 I guess the mic is on. Well, great to be here with all of you and great to be here with you guys. Shall we start with some intros? Post what was said here. I think it'd be great to add to the intros already made just to go a little bit into how you really differentiate yourselves and bring out a little bit of individuality in terms of what each of you is interested in, in terms of sectors or areas. So Sakshi? Sure. So I've been at SoftBank for almost three years now. As you know, SoftBank Vision Fund is the largest technology venture fund. We are excited by technology breaking and then changing large markets and making them more intelligent. What I've done so far and what excites me are markets like healthcare. So within healthcare we've got genomic cost curves that are creating whole new markets, making healthcare very intelligent. I've done logistics and I think that's gonna be an exciting space to watch all around the world on a global scale. I think education is very interesting. So I suppose high impact large markets where tech can play a big role. Great. So at Atomico, I think our genesis is clearly a place from early stage. So as my friends here come from a much more growth oriented thought process, the beginnings of Atomico have always been to support entrepreneurs at Series A and help build companies. And parallel to that, I think our organization reflects that in that we have entrepreneurs, operators and investors who are collaborating within the organization of Atomico to help build companies at A but then beyond. So I think the capital that we have is much more from a venture roots but the ability to follow our investments to a place where my colleagues might look at these investments is where we live and our genesis are. We have a vast array of interest because my partners have come from very diverse backgrounds. But I would say generally speaking, I'm probably not to surprise of anyone. There's a group of us that are looking at consumer. There's a group of us that are looking at enterprise. And of course, deep tech is a big part of our strategy. But then I think we layer on a fourth which cuts through all of those which is kind of the Series B and C elements. And then wrapping all that up, Europe is our core focus. We really feel that Europe has a lot of potential up to now and then going forward, we're super bullish on that. Yeah, no, and we'll get into Europe a little bit more. And I mean, you guys are not afraid to do sort of early, big early investments in very tough industries, graph core, Lilian. Yeah. I think that there's also within the group and as an organization, I think there's also longer term thinking. You know, my partners like Nicholas and Siraj are both very well versed in those areas. And I think they have the mindset to think super long which I think is a good component of our portfolio and it gives us diversity in terms of the lineup as well. Yeah, no, cool. And Teddy? Yeah, I mean, inside has been around for 20 plus years and the focus has been singularly in software. And what software for us means mainly B2B and how we differentiate in that is our operational focus. So we have our kind of operational army structure of the software company itself. So we have everything from talent to customer success, to sales, product, so forth. And the professionals working on a team can go really deep into the problems of go to market and other areas in software companies as they don't have to cover like loads of different industries. So working with that team is a key way of untangling growth problems in our companies. We invest a lot in Europe. I would say a significant proportion of investment in Europe. Stages range from kind of series B, large series B all the way to buy out. So one of the differentiations inside has that we can be very flexible with the deal structure from small high growth minority deals to all the way to kind of take privates. Right, okay. Actually, we'll speed into Europe already then since you both mentioned it. I guess partly you guys don't have a team in Europe. So maybe cover that a little bit how you guys cover Europe from the US. And I think talk a little bit about what makes European companies you see special, whether it's certain sectors or qualities or metrics, that'd be quite interesting. So how we cover Europe is essentially we have a very bottom up sourcing model. So we have lots of people just calling every company and emailing everyone. I mean, there's probably every startup, the FNA scale that has received and contact from inside. And then there's a bunch of us who are on the plane and jet lagged all the time, including myself. So we kind of take in the positive side of like being everyone being in the same office and to kind of accepting the downsides that of course we have to travel more than having a local team. And so does that work? I mean, because I know my companies get calls from your analysts. Does that actually go flow through the system? Because we're often like maybe you should just ignore that and you have other things to do. I mean, you can ignore it. And then they will just email you again until you pick up. And we will show up eventually. So the team is very persistent. And that's the way we kind of surface things bottoms up. But of course, we get engagement from companies from different ways. We get introductions from co-investors and kind of the usual. To your question about Europe, at least in the enterprise segment, I feel like these companies can come from anywhere. Whereas consumer companies are more focused on that kind of key tech hubs of London, Berlin, Stockholm, so forth. Whereas BDB companies can come from tier three cities and it's more countries. And that's also how we feel like you can't cover this ground with the local office anyway. So for us, it's being in New York and traveling across the world is a way that works. And I mean, you guys obviously do this report every year on the state of European tech. And particularly it's been a banner year for Europe. We've seen successes in fintech. Fashion e-commerce has always been strong sectors as well. It's been a better market in terms of Europe, in terms of returns versus US. I guess what's happening or what's special and what are you guys looking at? Well, to the extent that just touch on one of Teddy's points, I think over the last five years, the stats speak for themselves in terms of the seed capital 4X, series A4X. So basically what all that suggests or actually probably is fact as per our report is that the ecosystem is super rich and which means that there's a lot more data points to cover. And so for us, because I think as an organization, we're really relying on the network of the angel program, which Sophia Benz was up in this stage talking about, our network of friends, of people who are seed funds themselves. Those are all feeding into our series A core strategy. And from that, I think what I'm trying to understand better is surfacing those that are of global caliber. I think all of the entrepreneurs. Dig into that because I think, obviously, there's so much noise. And you look at the top 20 companies, US or Chinese, right? So talk about that global in terms of how do these work. I mean, the banner year that you talk about this year has been the North Star of what a company can be, say in the consumer space, from Europe has just kind of almost 10X with Spotify. And I think the expectation of, I guess, the expectation of people who are in the ecosystem of the possibilities that these enterprise values can be so big has been defined at another level. And I think that's what is totally driving my motivation, at least to dig into the companies, both enterprise and consumer, that are trying to, most of our companies are trying to tackle bigger problems that are global and be global category leaders and then maybe winners. But within that journey, we are looking for signals, right? We are all looking for signals. And I think I'm trying to really try to understand and spend time within our portfolio, but also through the network of the ecosystem. What are those signals? And I don't have all the right answers, but I think that's where I'm really hopeful that the next three to five years we'll see a lot more companies that both softback and insight will want to invest into. And I'm a big believer that that will happen. And I mean, Sakshi, you guys are based in London. Does that give you a special perspective, obviously on Europe, but perhaps globally as well, because you are covering that vast arena, right? So we've got three offices, one's in London, one's in San Carlos in California and one's in Tokyo. We've got investment teams in all three offices. Pretty good-sized investment teams. We invest globally. We look at all sectors. We see ourselves as long-term capital. And we are very interested in Europe because going back to the US-China effect that you referenced, obviously these countries have seen escape velocities. People have seen zero to billion dollars. People have made a lot of money. Some people missed out. So there's a bit of FOMO, which creates a lot of risk appetite, which I think Europe doesn't have as much of. So I think there is a gap on the series B on the side and we hope to solve that. In fact, we think that valuations-wise, I think Europe is very attractive, probably one of the most attractive regions on a global scale. So we hope to find more things here. Great, great. And we'll get to some of that too a little bit later on. I guess I wanted to, for those in the audience that are looking at their growth rounds, sort of BC onwards, maybe digging into a little bit into metrics. I know at SEED, we think of sort of, do you have traction at A, as a B2B business, especially, have you hit 100, 150K MRR? We can help you pitch into the series A investors. I guess for each of you, what are different metrics? Are they growth metrics? Are they numbers? Are they just NPS? Are they market sentiment? What are the metrics you look at across different stages of what you invest, maybe, Teddy? I mean, I think in B2B, it's a little bit easier because B2B companies scale a little bit more linearly than some of the consumer businesses, and there's more standardized metrics and benchmarks. But your question, I would say, it's like all of those. So you can't just look at the ARR growth metrics if you don't look at the NPS of the product, if you don't look at the retention. So it's a composite. I think what we're seeing in the market is that series A's are raised really on conviction on product. And then series C's are really raised fully on metrics and execution. And series B's kind of end up in this halfway world where some larger series B's are maybe purely momentum-driven on revenue growth and the kind of usual metrics. And some companies are raising series B's more as series A's, just on conviction. And then they have to really prove and grow those metrics in series C. And I'm sure you guys see this as well. Yeah, I mean, just stepping back, I think maybe you can both, I feel it because I think you're doing it. But to the extent that there's this series B land that is becoming much more complex and that people with big pools of capital are coming upstream and going earlier, there's a murky B there that perhaps the ARRs that you would have looked at before, Teddy. And I don't know what they may be, but you would know. Probably have come, they're much more nascent or whatever percentage of what you would have expected five years ago. So there's definitely some sort of like collision of different characters there. And it's probably a very good thing because if you think from an entrepreneur's perspective, as long as you're kind of locating the right type of capital at that inflection point, let's just focus on that, the B's and C's for that matter, I think you can get to, still get to the right investor, a good investor that fits your profile. We have this like high, when I go high resolution fundraising that you have like, it's no longer series A, B, so you have like A plus, B minus kind of things. And even in seed, you have like, I mean, you know all about that, like that's like post seed and you know, pre-A. And so it's, I think it's great for founders because you have just more capital and more investors available for exactly the stage and situation your company is in. And a slightly different take on that. I mean, definitely talk about metrics and things, but with the announcement of your fund, there's obviously a lot of startups going, that's what I want. I want that 100 million check. I want that sort of billion dollar check. How do you, you know, how do you stand out for you guys? And what do you, what are the metrics you look at or? So I think that there are two questions here, right? So the first one around metrics, I, you know, I echo what these guys said. If it's a, you know, if it's a commercial product, numbers matter, right? So numbers speak for itself or a business model and how sturdy it is. If it's not commercial, if it's a deep tech company, a deep science company, we look for, you know, some sort of a technology superiority. And I think for us, the entrepreneur himself, his vision, what he's built, what he wants to build is extremely important. So I think the mix of these three things, usually always is something we look for. And your second question around... I mean, you know, you guys have had such an impact, I guess on the market and I would say, you know, you guys stand out and people kind of go, that's the check I want, that's the hundred, you know. Yeah, yeah. So I think, you know, honestly, capital is a commodity. I think there's a lot of people who can write checks, you know, sure we can write very large checks, but I think the good entrepreneurs are looking for something more and I think what makes us quite unique is we feel that we've made our own kind of network effects. In 18 months, we have close to 70 companies and Massa's whole vision is around creating portfolio synergies. And each of these companies are run by brilliant entrepreneurs who may or may not have met each other, but today, besides meeting each other, they're cross-selling their products into each other's companies. And you see that actually happening. Absolutely, absolutely. We have a lot of JVs going around all over the world and, you know, these companies are all very large companies, right? So the impact you can have, the scale you can get is very large. So I think that's very unique about us, this kind of network of portfolio synergies that we've built. And so getting into that a little more, I guess we were talking backstage too, you know, at Seed, we're definitely telling our companies, especially we'll talk about markets now, is that we're telling our companies cash is king, you know, raise as much as you can, plan for 18 months. It used to be more kind of nine to 12, especially at Seed, but now it's more 18, maybe even 24 months. I'm hearing that in the VC circles at A as well. I guess, you know, do you believe, and I think some of your investments indicate cash is a moat and cash is defensibility and how are you advising your portfolio on that when they're seeing a competitor, you know, get in that massive check into whatever competitive round it is? I can start. I think that, you know, if you, there's game changing quantums, right? So, you know, it's actually like the soft bank capital discussion becomes like, like a meaningful one always because does that just kind of create a category killer? Which it can, I think we would agree that you have to take that into consideration, but that's maybe not a tomorrow thing, that could be maybe a next year thing. So this is more dialogue and understanding what other players in the ecosystem are thinking about and doing. I think to your point about general kind of, you know, a more heightened interest to raise capital now before the year end, I think I agree with you that that's something that maybe is some foreshadowing of anxiety of 2019 and things that are happening, which I'm not the first person to be able to kind of tell you at death what will or won't happen, but I do see that as a, you know, general trend of people trying to load up a bit more now and think about longer term and you see that in kind of, I think the quantum that are being raised in A's and subsequent B's, which is, you know, where we live. Teddy, what would you say? I mean, I fully agree with that. And I think, you know, there's an incredible amount of capital available for companies and it's easy to get to the temptation of our founders just to raise like, you know, crazy amounts for where they are. The problem with raising a lot of money, putting a lot of cash in the balance sheet is that you also will spend it. And I think sometimes founders really underestimate what it means to raise a really large round, maybe like kind of raising the next year's round today kind of thing, because it does set the expectation of an exit and liquidation preference and all these things that then you kind of really committed on building a 3X larger company that you would have been happy with prior to the round. So I think it's important for founders to also think about what it means to raise that large check and what do you need to actually deliver to justify that? Yeah, any? I mean, to be very honest, with or without SoftBank, cash is always a moat, right? I mean, especially in industries like consumer, you know, you need to build a war chest, or even in like industries, deep science, deep tech, it involves you to actually educate the key opinion leaders, so you need cash for that. But I do think that, you know, having a big fund like SoftBank, I think we've had some of that effect where we've helped kind of, or at least we hope to believe that we're helping moving that ecosystem where companies can raise more capital from other funds. No, and I think down, you know, upstream, downstream, whatever we are at, I think we see that, right? And I think there is sort of that momentum and a push to act, which especially in Europe helps because I think kind of, you know, previous to the last five years, it's been a slower growth and now there is that real momentum. So I think it's been, you know, mostly positive for sure. But maybe one last bit into that is, so when companies are raising this much cash, I mean, how do you ensure they're spending it wisely and what are some mistakes you've seen made and, you know, you're trying to kind of, as advisors to your businesses, ensure some of those mistakes aren't repeated? I mean, on the B2B side, I think you can definitely, you know, scale prematurely. You can spend money if you don't really have poor market fit. You can end up in a spend war with a close competitor where the only winner is the customer. So I mean, I'm sure we've all seen these examples in our portfolios and that's why I just feel like that you have to fundamentally build a good business and cash is a means to an end. And personally, I'm slightly averse of investments where cash is the only key mode. I'd rather try to use cash to kind of get the advantages of some other defensibility aspects that a business has. I mean, I completely agree. I think that maybe the additive part is, you know, organic versus marketing. If you think about some of the more consumer-leaning companies, just making sure that the discipline or at least everyone, including founders and investors, are huddled around the table thinking about, like, is this driving, you know, will this help drive more organic growth because, you know, a leaky bucket doesn't help anybody. And I think those, maybe just adding to Teddy's point, I think that's what I would maybe think about for some of our companies. And our founders are conscious of that too. I think they're all trying to figure that blend out. Yeah. Yeah, so I think we're quite focused on understanding the use of funds because we understand we write a large check and, you know, we don't want to distract the company from getting to where it wants to get to. And we also have this operating group, like I mentioned before, who works very closely with the companies along with the investment side to make sure that each of those problems that they wanted to address with the cash, you know, are getting addressed in the right way. So you have good governance. Yeah. Good governance, yeah. Cool. So talking about the markets a little more, you know, I was at a conference recently and I saw some very happy investment bankers because it's been a great 2018, but they seemed even more excited by 2019 and kind of these, you know, pipeline of IPOs that they're really excited about. You guys are closest to that. What are your views on the market on the one hand and then the market receptivity for IPOs and can we have, you know, 15 IPOs next year and they're not going to cannibalize each other, I guess. What's, you're all smiling, so you clearly have some idea. I mean, some are closer to it than others. Yeah. I mean, I think we're probably of the three the furthest away from kind of the IPO market in general. I mean, some portfolio companies are closer to others, but I would defer to... I mean, it's hard to say on a macro side, but what we do see that there's an incredible pipeline of fundamentally very, very good companies that are still private that probably need to go public at some point. Timing-wise, it's so hard to say. I mean, you know, especially US IPO markets are extremely finicky. Like the IPO window can really open and close, you know, depending on a certain president tweeting out. So like, it's really hard to say where we will be six to 12 months from now, but I do know that there's really great companies and the great companies do have options of delaying the IPO or looking at, you know, large strategic M&A. We see a lot of dual-track things. We were going to IPO one of our portfolio companies, Qualtrics, which then ended up being bought by SAP for $8 billion at the very last moments before their pricing. So you see a lot of M&A interest today, but, you know, if I knew where the market's gonna be in 12 months, I'd be running a hedge fund instead of working venture. Yeah. But how are you advising your companies? I mean, do you look actively at the IPO route or are you, I mean, you guys are able to put in the cash for staying private pretty, you know, pretty long-term? Yeah, I mean, look, we're seeing a massive bull run, right? Like no one knows what the peak is, when the peak is, or if there is even a peak, right? So it's all about timing. I think we have a bunch of, you know, we do late-stage investments. So we have a bunch of companies that are exciting, that are ripe for, you know, taking some of these opportunities. So I think when the timing is right, we're completely supportive of that stuff and we're excited. Cool. So I'm gonna ask one more question and then we'll open it up. So I only see one question here. So please, you know, please do input if you want something answered. So yeah, so the last kind of question is what are some of the, you know, sectors you think are ready for growth funding in Europe? Gaming, you know, obviously has been a very active sector in the Nordics. At least we talked about the other ones, FinTech, et cetera. Is there more in FinTech? What's the future? What's the next couple of years of? You know, this year 23 billion plus in terms of, you know, funding into the sector. I think if you just think about the cohorts of the last 10 years of talent, because you're talking about capital, but the other very important component is talent with experience. I think what you will definitely see next year is this talent recycling of people who have been part of like high growth, high impact startups that have, you know, broken through many different barriers of unicorn, Deca-corn, whatever you want to call it. And those people will start more companies. There's funding for that clearly. And so I think the paradigm shift for Europe has happened. I think now we're going to see, you know, the expectation level for next, for every year is higher, right? It's a global market, you know, soft banks looking at, you know, India, China, US, Europe, you're looking, you're doing investments in US, Europe, and other places, I'm sure. So it's becoming much more of a global benchmark to hit. And I think that will definitely be something that I would be encouraging, you know, people that I work with and founders that I work with to think about. And they're that caliber now. So like it's super exciting, right? Like they're even coming back from the US after having either sold their businesses that they grew to, you know, and had M&A activity, they're coming back. So I think it's going to be exciting. That's a great point on talent. I'd love for either of you to, you know, sort of put a stake in the ground on some sectors that we haven't seen maybe to date as much capital going into, but that you're really looking, no one's mentioned AI yet, but. I mean, from my perspective, at the B2B side, we see that, you know, great AI and machine learning-powered software companies like in the workflow software, application software can come from Europe because you can build a talent everywhere. I mean, it's not necessarily a new sector that's clearly been happening now for last year or two, but what we definitely do see that the talent there kind of benchmarks very well globally, whereas I think where the lack on the talent side is on the kind of business-like senior operators just because we don't have that many success stories that say in B2B in Europe where you can like hire your VPs from, whereas in the US, do you have that? But I think that's also getting better as we get more and more exits and successful outcomes. Saxie, there's actually a question, which is perfect, really good one, because you mentioned education, and so what are the opportunities you see in education? You mentioned that particular vertical, and a really good point made about do you see examples of public sector getting involved in terms of policy? Because we've definitely seen policy has had huge impact on financial services and opening that up, having impact in health availability, et cetera. So do you see a policy in education link and what are the opportunities you're seeing there? Yeah, I think education has been one of the oldest industries to catch on to tech, so I think there's huge opportunities there. The idea would be, let's take India for example, right? Having grown up in India, having read those textbooks, even if there was a topic that was super interesting, the textbooks are written in such a boring fashion that I would fall asleep. So you're not preparing your younger generation to be ready for the workforce, because you're forcing them just to mug up everything in the textbooks and just vomit it out in exams. So this is where I think tech can play a big role, right? If you can create content that's engaging in the form of games or anything else, it could change outcomes. I think in terms of policy, this is going to be similar to healthcare, right? Where healthcare started off slow, but now you're seeing FDA approve all kinds of digital applications of healthcare. I think you're going to see that in education, right? Cool, no great, good note to end on. Thanks so much for your time, guys, and thanks all for listening. Okay. Thanks. After you.