#50 George Robson (Sequoia) : world-class investing

Hi everyone, this is Donate Des d' Anvisy or for non French speakers in the mind of a vc. I am your host, Mehdi Benjelun. I'm currently working at Hardcore Capital, a consumer fund in Europe and I'm hosting this podcast and today it is an honor because I'm absolutely thrilled to have with me George from Sequoia, one of the European partners in Europe. We're going to talk about the Sequoia story around building a presence in Europe, their superpower as a firm with their multi decade legacy. But also, and I think you might be very, very interested in that is George's background, how he got to Sequoia and what he's been learning so far. So. Hi George, how are you?

Mehdi, it's such a joy to be here and I think you're doing an awesome job with the podcast. Thank you for having me.

Thank you so much. Thank you so much. You're too nice. Thank you so much for taking the time to be with me today. And I think I want to start with this. You know, Sequoia has been one of the most important fund in the history of technology. Currently manages a lot of investment funds in the US but also in India, Southeast Asia and China and now in Europe since 2020 when they hired Luciana to lead it. Luciana Chandra was founded in 1972 in Menlo Park, California by Dan Valentine. And let's say it's amazing investments, including Apple, Google, Oracle, LinkedIn, just to name a few, Instagram or WhatsApp. But the real question, and I want to first start with that, is how did you become a partner at Sequoia at such a young age? I think you're 26, that's impressive. How did that happen?

I appreciate that. I mean, it feels like this is a next chapter of sorts, but in many ways not really. What I mean by that is, so I grew up in the uk. I studied at LSE here in London, which is where we've set the office up. And I mean, when I was at lse, I was thinking quite deeply about what I wanted to do with my life. I think, as a lot of people are when they're students, when they're growing up. And as part of that, I pushed out and tried lots of different things while I was studying for six 12 month projects, really over the three years I was at LSE, ranging from things like working on a US presidential campaign, setting up an accelerator with a few of my friends. Yeah, yeah, Kickstart, exactly. Which I still work with today. And through those experiences, just getting introduced to lots of different people across different ecosystems, with different types of work, etc. And the kind of output of that really is. I was actually on a panel with Kickstart in my final year and I started on that panel. I was basically Revolut were there in their early stages, a kind of seed stage business, one of the co founders, and that's when I first heard about that product, heard about the business and what they were building. And I was introduced to venture backed companies for the first time. The growth that comes with that. The fact that for a business like Revolut, it's a team of outsiders, really, at least outsiders to financial services, who are going out to really try to change the world's largest industry for the better and change how consumers and businesses live their financial lives. And as part of that experience, working with Nikolai, working with the team, seeing founders have this incredible view of the world that they want to try and create through product, through technology, I really just felt like I had to jump on that opportunity and work with that, with that team. And for me, the piece that really took me to Sequoia and the thing that really excites me about what I do now is that actually I think that it's not all that different when you work as a venture capitalist, when you work with founders at that stage in that really it's a privilege to work with people every day that have that scale of that ambition. Right. Who are attacking these large markets with these incredible insights. And the path for me was not so much by design, it was chance that I was working hard, trying to build product, trying to understand fintech here in the EU and build this business. And the opportunity presented itself as a coy, opening their office here to work together. And I think that during the process of getting to know the team, because I'm sure for many people it was the case for me, I maybe knew bits of the brand. I hadn't necessarily met anybody who worked at Sequoia personally at that point in time. So the interview process for me was as much about getting to know the individuals and the culture and the style of working as much as it was just the details of the funds and all that other stuff.

They came to look for you, right?

Yeah, I mean, Luciana absolutely is an amazing first hire in Europe as you can imagine. I'm lucky enough to join the band, of course, but I think the piece which just struck me during that process was how deeply thoughtful and curious this group is. And what I mean by that is that when you think about, I think what Sequoia has done well over the years is it's very much been just focusing on the company building process, thinking about how to take companies from an idea and an incredible insight and a great founding team to building an enduring business in the long term. And I think the piece which really struck me and captured my imagination is that 50 years in technology is an unbelievable time period, right? It's cross platform, it's the emergence of mobile, emergence of the Internet, increasingly serverless technology, it's across geography in the case of Sequoia, because it's working not just in the us the historical joke of Sequoia doesn't partner with companies that they couldn't cycle to. Clearly that's not the case anymore. It's Latam, it's European China, it's India, Southeast Asia and also cross sector. And I think just seeing that curiosity that powers that is just something that I thought was incredibly attractive.

Definitely. And so just to bounce back on what you were previously saying, you are, as you mentioned, working at Revolut in a product role.

Right.

My question is what did you bring from Revolut that today helped you at Sequoia, you know, like what did they find in you except this curiosity and this willingness to work with this amazing team? What kind of skills did you bring with you from Revolut that today helps you at Sequoia from a product side perspective also?

Yeah, awesome, awesome question. So one thing that I think Revolut has done incredibly successfully is when you think about building something like a near bank in the early years, a lot of the functionality you're building around product is what I would call sort of hygiene features. It's things that you need to be able to operate a bank account, sending money in, out, issuing a card, blah blah, blah. Right? All these things. And the reality is that's not what differentiates the business in the long term. The innovation comes later once you have those features in place. And I think that the piece has just been very impressive, frankly, about what has been achieved. There is actually this willingness to go back to first principles as an outsider to really understand the mechanics of how industries work. How does the unit economics work today? Why is it that way? Asking why all the time about these problems and really working often with pretty established legacy partners in an industry to co create a new solution that works better for the consumer, is cheaper, is easier, is faster, et cetera, et cetera. And I think just that level of healthy skepticism for the way the world works is actually an important characteristic of anybody who wants to found a technology company or go on to innovate. Because really that's at the heart of the innovation and that is just an integral part of the culture at Revolut. And I think, I mean secure. It's no different the founders we work with, it's exactly the same. I think the second thing I would say is that Revolut has an incredible way of quantifying performance in terms of how we think about not just KPIs that the teams achieve when they launch products, which can be a combination of business goals, P and L, but also operating goals around engagement and new users and things like that. But actually just this sense of really trying to understand how users are using our product, whether they're enjoying it, what their pains are, quantifying that on a feature level, on a team level, over time. And I just think that level of real, I don't know, sensitivity to the end customer is something that I love and it comes through in the product when you use it. And it's something that I really take with me when I work with my companies in terms of how to build product.

But then imagining that you are currently assessing a company, talking to a founder, do you think that this previous experience with those very important metrics that you guys tracking, your purpose is tracking Revolut gives you an edge at currently assessing the companies as an investor?

So I'd maybe make two points, I think. One is when you think about building a business, there are a few things that need to go right. Obviously you need a great team and you need luck. But when you think about things you can control, you need a mixture of domain expertise, an understanding of your market, and increasingly functional expertise. It might be in product, it might be go to market, it might be data science, it might be engineering, whatever it is that your product needs to achieve it, you need some mix of functional expertise in the team. I think that it helps that I'm able to contribute to the group, the decision making process inside of Sequoia with some of those experiences that I have. I think it also helps actually that we're fortunate enough that many of the colleagues that I work with have worked at some of the most important companies in their sectors at quite critical phases in the development of those companies. And we sort of pull as a team in terms of how we think about evaluating companies, working with our founders to build businesses. We sort of lean quite heavily on the diverse backgrounds and interests inside of the group. And we make sure that actually, especially in a world where Some of these values that are taken from one sector are increasingly being applied in another. For example, like the emergence of SaaS pricing in enterprise, the dominant pricing model with inspiration from consumer. Or conversely, when you think about product led growth for B2B companies, that has a lot of the consumer intuition that we've expected over the years. And actually you can have somebody that worked in a viral consumer product who all of a sudden is able to advise and go to market for an enterprise company for the first time. What an amazing thing. And we can do that because of that cross pollination, but also because we have a lot of that expertise in the group.

That's, that's amazing. So, so you working with Luciana and how many people are you currently based in the London offices in Europe?

So absolutely with Luciana, who's an amazing person. And so the way we set our business up is so it's one team, one dream between the, between Europe and the us Meaning it's the same family of funds. I'm investing across geographies. I work with my US based colleagues. I'm here on the ground. It is Luciano and myself. My partner Matt, he's moving over from the US which is very exciting. My partner Doug, who spends a lot of time here, which is fantastic as well, but really just making sure that we leverage a lot of the insights and experience that we build, not just among the investor group, but actually a lot of the specialist group and the other people who work with us at Sequoia are making sure we can support our European founders.

And so I think it's a new move for a lot of American investment funds to come to Europe. We also see them invest a lot more at the earlier stages than they used to before. How can you explain that? Why did Sequoia, on a global level come to Europe at some point?

Yeah, what an awesome question. So I think the reality is that now is just such an amazing time for the European ecosystem and you can see the interest you have from US based funds is really validation of that and of the scale of the ambition of European founders. And I think that there's a couple of factors that contribute to it. I mean, firstly, just the increasing number of high quality entrepreneurs founders we have here working to build companies of this enduring global scale from Europe, which is really exciting to see that ambition. And I mean our job is, as we've said before, is to basically find founders as early in the journey and support them for the long term. And in reality what that means is, you know, having a team here on the ground so that we can be closer to founders earlier in the journey matters. We want to meet these founders as early as possible and our goal is you want to be part of the very best global companies that will be born in Europe over the next 10, 20 years, working as a team, cross office, making sure we can support that global ambition.

That's super important. And one of the things I think about Sequoia, it's a multi stage fund investing at a lot of different stages. And that's one of the most important thing for founders. I think that when you have Sequoia from the very earlier stages, it gives some confidence for them because they know that probably they will be there at later stages. They're kind of deep pocketed and able to fall and sit at a money level, but also on an operational level. And that's not necessarily how other European funds operate because they don't necessarily have the same amount of funds. So for me that's an edge for funds like Sequoia. And I also wanted to ask you, how do you think that other European investors should react to US funds coming to Europe? And also what are your relationship with, with these incumbent funds that are there from the very early days of the UK ecosystem or the French one or you know, like how do you think that those people think about you and how do you guys live together in the same.

Yeah, great question. I mean, I mean the reality is all of those funds are pillars, right, of the European ecosystem. And you know, we love building our community of co investors, partners that we collaborate with here in Europe, particularly at the seed stage. Right. Given that there are so many high quality seed investors and the market is so big, it's really important for us for Sequoia to be a good partner. We know that the more smart minds we have around the table with the companies we work with, the better. What I would also say is that Sequoia has built its business really focused on partnering with companies as early as possible and for the long term, as you say. And seed is really the heritage of the business and we've been partnering with companies at the idea stage for 50 years and it's not enough for us just to get in at the seed. In practice, what we're trying to do is support companies and double down over the long term. We've set up our fund family to do that. So we have a global growth fund that we invest out of. Over 90% of the investments we've made out of our global growth fund are with existing companies that we're already in business with. And it really is that vision to support companies from idea to IPO and beyond. We do that with many fantastic partners, both European and otherwise, as part of the journey.

Yeah, definitely. For me, that's an edge that you have that other funds don't necessarily have, and that's super important. But also another edge that you have is you say the people, because actually at the end you have the money. But a fund is not more of a partnership. And it's a collective intelligence of different people working all together as partners, but exchanging thoughts and challenging themselves. And so my first. My next question, sorry, is to you, George. You kind of spent some time now at Sequoia since you arrived. What is good investing versus world class investing?

Absolutely. So what a great question. So I say the first thing is we're not passive investors. Right. We're active company builders. We're partners for the founders that we work with. Piece of that is just making sure we hold ourselves to a high bar to continuously innovate in terms of how we think about how we serve our founders. And it starts for us at the C stage because that's where we've been partnering more companies than at any other stage.

You've just announced a new fund, I think.

Right, exactly right. So new fund, continuation of that important strategy which really is the bedrock of our business. And to give an example of some of that innovation, we recently sort of came out of stealth, really having been quietly operating it for a while. A program called our company Design program, which is something that we run. It's kind of a batch program that we run for new Sequoia founders who are joining the portfolio. We run it at kind of the seed stage. We have a series a program and we run some sessions for our. For our growth stage founders. And effectively what this is about is making sure we achieve two things. One is building a community of Sequoia founders, which really comes from a belief that if you think about companies as really just millions of decisions made in a certain order that lead to a certain outcome, the reality is that each of those decisions are not necessarily unique. Right. Thinking about changing your pricing model, should we launch in a new market, should we update the website, what does a VP engineering look like for our team, etc. Etc. The reality is that lots of companies have solved this, not necessarily in your market or in your geography or today. Right. But across time. So making sure that we can lean on the expertise not just from Sequoia itself, so from. From the investors and from the specialists, but actually also from our other Sequoia founders who may be not in your sector, but at a similar stage, or maybe in a similar sector but slightly more mature businesses. So that's the first thing that it achieves, creating a sense of community. But the second piece is just making sure that we can impart some of the knowledge that we as a team have built of having seen the movie before, sometimes in terms of how some of these sectors play out. And what it basically means is we have a multi week program that we run with our founders and we have a curriculum that we've designed, which is often led by either Sequoia founders, sometimes by scouts, sometimes by investors, making sure that we can just share some of these learnings to do anything we can to basically accelerate the business, bend the trajectory of the company and ideally improve their odds of success.

Super, super interesting. So you said that the community was super important and in some way it's just like a flywheel where you see that the more you invest in amazing founders, the more they contribute to other founders. And it's kind of the flywheel that starts that's super interesting. And so if you could say something more than just those two reasons, which are actually amazing, is if you had to choose one, maybe superpower for Sequoia as a firm, what would it be? The thing that other people don't have.

So I think it is a couple of things. I think the way we've set our business up is to be patient and to be active company builders with the founders that we're working with. There are a couple of components to that. One is just having seen the experience across not just platforms, but geographies and sectors. Two, having the structure to be able to support our founders from the earliest stages, from the seed stage, for the long term. I mentioned the point around having our global growth fund, the fact that 90% of those investments are in existing businesses, but I think also just the fact that we're able to stay on the boards of many of our companies, not just up to an ipo, but actually well after they go public. And like there are examples from the partners I work with, companies like Medallia or MongoDB or Okta, where we sit on those boards as public companies, continuing to advise the founders and really recognizing that something like an IPO is really just a point in the journey. And if you think about the headline statement of trying to found category leaders or enduring businesses, it takes time to achieve that. A lot of things need to go right and you need an advisor you can trust who's in your corner to achieve it. And I think just being in a partner to really help founders build the best version of the business they want to build is actually, it might seem obvious and it might seem just part of our work, but actually structurally it's how we think about the best way to support our founders.

I also see vc just like if you take the analogy with football, for example. I see the VC as a coach and the team as a football team.

Absolutely.

How I see it, if we can look at sequoia arrived in 2020, what would you say that the success of the firm looking? I would say three, five years in Europe. How would you manage success for Sequoia?

Yeah, I think it's pretty simple for us actually. I think our goal is we would like to partner with every category leading company that started in Europe in the future and we're building out our team, we're building out our support infrastructure accordingly to support that. So we were doing this in the same way we've done it, for example, in the US where we'll have a small but nimble team here on the ground, where every person makes a decisive impact on the team and on the companies that we work with and also making sure that we can roll out some of the value add services of having our specialist teams that we love who help drive a lot of value for our companies, but also some of the programs and initiatives like the company design program as well.

And on the flip side, what does failure look for Sequoia in three to five years?

So not doing that, I think is the headline thing. I think we want to be known as somebody where if you have Sequoia on your side, on your cap table, working with you as a founder, we are bending the trajectory of your business. We're helping you get there faster with better people, in more markets, with more revenue, whatever metrics you think as a founding team you need to focus on and optimize for, you should believe that Sequoia is there as a great partner to support you in getting that. Cool.

And I understand that that's what you say to your founders when you currently meet them or when you probably invest. If we just go a bit far from that. The moment you actually your own deal flow, you currently do your own. I'm very curious. Like, you know, it takes a lot of time for most partners when they arrived in a certain ecosystem to build their own network to create that deal flow. I know that Seiko AI resonates quite well with the brand, you know, but at some point, for Me, it's more of an asymmetry game. And the category leading company defining company that you're mentioning are not necessarily coming to you directly. You should be able to chase them. Right. And with the Internet, it became way more easy to do that. But you need the key component for that. And that key component is network. And my question, George, is you've arrived at Sequoia in 2020. What was your first steps as an investor? And I think that it would also have a lot of people who want to do VC just to understand how you've managed to create your own network and be able to generate top deal flow from day one.

Absolutely. And you're absolutely right. I mean, when you start in VC and you have a network of people that you may know and have worked with in the past, I'm sure not many of those are investors. Right. Because that's a reality and it can be difficult. I agree. I think that the important piece here is that we opened the office in September. Sequoia has been partnering with companies in Europe for 10, 11 years. So we're fortunate that we already have a great community of founders that we work with here already. Right. But an important piece of the puzzle actually has just been the reception that we've had from the ecosystem having opened the office. So really finding a group of important trading partners for us that we can collaborate with in terms of working with companies. That's the first piece. I think the second piece is our scout program. So you might have seen that we launched a kind of European cohort last year.

Yeah, I was about to ask you about that because I know that Rexen Varza, she told me she was doing something famously known.

So Roxanne, I mean, has been an amazing community leader, obviously in her own right. She's also been awesome for scouts and maybe just to talk a little bit about the idea behind the scout program. So it's actually as much about the community as it is about investing Right. In early stage companies. And what I mean by that is you shouldn't underestimate when you have interesting friends. We all have interesting friends that may work in tech, they may work in sectors adjacent to tech. They see things every day, they talk to people every day, they read things online. There's a lot of inspiration and insight that comes from being surrounded by smart, intelligent people who are curious about the world. And scouts help to achieve that. So it helps deepen our relationship with the seed ecosystem through those relationships. It also allows us as a partnership to really think through some of these problems. With people that are on the ground doing these things. And it also democratizes angel investing really to an extent, and that it allows the next generation of potentially early stage seed investors, people who are interested in angel investing, to whet their appetite a little bit. And I think we've had something like 25 former Sequoia scouts who've gone on to become investors, including three of the Sequoia team who are now GPs, Alfred Lin, Mike Vanow, who currently runs our scout program, and Jess Lee. So it's an important way of us getting to know people, for people getting to know a little bit more about angel investing and also for us just to get inspiration of what is happening in the ecosystem. And once we've done that, it's our job as investors to go out and be curious and to build a prepared mind on the opportunities that exist in a market. The way the world looks today, the way it is evolving, and just to be a little bit more structured in terms of going out and finding businesses and great founders that we think meet that mandate.

Yeah, I completely get it. And also I think, and I want to take you to maybe what's happening at the moment of the investment or at the moment where you currently meet the founders. My first question is because when you arrive in vc, you've been working at Revolut, you've probably read a lot, but I really believe, and that's my conviction, that you must come with a personal thesis. You must come with a thesis of what do you want to invest in. So probably all your sourcing efforts or all your meeting efforts will be headed towards your personal convictions. So before maybe you take me to how you manage relationship with a founder during a call, what's the current things you're looking for while sourcing? What's your current focus of the moment as you're broken thesis, you know?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'll speak a little bit more generally just about some of the things I think really matter when we're meeting early stage founders. And I'll explain a couple of things I'm excited by. So I think as you say, when you think about building a business, it is really a mix of domain expertise, functional expertise, grit and luck. Right? To an extent. And I think that we're all lucky in that we have experiences, a lot of those experiences we've acquired because we just have passions and we end up doing jobs. But actually the best founders are people who watch the world and the way the world works and pick up on little bits of inspiration for things that Are inefficiencies could be different, could be done better. And it's actually that unique insight that we care about very deeply for founding teams that we work with. That is what is your view of the world? How should it be different? How painful is that? Delta? And crucially for the solution that you're proposing to this problem, why should this be solved today? That resonant why now? Is an incredibly important piece of the thesis because there are often enablers of your business that could be to do with new technology. For example, for a business like figma it was really the evolution of browser technology enable people to collaborate through browser for the first time. It would have been very difficult to found the business before that. It might be new platforms, the emergence of mobile, it might be regulatory. You think of a business like Revolut and the crop of companies that came out of that, it was really e money regimes, non banks being able to participate in payments that created this whole wave of innovation. It could be PSD2 et cetera, et cetera. So thinking about what are these structural enablers for your business and why this should be found today versus why couldn't someone have set this up in 2019? And the best companies recognize the need but also recognize the enabler to do it here now, today, right. And really capitalize on the opportunity and to talk a little bit more about things that I'm excited by. I mean I'm obviously incredibly passionate about fintech. I think it's just an important category for all of us. But to be more specific, I mean when you think about the first wave of consumer fintech in Europe, it's been heavily focused on primarily innovation in around banking. Right. And the payments experience you might have with vendors. I think two things that I think are huge opportunities. One is this problem around savings. I think that our generation have very different relationships with money than our parents. I think that historically savings has been about managing downside, it's been about getting security, feeling safe. I think in the future savings will be much more aspirational, it'll be much more goal orientated. I want to achieve things, I want to move money across time and we need new products and structures that service that to make it possible.

If I can just tackle this, I'm super interested in this moment about an industry or if you can call it also a product called price link savings which is actually something that is very famous in the UK. It started back in I think in the 50s and the 1950s just to prevent people from or to allow people to save from war. I currently see a lot of innovations in that space. And so basically what you do is you tell people to save money and at the end you have some reward. It actually works like a lottery. And I think that's. It's a new way to do it. A lot of company, for example, like EverUp in the UK, a lot of other companies in the US, but that's something that is not very present in the uk. I just wanted to talk about that because it resonates quite a lot with what I've currently been reading those past few weeks.

Yeah, I think that is a huge problem to be solved, measured in the hundreds of billions of people to put this money to work. And then something entirely different that excites me, to be honest, is social gaming. I think just people spending time online in virtual spaces, not just playing games, but hanging out and shopping and thinking about acquiring goods and services. And I think that just the evolution in technologies like VR and some of the new headsets that are being released this year, early next year, really bring that into something that is not only more powerful and more accessible because it's cheaper, but increasingly something that developers will build incredible solutions on top of. I'm just very excited as a consumer, never mind somebody working at Sequoia, just to see how that evolves.

Definitely. I've seen quite a lot of companies like that. A company like Quell, for example, it's a mix between fitness and gaming. And you can actually do quite a lot of fitness while playing with your friends. It's a great company. And if you could just take us with you, because I'm super interested in that, on a call, for example, you would have with the founders. So how would that happen? What would be the first question you would ask and what would be, I think the questions you would ask, for example, to learn from them while you have a certain blind spot on their business.

Right.

Because at some point, I think that we as investors are more of a. Yes, we ask questions, but there are a lot of things that founders do, they read, they do on an everyday basis that we're not aware of. And I think that's also during these calls, we have to learn a lot from them. Right. So how do you manage to kind of remove those blind spots to be able to make better decisions. Right?

Yeah, I think it's important to. Obviously, there's a lot of information that you might want or expect as an investor to make an important decision, like partnering with a company. I think in reality, it's important to make sure you weight those data points appropriately. And what I mean, for example, is things like metrics today, right? Things like monetization and revenue. They're evolving. Businesses are very flexible and pragmatic in terms of thinking about how to capture value from their end customer. What really matters is the quality of the insight that the team have into the problem. Some of the structural enablers that I mentioned are things like the why now for the solution. And I often talk a lot with founders about, to be honest, their personal experiences and their journey that has taken them from being a student at university to founding this company today. Because I sort of work on the assumption that there are millions of things we could all be doing with our time. Why is this the most important problem that you want to put time and energy and money right into solving? And there's some reason for that. And my job really is to try and understand where that enthusiasm comes from and why you are choosing to spend time on it. So I look at the personal experience a lot. I look at the insight, I look at the enabler and then really what I care about. And it depends a little bit on the business. But two things. One is the mechanics of the product, how does it work, is it efficient, how is it better? What are your dependencies on third parties, if anything, really understanding that detail. And then second, just evidence. If you have customers of customer love. Right. We would much rather, particularly at the early stage, you have a small number of people who couldn't live without your business or your solution than a large number of people who are indifferent really finding a home within your Personas, within your customer community for your business. And I think that if you can evidence those things, you're well on your way anyway, with or without Sequoia. But it means that we're extremely excited by what you're doing. Cool.

I guess we're getting to the last questions of the podcast and also super thrilled to have you today with me, George. Maybe before we wrap up this episode, I really want to ask you about maybe some more personal questions. I think it has a lot to do also with your journey in vc. You started a year ago, but what would be the most challenge, challenging things for you to do in the, in the next two years to improve as an investor? You know what's. Because you, you have Sequoia and but I think it's also your, your personality, what you read, who you meet. And you know, Covid world, we don't necessarily meet people in real life. So if you don't have maybe the same deep relationship with people that we could have. So it has a lot to do with that. So my question is really, what's the most challenging thing for you to do in the next next two years or three or four?

Yeah, absolutely. So I'm lucky. I obviously have amazing people around me to support me in this, which I'm very grateful for. I think for me, it is a little bit of a mental shift in terms of moving from being on the operating side onto the investing side. And it comes from when you're in a business and when you're managing a team, your job really is to keep the ship steady and make sure that the group remains on track towards achieving whatever common goal, or KPI, you've set out for this time period. And the reality of working in a business is that it can be chaotic. Right. Your job is whatever those obstacles are that are thrown at you to keep the ship steady right at the end of the day. And when you move into investing, the tables turn a little bit because the market moves very quickly. There are lots of exceptional companies being founded, going out and raising capital. And I've really got to learn to lean into this volatility in the market and in these opportunities and the change in control that I have over the timelines that come with when companies want to raise money. I think a lesson that I've learned from that is it is important to leave a little bit in the tank as an investor for short bursts. When you find a company or a founder on insight, that really excites you, because you don't have that same control necessarily over your schedule that you might have in the business, and it's just managing that transition.

And maybe before we really wrap up this episode, if you have maybe one book that is super important to you has helped you, not even on a business side or a VC side, but just as a personal thing. The book you have next to your bed.

Yeah, it was a book that was recommended to me by my partner, Rudolph, which I'm reading at the moment and enjoying, and it's called the Madness of Crowds by Douglas Murray.

So what is it about?

It will give some insights into the way societies are structured, why they're sometimes characterized by conflicts, and also why some of the tendencies that we might have as human beings repeat themselves over time. And it will, I think, put a lot of the stuff we're seeing in the broader market in some of the craziness we've seen over the last couple of years in context. It's very, very insightful.

Super cool. Well, once again, absolutely thrilled to have you on the show. I mean, these are the last episodes of the second season that I currently host and I'm super happy to maybe do the last episodes with you. George, what an immense privilege. Thank you so much for coming to the show and thank you so much for all the people who allowed me to do this with you today. I'm thinking Charlotte, I'm taking Roxanne. So I wish you a very good day and I'll talk to you soon. Bye bye.

Great pleasure. Thank you for having me.

This is the end of this new episode of Inside the Head of a vc or in French, Dans la tete d'.

Inventory.

I hope that you've enjoyed it as much as I did. Thank you very much for our listeners to listen to it and if you like this episode, don't hesitate to subscribe to it so you don't miss the next one. If you liked it, you can rate it, comment it, or share it on different platforms and talk about it with your peers and colleagues and friends, whoever you want.

If you want to know more about

VC and understand what makes this job, you can subscribe to the Baby VC newsletter that is written by the Baby VC Fellows every week on Tuesday. Thank you so much for your loyalty and see you soon for a new episode.