives trader. So I find in the finance industry too, you really, if you’re young like that and you step onto a trading floor thinking you’re more than you are, you just get shot down so unbelievably fast.
1:02:29 So it’s kind of, it’s a good training ground for a camp being hungry and you just, it just doesn’t work. You’ll get kicked off that floor so fast if you think you’re above some of the other guys. Yeah, good. Well, you actually answered the third part of the advice question, which was advice to the 20-year-old. So that is good advice.
1:02:47 What’s the best advice you’ve ever received? Oh, golly, over the years, it’s so much it’s hard to recall one specific bit. But the one that I’ll really focus on is when we created One Water, we beg, stolen, borrowed from everybody to help us do that and we had a… What is One Water? One Water is a brand of bottled water that we sell in the western world to fund, it’s a not-for-profit, we fund the creation of water wells in Africa.
1:03:31 We just started in 2004, we generated and donated more than 8 million, which I think is provided clean water for more than 2 million people, and we just, last week, Duncan got listed in, Duncan Goose who runs it, he’s a legend, he just got listed in Starbucks in the UK, which is awesome. So, you know, it’s been a rollercoaster, but it’s had some amazing highs. And we’ve worked with some incredible people, and the first label designer was a friend of Duncan’s, and he said, he did everything pro bono, and he said, why do you do that?
1:04:09 Because I get to hang out with some really cool people and meet some amazing people. And then later on in that journey, I got to have a couple of one-to-ones with people who who I’ve regarded as lifetime legends, people that you can’t imagine you’re ever going to meet, let alone sit down in a room and just have a private conversation with them. And so he told me what his motivation was and I sort of really took it to heart and it became true for me too. So I’m really into that kind of just give unreservedly and you’d be amazed what you’d kind of get back.
1:04:48 Advice. What was the scene in Little Miss Sunshine? It was when their granddad is in the back of the camper and he says to his grandson, you’ve got to fuck a lot of women.
1:05:02 I think it was a metaphor. I just hasten to add. He had the best lines in the movie, man. That was a really good movie. It was the way he repeated it every time he repeated it.
1:05:10 His son’s just had his head in his hand and it was just the whole chemistry. I’m gonna go watch I can’t I mean, I love that movie comes on you can’t watch enough How do people get in touch with you if they want to be part of where do they have to wait until the annual cycle? Is it a four-month cycle? Do you make exceptions? We don’t make exceptions. So everybody has to go through the application process, but we do Really try and help people through it. So That process, you know can be quite biased deliberately because what we found is that people who we connect with, you know But guess what, they somehow, they are more determined, they’re more committed, they go the extra mile to find their way into the Fernando from Higher Life.
1:05:52 Every gig I went to is at the back of the room waving at me. I was thinking, how did that guy do that? I have no idea how he did it. And so we actually really embrace and encourage that. It’s really easy, we’re very accessible, and the amazing thing is Twitter.
1:06:07 So before I started this, I started in January 2012, never been on Twitter before. started using Twitter. And the London scene is especially good. Oh, now we’re seeing it in every country. Follow us at Waro UK.
1:06:20 And we tell people what we’re doing and when we’ve got events. And you can just ask to come up and, you know, can I attend this event? Or we host occasionally external events. So tonight we have the Institute of Direct Marketing in. Follow them and ask them if you can come.
1:06:35 And come and hang out, talk to the entrepreneurs, find out whether, Don’t listen to whether or not I think it works. Talk to the people who are in the program, and they’ll tell you whether or not they like it or not, and then you can make an informed decision about whether it’s right for you. Get to know the team, get to know Charmaine and Tom and Toby and Alex and the people who actually run the building, who are there all the time, and go hang out with them, and that way, kind of get in.
1:07:04 And you can follow me as well, but I’m all over the shop. What’s your Twitter address? I have two. So I have at Simon Devonshire, which is interesting because that’s my name. And I have another one, which is at Tall Man Business, which is the name of my blog.
1:07:19 OK. That’s where I impart slightly more than 140 characters of stuff about the digital economy and changing the world, world changes, and how to run a successful startup. Quick question on the people getting hold. What stage of startup do you guys look for? So really early stage.
1:07:37 So we say, typically we used to say less than two years old, less than 100,000 euros invested. The truth is that line is blurring now and we are taking some much more established startups. We will take individuals but we tend not to, we tend to choose teams. If you come in as an individual, your first job will be to recruit a team. So we’re really looking for people who’ve got the capability of realizing their vision.
1:08:13 So they’ve got a plan, they’ve got an idea, and they’ve between them got the resources to actually manifest that, and that’s really important. But it could be just a piece of paper, and certainly some are pre-alpha, some pre-beta, some are in trial but pre-revenue, and the milestones we set are all about moving them on. Is there a formal process? Do you have that annual cycle? I know you just…
1:08:39 Yeah. We’re about to launch. So watch us any day now. We’re going to open up the next call. So Twitter’s a great way to follow when the calls are open.
1:08:48 And then the call process is all via our website. And it’s not onerous. It does require commitment. It doesn’t take days, but it does take a few hours. And we do…
1:08:58 It’s a bit of a pain in the ass. Things like there’s a bit of video required. say, you know, do you really select on that? I’m not sure we do, but what’s interesting is about the teams that get in all happen to have brilliant videos, you know, so it’s kind of, do you know what I mean? It’s things that are there for a reason and they do help us to filter. So you’ll start looking now for next year’s class. Absolutely. And you’ll decide by March, by June, by… So this particular, the next cohort will, the current plan is open the call literally within the next a few days, so that will happen imminently.
1:09:35 I think we’ll close that call and judge it pre-Christmas, and we’ll probably get the new cohort in the new year. So it is every four months? You’re following that cycle? Yeah, I think we’re gonna start to get there, yeah. Okay.
1:09:49 Awesome. Yeah. That was good. Does that work? I’m happy.
1:09:54 I’m happy. I’m very happy. A few. Any Silicon Reelers, on Twitter, we are at Silicon Reel, if you wanna follow us, And anything else we gotta tell people or what? Yeah, guests keep sort of recommendations and we’re looking for interns, we need help.
1:10:08 We got 13, this is our 13th episode. Each episode more takes a little bit more time to our back catalog, so we’re looking for help, looking for guys to help us as we grow as a startup and hit us on Twitter. Yeah, hit us up on Twitter if you wanna do some business development for us, part-time or full-time, we can talk about it. I mean, it’s a fun whole thing to be a part of Silicon Real And we’re just looking for partners. We won’t be grumpy old men all the time.
1:10:32 No, we will be a little bit, though. But yeah, so hook us up there. If you’re listening to us on iTunes, you can come watch the show on YouTube. It’s the channel, Silicon Real. And yeah, this is all about the scene.
1:10:44 So please tell us who you want to see. Guess wise, we’ve had a lot of founders, CEOs. We’re going to have some startup people in. We’re going to have some people that are just starting. And we still want to get a failure in.
1:10:53 You still want to have someone who’s just declared bankruptcy and just see what’s going on through their head. So it can’t all be about the success stories. Anyways, as we say, it’s about the people on Silicon Real. Simon, thanks so much for being here. Thank you.
1:11:06 Thank you so much, guys. I really appreciate it. Cheers. Cool. Take care.
