 Trying to get back to the basics of great products power comes from sharing information. I try to convince people to slow down Hello, hello listeners and viewers welcome back to the soaked by slush podcast my name is William from that pollen with me in the studio Issa krautio. Hi William. Hello. Hello today. We're in for yet another interesting chat We have from molten. We have Nicola McClefford in James Clark. Welcome to the podcast. Great to have you Thank you very much. Thanks guys for having us Do you want to start off by telling the listeners and viewers who you are and what you do? Yeah, sure. I'm happy to happy to do that. So I'm great to be here. Thanks a million for having us James and I are from molten ventures or the artist formerly known as draper spree As we sort of recently announced our our new rebrand So we're a London base, but pan European focused venture capital firm We invest in early-stage and high-growth technology companies across Europe really our our goal is to back sort of future European European leaders and global champions we invest typically from kind of Series a series be onwards We're generalist in our approach So we invest sort of across the technology spectrum from consumer through the software through the deep tech and hardware Space tech digital health. So so a pretty broad remit And I think the thing probably worth mentioning as well We're pretty different looking to many other venture capital firms in that we're a publicly listed company And so our focus is very much on Building a funding platform for entrepreneurs that is focused on patient long-term capital You know, many of us have been around this industry for a long time So we know that actually to build and scale global companies from Europe requires patience and flexibility So we invest from our balance sheet, which is an evergreen An evergreen funding model I'm a partner in the firm I run our consumer business and largely sit across both sort of consumer and software investing I have a background in in venture capital. I started my first Roland VC in 2006 in London and and I also set up and ran an e-commerce business for five years So I come from an operator background as well I saw that business in 2015 to ASOS It was a business in the pre-owned fashion luxury fashion space And then I came back to venture capital and joined Dreyprosbury in 2017 or Molten Ventures in 2017 And my name is my name is James Clark. I'm the marketing director here at Molten Ventures It's been sort of my my pleasure and my my sort of my role for the last year plus to bring the rebrand to life It was something that I did not long after joining Molten Ventures in April last year in the midst of lockdown Prior to joining Molten Ventures, I worked at London Stock Exchange for four years where my job was head of tech listing So therefore a publicly listed VC firm is something that's very close to my heart It was also I was the person who hosted the ceremony when then Dreyprosbury Did its own IPO in 2016 so it's sort of there's a lot of connection within this But I'm sort of the first half of my career is as an advertising and marketing professional Roughly 10 years of doing that and then the second half of my career has been sort of digging ever deeper into the sort of the tech and venture capital industry So it's sort of a combination of my two sets of experience the role that I have today Great, that's interesting. Nice to meet you both The rebranding is probably the central central topic of this episode And we're probably going to go into a lot of like how to rebrand and everything But it'd be interesting to start with you like what what has changed How did you identify the need to do this or the the wish to do this the How did you approach that? How did you begin approaching that? I think look My my first instinct as a marketing person is is typically won't rebrand It's it's there's a very specific set of circumstances where companies should consider doing so And you know, you have to be very clear about why you do it in the first place And a lot of times a rebrand is approached by companies who Or especially unfortunately marketing practitioners who feel that sort of They're a little bit bored with what they've got and they want to do something interesting And I think that's not a good place to start a rebrand I think from from the perspective of when we were draperous free and this is something We started discussing probably someone last year was that The the the feeling that we had was that the existing brand was very well respected Very well liked a lot of people understood Who we as a team were and what we did But the brand itself probably didn't convey the what what what we were as as well as it possibly could And I think that the thought was You know The company has come a long way in the last five years since listing And it has a very different set of audiences to a typical venture capital firm And you know being publicly listed puts a special responsibility on on us as a business You know, we're trying to explain venture capital to a public market's audience And we're trying to explain, you know public markets to a venture capital and tech entrepreneur audience And we needed a brand that would help us to be able to Tell that story on both sides of those audiences And we felt that the the the the brand that we had had taken us as far as it could And our our team has evolved a great deal I mean just the size of teams almost doubled in the last year alone And so therefore we really needed a brand that was able to Express this new potential of where we thought the business was going But maintain a sort of a respect and a good regard for for what had gotten this this far I mean draper esprit is a 15 year old business at this point So there's a lot of things that we needed to be able to do and a rebrand felt very much within the team As the right way to do that, but we had to be very deliberate and careful about how we went about doing it Yeah, that makes makes total sense and we've we discussed quite a lot We've discussed Europe and the coming of the US venture firms also to Europe and The increasing competition here and and also maybe why why it's Europe's time to shine now But is it how do you view it Nicola? How do you position position yourself in this Environment and also maybe is there is the rebrand party targeted at that also? To be able to to compete and position yourself again Yeah, I know I look for sure we're operating in in a market certainly over the last kind of 18 months two years that has has Never been a sort of vibrant and dynamic by way of sort of availability of capital To European entrepreneurs and you know particularly given both new entrants into the venture space So so kind of type investors that weren't sort of typically VC investors, you know the the hedge funds the public market crossover funds All of whom are now looking at sort of early stage tech or high growth tech as a very meaningful asset class And are are kind of directly investing now in the private markets Very broadly, you know, it's worth saying this is a hugely positive thing for Europe You know this sheer availability of capital Europe and European entrepreneurs has been underserved by way of Meaningful growth capital. It's come a long way over the last few years certainly since I first started out in European ventures So 15 years ago It looks incredibly different But but even the evolution over the last two to three years and the presence of International capital us capital It's it's a net huge positive for for the local market here in terms of giving European entrepreneurs the availability and the breadth of capital required to build global scale companies So I think it's that that's just a really important point. We're starting to level the playing field to the amount of capital That's been that's deployed into us companies and allowing European companies to compete at that level. So it's a very much a net positive But of course that means that it gets more competitive For local investors on the ground including us There's more capital chasing sort of the same deals the the top entrepreneurs have a lot of choice and a lot of options in the market And that requires, you know us and every other investor really to to be really clear On on who we are what we are and how we can work with companies and this again. This is a really positive thing, right? ultimately money and capital is Is the single greatest commodity we have and and we all have a tendency as bc's to Sort of talk about our value add and talk about, you know, the help we can give And frankly our industry has historically been really poor at areas like communication and branding and very few Financial industry right at our core historically terrible at branding and communication and and also open ventures in a way No exception to that. So While I wouldn't say the rebrand was in any way driven by Sort of competition and changes in the market because touching on what james talked about earlier on Driving a rebrand or a decision to do that due to sort of external factors Or what might be happening in the market around you isn't necessarily the right place Uh to come at a rebrand for us It's got to be linked to our our core purpose our mission and and also as a business and regardless of you know What's happening with the macro markets and other investors, you know that that wouldn't change What it does do though is sort of give us very clear opportunity To properly put the conversation and be able to communicate us Our value our scale our purpose and how we can work with companies And again, we're uniquely positioned given the patient capital model and this rebrand is really part of an effort for us to say Well, there's been a lot of change How do we make sure that we're capturing that transformation and communicating that to entrepreneurs now? Will that help when it comes to us being able to you know, hopefully get an opportunity to work with some of the best european entrepreneurs for sure, we would hope so James you said um It's very interesting. You said you usually shouldn't rebrand which is supposed to make sense on paper too And I think the flip side of that what that means is the reasons to rebrand need to be very Well motivated well justified I guess I mean branding is about Storytelling I guess to a big extent so I would assume that the methods or the sort of the the criteria to rebrand are mostly qualitative But do you have any like do you have a checklist like a do you have any What is your methodology there and like is there any Quant stuff that goes into a a big operation like that in the wire So yeah, so one of the things that we that we did internally as we were considering this was We sort of framed it as you know, how well does our does our team understand what our brand is and what our purpose and what we stand for And if you're getting disagreement internally or you're getting Not sort of not a lack of alignment internally about what that is Then obviously it means when you're talking to the wider market that becomes ever more more fragmented And so the yeah once you realize internally that that some of that that sort of that actual purpose or the messaging can be a little Bit confused that becomes one of the reasons you need to start to talk about that rebranding process And you need to start thinking about it very carefully and that's sort of the bit that follows from that is You know if you do kick off a rebranding process you need to be you know really clear that but Most when most people think about a rebranding they think about names and colors and logos and And and look and feel and all that sort of stuff and and to be honest with you that that part is important But for me as a professional doing this Literally 75 of the process is actually really getting to a common and good understanding of who you are You know that as a start of the process end of summer last year We're about 35 40 odd people and we first asked everybody You know the the question of what do you think? Yeah, what does this company mean to you? What do you think is special about us? We did a huge amount of diligence internally to try and find those common areas of understanding to try and bring together a common thought about what we stand for and who we are and that that sort of I guess you call the strategic understanding of what the brand is Was sort of about three or four months of work last year to really bring that together to get to a common understanding To come up with a positioning for that for for the company that we could really you know gather behind and and It's a sort of thing that shouldn't be a surprise to people when you when you wouldn't bring it out to them It shouldn't be I didn't really think of that at all It should be actually that was that's probably something I had on the tip of my tongue But I never thought to express it and so for us this this positioning that we came up with of make more possible was was very much a sort of a Sort of a distillation Of all these things about the company that made it meaningful for the people who work there And therefore if it's that sort of a distillation and that that sort of meaningful thing to the rest of the team Then it becomes easier for the creative work that flows out the back of it to make more sense. And so You know, we sort of got to a point towards the end of last year where you know Very much in consultation with the team in consultation of the board Actually in consultation with small numbers of our portfolio and other sorts of people We got to this positioning make more possible We felt very strongly behind the meaning of it And at that point we could start to do the creative work But it is very qualitative But you can do certain sorts of exercises along the way to really sense check yourself To make sure as a marketing person, you're not just going off on some, you know, some random flight of fancy that suits you You have to be you have to be coordinated with What the people in the company are feeling because if you don't do that Anything you produce on the back of it is not going to is not going to gel with the people who are supposed to actually You know live it and believe it And just add to that. I mean more more than just the people in the company I mean that was certainly where a lot of our core focus was but you know, james Touched on some of the external stakeholders and this is of course true You know, I sit across a lot of our consumer business and actually doesn't matter if you're a consumer business or a Software business as you're thinking about something like this Data and insights from your customers and your consumers or your sort of stakeholder All of your stakeholders is sort of fundamentally what need to underpin How you think about your how you think about any form of rebrand sometimes that's a name change It isn't always a name change. It could simply be around positioning and messaging And so james said, you know, we talked to to some of the portfolio obviously everybody internally was was very involved but You know, it was important that we understood the external perception too and you know for us. That's everything from public markets through to You know, even more importantly the the the entrepreneurs that we work with those that are within our portfolio those even some who who aren't within our portfolio and other vcs Other people we we both compete with we collaborate with we sit on boards with so You know, so we we had a sort of a select group of some externals as well And all of that needs to come in to inform how you think about both the internal and external perception Of us in our brand and also how we can use that To better meet those end goals and I mean any any company going through this will do the same thing I mean having insights from you know, not only your internal team and led by sort of a marketing team but Really the customers the people you're selling to your partners. Um, and so, you know, we took a similar approach to that Yeah, yeah, and I think I think that's so important. It's oftentimes you'll you'll you'll seek the documentation around a process about this and it's sort of A handful of people have locked themselves in a room and kind of come up with this and when they come back When they sort of present something it's like ta-da and everyone's like what the hell is that and I think I'm not kidding. It does happen and it's sort of big and this is what I mean The re-brand becomes sort of a sort of a personal challenge for a handful of people rather than Something that is actually a business need. I mean there has to be a business purpose behind how you do it And we we've tried incredibly hard to to do that throughout the process And yeah, it is about asking everybody. It's about checking the audience as we're you know, a venture capital firm We're now about sort of sort of 60 70 old people But as I mentioned at the time we're about 30 or 40 We're small enough organization to be able to ask literally everybody To gather the kind of feedback and also go out to those other stakeholders and make that manageable Now, obviously if you're a company of hundreds or thousands of people It does become different and and different and sort of you have to execute in a different way But the core thing should be is does this thing feel believable to these key audiences that we have to work with? Because if it doesn't feel believable Then it's not going to land and and I think one of the I guess one of the payoffs that we've had is The feedback we've had from our portfolio from other people in the industry from In my case from from professional marketers that I know that actually have nothing to do with our industry go To come back and say actually this makes a lot of sense for you for what you are trying to do Yeah, before we dive into the the more particular choices you may be interested to hear kind of What you ended up with with from these interviews But one thing that comes spontaneously to mind here is that If branding is something that should reflect the values and reflect the the the story of the company When is the right time for a startup to start thinking about brand because quite often I hear early stage vcs Investing in brand But then if you don't have like your pre revenue or your very early stage You can have obviously can have values and you can have something you want to solve But can you really talk about having a believable brand at that stage or it's or it's something that rather should evolve You know in the first few years of the company and then maybe be set in stone it Nicky, I mean you'll you'll have opinions on this but just From a marketers perspective Yeah, your brand is your brand is a collection of attributes that exist in the mind of your audience Right, you can't you know a brand is yes There's logos and colors and and all that sort of stuff But a brand exists in the mind of the audience So therefore you can't there's only so much you can do but everything you do can influence it in some sort of way Either explicitly or implicitly So everything from the way your your service team answers answers customer requests to yes Your logo to the way that you interact with the media all these sorts of things as a startup Are some sort of way of expressing your brand? So yes, you should be quite explicit about how you think about it But you should also sort of realize that the the the sort of the the manifestations of your brand You know the the the marketing exercises the the expensive part of it can be done in different ways And I'm you know Nicola has lived through this so I'm sure she has you know She can sort of talk through how she applied it when she was when she was sort of managing her business Yeah It's you know James said it a brand is a living breathing thing And it so it evolves right you can't you can you can state your brand principles early on you for sure As any entrepreneur should have a vision for your brand But ultimately the success of that or the evolution of the brand Depends on how you live and breathe that And that happens over time You know you don't a brand is not something that's underpinned by a transactional relationship It's underpinned by an emotional relationship. And I think you know a lot of businesses You know you get into this world of and you know, you may not even be in the consumer space This is also true of of B2B companies too And where it's all about you know transaction transaction and volume and your brand is sort of something that happens to Sort of sit alongside that and and maybe for sort of some types of businesses It's a bit more important to others but ultimately your brand is the emotional connection that you make To your stakeholders. That's not something that happens quickly and early So your question about when and how should a startup be thinking about branding, you know Also brand and name are also kind of two different things too. So sort of let's be clear about that I've seen a lot of companies go through a rebrand that doesn't necessarily mean they change their name in our case You know we did but a rebrand doesn't necessarily mean a name change Plenty of early stage companies changed their name Google's first name was back rub if you'd believe it and and so there's a list There's a list of companies you just need to google best and worst rebrands and renames Come up with a really interesting list of sort of brands household names and sort of the names that they started out with And it sort of talks to You realize that some of those companies early on sort of realize that actually look our name You know doesn't actually reflect what we are as a business and so look if you're going to Renaming is harder and so putting some thought into the name early on is sort of worth doing That's not to say you can't rename your company at some point for sure Little harder if you're operating in a pure consumer space and you've put a huge amount of investment behind a brand By way of recognition. I think when you're a VC firm you kind of get away with it a little bit more But but aside from the name piece In a way, it's never too late to do a rebranding exercise If you feel that you need to take a step back and better understand your positioning Better understand your customers and the nature of the relationship you have with your customers How those customers might stay with you Over the long term beyond the immediate transactional relationship That's an exercise that every company should be doing almost on an ongoing basis And when you feel that that connection has been broken, you know, that might be a moment to have a think about Okay, well, you know, do we need to do a little bit more work around our narrative our story our value Our positioning in the market and that that might be the the moment to do it So look it's you've got to do it early because you know You used to set your stall in the business that you're building and the brand you're building But it's an iterative process and it's something that will evolve as any We all know how much change startups go through But don't lose sight of the importance of that, you know The emotional connection and perception of your brand alongside everything else you're doing on a pure sort of transactional level Uh You said something interesting that the the brand is a living breathing thing. Does that also mean, um How much is there this death of the artist Phenomenon in in branding like how much like when you when you put it out there You sort of lose a part of its control like if you imagine a word in any language Like we can all picture a word that meant something 50 years ago. It means another thing today I'm not sure it's a hundred percent the same with branding, but is there this phenomenon where you kind of lose a part of the Part of control over how people interpret it and then you have to live with that if you want to be a genuine brand Well, that's I mean look this this is it bring your companies to companies don't own brands The the the audience their customers the stakeholders they own the brand And as a marketer or as a company you can try and influence that you can try You know your your job is to try and be as consistent as possible in projecting What that brand means in the minds of of your audience, but you don't own it, right? It is it is it is possessed by the people Who who who who interact with it and so therefore? Yeah, then look there is there is a bit a bit of a death of an artist I feel a great deal of sympathy. There was a venture capital firm based out of oxford called isis ventures a few years ago And obviously, you know with sort of the situation they had with terrors It was it was you know isis is a river, you know what the tens river comes because is when it goes past oxford Nothing you can do about that. It's I have a huge amount of sympathy. It's the sort of thing that happens but I think you know it Ultimately, you know these because these things do exist in people's minds. They can make that separation You know what all you can do is you can try and be as directly influential as you can around How your audience precede your brand? I mean we're going to be people in our industry who who we are It'll take time for them to get used to molten ventures and it is our job to try and give them A consistency of experience That makes them realize that what we're talking about with molten ventures is very similar to what we what we offer them with draperous pre but with a few extra additions and that that takes time and you know You have to be willing to be patient to to bring that that change along with people But ultimately if if it feels natural to your audience The pickup is going to be much quicker if you're trying to do something that is a rapid big change from where you came from Not so much in names and colors and whatever else but Experientially is very different from where you were you'll find it harder and so I think from our perspective as I say We tried to distill and capture what we thought was the essence of our company and then turn it into the brand If you get that part right you should find the experience more straightforward Yeah, what about then using external help to do the rebranding process? How do you view that you mentioned that you did some research Internally and with your stakeholders and you have in-house competencies, but Where could you benefit from using some external help? So so look I I would you know If you have the resources to it and look there are there, you know, there are there are Expert agencies at many different price points. Yeah, we went out and we quoted with a range of different agencies We quoted with where we got quotes back at different price points and we selected a partner named Koto Now we sort of we knew of Koto They'd sort of become there we referred to us by one of our portfolio companies That actually worked with some other vcs and they had very good credentials But you know, it's it's one of those sorts of things where we've sought the advice of people that we know Who we respected and to see the work that they'd done and they made referrals and we would do the same thing I I think that there is a lot of expertise out there in the industry and you can get it a range of price points So I think it is definitely good to work with external parties. Just because you won't have strategic necessary strategic marketing or strategic branding people internally You won't have the right kind of design expertise internally You know, this is a sort of a six month 12 month or sometimes three month sort of process And so therefore it makes sense to work with external agencies to do this Provided you understand how to manage the process internally And I think that that's sort of, you know, the role of the marketer in this particular case is to act as the go between between the creative agency and that the needs of the business internally And that that that can be where you sort of find things a bit difficult because I've been doing this for more than 20 years and and brand marketing is my hinterland So therefore it I found and I found this difficult So it's sort of it's it's the sort of thing where expertise really does make a difference to have that part internally Or if not to have a trust like a consultant or a party you can trust that can help you mediate that part of the relationship And that part of the process Yeah, the operational side of rebranding. Let's talk about that a little bit. That's interesting So let's say now you have an idea like we were a draper's spree and now we have Molten Ventures great name. Let's do this. And so what do you do is do you like do you I can tell you it looked nothing like that Swear jar whenever anyone says draper's spree you have to put a quarter in the no, no, no, no So we spent probably a month or two Doing the research part of we called it an immersion session We did the research Within our team within our sort of our stakeholders to understand where we stood and what our differentiation was We then spent a few months of refining that to get ourselves to you know What we call it a market our brand strategy and that's you know, what is the vision of the company? What are the goals? What is the positioning? What is the personality? What are the values, you know, that's sort of every Yeah, every different brand agency will have a slightly different model But they all kind of do the same thing We then once we'd sort of agreed that strategy You can then move into the creative phase of the process and at that point we knew that we wanted to change the name So you're running kind of two parallel tracks. One of them is around the creative development around, you know What is the brand idea and all these other sorts of things? But the other part is the name now I should sort of say something specific about names As a very large tech company discovered recently if you don't trademark things properly you can get yourself into trouble And because the trademarking process can take six to six three to six months Depending on which jurisdictions you're operating Europe versus the US You do kind of need to run those two things in parallel And so you're often going to be submitting multiple names in for trademarking while you're still trying to develop the other brand assets And hopefully they come together at the other end and you have a choice of names So that that part of the process probably took about sort of three four five months To get all those sorts of things together And and then sort of obviously once you've sort of got the name agreed and once you have the sort of the rest of the The visuals of the brand agreed you go into a an execution phase Which is in our case has taken us about two or three months of you know We were had to rebuild our website from scratch in fact We built two websites from scratch because one of them was sort of is focused on entrepreneurs and sort of the tech industry The other is focused on our public market investors are incredibly important and the people Operator or using that website have a very different use case to people who want to learn more about ourselves us as investors And so we had to build two websites. We had to build Swag like the out to create swag like this We had to do a whole huge range of visual assets You know the video that that you would have seen on our twitter profile all those things Took a number of months to come together. So It is a if you if I believe you do it properly it takes quite a long time It's a bit longer because we're sort of a more mature company Because we have a sort of a wider stakeholder group those things add to the complication But sort of those steps along the way become quite important and and sort of Making sure you've ticked all those boxes and done things properly and got your name trademarked and and being through that process Is actually quite involved But but I I have to laugh. I mean james james Sort of skimmed over the you know, we do all that the creative piece and once that agreed Here's the operational the the once that once that was agreed You move past very quickly and let's be clear. I mean, that's not an easy process right getting getting alignment. So And and as you would expect to come back to you know brand being an emotional thing this this this work You know does need to go through and believe me. You don't get to consensus And and maybe you shouldn't and that's to be expected too. So The process of even getting to sort of agreement and alignment across the team I mean we're we're lucky I think we ended up in a place where everybody's incredibly aligned and agreed but that takes time to get there too and what was really important to us is that You know design I've been through some branding work previously as well rebranding work previously both with my own company and with another business that I was in and designed by committee And sort of constant debate across a huge group Honestly, you never really end up in in the best place. It's sort of lowest common denominator wins out in the end And we were very mindful of that and getting the balance between making sure that Everybody in the firm felt that they had a role and input which is critically important But also that we sort of had a forum which we could in a way sort of centralized some of the key decision making as well To make sure it was there was the right level of focused discussion and debate. And so we did have a working group internally that was made up of There was a kind of five or six of us on it But really what was most important was that it was really representative of the whole firm And that means that you know, that group was made up of people who were Had been with the business for you know, four or five six years plus people who'd been with the business much more recently More recent joiners. They have a different relationship with the old name and the old brand if you're in the door six months versus somebody who's lived and breathed it for years You know, there's obviously we we've a team of investors But we've got a huge, you know, we've a huge business of people who aren't sort of investing day to day as well And to making sure we had proper representation across the whole firm by way of functions Whether you're in an investment role or not Um that we had good diversity across the group between, you know, male female input other levels of diversity So to us it was getting a core group of people that were just representative across the firm That had been put into that process, but you know, and you have interesting debates as you should Um, you know, something's kind of maybe not right with the brand if everybody's sprayed away just says It's good tip that people get emotionally involved with the name because it just means you you test You challenge you push You you challenge each other's opinions. Um, and and that in itself, you know, James sort of said once that was agreed I was just it's important to note that takes time. Um And I think it was You know, I'm really proud of how we how we did that as a group I think it was a really it was a good way to do it. We had great input for everybody and ultimately when it came to You know talking about the brand internally and kind of talking about the new name Everybody was fully on board because you know, the process was understood the representation was understood and and you know It felt that it it translated across the whole the whole company pretty successfully. Um, but that's not an easy thing Yeah, I just it's not no look one of the things we did do is we we for the name specifically we had a quite a quite a specific brief Of what we hope the name would be look, there's many different ways to name your business We we've picked what you would call an associative name, you know, malton is an existing word Um, you know, there are ways you can invent new words from scratch all that sort of stuff And there's there's different reasons why you picked them, you know, if you're a consumer focused company You're going to spend a massive amount of money marketing your brand You can probably pick a name that has never existed before, you know Kizoo is one of our portfolio companies and that's a classic example But if you're if you're a venture capital firm and we don't tend to spend a huge amount of money on marketing Having an associative name like malton is very useful because the name itself Says something about what the company believes and what it stands for and you need to make that work So we had a detailed brief around the name. We long listed. We were working with the agency koto We long listed 50 something names That was shortlisted down to 10 or 15 and that was even shorter listed down to about seven or eight We then ran a scorecard. I mean, this is a very sort of deliberative process And then the top three of those names went off to be to be sort of checked through trademark and through one of the most, you know Very unusual and very pleasant coincidences in, you know, I've ever come across as a marketer The the highest scoring name was both the easiest to trademark and the easiest to find URLs And that was that's really unusual. We really got lucky with that. Yeah For sure. Yeah, and brand discussions are are never easy. They're fun I've had quite a few one with one of our producers on this show as well. Samuel He probably regrets some of those some of those yet still But it's it's fun. Yeah, it's really interesting to talk about because I mean we use words Are you use words like not consensus but aligned and like it's like it's trying to hit that space of like Of like defining something that collectively exists, but doesn't make sense yet Yeah, yeah, and that's true. And you know, you are you are there is a very deliberate creative tension involved because Because that that creative tension leads to better results And I look I've had many discussions with Nikki and other members of the team about specific creative aspects of Of the new brand and and yeah, it took weeks and it was hard and there was some really difficult conversations But ultimately what what ended up happening is the assets that we do have are better for it, you know, they are they are far better for it and and you know, you know, we we have a brand that That has an idea which underpins it We have a look and feel which is a better expression Of what the brand is what the brand stands for and where it wants to go and whatever else we have A name that is expressive of what we you know What the actual underpinning of the name of the idea isn't and all these things come together But it was it was weeks of very very difficult conversations to get us to this point Yeah And you also have a new motto to to to go with the brand. So do I elaborate on make more possible? Yeah, look, I mean, it's interesting We we landed upon make more possible as our positioning back in towards the end of last year and You know make more possible is this idea that you know your position or positioning should be the thing that the bit of Marketing or branding territory that you alone can own, you know This company alone should be able to own that idea and look any any venture capitalists can say well We make more possible for entrepreneurs because we invest in them and they you know, they they they build these things But the thing about you know, molten ventures particularly because we're a publicly listed firm Not only do we make more possible for the entrepreneurs who we invest in But because anyone on a public anyone who can buy shares on a public market, which is literally anyone can invest in us And hopefully we perform well and and make returns for them Therefore we make we make more possible for those investors as well And through that collective action of a sort of a democratised version of venture capital We believe that makes more possible for our wider society because we you know more people are able to access venture capital More people can see those returns. So make more possible as a positioning Really really sort of was something that we felt we could own and believe it And the more we thought about it and you know venture capitalists don't typically have mottos or Don't don't express those sorts of things in their marketing communications The more we thought about it the more we realized that actually This was something we wanted to talk more publicly about Because again, it was something that helped differentiate us. It was something that helped we helped you know It helped us to be able to own it but it's it really speaks to what we think is our purpose Which is why we get up in the morning and why we seek out those companies and why we try and invest in those great businesses Because make more possible is something that is genuinely what we believe is the the the thing we bring to To our industry and and sort of to the wider economy in the world. So that was you know It became something quite special to us the more we started to talk about it Yeah, makes sense. Maybe to round off then Nikola, do you think um the heightened competition will push more vcs to consider rebranding? Or is it maybe not that that's maybe not the most central central part of Still to to stand out in the competition Yeah, like I honestly think if you think that just slapping a new name or something on on, you know, your On your website is the right way to compete in a more competitive market It's just the wrong reason to think about a rebrand. Um, I do think it's fair to say that the whole Venture ecosystem is an asset class is evolving And that will absolutely need to push firms to more critically look at themselves And better understand their role and they're in in two entrepreneurs In the broader context of the investment ecosystem. So for sure as the ecosystem is evolving Other firms will probably sort of take take a look and really understand or try to figure out what they're doing That doesn't necessarily or shouldn't necessarily automatically lead to a rebrand But really just sort of better articulating or better delivering on the value that you bring as a firm So it will focus the mind I think for people but not necessarily if people are choosing to rebrand or relabel Then that's sort of coming from a different place than than than just competition. So um I do think You know over a longer time. I mean the competitive more looking at the competitive market is quite a short term way of looking at things as well Uh, and obviously any rebrand or reposition is a very much a long-term saying So fair to say many will be in the context of long-term evolution of our industry really looking at their positioning And how they better communicate that and I do think you'll see Other firms we've just seen, you know, sequoia make a pretty transformational change with how they operate their fund model That's not a rebrand necessarily like it's it's it's clearly not a rebrand Um, but it is sort of a repositioning of them how they operate The value that they bring to entrepreneurs and to the to the investor ecosystem more generally how they work with LPs So I do suspect that you know with that change us having gone public that didn't come going public Didn't come you know, didn't come hand in hand with a rebrand at the point that we went public But it was sort of a how are we evolving our purpose our mission and our you know, our business model For kind of the the next five 10 20 30 years of this ecosystem So I do think many firms will be thinking about that and looking at that But that's not necessarily going to be tied to a whole load of renames and rebrands And I think if you do see three names and rebrands, it's possibly for the wrong reasons Yeah, look, I've I've to agree with that. I think that you know Capital is quite possibly one of the most commoditized things possible Uh, and and you know, you you start to see this how you'll you start to see more of these sorts of moves because I guess venture capital in the last 10 years has gone from being Kind of a cottage industry to being actually very commoditized and incredibly incredibly competitive But the thing that underlies most of that is that the model for for most vcs is incredibly similar to each other And I think so therefore it becomes very hard for them to differentiate On their their their structure or it becomes hard for them to differentiate on sort of other more sort of fundamental parts of the business So yeah, maybe they will look at marketing and branding as a way to do that But unless they have a unique positioning within that it's going to be very hard for them to to make that branding work stick And I think that's look ultimately the thing that the drove us to to consider a rebranding is we have a fundamentally different model It has an offering that goes to entrepreneurs and an offering that goes to the widest the wider community That is very different to most vcs And so therefore a rebranding to be able to talk about that makes sense So yeah, unless you're going to consider what is the fundamental nature of your model It's going to be hard to really make a brand exercise stick But look, you know best of luck to everybody. It's it's a fascinating thing as a market Or I think it's like you know venture capital is in a bit of a potential golden age because In many ways our industry is starting to apply the the marketing lessons that have been that have existed in Other industries for the last half, you know, half a century, you know This sort of stuff has been happening in shoes or cars or Yeah packaged goods for the last, you know, since the 1960s And venture capital is starting to wake up to this mainly because it's starting to become so much more competitive And so much more commoditized and you need to get better at this sort of thing to be able to differentiate Because as as nico was saying it's a you know, despite the fact that A decision to work with the vc can be a very rational thing you have to think about a lot of Different very commercial very realistic aspects of working with a particular vc You might be working with them for 10 or 15 years And so ultimately that decision over which vc you choose to work with Comes down to an emotional decision and so therefore being able to Help express our brand a bit more clearly to enable entrepreneurs to understand us that a little bit better Can hopefully mean to you know that we'll that we'll be able to work with many better entrepreneurs because they'll be able to understand that a little bit better Exactly. Yeah, we'll make sure to keep our eyes open for for those potential rebrands and see see how they go Happy to come on. Yeah, it's been great. Great having you on the show It's been very informational and very hands-on also for our audience. I think so. Thanks for taking the time to join Thank you very much We can't wait to see everybody at slush Well next month. It's gonna be very soon. We're sponsoring Founders day, so we look forward to seeing everybody on november the 30th. Yeah, fantastic Perfect. Yeah, I look forward to to meeting you in person as well and seeing you in in hopefully not too snowy or slushy Helsinki Yeah It's part of the brand I think so, yeah Yeah, and thanks See you in the next one. Bye. Bye You