James Wise, Partner @ Balderton Capital

Welcome back to another episode of The Graduate Guide. Today, joined by James. James, welcome to the podcast, mate.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah, so it's a, it's a real pleasure to have you on. You are a partner at Balderton. I think a good place to start is just, what is Balderton?

Yeah. So Bolton Capital's a venture firm. So we invest money in the earliest stages of predominantly technology businesses, but certainly businesses we believe can scale and have global impact. We do that predominantly focused on founders based in Europe. So often they're getting their start out in, you know, London, Berlin, Paris, Manchester, wherever it is. And we help them scale that business, you know, providing them with capital. So that's an investment. But also, we'd like to think providing them with support as well, whether that's through our own experiences, through expertise in talent and HR and legal and finance. And we hopefully support that business to grow to a scale where we can return many times the initial capital that we invested.

And if we go back to the beginning of your career journey, when you were at University of Oxford, is there somewhere you thought you might end up in this world, in this space, or What were you thinking about your career in general back then?

Well, certainly not. I don't think I was aware of venture capital when I was a student, at least. And you know, my career, I've been working probably from the age of like 13. I'm not even sure if I was paid legally at that time, working in local garden center and as a waiter and everything else. So I've had a relatively long work career in many different industries. When I was a student, you know, European venture at least, was a fraction of the size it is today. And so actually, you know, back in sort of the mid-noughties, like 2004, 2005, 2006 kind of era, venture capital in the US was going through quite a tough period. It was post the big dot-com boom. So everyone thought, well, you know, that technology industry's over. There was all these amazing dot-coms in 2000, 2001, massively overvalued, all went public and all collapsed. So everyone thought, well, tech industry is gone. Amazon, I think, was trading at something like, uh, 100th of the price it's trading at today. Um, so we thought that's all over. And Europe never really got going. There wasn't really a technology scene to speak of, um, uh, in Europe or, or UK in the same way. So I wasn't aware of it, and even if I had been aware of it, I don't think it would have been a very attractive place to be.

So what was your, your first step out of university then, and, and why did you make it?

Yeah, so as I said, so I tried lots of different roles before university, right? So I did, you know, all the local job stuff. I grew up in a small town in Cheshire and around Greater Manchester. And one of the roles I really enjoyed was sales. And so I got lucky through a sort of a friend of a friend working at a recruitment firm. And I was doing cold calling sales, predominantly to graduates actually, trying to convince them to get go for interviews and take jobs. And I thought that was— I really enjoyed the job to some degree, but also it was just like a really dynamic, very early-stage company. It was growing fast. And seeing like the little building blocks of this company, and it wasn't small when I joined, but it was really expanding quickly at scale. So I really enjoyed doing that piece. And at the same time, I was building websites. So I built some websites, probably from the age of like 15 or 16, I was building websites. And it, you know, I'm not an engineer. This is like HTML, CSS, Dreamweaver for anyone over the age of 30, was like this program which people use to like design very simple websites. But I was building websites for local companies, right? There was like a University of Manchester laser spin-out, I built their website. And there was like a real, you know, once again, a friend of a family friend who wanted a website for his real estate company. And so, I was doing that. So, I was doing these two things, whereas in this very entrepreneurial dynamic environment, which I really enjoyed, like sales-led, but ultimately it was a small business growing. And also, you know, getting to build stuff, like, okay, not building necessarily with your hands like a mechanic or a mason would, but with code, creating these websites, which people use. It was kind of amazing that you'd think, you know, people go and click on something that you'd put together. And so, the earliest experience I had, what I knew I enjoyed doing was being in that sort of vibrant community and also sort of being hands-on. However, I went to university and in the middle of my university, I did an internship with McKinsey, which is a global consultancy. I actually did it out of their Middle East office. And because I really, what I wanted to do was travel and I couldn't afford to travel. And so, you know, I hadn't taken a gap year or anything like that. And so, I thought, well, one way to travel the world is to do it through work. And I managed to get an internship with McKinsey in their Middle East office. So I spent a number of months with them when I was maybe 20, flying around the Middle East, working on projects there, really interesting, big picture projects, and getting to work in Lebanon, in Kuwait, in Bahrain, in Saudi Arabia, obviously in Dubai, all around that region. So I got this taste of like, well, the small, feebrow startup world was really exciting and building websites was really exciting. But suddenly you're working on these massive infrastructure projects like the Kuwait railway system we were advising on and doing really detailed research, but also thinking about how do you work on a project that could have massive regional impact? And by the time I'd finished university, I sort of convinced myself that actually I really enjoyed that big picture stuff. And so I joined McKinsey straight after university. It helped that they'd given me a job offer and I didn't have any other job offers at the time. So there was a bit of path dependency as well.

Obviously you're a partner at one of the leading venture capital companies in Europe at this point. And I'm curious about those initial roles you were doing, whether that's building websites or working in sales, like you know, more generalist as a consultant perhaps, if those experiences were formative to your outlook as a partner now and, you know, even the investments that you make.

Yeah, so they really are. And I think that, so, you know, you draw on all experiences in life. But I think that if you'd only worked in a large corporate, so if I'd only worked at McKinsey and I worked with some of the biggest technology companies in the world while I was at McKinsey in a advisory capacity, if I'd only had that experience, I think I would really struggle to understand the day-to-day challenges of getting a company going. You sort of, your initial hires, getting people to turn up to work on time, you know, understanding who's performing, who's not performing in a team of 10 and how you manage the personal relationships around that. You just wouldn't have a concept of that because you work for a massive global organization. It just doesn't operate that way. There's an HR department to do that. There's a sales department to help you. There's a marketing department. But if I'd only worked at sort of struggling startups that were sort of frenetic and experimental and trying, you know, trying new things and often failing, I think you'd struggle to understand what does good look at scale, right? So, you know, I've sat on the board of businesses which are, you know, worth billions of dollars. And I sit on the board of businesses which are just getting going. And businesses which employ thousands of people and businesses which employ literally 2 people sometimes when we start. Working with them. And so having a sense of what great looks like, both at the sort of the macro large-scale level and also at the smaller end, I think is really helpful when you're working with businesses on that journey. So I draw on those experiences. But, you know, also venture capital is an industry where you're constantly working with the new, right? Almost by definition, if you want to upend an industry, you you want to completely change the manufacturing industry or the automotive industry or HR SaaS or whatever it is, you kind of have to see something that doesn't exist yet. And there's no experience that prepares you for that, right? That's a curiosity, that's a personality trait rather than sort of anything you can learn through working at a company.

Yeah, I think that curiosity point is actually very interesting when it comes to business or careers more generally. If someone's, you know, maybe curious of what working in VC might be like, what would you say to, you know, to fly a flag of why working in VC is a great industry to be in? And, and how are some, some steps that students could take to actually get into it?

Yeah, so venture is a, it's a very small industry, uh, it's something that people should bear in mind. So, uh, I think we make a lot of noise, uh, certainly over the last decade. I think if you look at sort of Where finance has had possibly the highest points of impact, in the '80s, you could have argued it was stockbrokers because the markets were being massively democratized and equity trading was very volatile. So, they were having a real impact. I think in the '90s, big banks and M&A because all this globalization happened. There was mass capitalism after the fall of the wall. And so, there's loads of big M&A transactions. Probably in the noughties, private equity, there was roll-ups and buyouts and activism. But over the last decade, because of the extreme and rapid growth that, in particular, software companies have seen, venture capital has been a really important part of that story, right? So actually venture capital has, in a way, really blossomed over the last decade. But even today, it's very small. There are probably 1,000 people who work in venture capital in the UK, maybe. So, you know, it is a tiny industry. I reckon there are more rocket scientists in the UK, even though we don't have a spaceport, operational spaceport, than there are venture cap— professional venture capitalists. So I think people have to sort of bear in mind that while we've— the industry has got a lot of press and coverage over the last decade because of this role it's had in helping build software, businesses, it's actually tiny. So, you know, the great news is it's growing. And so more roles are being created. But I wouldn't say your goal, if you're sort of intellectually curious about technology, should just be to work in venture capital. You know, I think when you think about how to plot your career, there's various things you want to lean into. Curiosity is a really important one. And if you're curious about, you know, certain types of things, let's say, new technologies, getting exposure to those new technologies is what you want to do. Venture capital is a great way to do that in certain ways, but there's other ways to do that, right? You can go and work for a startup. You can go— and arguably, if you go and work for a successful startup, it's a much more personally rewarding and also financially rewarding career, right? So if you were one of the early employees at Revolut, you will do incredibly well. I hope at least. We were one of the early investors in Revolut, and, you know, we've seen that journey. But you'll do really well. And so, and the same as if you went and worked for even a large software business in a new field, which is growing. So even if you went to work for Amazon and Google 5, 6 years ago, you know, you would've done incredibly well personally, 'cause I think you would've seen that growth and had those experiences, but also, you know, financially would've been very rewarding. So there are different ways to gain exposure to the things you're curious about. Venture capital is a niche, but it's an interesting niche, and it is one of those ways that you can build exposure to, in that case, sort of fast-growing technology businesses.

So if you're a student that's, you know, they've decided they're not interested in actually working for VC, but they know for sure that they are a founder, they're entrepreneurially minded, and they're they're gearing up to make their first business or they want to start their first project. You said Revolut you were an early investor in. What was it about their team, about their makeup that made them stand out from the rest and obviously go on to have the success that they have? And what advice could you give to students in really making yourself stand out to venture capital?

Yeah. Yeah, so I was in the first pitch that Nikolay and Vlad gave to Balderton. I'm very happy that we supported them and continue to do so. But I think so, so one thing I think people really need to have clear in their minds is that raising venture capital should be a lagging indicator of success, not a leading indicator of success. By which I mean, the goal is to build a globally impactful business. That should be your goal. And if you're a founder and you have a founder mindset, you should have that, that North Star in mind. What is that North Star that you are chasing? It may be that you want to build a business which, you know, is just self-sustaining, right? Which you're passionate about, but you have other passions in life. And this is part of like you building something meaningful, but it's not gonna be your be-all and end-all, everything you do. Absolutely fine, right? I hate the term lifestyle business because it sounds like something you do to relax, right? When actually most lifestyle businesses, incredibly hard work. But, you know, I think there's a very, very, you know, large number of people who probably should be just focused on building a business in an area they enjoy working in to some degree that will, you know, pay the bills at the end of the day. And chasing venture capital isn't for everyone. So focusing on what kind of business you want to build and that North Star matters. And once you find yourself sort of locking into the product, or at least the strategy to build a product, that you think will help you achieve that North Star. So let's say, you know, you fundamentally want to change the way cars move around the streets. You wanna work in autonomous vehicle technology, or you're, you know, passionate about helping people with preventative medicine. You wanna work with some kind of medical device that helps people spot disease earlier or change their lifestyle. All of these things should be your North Star. You should then have like a clear view of like, okay, so what is my strategy to build a product that would could have that impact? And my strategy to collect data, whether that's from shipping product to users, or it's from research that I do, or, you know, interviews, whatever that, that data collection thing is, what's my strategy to collect data to inform that product, which will ultimately have that impact? What's that? And once you have all those blocks in place, then you say to yourself, what kind of financing do I need to achieve this? And venture is one form of finance, right? There are banks who may give you debt, there's friends and family maybe, or angel networks or crowdfunding platforms that you can raise money from. I mean, there's grant platforms, right? Some people on, certainly if they're sort of visionary, but in a field like social enterprise or charity, may go and raise grants to build their business or build their company at least. And venture capital is, you have to decide whether venture capital is the right route. For your business, right? And if you've gone through all that, right, so you have your North Star, you have your strategy for building the product, you have your strategy of collecting data to validate it, and you decided probably venture is the right thing for you, um, you will find talking to venture capitalists a lot easier because once again, that is a lagging indicator that you're onto something. You go and talk to venture capitalists and say, I'm onto something, and convince them that you, you have a grand vision. I think that the art of pitching VCs has changed a lot actually over the last decade because the supply and demand of entrepreneurs and capital has actually shifted. There's a lot more entrepreneurs. There's also a lot more capital, which is great. It used to be that we would sit— Balderton's offices, when I joined, was on Balderton Street in Mayfair. And within 2 years, we'd moved to King's Cross. And now we have a much more accessible office with a lot more space and room for entrepreneurs to work and everything. But it used to be Mayfair. And honestly, the UK venture capital industry in I joined in 2013, but in 2010, people just sat behind their desks. People came to them, showed them a presentation, done. Now there's a lot more competition to get into exciting deals and hunting down of great founders. And I think that competition has driven that, which is great. And, you know, we also see more pitches. So we see— I personally will have an interaction with maybe 1,000 entrepreneurs a year. Whether that's through reading their pitch deck or sending them an email or a Zoom call or a meeting or whatever it is. And so through all of that, you have to think, well, how am I going to stand out in this noise? And I think that, you know, being really clear about your vision, being really clear about why you think this product's going to work, being really clear about the process you're going to go through to build the team, collect the data you need to validate that product, will get you 90% of the way there. The final 10%, and this is why I think venture's a really interesting asset class and harder than people might think to say automate. The final 10% is a level of conviction in you as an individual. And that conviction that an investor has, uh, is quite personal. So it's hard to replicate, uh, the decision-making process to whether or not you believe that someone can build this company or has a chance of doing it. Uh, it's also, by the way, part of it, like, you know, do you want to work with this person? You know, are they high integrity? Do you think you're going to get along in times of stress and pressure? Because all of these things, it's not just a personal decision, but it's a professional challenge building companies. And so you want to have a professional relationship. And that part of it is a bit like matchmaking, right? You know, there's someone out there for everyone, but it may just be that the first 5 investors you meet don't necessarily click with you. And so, which is perfectly natural. So I think I think there's an element to it, which is, once again, terrible term, kissing frogs, but there is an element to it where you have to, no matter how good your pitch is, and no matter how good your vision is, and compelling the story is, you're going to get a load of nos. And so you also, as a founder, have to be very clear in your mind that I'm going to go and speak to 100 people, because it may take that many conversations for you to be sure that you've exhausted all the opportunities.

That's a very refreshing outlook on venture capital industry. I think as a young person now doing my own business, I think there is an ongoing debate about, you know, sort of VC being put on a pedestal as the best thing that you can do. That's like the height of business. And I think it's nice to know that, you know, someone within it is saying like there are other ways to build a business. And interestingly, I think there'll probably be people that, you know, are going to pitch to you saying like, maybe they're used to a lot of success, you know, getting into the right university, then the best grad role, and they don't get the investment. And it's because, as you explained, there are so many intricacies. I imagine that sometimes being the best thing that ever could have happened to their business, actually being told no, right?

Oh, 100%. I mean, I think that, I think there's loads of businesses like that. And if you read James Dyson's, the entrepreneur, James Dyson's life story, he had a terrible experience with venture capitalists early on in his career, and subsequently went on to build Dyson, and he owns vast, vast majority of it. And he, you know, he didn't have to go through the board meetings where someone said, you know, James, this product doesn't work, and all you should go and IPO or whatever it is, right? He's managed to maintain control of that business. And it's been phenomenally successful because he's a great product. He has great product intuition. And also he's obviously a great employer and good at judging people. Who knows if Dyson would be the success it is today had he gone down the venture capital route. He might say no. So yeah, I think that it's really important to put it into perspective and know that venture capital, we invest in maybe 10 to 12 businesses a year of the thousands that we see. So we don't always get it right, right? Maybe we should have invested in the 13th one or 14th one, but there aren't hundreds of thousands of people getting venture capital every year in Europe. There's hundreds. And I think that it is one way to build a business. It has many advantages. When it works, it is an exceptional asset class, but it has very many drawbacks as well.

And for myself, working as a venture partner right now, I think it's been interesting looking at businesses through this new lens, right? I think a lot of social media makes business very emotive. And you can get buy-in without actually knowing the practicalities of why that business might be successful and make money ultimately. What is the difference between a nice idea and a business that can actually function as a business, I suppose?

Yeah, the real world is the difference. And I think there's lots of things that look nice until they touch reality. And ultimately, you are in business to build something people want. And sell it to them profitably and sustainably. That is the whole point of building a scalable business, right? That's the whole point of venture capital, to find those founders and companies that can do that. And there are many, many things, you know, we all have thought about it and we've all got friends and family members who said, oh, what we need is this. Why has no one built this app? And there's almost certainly a good reason for that. And what happens is you learn what people want. Partly through intuition, right? I mean, that's the starting point for almost everything. And you can build intuition through lots of different manners. But you learn by getting out in the real world and collecting data, right? Action creates information. So sort of a great sort of principle to live by. You get out in the real world and you suddenly realize that, oh, actually, people, you know, don't want auto-tipping or people don't want, you know, free trainers in the post every time they buy a pair of trousers, or, you know, all of these, you know, many, many innovations you may think should exist in the world, they don't want it. The important point there is then how do you react to that new data? Do you react to that new data by ignoring it and just pushing on and saying, no, I'm right? And sometimes you will be right because the n, the data, the amount of data you've collected may be so small that you shouldn't take it too seriously. And actually, you know, one big error early-stage founders make is they get a little bit of data and, you know, they meet, you know, their first customer who just might be in the shipping industry. And they say, this is great, but I need you to build this widget for the shipping industry. And they go and build that because that's the feedback they've got. And then actually the business doesn't work for 99% of industries anymore, right? And you become like a, you know, a smaller company than you could have been. So some of it is getting the amount of data and interpreting it correctly. And, you know, sometimes it's ignoring the data data and saying, no, I'm right, and you will be proven right in a decade, if not, you know, immediately. But, you know, another sin is ignoring the data and not reacting to and innovating when you get it. The beautiful thing about software businesses, which is predominantly what I invest in, is the feedback time you get, or the amount of data you get and how quickly you get it. So historically, if you wanted to, you know, sell a widget, you can go and rent a factory and go and rent a big machine and get the machine together and rent a load of engineers and design it and print the widget and go to a shop and get a distributor to put it in the shop, right? That's a lot of money and a long feedback cycle. And that's why multinationals, you know, dominate the landscape because it's easy for them to sell. It's easy for Sainsbury's to put another widget on the shelf. Very hard for you to try and do it. However, now, with the click of a button and almost for free. You know, I used to be on the Depop, on the board of a company called Depop. You can sell it on Depop or you can put it out there at least, put it out there on Shopify if it's a different type of product, put it out there on eBay or Etsy and get data back, right? Oh, people say it's too expensive. People are returning it because the packaging's wrong. People are absolutely loving it, but they only buy one of them. You know, there's like, there's loads of data you get from that instantly. And I think that feedback cycle for low cost is what makes software Um, company's beautiful. And I think that that's the thing founders have to keep in mind is for the first year of your business, at least, you're just a data collecting machine. And hopefully you can spot some signal in that noise.

And to somewhat contradict my previous question, you could be the best business person with the best idea, but if you can't storytell, I think you're going to struggle to raise investment and sell anything really, full stop. And I think we apply this not so much to entrepreneurship or venture capital, but just to even landing that job. You know, maybe if you land that job at McKinsey, what is the power of storytelling in a career and how can you become comfortable in actually telling a good story?

Yeah, so I think it's incredibly important and it's not just venture capital, as you say, right? Almost every part of, whenever you're in sales, And I interpret almost everything we do as a form of sales, right? So, you could be building a business, you might be interviewing for a job, trying to hire someone. You know, you are ultimately saying, I have something and I want you to purchase it with your time and effort or whatever it is, or your money. You know, whenever you're in that role, you're always giving, trying to give people a view of the future on uncertain data. So, you know, buy these clothes, they're going to make you look great, people will like you more. You know, for one example, that's the marketing industry around clothes, right? And I think that that's trying to tell someone a story of the future based on imperfect data today. And what fills that gap between the knowledge of the data we have today and the unforeseeable and forecastable nature of the future is narrative. It's the story you tell to help people interpret the data in front of them, right? And so whether that's, you know, you should hire me because this is what I think I can achieve and this is what I want to achieve and this is what drives me. And that story helps people go from the data they have, maybe that's your CV and a test you've done or whatever, to the vision they need to have of you performing excellently at their company. Or if you're a founder, like convincing a an investor, you know, that this little app you built in a weekend, uh, based on that data they've seen of you in, you know, in your pitch or in your work history, translates into this massive company. That's, that's a narrative. That's you explaining the data today in a way which makes sense to people to, to give them a taste of the future. Um, how you get comfortable with storytelling, you know, I think there are many founders that I have, I have sort of worked with and obviously seen pitch who aren't actually great at storytelling in a traditional sense that you might think, like, you know, Stephen Fry orating, you know, the Harry Potter series and being like, wow, you know, he's so entertaining and engaging and he's got so much charisma and everything he says is like, I'm hanging on every word. There are many, many founders who don't have that and they don't need to have it. I think it can be overplayed that you need to be some wonderful public speaker. Sometimes it helps for certain types of businesses.

Sometimes being quirky is actually like captivating in itself.

Yeah, I think being high integrity is important. So one of the challenges is if you're not someone who naturally stands on stage and wants to spin great yarns, don't try and do it because people will see through that, right? The narrative is the storytelling of the future we have to experience. So If people don't believe that you're really that person, because you're not, it's going to shine through. So some people are quirky or, you know, people are, lots of people through both, you know, the way we've grown up and the experiences we had, have different forms of storytelling and narration. And it means that they present stories in different ways and quirky or quiet or, you know, data-driven or, you know, more elaborative. That's not the important point. So I think the thing to remember is there isn't an archetypal success when it comes to, or one route when it comes to great storytelling. There's lots of different ways to do it. If you're true to yourself and so you present yourself as someone who is trustworthy and high integrity and clear about what they want to achieve, it doesn't matter if you're reading from a piece of paper word for word, people will see that that's, you believe this and that's what's really important. So I don't think there's a particular style. I do think though that being comfortable talking about your ideas in whatever style you do it is important. And, you know, one of the big mistakes I think even very young founders, maybe even seasoned entrepreneurs make, is I don't want to talk about my idea. I've got this brilliant idea. I'm actually going to change the world, but I can't tell you in case you steal it. Or, you know, I can't tell you in case you over-criticize it. And I don't want to, you know, that will make me feel sad. And I think that actually, and there's a big cultural difference here, even in the UK versus the US and other cultures where people aren't necessarily comfortable just talking about ideas and the visions of the future because someone's gonna challenge you and someone may say you're wrong or someone may laugh at it or someone may steal it, right? Almost certainly none of those things are gonna happen, but because of that fear of exposing your narrative to the world and having it challenged, People don't do it. And so whether it's, you know, whether it's just not your style to be, you know, loud and shouting, and in fact, you're, you know, more of a calm, thoughtful, introspective, and measured speaker, that doesn't matter about storytelling. But what is important is you practice having those conversations about, you know, you know, guys, do we really believe that everyone's going to have computers in their head in 10 years' time? Does anyone believe that? What does the brain-computer interface mean? And Do you, like, if you believe that, like, what implications does that have for everything else? Those kind of conversations, I think, are great ways to practice storytelling. I don't think anyone at university does that. There's entrepreneur clubs, uh, and, you know, maybe Graduate Guide helps you, like, think about different careers, which is great. So there is some stuff, but, like, the formal part of education doesn't encourage people to do that, uh, and I think it's a great shame.

Yeah, and Correct me if I'm wrong, but the story that you told to get yourself into McKinsey, I imagine it wasn't that you just wanted to travel around the Middle East. I imagine there was a bit more to it than that.

Yeah, yeah. God, I hope no one's listening who interviewed me all those years ago. No, look, you know, the reason why I worked at McKinsey out of university, really. So obviously after I did my internship in the Middle East office, I really enjoyed it. I went back to the UK, I worked out of the London office. I still traveled a lot, but to less exotic places, to be honest with you. But the reason why I worked out at McKinsey out of university, and I guess the story I told myself and believed, and the story I probably gave in my interview, was that I wanted to work on really big problems. So one of the nice things about working at a consultancy is, one, you get lots of experience of different types of problems, because one day you might be working on an issue with the National Grid, the next day you might be working on a strategic challenge in a hospital, There are actually similarities, and that's why consulting kind of works, because you can take experiences from different industries and apply them. But they're very different. But the other thing that's great about working consultancy from a young age is you get put in an experienced team advising people in very big companies. And so probably in 2008, I think I started McKinsey, 2009 maybe, the way to have leverage and impact at that time was to go and Wow, I can go and set, help advise the strategy for a global corporation. And that's what I enjoy doing. I like thinking about those big issues and feeling that you're part of a, you know, a big change. And then a couple of years had gone by and I realized, you know, it's not multinationals that are going to own the next decade, if not century, it's technology businesses. If you want to have a real impact, like really be part of leveraging what you do on a day-to-day basis into a much grander narrative and an impact, hopefully positive impact on the world, it was very clear at the beginning of the 2010s, at least to me, that the way to do that was through building technology businesses. And you could do that as a founder, you could do that as an employee, you could do that as a venture capitalist. And I ended up doing it as a venture capitalist.

I'm not sure if this is the same for you when you were at university, but when I've been at UCL recently, yeah, I was studying history and there's no direct path out of history. And a lot of my friends were going, oh, I'll get a job, but, you know, one of the Big Four, and then I'll earn my badges, I'll go do an MBA, and then I'll become CEO of a global business. And, and I think, you know, that is what a lot of people are aiming for right now. It's, again, it's put on a bit of a pedestal. And I think obviously you landed that job at McKinsey, and, and I think it was very formative and you learned a lot, but there was a point where you were like, okay, now's the time to switch, right? And now it's time to to go into the venture capital world. You obviously had that, that consciousness. How did you actually bring yourself to make that step, and how did you realize it when it was time?

Yeah, so I was very fortunate actually. So McKinsey used to— it's a real shame they've not done this— after 2 years at McKinsey, they used to kick you out, and they gave you 3 options. They would say, go and do an MBA, and well, you know, apply to an MBA, and if you get a great place, we'll finance it and we'll lend you the money. You can come back to McKinsey and earn it off. Or they say, this isn't right for you. Or they say, go and get some experience in industry and you can come back after a year or two. And so that's what they said to me. So do, what do you want to do? Do you want to go and do an MBA? Do you want to go and get work experience in industry? And they did it to everyone. And sort of my friends, so at the time, sort of Hiroki, Matt Robinson, and Matt Robinson, who were the founders of GoCardless, went off and started GoCardless. My friend Sam Choudhury, he went to the Valley and started a company called ClassDojo, which is hugely successful. I had a friend called Melissa Morris who left to go and start a healthcare startup, which has gone really well. Matt Clifford and Alice Bentinck, who were in my year at McKinsey, went off to start Entrepreneur First, which is now very successful. So they forced a load of people out. Yeah. And then lots of people did great MBAs and other people have gone into industry and done really well. So I actually think they do that, or they used to do that, and they don't anymore for talent retention purposes. I don't think they do it anymore, but it's a huge gift to people because you're basically saying it's a pretty low-risk option. Because if you go and screw up, you can come back to McKinsey. If they give you that offer, right? You can come up to McKinsey after a year or two and go back, you know, and do the work that you probably enjoyed there. Or you can do an MBA and some people, you know, some people did an MBA and really enjoyed that as well. But at the time, as I said, I wasn't alone in thinking this. It was clear that if you wanted to have real impact, you'd go and work in the technology industry. And hopefully the beginning of it, right? Starting something or joining an early-stage company. And so, I think that more companies should do that, but they don't. And so, you have to force yourself to do that, right? And, you know, it's a bit like going to the gym or anything else in life. You know, I think you want to have targets and you want to give yourself a deadline. And a lot of those deadlines are fictional deadlines, right? You say to yourself, by the end of 2025, I want to, you know, lose 10 pounds, or like whatever, you know, you do your January New Year commitments. They're all fictional deadlines. But I think you need to give yourselves that and force yourself to take on the change because change is uncomfortable. And staying in what you think is a chosen path or a happy path of going to work for the Big Four doing whatever your friends think is going to happen, actually, you know, change is the uncomfortable point there. But what's far more uncomfortable is when change is thrust upon you outside of your control. So changing under your own impetus, saying by the end of 2025, I'm going to do X, is uncomfortable. But if by the end of 2026, the industry has changed such that there ain't going to be an MBA available to you because half of the further education institutions are shutting down because the financials don't make sense, or there's a global economic crash, as happened to me when I joined McKinsey, right? It was 2008, I think. Global economic crash happened and suddenly, like, the many different opportunities at McKinsey shrunk. I mean, my intake, I think, was shrunk by half when I joined. So I went on training with a load of people and only half of us turned up on day one because of, you know, the 2008 financial crash. So, you know, things will— change will happen. And you have, I think, two choices to, you know, have it done to you or take it under your control. And if you can take it under your control, you have to make it happen because it's it's uncomfortable. The, you know, the good and bad thing I think is change is going to happen more often. We were over the last 30 years in a historically unique period of economic and political stability from the fall of the Berlin Wall through to, some would say, 2001, but certainly 2008 and now in the 2020s through the zero interest rate period. I mean, God, we've had it pretty good compared historically to how volatile things were. And so the idea now that you're going to find a stable path that looks anything like the last 20 years of success looks like, I'd throw that out the window. And there will be small pockets of it for sure, but it's far more likely that you are going to face volatility in your career than you would have done over the last 30, 40 years. And so any priors you have of what success looks like, based on someone's career 20 years ago, throw it out the window and be prepared for volatility. And once again, you can try and seize that initiative yourself, or you can be subject to it.

Earlier on, you alluded to how the UK education system doesn't prepare you for the world of work, and I think that's definitely one of the things it doesn't prepare you for, is the volatility and the changing and the real, like, soul-searching you've got to do in your career. I'm interested, is there any other things that you think you wish the education system was doing to prepare us for the world of work?

Yeah, so I have lasted this long without plugging my book, uh, Start at Century, which came out earlier this year in hardback, and, uh, it's on Amazon obviously, and, uh, with Bloomsbury Press, and it's coming out in, um, paperback, uh, in a couple of months. And the book focuses on why more people are becoming entrepreneurs and how we react to that as a society. And obviously a big part of that is education. So today I think it's only 6% of university graduates who go on to found a company say their university experience was helpful to founding a company. 6%. If that was the medical industry, you'd shut all the medical schools. You'd say this is ludicrous, right? What a failure. And especially it's becoming more important as I believe more and more people have to become founders for positive and negative reasons in the way that the economy is changing. So there is a fundamental challenge education-wise. The positive thing though is actually formal education isn't necessarily the best way to learn how to deal with volatility anyway. You know, I think like, you know, whether you, whatever you're interested in as a kid, it can be like sports and competition and learning about, you know, failure and working hard and challenges there, or it's, you know, drama and being on stage and the nerves around it, or it's playing games and getting really deep into a game and being passionate about like really getting to solving a problem, right? Most games are like some kind of way of solving a problem. You think you're having fun like swiping a knife or, you know, clicking a button, but actually you're trying to solve a math problem in some ways. And, you know, doing all those things is what prepares you for some of the challenges of sales and marketing and operations and founding a business. School doesn't, university doesn't, but they can do more. And there's proven examples, whether it's through entrepreneurship courses, things like CDTM in Germany, and there's great examples from Sweden of how, and the book covers a lot of these, of how getting exposure to working in a small business or building one yourself at school, or even learning how to select teams and build teams together as a group. All of these things can help you become more prepared, at least to be a founder or work in a startup. And we're gonna need a lot of that.

A big push for us on the Grad Guide is to try and make sure everyone feels heard in a career sense. With that being said, who was 21-year-old James? Like, who— what was he as a person? And, you know, how would you say to a 21-year-old who might be thinking similar to you, like, to reinstall their faith in careers, what would you say to them?

So I was very fortunate in that I didn't know anyone who had a successful traditional career growing up. So, you know, almost everyone in my family is like what you call, what I think of as an entrepreneur, but like small business person, right? My dad's a mechanic and sold secondhand cars and like my stepdad's in sales and all our family friends were in, you know, some of them really successful, but they were wheeler dealers, right? Some of them were really dealers in property, you know, buying and selling houses and made loads of money and, you know, very hardworking, and some people were just, you know, getting by. So I didn't know lawyers or accountants or management consultants or bankers. I didn't know anyone like that. And so that's a really helpful starting point, I think, because you don't have these priors. You don't have this idea of what a successful career looks like 20 years ago to affect your decisions about what the next 20 years look like. And so you come at a lot of stuff tabula rasa. Now, you're still affected by Who are the brilliant people I met at university or extracurricular stuff I did at university or my first years of work? Who are the really brilliant people I met? And I thought, wow, they're brilliant. What are they doing? And so there's a sense of osmosis when it comes to careers. And I mentioned a bunch of people like Matt Clifford and Hiroki, who I was at work with at McKinsey. Through osmosis, you get excited about working in technology because you're surrounded by other people who want to do that. And I hope I contributed to that. General excitement as well. So you start to learn about what other successful people and people you admire do. But I think if you can, you have to approach it tabula rasa and say to yourself, I have no priors. What do I think the next 20 years are going to look like globally and economically? What do I enjoy naturally? And, you know, I mentioned like playing computer games or playing sport or reading or doing research or being with friends or Speaking publicly, these are all things which you do as a kid, and some things you'll enjoy more and some things you won't, and finding ways to lean into the ones you enjoy more. You know, if you're great, if you really enjoy an audience, go into sales. You know, if you really enjoy problem solving, go into research or go into engineering or maybe ops. You know, those kind of things you can lean into and try and work out from there, like from a fresh starting point, what the next 20 years should look like for you. Because I think if you go into it, and that's basically what I was like at 21. I didn't go into management consulting because I was like, the way to build a career is go into management consulting and then you go and do this and then you go and do this and then you do that, right? I wanted to work on big issues and I wanted to work in a fast-paced environment that was growing fast and whether I was management consultancy in the late noughties or venture capital now, that's what I did. Um, and I think working backwards from what you want rather than trying to plan forward from what worked is really important.

You achieved great success from really leaning into your authentic self. And my final question to you, which I ask every single one of my guests, is, you know, when you were first starting off in your career, you had a certain idea of what success would go on to look like. And fast forward with everything you've achieved now and learned, what is your definition of success and how has it changed?

So I really, I don't think when you interview professional sports people who've just won gold medals, I don't think they think of themselves as successful. And I don't think, you know, entrepreneurs who've IPO'd their business and sit there, you know, worth billions and also having built something that millions and billions of people use, think of themselves as successful necessarily. I think it's, I don't think, you know, I think most days are a series of small wins, which you hope build up to a bigger win. And so, I, you know, that's my focus is really how do I get more of those small wins and build up, right, over time. Once again, like going to the gym, I guess. So, I certainly don't consider myself successful. I think that what I think is really valuable in your career is most of the time doing something that you enjoy. And unfortunately, like everything in life, that you have to get a balance of things you enjoy doing and don't necessarily enjoy doing. And you sort of, trying weave that into a narrative around sort of, you know, what do you want to be doing in the long run to make the days where you're doing the stuff which are harder or you're failing at or, you know, you're not enjoying better because you're like, I'm working towards something that I want to work towards and it's really valuable. And so I guess not thinking of yourself necessarily as a success, but aligning what you do on a daily basis with a bigger picture that you have for yourself. A bigger vision that you have for the world is the most valuable thing you can do for your career. Because inevitably, Elon Musk has bad days. God, he has a lot of bad days, it seems, at the moment. But he has, you know, he's given himself this vision, he's working towards it. And, you know, despite all of the craziness that surrounds him and his day-to-day, you know, I think that's a really powerful way to live your life and also do the work that you do.

James, thanks so much for coming on.

Great, thanks for having me.