Manas Chawla, Founder @ London Politica

Hey, welcome back to another episode of The Graduate Guide. Today we're joined by Manas, and he is the founder of London Politika. If you could just start off by telling us very quickly what your journey has been with London Politika so far and, yeah, how you've gone on to build it.

Absolutely. I mean, firstly, thank you so much for, for having me on your podcast. I started London Politica about 4.5 years ago. Effectively, I was still a student at LSE studying international relations, and I decided pretty quickly that I didn't want to be a diplomat, I did not want to be an academic, and I definitely didn't want to sell my soul to investment banking or management consulting. But I did want to go into the world of geopolitics and do something sort of true to my degree. And then I found the world of, you know, political risk. And I realized that there's an industry out there where effectively you can get paid for giving an opinion on the world of politics, and that sounded really intriguing to me, and I sort of jumped in headfirst. And I realized quite sort of quickly that this industry had two massive problems, right? One was perhaps on the supply side, it was really opaque, right? All the people that were analysts or were leading companies, had effectively transitioned in laterally from another career. They were all ex-ambassadors, ex-foreign ministers, ex-statesmen, sometimes ex-civil servants of all sorts, right? But hardly anyone had gone in straight from university, and I saw nobody like me or nobody like me in 2 or 3 years' time that I could model myself after. That seemed like a massive skills gap, just because I knew there were tons of really talented people doing international relations that could easily do this analysis. They just industry was just too closed off to them. And then on the other hand, because of how small an industry this is, it was almost entirely segmented to one particular kind of clientele base, and that was effectively the Fortune 500 companies, right? The Fortune 500 companies that could afford to pay something in the ballpark of $300,000 to $1 million a year for a sort of glorified subscription to political risk analysis. The big banks and the financial institutions can afford to pay that, but it also means that charities can't and nonprofits can't and NGOs can't. And so there seemed to be this massive gap where the kinds of institutions that would need political risk the most were also the ones entirely sort of priced out of the industry. And I basically tried to connect those two needs together and start London Politica and say, look, let's get a bunch of really talented young professionals from around the world who have their own specialties and expertise together to advise some of these social impact clients. And initially we did it entirely pro bono. So we started off working for really small charities. We kind of— there was just word of mouth effect and we kind of went from there. At some point I found myself consulting the UN World Food Programme. We were working with the Red Cross in Ukraine. We worked with the British police. We worked with the World Economic Forum and did some of their advocacy on future generations. And at some point I realized that I had a network and I'd built a skill base that I could monetize. And so now effectively the company split off into two: one which is effectively entirely a charity that does pro bono work for social impact organizations, and then one which is a commercial but quite unique and innovative geopolitical risk advisory that works for corporates.

There's a lot of routes I could take this from what you've said there, and it all sounds amazing and massive. Congratulations. But I want to start at the beginning of your journey. So you arrive at LSE and, correct me if I'm wrong, you're studying International Relations.

Yes.

And that's, I feel like, especially with the UK education system, it's not something you can study at A-level, for example. Like, you kind of have to have had like a prior desire to study that. Where did that desire come from? What was your initial understanding? And through the work that you've been doing How has that understanding of what international relations means to you changed?

Yeah, I just did a lot of MUN. I don't know if you're familiar with MUNs, Model United Nations, right? And like, I recommend everyone to try it and to not stay in it too long because after some point it becomes your substitute for personality. But I started doing a lot of MUN in, well, actually in, I think in middle school, and I did it for about 8 years. And it was effectively, I mean, when most people were spending their weekends I don't know, chilling at home, seeing their friends. I, for some reason, was going to these conferences pretending to be China in the UN Security Council and like debating nuclear policy. And something about that was just really thrilling to me. And it was sort of adjacent to speech and debate. And I found myself really interested in that world, realized I had to study something sort of similar to it. And IR stood out to be a pretty good option. But to be completely honest, I wasn't very dead set or very clear that I wanted to do this. Just like 2 months before I'd applied to IR, at LSE, I was dead set on doing business at Wharton at UPenn, where I did not get in. And had I got in, my life would have turned out totally, totally differently, and I'm almost really grateful that I didn't. But I mean, certainly my kind of understanding of IR has changed from what it was, I guess, 6 to 8 years ago to what it is now. I guess the biggest difference is I used to think international relations is all about the relationships between countries, and now everything I do is about the relationships between countries, but also all sorts of non-state entities. Entities, right? So terrorist groups, NGOs, nonprofits, humanitarian aid organizations, but also corporates. And the same sort of companies that we advise play a massive role in geopolitics. A lot of my kind of current research is around how tech companies effectively have their own foreign policies, often take independent postures on intervening in wars, often butt heads against national governments and win. Uh, and so that's what I thought was the most interesting bit about it.

One thing I'm super interested with you is that obviously you have a company, you do run a company now, but you're still in academia. You know, you've gone from LSE to Oxford, back to LSE, right?

Yeah.

And for example, um, I, I— this podcast technically is a startup, right? And, and I was doing it all through university And then when I graduated, I continued doing it, and I guess I felt like more of a founder. And then I've since recently taken a job, but I don't think it stopped me from feeling like a founder just because I work for someone else now. And I wonder if it's a similar relationship with you where, um, you know, you've stayed in academia, and just because you are an academic, it doesn't stop you making— being a founder. If anything, it amplifies it because it continues to help you learn about the field that your company operates within.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I don't even really, to be honest, think of myself as an academic. I'm only 6 months into a PhD, and I certainly am fairly confident I'm not going to go into academia full-time. Running the company is what I want to do. But I mean, the reason I did the PhD is because I looked around and I saw all these political risk consultants, you know, 10, 20 years ahead of me, and I saw that the difference between them and management consultants had shrunk a lot more than I'd initially expected, right? Effectively, these people were running political risk companies but were just managing people on day-to-day tasks, were treating due diligence projects like they were management consultant projects, right? It kind of felt like they almost lost their flair or their touch, and I wanted to know that even if I was running a company working with businesses, I still actually knew the bread and butter of what I was advising them on. And I'd found this really interesting field that I thought doing a PhD in would actually help me gain the expertise. To then go and consult tech companies and consult in the world of AI governance and on that intersection. And so I thought it complemented quite well. And the other thing is I think people have a lot of misconceptions about PhDs. I think I'm, I mean, in my cohort of 8, I'm probably the one that's most clearest in that they don't want to go into academia. Most people are still keeping the door open or are committed to it. But you can certainly do a PhD, and if you know that from the start, then you can, you know, you don't really have to commit to a lot of the work that you would have to do to be an academic. You don't have to do the extra research workshops, you don't have to teach as much, you don't have to write for a journal, you don't have to get papers published, and that, you know, significantly whittles down your workload. But that's basically why I do what I do.

So you started your company as an undergrad, right? And how did you like balance your time as a stud— as during studies and like What advice would you give to undergrads who are looking to start a company or startup in like their first or second year of university?

Yeah, I mean, it was a little bit easier for me than it is probably for anyone now just because I started this at the peak of COVID right? And so like, I still remember it was March time. We'd just been sent home from university. All my exams suddenly had been turned into 24-hour exams that I knew I didn't really have to study for. And so then I had effectively 3 to 4 months on my hands in front of my laptop. Of not seeing friends, and I had to do something with that. And I ended up coming out with this. And I'm honestly not even sure, had COVID not happened, that I would have done the same thing, right? Maybe I would have been too involved with university societies and the day-to-day socialization to be able to commit to this properly, that you sort of need to in that first couple of months. I mean, my biggest advice to sort of people that want to be entrepreneurs is to have a really, really strong why about why you want to do this. Just wanting to be an entrepreneur isn't nearly enough. In fact, I'd say that's a distraction, right? Anyone who says, "I want to be an entrepreneur, but I haven't found my idea yet," I think is totally bullshit. Because it means you're searching ultimately for nothing, and you don't really know where the gap in the market is, you don't really know what your product is, but you just know that you want to be your own boss, and, you know, you don't want to get in the rat race of a sort of 9-to-5 job. And I think that comes with a lot of sort of illusions of what entrepreneurship is and how glorious it can be that frankly just are so far from the truth. I think the best reason to be an entrepreneur is if you've, you know, had a little bit of experience, no matter how little, in some market, in some industry, in some space, and you found one particular gap that nobody else is attending to. And you think there's something unique about you or the people that you know or something that you can create that fills that gap. And you have honestly the privilege and the safety net to be able to pursue that, right? Lots of people can't afford to, say, not get a first in university because whatever their plan B is requires that. If all those things line up for you, then entrepreneurship is a fantastic kind of pathway. But those, I think, are like the bare bones.

I'm really glad you said that, and I completely agree because I think, yeah, everyone this sort of lecture on you need to find your passion, you need to do this, where I think like actually addressing a pain point that you're actually suffering and identify that other people are suffering with you and then working on that to see how you can resolve it is the like the most motivating factor as someone doing something for themselves. And yeah, I think obviously you would have identified that maybe in the space that you were operating with, there were quite a lot of problems. To deal with. How did you actually go about picking what you were going to try and solve? And I suppose with Daniel's question, like, at university it may feel like you want to sort of save the world and do everything, but you can't do everything at once. You've got to pick something and do it very well initially to get off the ground. So what was that first thing for you?

Yeah, I feel like it's really hard when you're in university to pick an end goal. And say, here's the way I'm gonna get there, and here's exactly my route to that. I think instead of doing that, you just need to be directional, right? So at the moment that you're at, with the opportunities presented to you and the interests you have, pursue what you think is best, right? And then go there and see what that was like, and then in 2 months ask yourself, was that the right decision? And then you pivot. And my kind of guiding force was always, I just wanted to do cool shit, right? Like, I wanted to meet cool people, I wanted to be in cool places, and I found a very specific kind of thing fascinating, which is geopolitics. And so I, when I was starting this company, I mean, you guys have your own podcast. I started mine like 3 months in, not because I wanted to be a podcaster, not because I was even very articulate or like, you know, was capable of having these conversations. I just knew that if you put a mic in front of someone, they'll speak to you. Uh, and often they wouldn't if you just ask them for a 15-minute coffee, right? Uh, and I'm sure you guys have discovered the same. And so my podcast initially, and to some degree even now, was just entirely a vehicle for meeting the people that I always wanted meet and having those really interesting conversations. But I never thought about how does this instrumentally help in my career. Uh, the fact that my first 10 podcasts never got more than 100 views, like, does that matter? I didn't care about any of that, right? Because I, again, I had a strong why and it was very directional. I didn't want necessarily like instrumental endpoint with it. I didn't want to make a certain amount of money by the end of the year. And that's just a very small way of approaching how I did every other aspect of my business. Every business is effectively like a million smaller businesses, right? We have a podcast, I have a sort of side thing of I speak at, you know, 6 to 12 conferences a year, and doing that and marketing for that has its own thing. We advise pro bono clients, we advise commercial clients, we're setting up all sorts of new sort of diplomatic academies. So you've just got to find the, you know, bits and pieces that you find interest you most, and then once you've decided on that, go all in. For a specific period of time, and then don't be afraid to pivot if it doesn't work, right? Don't have your ego attached to it.

Earlier on, you demystified really eloquently what people think about a PhD and academia in general, and I was wondering if you could do the same for geopolitics. As someone who is maybe in their first or second year at university, they might hear that word, know roughly what it means, maybe it's to do with politics, maybe it's to do with geography, but what actually is there like as an industry, what kind of jobs could I go into within the space if you're not going to go be a founder like yourself?

Yeah, so the geopolitical risk space, I mean, firstly, is kind of almost exactly as the name describes, right? It's, it's, we live in a world of immense geopolitical fragility, uh, and that's a unique factor. This wasn't the case 10 years ago. 10 years ago, it was much harder to run a political risk firm because you had roughly stable markets, you had roughly stable globalization, and you didn't have an election every 2 months that could turn the world upside down. That's not the case for 2024, which is why I think it makes it such an interesting space to get into. But the space itself is really weird and tough to navigate, in my opinion, because 90% of firms that do geopolitical risk analysis won't even outright call themselves a geopolitical risk advisory. They'll call themselves something a little bit different. So there are, for instance, security risk consultancies or security advisories. So these are some really old firms like Kroll, like G4S, that employ lots and lots of people, and their primary job is to protect people and assets on the ground, right? They will send armed bodyguards with you when your corporate CEO has to go to Mali for a financial review, when there's, you know, an election happening, there might be post-election violence, right? They do that, and that then involves geopolitical risk analysis kind of as an add-on. That's a very big add-on because that sort of defines how security risks in particular parts of the world are going to evolve. Then there's a space of kind of due diligence, which is more related to business intelligence, right? Geopolitics is one aspect of that, but anytime a company is bought, a company is sold, a company is divided into multiple other companies, you have some sort of big financial transaction, you need a lot of due diligence on— both parties have to look at the other side. And the corporate shareholders there, and the structure, and everyone involved, and figure out exactly sort of what's real and what's smoke and mirrors. And some aspect of that is, you know, geopolitical due diligence. If I'm buying a company in Russia, I have to understand, number one, how do I make that sanctions compliant? Number two, is this connected to any particular oligarchs whose wives are sanctioned, but this is actually a shell company for them to hide that? And those sort of investigations can take anywhere from 2 to 12 months to do. And I know companies and people that get paid a lot of money to look at one specific transaction for a very, very, very long time. They will travel to the country, they will take pictures of ships and track vessels, and go through Jordanian corporate shareholder lists, and use satellite imagery, and use social media, and speak to 7 experts on the ground, and learn the language. They'll do everything it takes. To get into that. And then there are in fact the political risk advisors that call themselves that, right? There's bigger companies like Eurasia Group, like Oxford Analytica, that focus more on kind of macro risk. So if your company wants to know about US-China risk, about, you know, the next central banking meeting and whether rates are going to go up or down, you go to them. So before I go rambling on, that's a little bit of the industry, I guess, in a nutshell.

To me, that sounds like really compelling. As an industry, and it'd be really interesting to work on. But it does make you think, at university, when you, when you hear all that, and maybe the complications about how you can enter, who you have to know, like where the graduate schemes are— oh, you know, I do know about consulting, I do know about investment banking, maybe I'll just take that and work, work out what I want to do later.

Yeah.

What would you say to someone like that to sort of convince them that not only is this a super interesting career path, but also a very essential one, like something we actually need people being funneled into.

Yeah, I mean, the first thing is probably I wouldn't try to convince them, right? If someone's dead set on doing banking or consulting, I think more power to you. I think if someone is sort of stuck in the middle and doesn't really know kind of where to go, and if they're choosing those industries out of complacency and because they see no other kind of viable pathways, Then it's a couple of things. Number one, I've got 3 dozen friends that are doing investment banking, management consulting, corporate law at all the big firms, right? 3/4 of them are unhappy with their jobs. And I know this in every possible way, right? They're— whatever amount of money that you think you're going to get paid, you do, but you certainly don't have the time to spend it. Whatever promises you're initially sold of being able to work on a diversity of projects and being able to do management consulting to figure out what it is you really want to do, you end up realizing are quite false because you work on these incredibly niche things and you're not really sure whether that's something you're just stuck into or actually like, or something you're just forced to do. On the other hand, I think political risk is far more interesting to people that have a natural interest in these sort of subjects. But it's also not without its own problems, right? Number one, you're not going to get paid nearly enough, and certainly not as much as investment banking or consulting, at least in the first 5 years. And that is many times a privilege to be able to take a job that pays less. Not everyone can do that. People have student loans and families in debt and all sorts of things, and that I totally understand. And kind of beyond that, it's a little bit of a trickier industry to get into because, like you said, there's no spring week for political risk, no companies will do, you know, summer internships or vacation schemes or very easy, you know, guaranteed graduate pathways. 80% of people who get a job in the space will get it because they message someone on LinkedIn or they email someone or they ask me and I put them in touch with someone or like that sort of thing, right? It's a very word-of-mouth industry, everyone knows everyone. And that sounds daunting in the starting, but I honestly think if you put half the time that you put into assessment centers and making these elaborate applications, et cetera, into just looking at, this is the area I'm interested in, these are the top 3 companies in that space, I'm gonna sit down for the next 3 hours, I'm gonna send the same generic message to 20 people who do that, who have the job that I wanna have. If you just did that, I can guarantee that 10 of them will reply and 5 of them will end up getting a coffee, and one of them just might have an opportunity for you, or at the very least will lead you in the right pathway to a company that might. And if all of that falls apart, at least you've explored this area and you know that it's something you don't want to do. And so that, I think, is a really valuable exercise and is like step one to getting into political risk.

And so you studied international relations at LSE. How has your degree like helped you with your company? And now that you're like 5, 6 years in, um, would you go back and change the degree if you're thinking about it with what you've learned and doing your company right now?

I didn't learn that much in university. Uh, I, I don't know if other people on your podcast say the same or if they say that the degrees are really, really pivotal, but I learned and I benefited tremendously from being at LSE and from having that network and from going to dinner every day with really, like, interesting and fascinating people who shared similar interests, and I learned so much from those conversations. But, like, if you're asking me if I, like, you know, sat down in my international relations theory class and if in week 4 I learned something that I still use today, the answer is absolutely not. It's a pretty core fundamental education to have if you want to go into the space, right, if you want to sort of take it off almost, and I would say it is important, But 95% of the things that I've learned that are really useful for the business that I run day to day, I've kind of had to teach myself, right? I've either had to read books on my own time or kind of explore the space by talking to loads of different people, or just had to put myself out there, right? Part of the reason I, you know, when I was doing this podcast is I'd be so, so incredibly inarticulate when I first started, and I think I still am. But when I was first speaking to people, I mean, they tell me, you know, they give me an answer to something about, I don't know, US-China relations, and I have no idea what to say next. And then over time, you sort of realize how to have a very basic conversation like that. That's not something you're taught by writing 3,000-word papers in university, right? Knowing how to deal with a really pissed-off client because something came up and you couldn't deliver a report on time, that's not something that IR 205 at my university could have taught me. So I'd say, I mean, I wouldn't change it. If you wanna go into the space, university degree's essential, go and do it. But be incredibly, incredibly judicious with your time, right? Go to all the classes you think are useful and none of the ones that you think aren't, no matter how many angry emails you get. And I'm probably gonna get in trouble with my supervisor if he ever watches this, 'cause I'm still doing a PhD. Because it's your time and you've got to use it in the way that benefits you best.

I just think that's such a refreshing thing for somebody at university to hear, and I wholeheartedly agree with that, especially given the fact that at 18 you're just told to narrow your interest down to one subject and be expected to enjoy every single thing that they give to you. Like, that's not going to get you any closer to knowing what you want to do for the rest of your life, like your career. You need to— by narrowing down, you need to actually broaden your horizons a bit again when it comes to your career. Um, I think what you were just saying there does lead me nicely on to what I wanted to ask you about, which is all these conferences you speak at. Um, you know, it's very clear from this podcast, you're— even though if you don't think you are, you are very eloquently spoken. I don't think I've heard a single like or a but, and Is that something that you feel like was relatively natural to you, that confidence to get up there, and even if you didn't know wholeheartedly what you was gonna say next, like that ability to deliver and speak confidently on a topic, or was that something you just had to start and learn the hard way, that, okay, I need to work on this myself?

Yeah, I mean, totally, totally had to learn the hard way. And I thought when I was in university, I was like, I've done 8 years of MUN, that's all that is, is public speaking and speech and debate, like I'm cut out for this. But doing that in a room full of other high schoolers and then getting up on stage and being 22 and speaking to a room of 1,500 investors about the top risks of the year, when you have 15 minutes to do it, are two wholly different things. And I definitely had to learn about it the hard way. I mean, I remember when I was still, like, setting this up and I'd, you know, sort of email people to get a coffee chat with me. Like, I'd be panicking in, like, the 15 minutes before we jumped on Zoom. I'd have a list of questions. Have everything I wanted to ask them. I wasn't sure how I was gonna take it. But over time, you just learn it, and you always learn it by doing it the hard way and by constantly, constantly practicing, right? Public speaking isn't one of those things that you're gonna sign up— I don't— maybe they work, I don't know, I've never taken one, but you sign up to a public speaking class or to, like, a course on it. I think it's just you're public speaking all the time. And, you know, when I'm doing this, this is great practice for me for when I do something else. But I think the initial thing that got me going and sustained me throughout it, which might not be true for most people, is that I wasn't afraid to fail. Like, I did my first podcast and I was always of the belief that it doesn't have to be perfect. I think perfection is the guise of insecurity. And I —did it, and I never listen to anything I sort of— anything I record or speak or put into public, just because I hate my own voice and I hate kind of how I often put things into words. But I remember listening back to the first one, and it was so awful. And I remember listening to it right after it was recorded, and I still put it out.

Tell me about it.

You know, right? You've done this 60 times now. Yeah. And I mean, you tell me, has it gotten easier? Yeah, of course it has.

I mean, yeah, like even what you were saying there about, you know, that sort of 10 minutes beforehand, I remember because I've always done this in person. Yeah. My ways of coping were just like, they weren't healthy at the time, but like, you know, you have to, there's no other way you can sugarcoat it or get around it. Like you just got to put yourself out of your comfort zone. I think there are ways, however, and I'll be interested to think, hear it from your side to sort of, you know, you do have to put yourself in the deep end, but how do you give yourself, you know, a bit more buoyancy, if you put it that way? Like, how do you prepare for that?

That's a good way of putting it. How do you give someone buoyancy in the deep end?

Wow, came straight off the dome.

Don't know where that came from. There's a couple of things you can do. I think number one, just firstly, going in there with like just blind self-faith and self-confidence, right? When you— and just really small things. When I walk into a room and I'm doing a talk, and it hasn't started and there's 5 minutes to go, I'll go around the room and say hi to everyone. It'll relax you a little bit, you'll sort of get an idea of who the people are, what they want. I mean, almost any room you'll be in, at least kind of in initial stages, the crowd will always be really, really friendly. They don't want you to fail, they're rooting for you, they know it's tough to be up there on stage doing what you do. You just don't feel that, 'cause you're standing on the other side and everyone has this really sort of monotone look. And it can feel a bit daunting. I think go in there with a really clear idea of the key messages you want conveyed, but don't write down how you want to convey them. It doesn't work for everyone, it works for me. But I know at the end of this presentation, say I want to convey these 3 things about the American election, the risk of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, and central bank digital currencies, right? I know what my key messages are, I know what my reasoning behind it is, but when I'm on stage I just totally freestyle it. And it means that it's a little bit more conversational, it's a bit more natural, I'm forced to think on the spot, I'm forced to even like experiment with ideas and then quickly retract and backtrack from them when I'm speaking, right? And it keeps it more live and upbeat, and then your audience is sort of taken through this journey with you, right? They're listening to the story along, whereas if you're just reading off a script, no one wants to hear that. Never use a piece piece of paper.

That is so funny, that, because like in the UK education system, I think with the way the examination is done, you're taught to like prepare, prepare, prepare. Like if anything, over-prepare. Like you can't prepare too much. But then like definitely with things like a podcast, like when you prepare too much, it actually makes it a worse product because maybe you've got too many things in your head that you want to ask. Like, and that thing about, yeah, looking down at screen or a piece of paper, it does— it doesn't just kill the aesthetic of it and the visual aspect, but it does— it knocks your confidence by the fact that you aren't believing in what you're saying, right? Yeah. Um, so yeah, I mean, with yourself, I'm interested, taking it a little bit away from the public speaking. Yeah. Did you have that same thing when you start building your team as a founder as well, like that same imposter syndrome where it's like, okay, I've now got tell people what I want from them when potentially you don't even feel like you're delivering that yourself. Maybe that's me speaking.

No, 100%, like it's entirely shared. So when I first started London Politica, we were, it was me initially, and then I got 3 sort of colleagues to join me. And we said, let's launch applications. And we had all these strategies to, you know, do it well on LinkedIn. I thought maybe 3 or 4 people are going to apply, maybe we'll take in 1 or 2. In 2 weeks, we'd gotten about 500 applications from around the world. And in our first batch of recruitment, we ended up hiring about 100 people, sort of volunteers, contractors based around the world, from all the world's best universities, many of them with multiple years of professional experience. I was 18 years old. I was the youngest person in a company of 100. So I know imposter syndrome really well. And it was, I mean, it was such a massive learning curve, right? Like, part of it was me asking myself, do I just pretend not to be 18? Do I pretend to look much older? Do I take off the date off my LinkedIn of when I've done my degree? Do I wear a wedding ring when I go speak at conferences? Like, these are all things that people told me to do. And at some point, you kind of just realize, like, if you're already in the space to be doing it, there's got to be something about it or something about you that these people have believed in to join your team, right? Nobody's an idiot, especially in like sort of these elite London universities. Everyone's got so many things to do with their time that if they've chosen to invest that in you, the worst thing you could do is be bogged down by imposter syndrome and say, I'm not good enough for this, I'm not cut out, I can't give you right sort of sense of direction. And so a lot of it was just faking it till you make it. Or actually, another mentor of mine said, "It's not fake it till you make it, it's face it till you ace it," right? You just got to put yourself in as many uncomfortable opportunities. Don't be faking it, but definitely aim outside your comfort zone. And, you know, after like the 67th time of doing that, you'll go into your 68th meeting and maybe you won't feel that sense of imposter syndrome. I mean, the only way around it, I think, is to start before, you know, you're nearly ready.

So, you know, when you're at university, uh, how'd you go about like finding people who are similar to you? Because like entrepreneurs and stuff, because I feel like I do— I study economics, everyone's so set on like banking, investment banking, consulting. I can't really find those people who kind of want to make an impact in the world, um, or like want to do entrepreneurship. Like, how would you go about finding those people and surrounding yourself with those people?

Yeah, it's a great question and probably not one I'll be able to answer well because I never really thought of myself as an entrepreneur, which sounds weird, but like I just ended up starting something and I thought of myself as a, you know, as a geopolitical strategist, as someone incredibly interested in this world that wanted to help people and start something creative. But like, I think entrepreneurship and what an entrepreneur should be comes with all these, like all this baggage of how you're supposed to act and all the philosophies you should espouse and the people you should look up to. And all the people you should look down to. And I never particularly had any of that. And it's only like in the last year or so that I get invited onto podcasts like these. I say, oh, you know, maybe I am an entrepreneur. So I mean, I kind of—

Maybe this grandpa made you an entrepreneur.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. If I'm here. But I also, I mean, tried my hardest to go out of my way to not hang out with like entrepreneur entrepreneurs, right? I thought there was a lot of value in me hanging out with academics and journalists and investment bankers and people that worked in nonprofits, just because it was more interesting. Like, when I hang out with my friends, I don't talk about geopolitics, I don't want to talk about my company, I don't want to talk about hustle culture or how hard I work or how, you know, cold showers and waking up at 5 AM is amazing for you, because it seems like that's what all entrepreneurs do. I just sort of want to chill out, so I don't know, so we kind of, I never really looked for that, and I think it served me well, but I think certain other people definitely need a community around them.

Yeah, it's a really hard thing to convey to someone that, like, I completely agree, and I think it's, I mean, at the end of the day, you are a product of your environment, so it's definitely one of the key things to try and lock down before you even, like, start a venture is, like, have you got the right people around you? Are they gonna check you in the right way, hold you accountable in the right way? Are they gonna support you and not, like, Like, for example, this podcast could have crashed and burned horrifically and ruined my whole social, like, French group if the wrong people were around me. But they were very supportive of me doing it. They understood why I was doing it. And to be honest, sometimes you don't know you've got the right people around you until you do something a bit, you know, like a maverick. You just do something that maybe other groups aren't, and they're like, oh, that is cool. Maybe, maybe I, maybe I like, you know, that's what I'm trying to say to you. There might be more people that just because you speak about investment banking and consulting at your EFS meetups, they might be like you. You've just not put that out into the world yet. And it's really something that I think the Graduate Guide is trying to address, is just talking about careers in a healthier way from a younger age. Like, there's so many problems in the world that I think I could solve, like whether that's mental health, like having a purpose, or like financial issues and people a bit— their talents being allocated more efficiently. I think like you're a perfect example of someone who has, you know, through trial and error found the best way to allocate your potential and what your brain is good at. Like you could have been at business school, but you found yourself here. And I think to caveat everything I've just said there, for that to be possible and for you to find out, you need to have the wherewithal at a young age to start trying things at a young age. You have to like have that delusional optimism about you? And where does that come from? Like, is that family upbringing? Like, can you just generate out of nowhere? I mean, maybe you don't have the answer, but I'm curious to hear your thoughts.

It's such a good point that you just made. Like, you definitely need this, like, grand delusional optimism to think you're going to make it work. Like, I was listening to this podcast with, I think it was the CEO of Nvidia. I'm not sure. And one of the things he was asked was like, if you could go back and you know, 20, 30, 40 years and you could start your company again, what would you do differently? And he said, I wouldn't do it. I like having gone through this massive journey and even having, you know, built one of the world's most successful technology companies ever, I just wouldn't do it because the reason I did it when I was young is because you have this youthful optimism. You think things are going to be 10 times easier than they actually turn out to be. And that's a massive superpower, right? When I was first getting into this, I thought, well, when I had my first initial bit of success, I was like, in a couple of years' time, why wouldn't all these massive clients want to be listening to me? And, you know, that was right, turned out to be right to some very small degree. But having that optimism and having that naivete isn't a bad thing at all. And I think it's sort of, I think there are structured education systems are almost meant to stamp that out of you to some degree. I think one thing that I was a little bit good at was I'd almost kind of get off to the idea that people didn't like what I was doing, or that I was doing something away from the mainstream. And so, like, if I went to a conference, and there were several times this happened, and sometimes I bring my friends with me to come watch this, right? And I'd get some, like, very hostile line of questioning, or I'd get people online that were hating, or I'd get friends that were gossiping about, "Yeah, you know, what does he know about geopolitics? Why is he starting this? He didn't even get a 2.1 on his last essay." I, some part of me just like really liked that. And I loved like somewhere in my mind was like, in 3 years I'll prove you wrong. And, you know, I think that can be spun a really negative way as well. But yeah, that like those initial sort of almost discouraging factors never put me off.

So you said like, you get like, not hate comments, but like people gossiping about you. How do you like deal with that? Especially as like, because I make videos and some people could be like, oh, he hasn't even completed his degree yet. How is he? Able to educate people on financial literacy and stuff. And I started that at 16. So there were a lot of hate comments and I kind of struggled to deal with it. And over time I've now learned to. But how did you deal with it?

Um, I, I don't know. I just don't— I'm sure there's more like particular strategies about it. I just, just never really listened to it. And, and, um, I— what I kind of figured out is there's 2 kinds of people that you're most afraid of when you're starting something, and they're the complete opposite people, right? The first kind is like your mom, your dad, your girlfriend, your parents, like people really close to you, and you care a lot about what they think and how they judge you and how much their validation and esteem matters to you. And because they love you so much, they'll either give you totally the wrong advice just because they don't want to see you fail, they don't want to say anything negative to you, or they want you too much to take like the safe path. "Like, all my brown friends struggle with this," right? And then the second kind of person is the total opposite, which is it's some guy on the internet that you don't know at all, who has the time of day to comment something incredibly negative. And we got hundreds of those when we were starting out, right? And people in the middle don't really matter, even from initially. People in the middle will either be fake supportive, or, you know, if they're sort of distant friends, and they don't actually agree with it, they'll sort of put up a front. But if you can manage the expectations of these two, if you can say, look, like, I love all the people really close to me and I value their opinions, but I've got to do this for myself, and I can entirely tune out the opinions of someone that's a total stranger because their opinion just doesn't matter to me for that reason, then the people in the middle will always be supportive, at least in the first couple of stages, if you've got the right friend group around you. That's sort of how I thought about that, sort of what helped me.

I think this conversation has been a massive breath of fresh air for me. And, you know, excluding maybe that I'm, I'm not taking on like a national crisis and problem like yourself, and I'm just sat in a room asking some questions, I feel like there's a lot of similarities between how we think and, and, you know, maybe our ambitions. And yeah, I ask every guest I have on the same question, my final question, which is when you first started at LSE, you know, you would have had a certain idea of what a successful career would have looked like to you? And then fast forward to where you're at now, having done everything you've done, what is your definition of success now and how has it changed?

It's a great question. Starting out, I think my definition of success was pretty bog-standard and mainstream, right? Or maybe that what every entrepreneur thinks, which is I'm gonna work hard and grind for a couple years and there'll be some inflection point and then it'll be all exponential growth from there. And I will raise tens of millions from investors, and I'll have this innovative product, and I'll be famous, and I'll be going around the world speaking about it. And like, that is what success is, right? And what I realized, what's quite false about that, is it's all very exterior. It's all very, uh, what do people think, right? How do they perceive me having this much money, or having raised this much funding, or having a company where this many people work, or like where seem to be. And the more I've gone through life, you kind of just realize, like, no one really cares, right? Like, you can have your 2 minutes in the spotlight, but it's really only gonna be 2 minutes, or maybe it's not even gonna be that. You will inevitably have this thing that you thought was a point. I'll give you an example, like a really tangible one. I thought my first conference that I speak at, that was like a real conference, not at a university, not at somewhere in London, where I travel out to a different country and speak, to investors, I thought that was going to be like a game-changing moment. I thought the first time I would be on TV speaking on the news, commenting on a topic, game-changing moment. I thought people would, you know, find my name, ring me up and say, we want geopolitical advice. None of that happened, right? I went on stage, I did my bit, I learned a lot, I met some cool people. No one cared. No one rang me up afterwards. I didn't go viral on LinkedIn. So then I realized, I mean, and then I had to kind of ask myself, this was still an incredibly positive experience, but it didn't go in any of the ways I initially thought it would. Well, why is that? It's because you realize that all the things that end up mattering to you are just very much about you and very internal about your sort of experience interface with things, right? When I go to conferences, if I have 3 really fascinating conversations with 3 really interesting individuals, that matters so much more than being able to, I don't know, like increase my LinkedIn connections by 400 by the end of that trip, right? If I say something that really resonates with someone, and they come out to me and tell me that, that's way more than getting a nice picture of, you know, a big crowd that I'm speaking to and posting on LinkedIn. Those things, no one cares, it just doesn't matter.

It's so important you said that, because I think it's almost inevitable that you're going to have like an idealistic view of what this knock-on effect could be. And I think what you get better at is not achieving that idealistic aim, it's the bounce back to just like resetting your mindset after, to just like, okay, no, let me just reflect on what actually happened and what I actually took as value and, and then proceed. Um, but yeah, listen, mate, you've been amazing, really enjoyed today. Thanks so much for coming on. And Daniel, thanks for hosting the first episode. Thank you so much, guys.

I really, really enjoyed this. Appreciate it. Great.