 Hello, hello, hello. Good morning. Good morning, Slush. This is Startup Station. And I'm Anna, and this is Dan, Daniel. And we're gonna host you today. We have amazing speakers coming. Yeah, Daniel, how was your morning? It was good. I had a lot of slush in my face, which was horrible. It was horrible, but we are really happy that Slush finally came because it answers the brand promise eventually. Hey, guys. Good morning. Thanks a lot for being here together at Slush. How was your morning? Slushy as well. A lot of my fans. But yeah, very happy to be here. Super exciting. Awesome. How about you? Thank you. Thank you for having us, Daniel. Awesome. Let's dive directly into it. We're gonna explore the opportunities and new models for founders. And first of all, maybe you can just start off by explaining a little bit about Founders Factory and right after, maybe, about first-minute capital. Yeah, sure. So Founders Factory, we wanted to have a new way to accelerate companies. We looked at lots of accelerators worldwide. And Alco founder Brent Hopeman always felt that he wouldn't join an accelerator if he was building a new business today. So how could we create something which had a much bigger impact on a founder's business? We thought key to that is having corporates who can really, really help and bring credibility and bring opportunities to startups. So we went out and raised a lot of capital from L'Oreal, EasyJet, Aviva, The Guardian, Holdsbrink, and a big Chinese conglomerate who covers six kind of strategic sectors. And they're very, very active in helping the startups that we make investments into. And the other key thing is we felt that the traditional accelerator model of mentors kind of coming in and helping startups isn't that effective. You get conflicting advice and you don't always get that kind of operational support that you might need as a founder. So we went and hired 60 people. So we have 60 people full-time in Founders Factory, across growth, data science, partnerships, product, design, engineering. And they're dedicated to supporting the startups that we invest in. On top of that, we actually thought if we have these corporates and we have the insights that they sit on, as well as the assets and capabilities they have for distribution or for scaling businesses, could that be a new way to create businesses and understand what businesses we should and could build? So we also have this incubator model where every year we come up with 12 new business ideas. We build them over a six-month period and then we go out and find founding teams to run those companies and to make their own. Awesome. So an exciting mix of corporate innovation and acceleration. That sounds super interesting. Spencer, maybe you can just give a brief introduction to First Minute Capital. It's a much less exciting structure than Founders Factory, but First Minute is a seed fund based in London. We launched this summer and, as mentioned, the majority of our investors in First Minute are entrepreneurs. So we have about 100 investors in the fund of which 50 are entrepreneurs, of which 29, I think, have built billion-dollar tech businesses. The institutions behind First Minute are Atomico, the later-stage fund that I'm sure you all know, and Tencent. And so really, we at First Minute are global in outlook. We'll be European-focused. So we think about 70% of our investments will be in Europe. The 30% outside of Europe will always look to follow a local venture lead in that area, predominantly the US and Israel. And I think for us, it was a critical piece being part of a wider group in terms of Founders Factory being a critical element and also Founders Forum, which is an event for entrepreneurs in London. And then having that entrepreneurial DNA at the heart of the fund was the other thing that we felt we could help turbocharge seed stage founders in Europe. Awesome. Cool. Different models, but both definitely exciting. So what excites you at this very moment? What are the industries that you're most excited about that you invest in that you really have a deep look into at this moment? Trying to get fast? You guess. I think for us, we try and invest in areas where we can bring some kind of competitive advantage through the corporates that we have. So we think new technologies like AI where you have great technical founders, but not always the data sets that you need to actually apply those algorithms and technologies to a particular industry. So we can kind of bring that with, say, flight data from EasyJet or claims data from Aviva Large Insurer and actually really help those technical entrepreneurs to kind of leverage that data to build out their algorithms, but then also to kind of productize and get their businesses into market. So we see huge opportunity there. Another thing we're fascinated about is how can we disrupt our own investors over the next five years? So we look at lots of different kind of blockchain solutions for all six of the industries that we work in. Can you replace the GDS system with blockchain for flights? Can you change how remittances and insurance works in the financial services? Can you innovate around kind of supply chain for large FMCG businesses? Is there a better, more fairer kind of contents indication network for publishers if you put that on the blockchain? So we have these verticals that fascinate us, but we're trying to think of how the new technologies that are emerging can affect all of them. And so looking for startups, basically, that are in there, it's kind of around. It's not just blockchain, blockchain, blockchain. It has to make sense, you know, as well, on how we're doing it. So we're not really crypto experts, but we're more thinking, what are the business model applications or business model innovations that could be brought about by era? Cool. And what excites you at the moment? We're genuinely agnostic. We want the flexibility to look at anything on the basis that a founder walks in and we think that he or she is building something brilliant and exciting. We want to have the flexibility to back them. I think, you know, we are spending quite a lot of time on blockchain, blockchain, blockchain as a team and learning where we're trained to be experts at all. But our first investments have been across, well, a cybersecurity business for medical devices out of Israel, a blockchain business focused on the insurance space that George knows well. We've looked at an AR business, a SaaS business for SMEs. So it is genuinely a range. We've dipped into the software for autonomous vehicles race. So, you know, it's obviously a very competitive space there, but we think we've found a brilliant team to support. So it's broad. Okay, awesome. So independent of what kind of businesses you invest in, both of you have a lot of experience talking to founders, early stage founders. And I think a lot of people here in the audience are founders themselves. So when it comes to pitching to you guys or in general, what are some of the dos and don'ts that you have experienced that you can share here some advice with us? I've got a couple one. I don't like it always when founders pitch and obviously it can often be a great presentation, but you get to slide 20 or whatever and you still don't know what the product is. I always think that's a big failing of a lot of founders. Make sure people really understand that product first up and then you can kind of build a story around that. Another thing that we often see is founders saying that there's no competition, they're the only person doing that. That probably means they might be wrong. Usually someone else has had the same idea, but it's more about how do you have the right credibility and why are you the right person and the right team to make that idea more effective than other people might be able to. So there's a kind of two dos and don'ts, I guess, from also from what we see. Yeah, I mean, I think you have to be authentic. I don't believe in tricks, whether they're kind of stylistic. I think one practical thing is we do see a lot of founders looking to raise seed stage money, saying it'll give them nine or 12 months runway. Most seed funds will say 18 months should be an absolute minimum just on the basis that things will go wrong and you need that extra space. And then I think all good founders don't want to be fundraising, they want to be spending time on their product and therefore they should be pushing investors and making them work to timelines, but I think there's also a way to do it and not to be erratic with that and if you do set a deadline for a VC or an investor, I think it needs to be a consistent one and a kind of reasonable one. So that balance of pushing but not too much. I think maybe another one that always really impresses me when we meet founders is when they have a really good understanding of what they don't know and what are the really big challenges and they can be humbled that they haven't figured them out yet but they have two or three ideas for what they're gonna try to try and validate or to try and explore. And I think that's always really important when founders just kind of blithely say it's all worked out, this is gonna how it's be, I know everything, that's always a bit of a red flag because no one does. So I think that humility is always quite powerful as well. So you hear it, being authentic and honest, both really important qualities for founders. Another advice for founders that may be really important is because I mean you have both different models and there are so many different things in terms of funding right now, right? From crowdfunding to acceleration, investment, VCs. So what are the things that early stage founders should take into consideration when choosing the right path to getting funded, basically? In terms of the types of investors or? Yes, exactly. The types of models. I mean I think what we hope to bring founders is a degree of additional connectivity and credibility, that's not meant to rhyme, but I think the idea that we can actually help with a couple of choice introductions that are high level, that are responsive and that could be transformative to their businesses. So I think us understanding how we can be useful is a really important part of why we'll invest. We'll often not invest if it's not clear why the founder wants us first minute as an investor. So I think just having a really frank dialogue about saying how would we work together if we were to invest tomorrow. And I think that's often a network play in our case. I don't think joining an accelerator should be a right to passage for any startup founder going on a journey. I think you should be really clear about what you wanna get out of a program. A lot of programs we see are super generic and can maybe raise the profile of a startup for a short amount of time and get you to a demo day but does that really change your business and does that really actually impact the company in a tangible way? So we only really encourage the, we'll try and bring the startups in for our accelerator where we know we can really help and we've got some kind of strategic advantage we can provide from different members of our team or something from the corporates where we know the corporates are gonna help and then we can kind of propel that startup to the next stage. And then we think it's a great offering but we wouldn't back a business say in the autonomous vehicle space because we don't really have that many competitive advances we could bring to that startup and I'd probably discourage from a startup for joining for that reason. So I think founders should always say, if I'm joining an accelerator, an incubator or raising seed money, how can they boost my company more than just the little bit of cash or the brand? Exactly, look at the overall picture, what are actually the benefits you can get out of the investment. So before I dive into the questions and thank you guys for supplying with us with those questions here, the last question to both of you, what do you actually look in or what do you look for in an early stage founding team? So what are the most important characteristics, criteria that you assess your founding team? I think it's hard to say anything super precise because it's hard to be generic but a sense of just perseverance, a sense of hunger and an understanding of why that founder is building that business. You know, I think that, go back to that word authentic, that sense of authenticity, because inevitably it's gonna be, it's such a hard thing to do to build a startup and to scale it, that feeling that they will go to extreme lengths to make that business succeed. I think as an investor, that's certainly one of the things you're looking for. And then I think at an early stage, it's maybe less of a characteristic and more of a momentum piece. I think you want to feel that you're looking for signals of momentum and credibility and whether it's the advisory board you've pulled together or the first angels who have come in or the first corporates you're working with or business development opportunities, it might not be huge in numbers, the absolute numbers might be small, but just those signs of momentum, I think are really important. Yeah, basically what he said, I think maybe what I'd add is diversity of skill sets and backgrounds in teams. We get a lot of single founder applications which we tend to mostly ignore, not in every case. And often you see startups with .ai on that website, but no AI experts in the team and you just want to make sure that teams have the core capabilities to get that product to market. You can't have everyone in your team at the start, but I think trying to build the right skill sets to compliment each other as a core founding team, that's when we've seen the best successes of companies that we've either built ourselves or invested in an accelerator. And I think one final one that George and I both share is can founders attract brilliant people to work with them? And that idea of would we go and work for them or what will their 10th employee like? I think those kind of abilities are key as well. Having an A player team, right? I guess, yeah. Cool, awesome. So we've somewhat answered the question of how you scout startups and what you look for. But now what are the benefits of working with founders factory and maybe we can also mention that for about first-minute capital compared to traditional VC firm? Yeah, so maybe from our incubator side, we're building 12 companies a year. That means we're creating 30, 36 new founders a year who we become a co-founder for them basically. And there's people that come in, they come with, they arrive and there's an MVP, which is fully functioning. There's your first customer from one of our corporates or one of our external corporates that we work with. There's some traction, we've got some funding behind it. And there's 60 to 70% of the business there and available for that founding team. So we think we can help new people who want to become entrepreneurs, become entrepreneurs more easily and create businesses faster than they'd be able to do on their own. And then on the accelerator side, I think getting that first customer or getting that proprietary data set can be incredibly hard. And we've created our model essentially so that existing startups can do that more quickly and more easily and gain that credibility from having one of those big brands on their slide deck. And we've seen great success stories of how just by getting that one customer initially can really open the doors to many others. This kind of startup world's a bit of a momentum game. So if you can get those initial points of credibility to start, it really, really helps. So that's kind of our main offering for the different models. That's where you have your advantage. Awesome. Is there anything to add from first-minute capital? Like, what's the key if you had to choose one thing that you do differently? What would it be? I think, you know, we're a new fund. We launched this summer. And I think our co-founder, Brent, shows his age by referencing an advert from Avi Switz. And yes. This is very rude, of course, to interrupt your lovely discussion. But we have to move on. So thank you, Spencer. Thank you, George. Thank you so much for being here with us tonight. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Thanks, Spencer and George. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you, guys. Thank you.