 I have this kind of energy boost just from seeing all of you guys and also High-fiving Al Gore backstage. That's kind of cool So I'm delighted to talk about to talk with you guys about how we together can build $100 billion companies together And I'll Let you guys talk shortly about what you do and how we can make this happen So if you don't mind like a quick intro Great super quick. I'm Brent Hovman. I founded a few tech companies and right now currently doing three things founders forum at events and First-minute capital which is we aim to be Europe's most helpful seed fund We're backed by 29 unicorn founders and some other amazing people ie Atomica And Tencent and others and we also have founders factory which is where we help large corporates work with startups And we will help launch 200 startups over five years Great Niklas Sennström partnered Atomico a venture capital firm in Europe. We are started 11 years ago after Skype and What we're trying to do is to find the most ambitious entrepreneurs in Europe and Supporting them as they're scaled their businesses to become global companies So we kind of typically come in after Brent kind of find these companies and and other seed investors are finding companies also One thing that I'm very very passionate about is very much what Al Gore was talking about is that it's so important that entrepreneurs are taking this challenge and And building businesses that that can address some of these really really big sustainability problems that we're facing and I truly believe that the biggest companies of tomorrow if you talk about ten billion dollar companies hundred billion dollar companies Actually companies of which are addressing some of these big sustainability problems are going to be those big companies of tomorrow So I'm super excited about combining investments and and fighting climate change at the same time Great. So I'm David Tevenham. I work for subbank. I'm a partner at the vision fund I've been working for some bank for three years investing company globally Prior to that I work for ten years at Google What we're really excited at subbank and for the vision fund is that we believe we are starting a new phase impacted by kind of a new wave of technology and We are very excited to invest in companies that are going to be the leading company of tomorrow Leveraging like a new Text like cool. Thank you So I wanted to hear your view. What do you think have changed in Europe the last year or since you guys started your own businesses So what's changed clearly? I guess since the beginning when I guess Nicholas and I was starting our company's almost 20 years ago or When you've asked for the last year. I I think it is just the Excite the serial entrepreneurs just continues to gain momentum There's a snowball of serial entrepreneurs or whatever. I mean if we could come up with a collective now and that would probably be better So but but we are seeing those entrepreneurs wanting to give back to the system wanting to help younger founders more and that means we're seeing more seed funds more angel investments and More energy and I think the other thing is we haven't global arms race Across governments. We're seeing it here today Finland doing a great job Attracting the entrepreneurial ecosystem But we are seeing this arms race from London to Paris and right across Europe and that can only help Surface the best entrepreneurs and lastly I'd say Entrepreneurialism is now a career choice It wasn't before now. It's something when you are the best of the best and you leave your university You consider becoming an entrepreneur in my day. You just went to banking and consulting. Yeah So I think you know you put a perspective of last year and then maybe on a 10-year horizon I think on a 10-year horizon when we started Tomiko and when I was building Skype. It's night and day You know back then it was a big question or could you build great companies in Europe and today? There's absolutely no doubt about it. The European take ecosystem is proven. It works I know that you're having a report there and and It's just showing that over the last year. There are more companies being founded more more money coming into the ecosystem More valuations being driven But also if I just look back over the last year since we were at slush last year I would say a few things have changed to the very positive one is that there's more capital We talked about last year that was still a gap a funding gap in Europe when it came to a little bit later stage funding So that's one reason we raised a bigger fund of seven hundred sixty seven million dollar fund So we could support the most ambitious companies as they scale globally But it's also which is important because we've been underfunded compared to to us and Asia But also rivals of all vision found and and other large investors like Tencent and others who are very actively Investing in Europe is also tremendously important because this enables these very ambitious founders To scale bigger, but we've also seen a higher ambition level of entrepreneurs Today entrepreneurs. There's no doubt about there's no question Like that they don't you know for them to build a global success story Ten years ago or a few years ago. Well, you know, maybe you build a Nordic business a German business now It's all about building global businesses So so those are going to think the big different changes and also we see a continuous drive towards deep tech a Lot of the companies we've seen over the last years are AI IOT And other kind of deep technologies, which is tremendous Yeah, so I totally agree with what was said. I think we're seeing more ambition more talent and more capital in Europe I think this is like 19 billion which is going to go into tech companies in Europe in 2017 That's 30% more than last year. So that's a huge amount We have heard of like 50 round or 50 million dollars or more For European tech to company. So this is really encouraging For us we are seeing more and more European entrepreneur coming to us with big dreams big visions like Niklas said working on like deep tech complex technology problems Trying to solve big problems and we find that really really exciting. I think Investors more and more are open and are able to kind of fund those those businesses and for sure we're in business To help those entrepreneurs to scale I mean a recent example of what we've done in Europe for example is we've improbable in London Here is an amazing company. They are building like a simulation engine They're started with with gaming, but we believe that technology can it can be applied to sales cities economies and much more And we we help them to raise 500 million dollars to help them to scale globally and to build a big business I think It is interesting as well now what's changed as well as that this next wave of companies a lot of them are gonna have to work with the System so playing either regulatory arbitrage or playing in the industries that haven't yet been disrupted So gov tech fintech fintech Medtech all of the ed tech these areas where you sort of you can't just ask forgiveness later as Airbnb and uber did You have to play within the system, and then there's also the opportunity for European governments Which they're doing more and more to play the regulatory arbitrage game To make it easier to have sandboxes for entrepreneurs to start and scale Yes, that our curiosity you mentioned this sort of momentum going on in Europe with more companies and more money invested Do you also see that your LPs are finding this trend? Are they more keen on investing in European VC firms? Because yeah, yeah It's true You know what one thing we said, you know last year was that again like this this funding gap that we have You know whether it's here in Finland or in Sweden or in the UK or Germany Netherlands We have great Institutional investors in Europe particularly like the public pension funds which been very In the past they've been investing in public public stock But that's your secondary market that that's not creating Growth So what we've seen now over the last year is that they also understand now that technology in Europe can create economical growth for their pensioners, so we see more and more of those LPs Institute big institutions Investing in technology the other thing we also see which is where encouraging what Brent talked about working within the system Is that we see that European corporates are also now realizing that this digital transition is happening you know ten years ago when the what was you know the disruption of say music or movies or telecommunications and and Whatever travels and other things It was very much about being disrupted and and and you could be quite aggressive with that I think what we see now is that it's actually about working with corporations as well And it's very encouraging to see some of the very large corporations are Understanding this and they're investing in tech companies investing in funds to partnering with companies and a lot of them are here today So we think there are a very very important role in in this ecosystem as well Atomico report actually it says that we're at a record amount of corporate money going into venture capital funds It's 20 it's over 20 percent and you know therefore In companies like founders factory which are getting the corporates into an entity together to help I'll start up fine product my market fit and to help those start up scale I'm not global Giants like L'Oreal Aviva easy jet those are the sort of companies that are doing it and What we've seen is those corporates in the years 2000 they got their fingers burnt and they stayed away for a long time But now they're back They've tried some other things but they're back and they see that they really need to work with the innovative entrepreneurs that are here today Yeah, it's really exciting times and speaking of the system that we mentioned We all know that investors play a key role in enabling and accelerating companies and also the founders I'm curious to hear how do you think we can work together the investors to ensure? We're building these massive 100 billion dollar companies and how does our system actually work? So how does the VCs work together? I mean I'm an angel of Esther you do seed we do a run and upwards and then we have David Maybe you can talk to the entrepreneurs here about how it actually in reality works when we Starting from the earlier stage, I think the hardest bit and I think there are 400 startups presenting in one of the one of the areas today Which fills me with joy and fear Because it's so many and how do you filter? So I think the art the answer is the ecosystem just needs to help each other in terms of filtering out is One thing is a filter the second thing is actually helping that talent find product market fit and helping them find credibility and gravitas So that's one of the things we love to do is find an entrepreneur with a great idea and say look here's five people You should meet who can help you. Here's the advisory board. You should build Here's the super angels who can come in and really help you build that company and then We can say once they've found product myth market fit We can move along the chain and say here's some great VCs later stage funds Yeah, no, it's when we look at how we source and we just looked at the other day You know the investments we've done over these years Almost all of these companies are from our network. So we have relationship with you know most Early-stage investors in Europe and we meet with them regularly and they tell us here good companies You should look at because they have an interest for those companies to get funding and for us We have an interest to find the great companies and then when we have worked with these companies to scale them a few years We go to David and his teams and other growth investors as they hear some good companies you guys should look at So that's really how the ecosystem is is working in a very collaborative way and and it is On the investment side is much more being collaborative than being competitive. Yeah. Yeah, I think we are all partners It's an ecosystem and we're trying to provide Capital our companies are growing for different scale. We are a later stage investor So we want to help them to to push the pedal. They are winning They want to go global they need to scale and we want to provide them capital to go big to achieve their dream So we lack entrepreneurs that are hungry passionate, but it take a lot of capital and often a lot of time and patience Until you achieve your your your full vision and we were speaking before about Spotify, for example And it takes some time before Spotify is kind of the leading player that it is today What do I so we want to support those players and so we're coming and providing them Capital but also expertise inside from a global portfolio to help them to have a truly global vision and help them to scale I mean a good example, you know as everybody has example is I think a good example would be super self example like to choose like a local kind of player is You know, we we finance them in 2013. We give them 1.5 billion And I think it helps them to stay independent It helps them to focus on building the best mobile games and he helps them to go global They wanted to build the first and the best Mobile gaming global company and he's helped them to do that and you know last year We're talking about 10 cent the company that was valued as more than 10 billion So that's a great example of scaling company and helping them to achieve like their dream Cool. Thank you. And also with regards to what mr. Al Gore earlier said What do you guys think we can do here in Europe to make sure we're building companies that of course generate great returns to investors but also to society I think it's you know the great news is that when you look at the surveys and you hear about Millennials and you hear the cheers that went up after Al Gore during Al Gore's speech What they really want to do is work with companies for purpose So it's it's a very selfish thing as well as an altruistic thing for entrepreneurs to have purpose right at the beginning of their mission So one of the other things we've set up is is founders pledge Which is entrepreneurial giving commitment for entrepreneurs over 1,100 entrepreneurs have now signed up to it And they do it from the very start of their journey. They commit and they think about Their impact on society right at the beginning now within that I think I'll go back to some of the themes that we've touched on earlier today But one of them would be you know medtech things like I've invested in startups that are literally trying to cure cancer I think we probably a lot many of us have right so these are the sorts of things where you see They have entrepreneurs with a wonderful mission But they're also a confluence of factors that are happening today big data plus big science equals curing disease So not 140 character tweets to quote someone else's website So I think there's you know, we're seeing more and more partly and education is another one You know, you'll see so many great entrepreneurs wanting to do To see that it education in the skills gap is a way to solve Some of the disenchantment and some of the societal issues that we've had today So we're seeing more and more Entrepreneurs in that area. I think as ever the challenge for Europe, which we haven't really addressed is how do you build pan European businesses? And how do you lower the barriers to that and that comes with some of these social goods because some of them find it hard to Build right across Europe. Yeah so 11 years ago, I had an opportunity to watch Al Gore when he did his inconvenient truth presentation in a much smaller group and I was like back then. I thought I was like a superstar. You sold my company for a few billion and I was really into what I was doing and then I heard him and how tears my eyes is like shit What I've been doing is the wrong thing. I went up to him is like Al. What do I do? It's like, well, you figure out He's okay fine. Thanks, but But I rose to the to the challenge and and then I started to do so philanthropic giving and which is great We continue to do that But what we have realized over the last few years is that and just because we see these entrepreneurs Who are usually like I've been passionate about building a world-leading company But it building products and services which at scale they have a huge impact on the same climate And these are companies like Electrical Aircross like Lilium in in in Germany. There's companies like farm drop the changing the Food supply chain. There's you know meter placement companies and I Truly believe that those are the companies that would be great of tomorrow for two reasons one is that it's all about talent You know if you don't have the best talent you the best idea doesn't work You need to attract the best talent and the best talent as Brent was saying They want to work for mission-driven companies that has an impact. The other thing is consumers in millennials are Don't need to tell you that because you're here are much more willing to buy products and services from companies Which have a sustainable supply chain both from an environmental, but also social point of view That's studies are clearly showing that so it's just good business practice to build to invest in these companies So that's what may make me really really, you know excited about that there are few There's not all companies but a lot of companies that actually can have a big big impact on on Specifically on on the environment and do you think Europe is better place than any other place to sort of facilitate the growth of these companies I Think that we have it's about playing to our strengths and you know We're sitting in in Finland, which is probably the one of the most Agilitarian countries in the world is one of the most environmental friendly I would say that they're more environment friendly than than my home country, Sweden Which also by the way, it's very environmentally friendly. So is Germany. So is Denmark I think we are ahead of the curve compared to the rest of the world thinking about these things and that's something we've been Learning when we're you know in school from early age. So I think we have a competitive advantage in that way Yeah, I think good ideas and good teams can come from anywhere We are really excited because we think what an inflection point is a technology cycle So there's a new wave of technology AI machine learning robotic, etc Which is going to impact every industry, you know, you know, I mean Brent was mentioning some of them But you know everything is going to be impacted So people have the opportunity to to work now on on company and Technologies that are going to change society for the better. They can have a huge impact on solving the world's problem in some way You know medtech is one for example, we invest in a company called Guardian Health They are working on improving the detection rate for cancer for example for machine learning and genomics This is fascinating So people in Europe and elsewhere have a chance to participate to that those adventures and us as investors We're like really excited to be able to accelerate the pace of progress and help those people to you know Not only achieve their dream, but make kind of all experience of product Or experience of services and the society better tomorrow decreasing pollution of solving cancer, etc, etc This is exciting times. Yeah, really exciting times Okay, so I'm jumping a bit now from a entrepreneurial perspective So if you're an entrepreneur and you've been backed by one of you guys How do you help them and support them in their journey and I can just relate to when I was newly hired at Spotify and Heading up global marketing and being 24 I didn't really have anyone to bounce ideas with that have been on a similar journey And I think today these these are working in a in a different way where it's not just about money. It's also about Support and advice. Do you want to talk a bit about that? I think what's also changed in that area is that there's more leverage So I mean we've all got good examples of just we're just individuals here But we've got organizations and structures that can help us leverage So I'm very lucky now that between all those organizations I said that we have you know For example, it found this factory 60 full-time people that will help entrepreneurs with whether it's growth hacking or whether it's a Blockchain smart contract firm. How can you get the deal the proof of the proof the pilot with Aviva? So make sure that so that once you've done that actually everyone else says while you've proven it So you found you've helped them found find product market fit So that's one of the areas I'm another might be another company that really needs credibility So we've said right here are the four people who should be on your advisory board and they've gone to them And they've actually invested in them and they've changed change the course of that company So I think another thing is just being authentic with the founder and not wanting to as Nikola said We're not in this actually sounds terrible. We're not in this to make money We're in this to make a difference to make an impact and because you know in my case I just love it when you see that founder who says yes later You've changed my life because of those things that you or your company have done to help me So I think there's something authentic and that's the one thing I'd urge founders to do is to find the people who Authentically want to help you and that's to be honest why I think Nicholas and I have done a lot together over the many years since we've we've known each other is because we both found a common thread in that Authenticity of what we want us to do next. Yeah, I think As Brent said it's about having building this platforms I mean at Tomiko where we're happy we have a big fund and we can invest a lot of money But money is actually commodity today But then what we have is like we have 50 people and we have assembled a lot of people who have a lot of operational Experience including yourself Sophia, but the people who've been part of scaling companies like Skype, you know Google Facebook Uber Virgin and a few others and they're there they're kind of to help Help companies with some other eyes having said that though. It's it's Actually the founders and their teams who are we're not there to do the jobs for them We can help we can give advice and we can a little bit like there will be a bump in the road ahead of you that you should Just brace yourself. You'll be fine But you know some but at the end of the day It's actually the founders who have to to to build their companies We can help them the other thing that we're trying to do is to push them and and to stretch them Just like You know if you go if you're training for some if you train by yourself He's gonna you're gonna do 80% But if you have a trainer they're pushing you You're gonna train 95% 97% and you're gonna have a better workout And that's a little bit how we think our role is as well also kind of pushing the founders and Encouraging to think bigger and and be a bit more aggressive and in their approach No, I agree. I mean it's more than capital for sure I think we all have resource to help entrepreneurs Helping them and connection insight experience who have had in the past of like scaling big businesses across the globe One thing that's reason 8 we want between entrepreneur and us is that we are long-term investors So we want to be partner with Entrepreneurs for 5 10 20 years is going to be a long journey and we want to be part of that journey with them All the way so I mean the analogy we often use is It's like a boat trip you see, you know where you want to go in the distance and of course if you look in front of the boat These waves and they go up and down up and down and this can be quite scary And you need to solve those waves in those issues but it's very helpful to have a view on the long-term horizon and I think Providing long-term capital is helping entrepreneur to focus on their dream on their big vision and And knowing that there's somebody on their side to achieve that vision And so that's something often that resonates and that often we discuss with entrepreneur about Which you know, which is about how to maintain the cap to get to the island again. Yeah So we talked about people building world-changing businesses and we also talk about how we as investors can help them in that journey and We also talked about the momentum with more money coming in and more companies being built and more strong technology being available for more people So now it feels like we're in this place where we have a lot of tools lined up and That brings me sort of I would love to hear what you guys think about the future What do you think is possible and what type of businesses do you feel will be built in the upcoming year? So if we sit here next year, what type of companies would you love to see pitching? Well, I think it's it's the same answer our investors often give right? It is people who are addressing the huge challenges, you know Are the challenges big enough and are they playing to their competitive advantage and the geographic competitive advantage? So, you know, we've spoken a little bit about deep tech and AI and those sort of areas But you know Europe has again this amazing wealth of really smart You know a global leadership to some extent in some of those areas So you'd want to see people skating to where the puck isn't and leveraging what they can play what what the fields that they're experts in And it is going after as we said today those massive industries that haven't yet been disrupted and understanding Well, some of the technology trends how they're going to play out whether it are things like, you know trends that we know Apple love augmented reality, right? So we know so what what are the trends that augmented reality and can you mix them? What's really exciting if you say well, it's education and medicine and augmented reality So if you're ticking all those three boxes, you're like, yeah, that's kind of exciting You know and then obviously today you can't we can't we haven't mentioned enough of crypto and blockchain and changing the entire Banking industry, which I know some of these people around here are looking at, you know, so It's those sorts of areas and then I think the other area that we may well go into a bit more is Geographic arbitrage again, and that would be places like Africa where there is so much good to be done And Lastly the one we probably haven't said enough about but it would be gov tech because governments are so wonderfully when you look at entrepreneur what you see with the government you see something that's so Unbelievably inefficient and you should look at that and say my god. I know it's gonna be hard, but it's time to transform them Yeah, I see that we're running out of time unfortunately because there's so much to discuss but quickly Nicholas and Dave I think the thing that is interesting that with technology we live living in in the law of accelerated Returns so that means that in the next ten years. We're gonna see more disruption than we saw in the last ten years So every year is gonna be more exciting in that way, which means that there are bigger opportunities and bigger problems that that can be Solved I agree with with with brand that ed tech so education is something that needs to be fixed. It's it's yet The education is one of the sectors that is yet not really Disrupted by technology yet. It might be one of the most important sectors because if we don't fix education We don't fix the future So that's something that we like us, you know like to see more of it's really hard it's because it's a very very slow system the same thing with with Medtech we've seen with a lot used the last year a lot of med tech companies That's something we will continue to see but it's also about using this deep tech technology is using AI You know I ut and and big data and other kind of emerging technologies to solve some of these problems Lastly Dave. Yeah, so like I said really excited because this is a new information revolution And I think people can work now and now working now on building if you want the foundational kind of Platform that are going to be the platform of tomorrow We're talking about few industries, and I think every industry is going to be changed tremendously What happened with the internet? Is nothing compared to what's going to happen now the pace is accelerating Industries are going to change society is going to change for the better because of this and this tremendous opportunity in every sector So we're really excited about it. And you know, I think we're going to see Those foundational platform building Europe and this is going to be excited like for European entrepreneur to build those platforms and take them globally Even more than before All right, so time is up, but thank you guys so much for coming here and discussing and let's have fun investing more companies together Yeah, absolutely. Thank you