 What a crowd. Wow! Wow! Woohoo! So let's get started. What's your favorite movie? Many Black. But you knew that, right, Sarah? This seems a little rehearsed, right? Yeah. We will never come unprepared for you guys. So do you remember the scene with the girl, you know, the little girl? It's epic. Let's watch it. This is from YouTube, not Pirate Bay. Let's watch it. Little Tiffany deserved to die. Well, she was the only one that actually seemed dangerous at the time, sir. How'd you come to that conclusion? Well, first I was going to pop this guy hanging from the street light, and then I realized, you know, he's just working out. And how would I feel if somebody come running into the gym and bust me in my ass while I'm on a treadmill? Then I saw this snarling beast guy, and I noticed he had a tissue in his hand. I realized, you know, he's not snarling. He's sneezing. You know, ain't no real threat there. I saw Little Tiffany. I'm thinking, you know, eight-year-old white girl, middle of the ghetto, a bunch of monsters this time of night with quantum physics books. She about to start some shit, sir. She's about eight years old. Those books are way too advanced for her. If you ask me, I'll say she's up to something. And to be honest, I'd appreciate it if you eased up off my back about it. Or do I owe her an apology? I told you it was epic. And that actually reminds us of how we look at ourselves. We are the analytical Will Smith that go for the ones that others overlook. Except for the part where he asks, or do I owe her an apology? Except from that part. This is... All right. We are back in minds. We use science, technology, and intuition to find the founders that other miss. And we actually think that if you want to be able to zoom in at the perfect spot, you need to zoom out to get the full picture. So we use other people's myths and traps to find great companies. So let's zoom out and have a look at our industry, the VC industry. VC. Society is changing, but VC is not. We have the same deal structures, management fees, titles as we have had for so long. Did you know that the 80-20 carried structure system actually origins from medieval times? And isn't it a bit ironic that the whole industry is based on disruption, but finds it a little bit too hard for its own work? I do have some problems with the clicker. Do you see that? Yeah. Come on. Yeah. Here we go. Myth one. Yeah, let's talk about some myths in our industry. Let's dissect them. So myth one, there are no female founders to be found, and especially not in tech. And if there were any, VC would surely invest in them, right? It's true. But as a matter of fact, 30% of the founders are female. And it's true that you very often hear investors say that they would invest in female founders if there were any. So we took a look at the unicorn founders, because the unicorns have raised most of the venture capital. And we found out that out of the world's unicorn founders, a majority don't even have a tech background. This means the criteria doesn't even exist on the checklist when evaluating male founders. All right, so... There are no men in tech either. Exactly. Next myth, age. The ideal founder, it's... Yeah, you know, who generates maximum return is around 28 years old, fast learner, great stamina, puts all their time into their venture, right? Everyone is nodding. Everyone agrees, right? No, as a matter of fact, if you look at the fastest growing new ventures, the average age of the founder is 45. This is Anne. She's the founder of Dynamic Code, a fast growing health tech company. She was told that she should bring on a male co-founder when raising money. She was also told that she couldn't run a tech company because she was too old. Today, she is transforming healthcare by providing diagnosis to consumers without them even having to leave their homes, like STDs, tonsillitis, gluten intolerance, you name it. And we are super happy to be part of her journey. She's awesome. Dynamic Code is the company. Myth number two, myth number three. Three. I mean, immigrants very often become Uber drivers, and when they start business, this is very often low-scale, like drive cleaners and kebab places. Actually, 16% of the companies are founded by immigrants. If you look at the Fortune 500 companies in the US, 55% of them are founded by immigrants. Entrepreneurs with immigrant background has much harder time to raise capital and get loans, and people with African heritage have the absolute toughest time. Look at this team. They look amazing, don't they? And they are, but as a matter of fact, they met so much cognitive bias when they were looking for funding. They contacted more than 120 different investors and didn't get one meeting. Since we invested in Transfer Galaxy, they've sent more than 40 million euros through their platform in less than one year. Have you heard about pattern recognition? VC is all about that. Our industry, we want to make sure that we go for the founders with the right background, the right schools, the right experience, maybe at Spotify or other places. But as a matter of fact, it's a huge advantage to have the wrong background, to be an outsider. If you have the wrong background, you don't know what toes you cannot step on or what rules you cannot break. You see disruption more clearly. And that's why we love outsiders. And we didn't have the right background either. Hallelujah. No, we definitely didn't have the right background and so didn't Pear and Adam, who started Virkesbussen, they just had a wrong background to enter the timber industry. And they also, the timber industry didn't make sense to the VC world either. That left us a space. And what we did was that we looked at all industries yet to be digitized. And we found in timber industry, which is huge, especially in the Nordics, but also in other parts of the world. And they actually already gained a prominent position with their digital marketplace for timber, using AI to optimize the sales. And we got a new hashtag, Forest Tech. Forest Tech, we love new hashtags. Forest Tech, I think it's ours too. And this is a myth that all our portfolio companies have met. There are no good companies outside of the big cities, like Stockholm, like Berlin, Silicon Valley, Helsinki. Or... But there are. 74% of the companies started in Sweden are started outside of Stockholm. And for Finland, that figure is actually 88%. So what does research say? I mean, does this correlate with reality, or is it just myths out of the blue? A research team looked at VC firms and how they evaluated entrepreneurs and founders, both men and women. And this is how they constantly describe the female founders. They are too risk-avert. They are hesitant to grow their companies and their companies underperform. The most interesting part was that even if they had the exact same information, the conclusions were totally different, depending on whether it was a female or a male founder. I mean, H, it's a number, right? But if the founder was young, the male founder was promising and the female founder was inexperienced. If the founder spent a lot of money, he was driven to build his company, and she was only wasteful. What was the results? How did the companies perform? So this research team, they looked at 24 different KPIs during five years. And do you know what they found out? Can you guess? There were no statistical differences whatsoever on the performance of the male and the female companies. So cognitive bias is actually a shortcut in our brain. It was once crucial for our survival. Today it prevents us from making the right decisions. There is huge potential there. And that's why we actually founded Back in Minds in the first place. Not to miss out. So who gets funding in Sweden and in the world of investments? We looked for statistics on this, but there were hardly no statistics. So we created our own database. We looked at all share omittances in Sweden during one year, and this is what we found out. So we started with looking at all the investments that went to stock-on-base companies, and then the investment that went to the rest of the country. And we saw that only 8% of the venture capital went to the 74% of the companies outside of Stockholm. You see the same trend in Finland. Only 12% goes to the rest of Finland. And in the states, you have three states that get 80% of all the investments. And then we looked at the amount of money who went to companies founded by one man, companies founded by women and men, and companies founded by women only. And this is what we found out. 96% of the capital went to companies founded by men. 4% went to companies founded by women and men. I know what you're thinking. There's a piece of the pie missing. Yeah, it is, because less than 0.1% of the capital went to female founders that year. And this was also later confirmed by Sweden's biggest newspaper. You might have seen other numbers on, like, female founders and how much money they get. But this is in VC, so less than 0.1%. Uh-oh, back. Sometimes it works a little bit too well. Okay, let's summarize this to make it even more simple for you. All right, to raise capital, you should either be a white male from a big city or bring one. And from our back-in-minds perspective, we can see, like, you can ask the question, what happens when everyone looks at the same company or at the same apartment, for example? It becomes very expensive. It's the same with companies, and that's why we invest beyond hypes and bubbles to find the companies and the founders that other investors miss. We do this because of a return, but the side effect is driving a change, creating new role models and owners in society. It's time for a fireside chat, a fire camp, whatever, chat. Yeah, so now we're, like, just walking and sitting back here, and it feels perfectly natural. So here is the fire. Did you bring the marshmallows? No, I brought a fire. Okay. That's good enough, right? That's nice. All right, so you can... This feels perfectly natural. Actually, the Slush team, they suggested, like, ten different moderators to us, but, yeah, we rejected them all. I'm not sure it was a good idea now, but let's try it. Yeah. All right, so we've seen a lot of statistics, but why does it look like that? Well, I think there's different reasons to this. One could be that if we look at the 100 largest VC firms, we see that only 7% of the employees are female, for example. Actually, in Sweden, it's more common to be named Johan or Hendrik than to be a woman in BC. So, I mean, this is a very psychological effect that we have, a similarity effect that we invest in and hang out with and recruit people that are like ourselves. Any Johan or Hendrik in the audience? I wonder what the Finnish name would be. Yeah. Yeah. Another thing can be, I mean, the industry relies a lot on, you know, tight networks. The deal flow is so big, so you need, like, people to point out the right companies for you. And in the end, it means that you, like, invest in your friends' friends. Yeah. And I mean, one of the most legendary founders of a VC company, I think his quote was, reaching me is the best qualifier. And that's like actually saying that it's much better if a founder just runs around looking for VC's rather than work with their own companies. And we believe very much in flipping the firm. Totally reverse. Like, in the future, we think that VCs and investors will be the one coming with the hats in their hand and asking for an investment in your companies. Because the thing is that there are so many more funding options for entrepreneurs. Just take, like, crowdfunding. Last year, it surpassed in amount VC. And there are so many more options. So I think it's going to be like the other way around. But we, VCs, need to go with the hat in our hands. Yeah. The question is, like, will the founders even choose VC when there are many financing options? Exactly. What do you think? Yeah. Yeah. So what should we talk about now? Yeah. Like, do you think that the industry will change? I'm very sure the industry will change because of return, as I said earlier, and also because of attracting the future founders. Yeah. Exactly. Because this swap. And also when you, maybe when you, like, understand the difference between the, like, perceived risk and the actual risk. When is this thing founders? Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, there are so many things going on. I mean, so many things are happening and we're trying more. Like, VCs are looking for female founders. You know, you want to have women in a lot of panels. You want to, like, do pitching boot camps for women and so on. What do you think of that? I mean, there's definitely progress going on. And I think that all initiatives are very good. It's a good intention. But I think that we also have to ask ourselves what is that doing with the founder when we talk all the time about how the founder should change. Like even putting up boot camps for them to be better pitchers. I think that's a little wrong, actually. I think that it would be much better if the whole investor network would go to training and maybe learn how to see beyond their own cognitive bias. And actually, I mean, research says that... That's actually based on research. It's not that like a woman or someone of a minority do, you know, a pitch that is not good enough. So it's actually we that need to look beyond our biases. And yeah, we need to change. So maybe a summer would be like, maybe we come from the wrong angle when we talk about what the founders need to do differently. And we should talk much more about how the investors should do things differently. But I mean, we heard just before us was a woman on stage who just started a $550 million fund. And started a great company with social services in India. And she also said like she was so sick and tired of the fact when she's invited to a panel like we are looking for a female founder. And that's probably something you can all relate to. How does it make you feel like you've been to a lot of panels and you get a lot of questions? Yeah, exactly, okay. So you go to this panel and you have so much to say. You want to tell them about how you, like the companies you've built, you want to tell them about the investments you've made. And the first question you get is always, how does it feel to be a woman in a manly dominated industry? It makes one feel like this. Can you describe that? What is it on the screen? It's actually a man in a vagina suit. The fun thing is that when we sent this through to the slush team, the only comment that we got was... We thought it wouldn't pass, but like they will never let us use this picture in our PowerPoint. Exactly. But the only thing they asked was like, can you change the background color on the slide with the guys in the hot dog suits? In the hot dog suit. Yeah, anyone up for hot dogs? I don't know. No, but there is so much, there is actually so much more to talk about. And maybe we should all agree on the fact that, I mean, just skip the prefix of founders. Let founders be founders, and not female founders or female investors or immigrant founders. The same goes for, you have the Femtec category. I mean, in most other categories, like if it's men, founders, you know, reaching out to men, it's like a category for human beings. If there's a product by a man for men, then it's like for human beings, right? And if there's a product by women, for women, it's always Femtec. So... Yeah, so it's a lot of stuff there. And what's your, like... Do we have some more quotes? Like, these quotes are interesting. Yeah, Survival of the fittest is a good one. Yeah, Survival of the fittest, yeah. It's also from the VC industry. How does that make you feel if you don't get funding? And it's... Now, but I think that's where the industry comes from, a place where it's very, very normal that the founder uses all his or her time to try to reach the VC or the investor. And it's actually, we very often hear from people in our industry that this founder was so driven, he was actually waiting outside the ladies room when I got out. Actually, I've done that. I've been waiting outside of the restroom and like, hello, but that's really creepy. Yeah, exactly. It's not a driven entrepreneur. It's actually only creepy, right? No, but I think... And that's how we see, like, entrepreneurs, you know, they're like, no, we can't come to your networking event because we need to launch this or we need to hang out with our customers. That's only a positive thing. Yeah, totally. We were actually kicked out once from the founder. We traveled a long way and we sat at his office and all of a sudden she said, now you have to go. There are too many customers calling at the call center. And we loved it. We invested. That's a good suggestion. And looking at... like, fears. What's your biggest fear? Missing out of deals. We have an album of investments that we should have done. I think all the investors have an album of investment that should have made. Companies that have grown much more than we thought. Yeah, and I think we're both, like, super competitive because we really, like, we're going to do this for, you know, maximize return and, like, yeah, maybe have better return than everyone else because the key is return here. A lot of people, like, are you doing this to be kind to these entrepreneurs or, like, some kind of charity? This is no charity. This is pure business. But while doing this, we, yeah, create the new role models and a lot of new... Yeah, new outlooks of the entrepreneurs. One fear could be the representation trap. When investing in someone that other have missed and that person would actually not succeed with his or her company, it would be easy to think, I was right about that group of people or entrepreneurs with that background and vice versa, if that person succeeds, then you don't talk about representation anymore, then it's very often okay, that was just the exception of it all, so... I recognize that very much from my upbringing, with, like, Iranian parents, so you're like, if I do something wrong, I will destroy so much from other, like, immigrants with the Iranian background and you have a lot of, like, weight on your shoulders, so you have to prove a lot of things. But, yeah, but I don't think we should worry about this because the companies are doing great, so... All right, time's running out. Yeah, time's running out. Only 30 seconds. Yeah, should we, like, do our brave heart? So this is the time for the, like, the William Wallace Braveheart end here of it all. Have we got something prepared for that? Not really. Not really, let's... Yeah, so you could all go out and swim with the sharks or you can join Meen Sarah in the Blue Ocean to find the true future successes. I mean, in Nordics we are among the best of the best. You are among the best of the best, but don't stop there. Go ahead and be with us and find the ones that are a miss. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you.