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Dean Forbes UK's Top Black CEO on Private Equity, & Building a $100M Business, Market Mondays Live · Earn Your Leisure

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: This episode of the Market Monday's World Tour is brought
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: to you with limited interruption by Ally.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: The Good Time for the Unforgettable Moments. You say, we're
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: all better off with an Ally A bird in the
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: stashly away.
• 0:40
  Speaker 3: On your feet and give it up from a guy,
• 0:42
  Speaker 3: Dean Forbes, a legend in the game, and he came
• 0:45
  Speaker 3: dressed to the nons. He he made a comment about
• 0:48
  Speaker 3: American fashion. I've noticed that you're now this is something
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: I've noticed that was funny. Europeans have a very disdain
• 0:56
  Speaker 3: for American fashion, but.
• 1:00
  Speaker 4: Understandable.
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: Most Americans can't dress. But you're not talking about You're
• 1:04
  Speaker 3: not talking about people from New York though, so that's different.
• 1:08
  Speaker 3: It's just it's a difference, like this New York fashion
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: and then there's Middle America fashion. It's good though, we
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: adopted them. But Dean, you look, you look very shocked,
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: my brother. So let's get into this. Man, what led
• 1:28
  Speaker 3: you to become a CEO in the tech sector and
• 1:32
  Speaker 3: what is your biggest motivator to keep going forward?
• 1:34
  Speaker 5: Oh man, Well, firstly, thank you guys for having me here.
• 1:36
  Speaker 5: Like I said before, you know, I'm a big, big
• 1:39
  Speaker 5: fan of the show, big fan of the format, you know,
• 1:41
  Speaker 5: getting these people together and giving all these jams. It's amazing.
• 1:44
  Speaker 5: So so it's a pleasure and the honor to to
• 1:46
  Speaker 5: be part of this. I think I've you know, told
• 1:50
  Speaker 5: that story a couple of times. What got me into
• 1:52
  Speaker 5: tech was the biggest kind of failure in my career,
• 1:55
  Speaker 5: right I was trying to play football that didn't work out.
• 1:58
  Speaker 5: I had a bunch of debt, and then when that
• 2:00
  Speaker 5: kind of all came to a head, my agent at
• 2:02
  Speaker 5: the time said, you've got to go work up motor
• 2:04
  Speaker 5: Oil because you're in so much debt. You need to
• 2:06
  Speaker 5: earn money right now. Why it is it going to
• 2:08
  Speaker 5: cripp you for life? And very tough decision, very difficult
• 2:12
  Speaker 5: moment in life, but it turned out it turned out
• 2:15
  Speaker 5: turned out to be okay.
• 2:16
  Speaker 6: Yeah, for someone sitting down in the crowd who was
• 2:19
  Speaker 6: inspired by you being here tonight, if you can go
• 2:21
  Speaker 6: back to when you were nineteen or twenty, what three
• 2:24
  Speaker 6: pieces of advice would you give them and talk about
• 2:27
  Speaker 6: the ups and downs as well, But what three pieces
• 2:29
  Speaker 6: of advice would you give them on the journey to
• 2:32
  Speaker 6: becoming you?
• 2:35
  Speaker 5: I mean nineteen twenty, you know, I'm probably a year
• 2:39
  Speaker 5: after being homeless a few months having been released from
• 2:44
  Speaker 5: playing football. I've got a mountain of debt. Like if
• 2:46
  Speaker 5: you'd have said to me at that moment in time
• 2:48
  Speaker 5: that life would be what it's become, it was like
• 2:52
  Speaker 5: unimaginable that the things that have happened to me could
• 2:54
  Speaker 5: have happened. So it's a little bit strange to think
• 2:58
  Speaker 5: back and say, what advice would you give yourself, because
• 3:00
  Speaker 5: I would be just chill out, you know, like stay calm,
• 3:03
  Speaker 5: don't panic, work hard, And I think I probably wasn't
• 3:09
  Speaker 5: good enough to have made it as a footballer, and
• 3:12
  Speaker 5: that was important because when I failed, I kind of
• 3:14
  Speaker 5: didn't want to fail again to It's like the next
• 3:16
  Speaker 5: thing I go into, you know, if it was bakery
• 3:20
  Speaker 5: or I don't know, track and field, whatever it was,
• 3:22
  Speaker 5: the next thing I went into, I was going to
• 3:23
  Speaker 5: apply myself so hard. I was probably going to be
• 3:27
  Speaker 5: okay or maybe even good at it. So if I
• 3:29
  Speaker 5: if I could go back now, I would say, calm down,
• 3:32
  Speaker 5: work ethic has to go up, and you've got to
• 3:35
  Speaker 5: be prepared to kind of play this out for the
• 3:38
  Speaker 5: long term, like this is it's going to take a while,
• 3:40
  Speaker 5: but you gotta keep going with it.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: So it says a lot about your mindset, right, you
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: had the mental fort or tool to say, it doesn't
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: matter where I go, I'm going to be successful because
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: i want to turn up my mindset.
• 3:51
  Speaker 4: I'm gonna turn out the productivity.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: I want to go back right because you start that
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: motorol though, but your first CEO role is at the
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: the Paris based firm KDS, So what does that deemed
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: for was like, because this you've now climbed up a
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: ladder and you've reached the pinnacle of a company at
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: a firm.
• 4:09
  Speaker 4: What was that like for you?
• 4:11
  Speaker 5: That was an interesting learning experience because I'd kind of
• 4:15
  Speaker 5: grown up at Premia Verrea. I wasn't CEO at Premire,
• 4:18
  Speaker 5: but I'd led a big part of that company and
• 4:20
  Speaker 5: it became the fastest growing part of that company. It
• 4:23
  Speaker 5: was an American software company, and my part of it
• 4:25
  Speaker 5: became the largest largest part of it. So I think
• 4:28
  Speaker 5: when I when I was in that position, then we
• 4:31
  Speaker 5: sold the company to Oracle and I made like life
• 4:33
  Speaker 5: changing money in that transaction. Then Oracle said you got
• 4:37
  Speaker 5: to stay, and we're going to pay you a bunch
• 4:38
  Speaker 5: of money to stay because we think, we think you're great.
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  Speaker 5: I was like King of the Hill. I thought I
• 4:44
  Speaker 5: thought I'd cracked life, and then I didn't enjoy Oracle.
• 4:48
  Speaker 5: I got approached to go do the KDS thing, and
• 4:50
  Speaker 5: I was so sure of myself before I'd made it.
• 4:52
  Speaker 5: I'd worked this big firm Oracle. I had all this
• 4:54
  Speaker 5: money now, and when I became a CEO of KDS,
• 4:59
  Speaker 5: I took over from the founder of that company, and
• 5:02
  Speaker 5: the employee base, you know, was just committed to the
• 5:06
  Speaker 5: founder that you know, they didn't care about me. They didn't,
• 5:09
  Speaker 5: I don't know, they cared about the company so much.
• 5:11
  Speaker 5: They just were in love with this founder, with the founder.
• 5:14
  Speaker 5: So I took over. I had these great ideas. I
• 5:16
  Speaker 5: had what I thought was an incredible CV, and I
• 5:19
  Speaker 5: would hold staff meetings to management meetings, and people wouldn't
• 5:22
  Speaker 5: turn up, Like they just wouldn't. They wouldn't show up
• 5:24
  Speaker 5: for the meeting. So you'd be sat in the meeting
• 5:26
  Speaker 5: with crossants and coffee and and nobody's just you and
• 5:30
  Speaker 5: just you, yeah, just you. And there was there was
• 5:32
  Speaker 5: even a time I went into a meeting room and
• 5:34
  Speaker 5: I was like pouring coffee before the customer arrived, and
• 5:37
  Speaker 5: the team were complaining, and they went off to speak
• 5:39
  Speaker 5: to HR about me because I'd gone in the room
• 5:43
  Speaker 5: and dared to pour coffee, which was there for clients.
• 5:45
  Speaker 5: So it was a very difficult environment and it kind
• 5:48
  Speaker 5: of brought me back to ground zero and said, you know,
• 5:51
  Speaker 5: not not everybody thinks you're good, Not everybody cares, and
• 5:55
  Speaker 5: you're gonna have to kind of go back to the
• 5:57
  Speaker 5: basics and kind of win people over, and you know,
• 6:00
  Speaker 5: work a bit harder than this than I thought than
• 6:01
  Speaker 5: I thought I would. But yeah, I thought I cracked
• 6:04
  Speaker 5: it and everybody was just going to do what I
• 6:05
  Speaker 5: told them because I had this, you know, I had
• 6:07
  Speaker 5: a stellar kind of eight year career. But yeah, it
• 6:09
  Speaker 5: was very, very humbling and very educational.
• 6:12
  Speaker 4: Did you ever think like you're fired, You're not coming
• 6:14
  Speaker 4: to me, you're fired.
• 6:16
  Speaker 5: Well, like, sometimes you have to have what I call
• 6:18
  Speaker 5: like public executions, you know, like you can't and shouldn't
• 6:23
  Speaker 5: do that to everybody, But there's a professional courtesy, like
• 6:27
  Speaker 5: if there's a meeting happening, you should show up. Like
• 6:29
  Speaker 5: that's just a that's a professional courtesy. So when some
• 6:32
  Speaker 5: of those things continued for a while, yeah, you got
• 6:35
  Speaker 5: you know, you have to make examples of people so
• 6:37
  Speaker 5: that the rest of the village understands this behavior isn't
• 6:41
  Speaker 5: isn't sad?
• 6:41
  Speaker 4: You heard that? That's right up your alley public executions.
• 6:46
  Speaker 6: If I can do a follow up, real quick example,
• 6:48
  Speaker 6: how are you able to turn the tie to then
• 6:50
  Speaker 6: get them on your side after? Because I'm sure we
• 6:52
  Speaker 6: have some entrepreneurs and here that may be having issues
• 6:55
  Speaker 6: with their staff. How did you turn that ship to
• 6:57
  Speaker 6: get them back or initially in love with you when
• 7:00
  Speaker 6: they were so invested into the founder.
• 7:03
  Speaker 5: It's a really good point. I think that was such
• 7:06
  Speaker 5: an important learning moment for me. Right, it just killed
• 7:11
  Speaker 5: my ego. My CV was irrelevant, The amount of money
• 7:14
  Speaker 5: I had was irrelevant. So I had to stop and
• 7:17
  Speaker 5: ask myself, like, how are we going to get these
• 7:19
  Speaker 5: people on side? And it taught me to communicate. It
• 7:22
  Speaker 5: taught me to really spend a lot of time with
• 7:24
  Speaker 5: staff explaining what we were trying to do, why we
• 7:26
  Speaker 5: were trying to do it, and most importantly, ian like
• 7:29
  Speaker 5: what their role in that was going to be right,
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  Speaker 5: Because I don't think you can invite hundreds of people
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  Speaker 5: to come to work every day because you want to
• 7:36
  Speaker 5: build a big company or a highly valuable company, or
• 7:39
  Speaker 5: because you want the stock price to go through the roof,
• 7:42
  Speaker 5: because the guy working on the support desk who doesn't
• 7:45
  Speaker 5: have equity in the company. So I learned in that
• 7:50
  Speaker 5: moment to translate the strategy of the company and the
• 7:52
  Speaker 5: aspiration of the company into language that was meaningful for
• 7:56
  Speaker 5: everybody in the company. So I started talking about what
• 7:59
  Speaker 5: we wanted to do, what we wanted to be, and
• 8:01
  Speaker 5: why if you were in this spot in the company,
• 8:04
  Speaker 5: it would create opportunities for you or income for you,
• 8:07
  Speaker 5: or you know, something important for you. I made sure
• 8:11
  Speaker 5: every communication had that kind of three part trilogy to it.
• 8:15
  Speaker 5: What do we want to be, how we're going to
• 8:16
  Speaker 5: get there, and what it means for you know, rank
• 8:18
  Speaker 5: and file employee and that and and some people loved
• 8:22
  Speaker 5: it and were excited, and some people said, you know,
• 8:25
  Speaker 5: not for me, and they and they left and that
• 8:26
  Speaker 5: was that was okay too.
• 8:28
  Speaker 3: So all right, so let's get into this. So you're
• 8:30
  Speaker 3: the CEO, correct me if I'm saying this roll. You're
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: the CEEO of fort Toennaro for terror Portero, your partner
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: in courting Capital, and your chairman and f FG. So
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: that's a lot. So can you talk about for to
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: Naro courting capital. What are those two companies and how
• 8:48
  Speaker 3: does that intersect with your chairman position at f FG.
• 8:53
  Speaker 5: So, so, for Terra is a ERP software company focusing
• 8:58
  Speaker 5: on the industrial midline in Europe. It is probably the
• 9:00
  Speaker 5: biggest company in that space in Europe. So business to
• 9:04
  Speaker 5: business enterprise software. So we sell direct to customers, court
• 9:09
  Speaker 5: capitals and private equity firms. So it's a one point
• 9:11
  Speaker 5: two billion euro fund. I've been been part of the
• 9:14
  Speaker 5: team helped raise that fund. So now what we're trying
• 9:17
  Speaker 5: to do is invest from that fund into technology companies.
• 9:21
  Speaker 5: So one of the guys trying to find opportunities convinced
• 9:24
  Speaker 5: managers to sell us a controlling stake in their business.
• 9:28
  Speaker 5: And f FG is something that me and my family created,
• 9:31
  Speaker 5: Full's Family Group because on my career journey, I've been
• 9:35
  Speaker 5: helped by so many people. So many people have showed
• 9:38
  Speaker 5: up at a moment in time giving me advice, introduced
• 9:41
  Speaker 5: me to somebody, helped me out that I realized success
• 9:46
  Speaker 5: isn't always only talent based. Sometimes it's opportunities network. So
• 9:50
  Speaker 5: we set up f FG to try to try to
• 9:53
  Speaker 5: play that network effect back to people like us from
• 9:56
  Speaker 5: places like I said, it's a not for profit trying
• 9:58
  Speaker 5: to help people in their career aspirations.
• 10:02
  Speaker 6: Can you walk us through your investment philosophy? Everything everyone
• 10:05
  Speaker 6: here wants an investment jim from you. So when you're
• 10:08
  Speaker 6: looking to acquire a company, what are you looking at
• 10:12
  Speaker 6: in terms of the parameters before you buy a company?
• 10:14
  Speaker 6: And what is something that makes a company like jump
• 10:18
  Speaker 6: off of a sheet to you to say I have
• 10:19
  Speaker 6: to buy this or be involved.
• 10:21
  Speaker 5: With It's different. So at Fortierra we're an acquisitive company.
• 10:25
  Speaker 5: I bought six I bought six companies with for Tiero
• 10:29
  Speaker 5: last year, the largest of which paid one hundred and
• 10:32
  Speaker 5: fifteen million pounds for So the philosophy is are different
• 10:37
  Speaker 5: between how I invest in acquire companies at for Tierro
• 10:40
  Speaker 5: and how I would invests as a personal private investor.
• 10:44
  Speaker 4: Are you sure both? Yeah?
• 10:45
  Speaker 5: Yeah, So on for Tiero, we've got free value creation streams, right,
• 10:50
  Speaker 5: we want to grow the company by more than fifteen
• 10:52
  Speaker 5: percent organically every year. We want seventy percent or more
• 10:56
  Speaker 5: of the company to be recurring revenue. So that's customers
• 10:59
  Speaker 5: on long term subscription plans. Beau's a higher quality of revenue.
• 11:03
  Speaker 5: It allows you to invest for the long term because
• 11:04
  Speaker 5: you know you've got this annuity base. And then the
• 11:08
  Speaker 5: third is we want to expand our profit margins, both
• 11:11
  Speaker 5: in net profit and percentage terms. You're a vehica. We
• 11:15
  Speaker 5: want to show the company becomes more efficient as it scales.
• 11:17
  Speaker 5: So when we look at a business, we're trying to
• 11:20
  Speaker 5: figure out which of those parameters is going to accelerate.
• 11:24
  Speaker 5: So I like things that grow faster than us, that
• 11:26
  Speaker 5: are more recurring the seventy percent, and that have a
• 11:29
  Speaker 5: profit margin in percentage terms higher than we have. And
• 11:33
  Speaker 5: if it has all three of those and it's in
• 11:35
  Speaker 5: our space, we're probably going to do the deal. If
• 11:37
  Speaker 5: it has two of those, it's better, and not all three,
• 11:41
  Speaker 5: only two, but I can figure out how to accelerate
• 11:44
  Speaker 5: the third, that's even better. If it has none of
• 11:47
  Speaker 5: those three, but I can look at it and say
• 11:49
  Speaker 5: when I own it, I will be able to accelerate
• 11:52
  Speaker 5: all three of those. Those are the best because then
• 11:54
  Speaker 5: you buy those for cheaper and they become more accretive
• 11:57
  Speaker 5: in value terms. It's kind of the thesis on the
• 12:02
  Speaker 5: full terroor side. On the personal side, it's two things.
• 12:05
  Speaker 5: I invest in things that I know and understand because
• 12:09
  Speaker 5: I have a lot of time, so I need to
• 12:11
  Speaker 5: to be able to look from distance and say, okay,
• 12:13
  Speaker 5: you know this, it doesn't look like it's going well. Right,
• 12:16
  Speaker 5: So you need to have pattern recognition and a rhythm
• 12:19
  Speaker 5: for those businesses. So that's normally property and tech, and
• 12:24
  Speaker 5: now I do stuff with startups, which is more to
• 12:28
  Speaker 5: be supportive to founders who've got a great idea and
• 12:31
  Speaker 5: I think I can add value, and that's less about
• 12:34
  Speaker 5: whether I'll get a standout return and more just this
• 12:37
  Speaker 5: guy's there. He's from Lewisham like me. You know, I
• 12:40
  Speaker 5: think if I participate in this, let's go South London, Yeah,
• 12:47
  Speaker 5: then I'll invest in. I'll invest in that.
• 12:50
  Speaker 4: This is interesting.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: I wonder when you talk to founders, like you said,
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: you do private equity, and so one of the things
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: that we notice, especially in the States, is that when
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: we have a company, we like to hold on to
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: our companies. We don't like to sell because there's a
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: stigma that if I sell a piece of ownership, I've
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: sort of sold out. What's that like when you approach
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: founders when you're looking at to be a part of
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: the investment opportunity and ownership of a company.
• 13:19
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I get it because I talk to founders all
• 13:22
  Speaker 5: the time. You know, they started their company in nineteen
• 13:25
  Speaker 5: ninety eight, they remortgage their house three times. You know,
• 13:28
  Speaker 5: they've been living in this business for twenty years, haven't
• 13:31
  Speaker 5: seen their kids, two divorces, and then I show up
• 13:34
  Speaker 5: and say, you know, on my maths, this thing is
• 13:37
  Speaker 5: worth you know, eighty million, and the guys or the
• 13:40
  Speaker 5: lady saying, I feel like my life's work is worth
• 13:43
  Speaker 5: you know, more than that, or I don't like the
• 13:46
  Speaker 5: emotional element of just handing it over to you for money.
• 13:49
  Speaker 5: There's two hundred people in this company who I know
• 13:51
  Speaker 5: their names, I know their family, So I get the
• 13:54
  Speaker 5: emotional element of doing those deals what I've always tried
• 13:59
  Speaker 5: to do, and conversations to explain that the legacy of
• 14:02
  Speaker 5: the founder will continue under my under my ownership, right,
• 14:05
  Speaker 5: so the things that they wanted to do, the things
• 14:07
  Speaker 5: that were important to them in building that company, will
• 14:10
  Speaker 5: continue to be important as long as that's true. Like
• 14:12
  Speaker 5: sometimes you're buying a company, you know you're going to
• 14:14
  Speaker 5: have the workforce on day one, which isn't a nice
• 14:16
  Speaker 5: thing to do, but that's the capitalist in us, and
• 14:19
  Speaker 5: that's the that's the business. But as far as you
• 14:22
  Speaker 5: can continue a founder's legacy and cash them out in
• 14:26
  Speaker 5: a meaningful way for it, it's normally it's normally a
• 14:29
  Speaker 5: good a good thing. And fortunately, I've kind of built
• 14:32
  Speaker 5: a reputation. So when I speak to founders and say
• 14:35
  Speaker 5: I'm going to continue a legacy, go talk to these
• 14:38
  Speaker 5: six founders who are acquired companies from before, They'll tell
• 14:41
  Speaker 5: you that that's what happened. I've been able to trade
• 14:45
  Speaker 5: a bit on my reputation, you know, my reputation with that.
• 14:49
  Speaker 5: But there is this like fetish of complete ownership, which
• 14:55
  Speaker 5: you know, which which I just don't agree with. Like
• 14:57
  Speaker 5: it's about value creation, like how does how does ten
• 15:01
  Speaker 5: million become one hundred million? And if if I can
• 15:04
  Speaker 5: make one hundred million owning the minority steak or make
• 15:07
  Speaker 5: twenty million own in all of it, I'm a capitalist,
• 15:11
  Speaker 5: so I'd rather take one hundred than the minority steak.
• 15:13
  Speaker 5: So yeah, I don't know why. Sometimes, especially in that culture,
• 15:17
  Speaker 5: we're a little bit obsessed with you know, ownership or
• 15:21
  Speaker 5: all costs, and I don't get I don't get that.
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: So let me ask you this. As far as for
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: people that are looking to get capital, whether it's on
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: you know, private equity side of a bunch of capital side.
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: What should they do to prepare themselves to pitch their
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: companies to somebody like you?
• 15:40
  Speaker 4: It's a great question.
• 15:41
  Speaker 5: Well, unfortunately, less than one percent of available private equity
• 15:47
  Speaker 5: capital goes to minority founders. So if you look like me,
• 15:53
  Speaker 5: you have a disproportionately poor likelihood of getting funded, which
• 15:57
  Speaker 5: is something you know through my relationship ship a cornerstone
• 16:01
  Speaker 5: we're trying to we're trying to train that we're focused
• 16:03
  Speaker 5: on investing in underrepresented founders. I think I see pictures
• 16:08
  Speaker 5: all the time, maybe maybe a one hundred messages a
• 16:13
  Speaker 5: week of pictures. The team at f FG probably get
• 16:15
  Speaker 5: probably get more. First of all, I invest when I
• 16:19
  Speaker 5: invest personally in a business, not on the full terroer side. Personally,
• 16:23
  Speaker 5: I'm investing in the person first, like the person, because
• 16:27
  Speaker 5: a good person will make an average idea a success.
• 16:31
  Speaker 5: An average person can destroy good but a good idea right,
• 16:34
  Speaker 5: So first thing is the person. So any business I'm
• 16:38
  Speaker 5: investing on the personal side, I spend so much time
• 16:40
  Speaker 5: with the person, Like they come to my house for dinner,
• 16:43
  Speaker 5: I go and meet their family, We go and watch games.
• 16:45
  Speaker 5: We sit and drink alcohol because people tell the truth
• 16:48
  Speaker 5: of the they've been drinking.
• 16:49
  Speaker 4: True great strategy.
• 16:51
  Speaker 5: So I spent a bunch of time right and normally,
• 16:54
  Speaker 5: what I'm looking for in that person is, you know,
• 16:56
  Speaker 5: all the all the normal things, good work, ethic, good
• 16:58
  Speaker 5: business mind. But I want to find the reason that
• 17:00
  Speaker 5: this person needs to be successful for themselves. I need
• 17:05
  Speaker 5: the driver in the person. I don't want the person
• 17:08
  Speaker 5: to tell me, if you invest in me, I'll make
• 17:10
  Speaker 5: sure you make a return. I don't want that. I
• 17:13
  Speaker 5: want the person to say, I was bullied at school,
• 17:17
  Speaker 5: my girlfriend left me, I lost a bunch of money,
• 17:20
  Speaker 5: and this making this a success. This is how I
• 17:23
  Speaker 5: This is how I change my past and creating future
• 17:26
  Speaker 5: right time. As the person is the first thing. The
• 17:29
  Speaker 5: second thing is a well fought out idea, And a
• 17:33
  Speaker 5: well fought out idea isn't always somebody describing how this
• 17:36
  Speaker 5: is going to be the next Facebook or Snapchat, which
• 17:40
  Speaker 5: too many founders do, and they I don't think they
• 17:42
  Speaker 5: realize the kind of scarcity element of a Facebook or
• 17:48
  Speaker 5: a Snapchat. And I don't think they realize how much
• 17:50
  Speaker 5: money there is to be made, you know, like a
• 17:53
  Speaker 5: free extra return is crazy, right, that's great, So don't
• 17:57
  Speaker 5: tell me I give you fifty grand and give me
• 17:59
  Speaker 5: back fifty million, and six years you fifty grand. You'veing
• 18:02
  Speaker 5: back one hundred and fifty grand in six seven years time. Amazing.
• 18:05
  Speaker 5: So a well fought out business idea with a path
• 18:08
  Speaker 5: to like a modest return, I'm all in. And then
• 18:13
  Speaker 5: like accuracy in the numbers. I've seen a lot where
• 18:18
  Speaker 5: people pitch businesses and they're very visionary, they're very creative,
• 18:22
  Speaker 5: which I admire because I'm not. And then we get
• 18:24
  Speaker 5: to the numbers and theyre kind of like, well, you know,
• 18:26
  Speaker 5: you don't really need to worry about those too much,
• 18:27
  Speaker 5: and I've forgotten and oh shit, I've just realized this
• 18:30
  Speaker 5: isn't adding up the way it's supposed to. Like, at
• 18:34
  Speaker 5: some point, this company is going to have an amount
• 18:37
  Speaker 5: of pounds in the bank, and if you are not
• 18:39
  Speaker 5: a careful custodian of those pounds, bad things are going
• 18:43
  Speaker 5: to happen. So if you're pitching your business and you
• 18:46
  Speaker 5: didn't have the fortitude to even rehearse to pretend you
• 18:51
  Speaker 5: were going to be good at managing the pounds, yeah,
• 18:54
  Speaker 5: you know, I'm out. I'm out. And sometimes people talk
• 18:57
  Speaker 5: to me as I just have multiple fifty thousand of
• 19:00
  Speaker 5: pounds that I'm just wanting to toss around, like for vibes,
• 19:03
  Speaker 5: and you know, because it's funny to do. Vibes are important,
• 19:06
  Speaker 5: but yeah, it's that's not going to happen. Yeah, so
• 19:10
  Speaker 5: those would be my free.
• 19:12
  Speaker 6: I feel like the geopolitical market and overall stock market
• 19:15
  Speaker 6: has been in a weird place since twenty nineteen. As
• 19:18
  Speaker 6: an investor and business owner, do you think these next
• 19:21
  Speaker 6: three or four years will become a little bit easier
• 19:23
  Speaker 6: or are we like setting up for a black Swan
• 19:26
  Speaker 6: event here anytime soon.
• 19:28
  Speaker 5: I think it's a great time to be an investor,
• 19:30
  Speaker 5: isn't it. Like all the nervousness, caution, downturn and these
• 19:35
  Speaker 5: are great times for investors because history has told us,
• 19:39
  Speaker 5: you know, we come out of recessions, we come out
• 19:41
  Speaker 5: of downturns, right, That's what history has told us. So
• 19:44
  Speaker 5: if you deploy capital now, if you're able to deploy
• 19:47
  Speaker 5: capital now, and you're able to leave that capital deployed,
• 19:51
  Speaker 5: you're almost invariably going to make money. Now you have
• 19:53
  Speaker 5: to make good choices about where you deploy it. But
• 19:56
  Speaker 5: downturns are just you know, kind of infinite opportunity. So
• 20:00
  Speaker 5: on a personal level, I've been invested more in this
• 20:03
  Speaker 5: downturn then you know in twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen.
• 20:06
  Speaker 6: Quick follow up, are you worried about VC valuations the
• 20:09
  Speaker 6: commercial real estate bubble that can pop any contagion level
• 20:13
  Speaker 6: events or are you just head down focus focusing on
• 20:16
  Speaker 6: the supercycles and buying.
• 20:17
  Speaker 5: These are time and these are all timing events. They're
• 20:20
  Speaker 5: all time. And like if you if you you know,
• 20:24
  Speaker 5: you buy a house to live in that house, and
• 20:25
  Speaker 5: at some point you might sell that house over a
• 20:28
  Speaker 5: twenty five year period, you're going to lose money on
• 20:30
  Speaker 5: that house. Not over twenty five year period, that is
• 20:32
  Speaker 5: it going to be worth a lot more than you
• 20:34
  Speaker 5: paid for it. So the only thing that matters is
• 20:36
  Speaker 5: the moment in time when you need to sell that house.
• 20:38
  Speaker 5: That's not true, that's the only thing that matters. So
• 20:41
  Speaker 5: so downturns, if you have capital, if you have liquidity,
• 20:44
  Speaker 5: if you can get it, are great times to invest.
• 20:46
  Speaker 5: And that's what that's what I've been doing. That's what
• 20:48
  Speaker 5: we've been doing at f FG. We're so aggressive a
• 20:51
  Speaker 5: court and trying to find stuff, you know, we bought
• 20:53
  Speaker 5: six companies last year at for TiO a little bit
• 20:56
  Speaker 5: because of that. So, yeah, you don't want to buy
• 20:58
  Speaker 5: something at the peak.
• 21:00
  Speaker 4: Of that, absolutely not.
• 21:02
  Speaker 5: That's tough. But yeah, it's a great, great time to.
• 21:04
  Speaker 4: Be what's your holding period? My last a lot?
• 21:08
  Speaker 5: It depends, it depends what it is. So for for
• 21:11
  Speaker 5: real estate, you know we own a lot of properties
• 21:16
  Speaker 5: double digit years, you know, ten, ten, fifteen years. Maybe
• 21:20
  Speaker 5: tech clap it up seven seven seven tech tech is
• 21:25
  Speaker 5: tech is up up to seven because normally over a
• 21:29
  Speaker 5: seven year cycle and privately held tech, yeah, you find it,
• 21:32
  Speaker 5: you find the moment to find a moment to get out.
• 21:35
  Speaker 5: But also tech can kind of define valuations. If you
• 21:37
  Speaker 5: have a hot company, strategic buyer, you can defy kind
• 21:40
  Speaker 5: of market conditions and evaluations to tech a little bit,
• 21:43
  Speaker 5: a little bit.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: Can we go back to last year February twenty twenty two,
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: and I just want to give people context when we
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: talk about this is a rare conversation.
• 21:51
  Speaker 4: This is a.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: Legendary moment for Tero achieved something that I don't think
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: we've spoken to anybody that has done this. You achieved unicorn, right,
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: which means a billion dollars raised.
• 22:04
  Speaker 4: Please clap it up for that. That's tough any market Euros, euros,
• 22:11
  Speaker 4: in euros even more. I mean, I trust my intuition,
• 22:17
  Speaker 4: but what is that like for you?
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: When you trust your intuition, you've got the process of
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: how you're gonna invest in companies.
• 22:24
  Speaker 4: But when you see something like this happened, what was that?
• 22:27
  Speaker 5: That moment like, oh oh my god, that was Yeah,
• 22:32
  Speaker 5: that was that was unbelievable. That was emotional for a
• 22:35
  Speaker 5: few reasons. You know. Number one, when I got to
• 22:38
  Speaker 5: for Terro, the evaluation was free seven six, So I
• 22:42
  Speaker 5: walked to the door. It was free seven six. Number two,
• 22:47
  Speaker 5: I told the investor who I was going to work
• 22:49
  Speaker 5: with that twenty four months been in euros and he
• 22:51
  Speaker 5: was like, yeah, knowing about it, you know six seven
• 22:54
  Speaker 5: will be okay. I said, no, been in euros. And
• 22:59
  Speaker 5: just secondly, the again, the scarcity of that, right. I
• 23:03
  Speaker 5: think I did something with Bloomberg where they said there
• 23:06
  Speaker 5: are six seven hundred privately held companies on Earth with
• 23:11
  Speaker 5: a market cap of a billion or more and only
• 23:14
  Speaker 5: eight of them are run by black you know, black operativiities.
• 23:19
  Speaker 5: So to be in that conversation is just just unbelievable.
• 23:25
  Speaker 4: That's amazing.
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that's all. I mean, that's pretty amazing. But
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: it's also pretty alarming. Yeah, six thousand companies eight and
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: only eight are run by a black person. And another
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: thing that's pretty alarm in which you spoke about where
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: So we spoke with a gentleman named Don Peebles, who's
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: the top black real estate developer in America and yeah,
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: shout out to and he told us that there was
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: eleven trillion in private equity and venture capital in America,
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: money that's been flowing every every single year. And out
• 24:04
  Speaker 3: of that eleven trillion, ninety seven point five percent goals
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: to white men. So that means that two point five
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: percent is divvied up between women, all women of every race,
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: and every person of any color, Black, Spanish, Indian, doesn't matter.
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: So the whole entire, every single person outside of white
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: men are fighting for two point five percent. So when
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: we spoke to Robert Smith, who's the richest Black American ever,
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: he told us the other side of that.
• 24:42
  Speaker 4: Story where he said that.
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: Seven ninety seven point five percent of all venture capital
• 24:50
  Speaker 3: and private equity firms are run by white men. So
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: now it starts to make sense. White men lend to
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: white men, So how do we have more private equity
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: venture capital firms? Because I mean, it's been proven that
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: people kind of usually look out for each other and
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: that's just like historical fact. So black firms higher proportionally
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: lend to black people, it would make sense. The problem
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: is that we just don't have enough black companies. So
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: how do we get more black private equity firms and
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: more black venture capital because that's the part of the
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: wealth gap that nobody talks about where it's like, Okay,
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: you know you can, we can implement programs, we can
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: get more college degrees, but you ultimately are only going
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: to be as good as the exposure that you have
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: in the capital that you can raise. So if you
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: don't have access to money and you don't have any relationships,
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: you could be the brightest person in the world. It's
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: not going to work. Where Mark Zuckerberg he has a
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: great idea, but more portantly, he has millions of dollars
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: in capital to get Facebook started. If he didn't have
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: that money, then Facebook would have just been another good idea.
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: So how do we solve how do we have work
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: to solve this problem?
• 26:12
  Speaker 5: Wow?
• 26:14
  Speaker 4: I don't know.
• 26:14
  Speaker 5: No, Okay, it's a big it's a big deal. I
• 26:18
  Speaker 5: think there's like a few there's a few different elements
• 26:22
  Speaker 5: to write. So I'm a big believer in taking responsibility
• 26:28
  Speaker 5: for it. Let's take let's take responsibility for it. I
• 26:32
  Speaker 5: think I don't have hostility towards the way capital is
• 26:36
  Speaker 5: deployed by private equity, your bench capital, because of the
• 26:40
  Speaker 5: familiarity with what you see. Right, So I don't hold
• 26:43
  Speaker 5: any grudge to a white man who's going to make
• 26:46
  Speaker 5: a fifty million euro investment in a company doing it
• 26:50
  Speaker 5: to something and somebody that he feels very comfortable with,
• 26:53
  Speaker 5: very familiar with, he's seen a bunch of times before. Right,
• 26:56
  Speaker 5: I don't have any I don't have any any issue
• 26:59
  Speaker 5: with that. His job is to turn that capital into
• 27:01
  Speaker 5: more capital. So if he's more comfortable with this bet
• 27:04
  Speaker 5: versus this one, I don't have hostility towards them for
• 27:09
  Speaker 5: doing that. So when I say take responsibility, I mean
• 27:13
  Speaker 5: I feel like there's an element, there's an element of
• 27:16
  Speaker 5: us understanding this game. And when we walk into those
• 27:20
  Speaker 5: rooms understanding that one hundred and ten percent is the minimum,
• 27:23
  Speaker 5: one hundred and twenty percent maybe gets us the gig right.
• 27:27
  Speaker 5: That's just where we are in society. We're a minority
• 27:30
  Speaker 5: in most of the major economies. So whether we like
• 27:33
  Speaker 5: it or not, that is the gig right. So when
• 27:35
  Speaker 5: I say to you, I see I spend every Saturday
• 27:37
  Speaker 5: morning looking at pictures for FFG. And let's say I
• 27:40
  Speaker 5: look at ten pictures each Saturday morning, I can tell
• 27:44
  Speaker 5: you that seven or eight of those pictures are poorly prepared,
• 27:46
  Speaker 5: contains spelling mistakes, how people are wrestling with the technology
• 27:51
  Speaker 5: for the first time. And this is before we get
• 27:54
  Speaker 5: to the viability of the business idea. Before we get
• 27:57
  Speaker 5: to the viability of the business idea can show up
• 28:00
  Speaker 5: better than that. Let's invest and use our friends and
• 28:04
  Speaker 5: use our networks to show up to show up better
• 28:06
  Speaker 5: than that. So let's take responsibility for being uber excellent
• 28:09
  Speaker 5: in the first place. Then there comes the next part,
• 28:12
  Speaker 5: which is coming up with something that is credible, viable,
• 28:18
  Speaker 5: and having the tenacity to push it in the first place. Right,
• 28:22
  Speaker 5: So being prepared for the noose, being prepared for the
• 28:25
  Speaker 5: ego bumps, but continue to go, because even Zuckerberg and
• 28:30
  Speaker 5: Jobs and Bezos all had their moments where people were
• 28:34
  Speaker 5: kicking them in the shins. And saying this thing perhaps
• 28:36
  Speaker 5: isn't going to make it out, so we have to
• 28:38
  Speaker 5: be ready for those things too. And then yeah, there
• 28:41
  Speaker 5: is us in private equity. There is us in vcs
• 28:45
  Speaker 5: who have to work harder to break that familiarity cycle
• 28:47
  Speaker 5: of only ever deploying capital and things that we've seen before,
• 28:50
  Speaker 5: things that we know before, and people that we've worked
• 28:53
  Speaker 5: with before. Right, And I take myself out of that
• 28:55
  Speaker 5: for a moment, because now we're talking about the people
• 28:57
  Speaker 5: who control those firms who are invariably you know, not
• 29:00
  Speaker 5: us and don't look like us. There is more effort
• 29:03
  Speaker 5: that needs to be made, you know, to break that
• 29:06
  Speaker 5: familiarity cycle. But I definitely put it in place free,
• 29:10
  Speaker 5: I definitely put it in place. Three, do we collectively
• 29:13
  Speaker 5: want private equity to deploy a pound behind the black
• 29:16
  Speaker 5: founder who is you know, poorly prepared, poorly researched. I
• 29:20
  Speaker 5: don't think that's reasonable. Show up a game, well researched,
• 29:25
  Speaker 5: well prepared, good deck, and then yeah, then then you've
• 29:29
  Speaker 5: you've put it on them to back you. At that point,
• 29:32
  Speaker 5: I think we've got to take a lot of responsible
• 29:33
  Speaker 5: follow up. You gotta follow up. Okay, Well, I have
• 29:38
  Speaker 5: a follow up I know him ahead.
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: I agree with everything you said, but I also think
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: that it's awareness to have positions of So I we
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: was at Diddy's house and.
• 29:49
  Speaker 4: Shou out to Black Caesar. You see the little casual,
• 29:52
  Speaker 4: humble flex talk.
• 29:54
  Speaker 6: Your talk said again, well, Miami, Sarry Island, where were
• 29:57
  Speaker 6: you at?
• 29:57
  Speaker 5: Wait? Where were you at?
• 30:00
  Speaker 4: You know you've heard of that guy before.
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: So we was talking and he was very passionate about
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: wanting to solve the wealth gap and wanting to help
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: black people. And I was telling him that, Okay, we
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: have some people now that have become billionaires through entertainment,
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: through sports, a couple of different areas. It's great to
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: start a clothing brand or start a tequila brand, but
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: what would be better is if a few of them
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: came together and started a private equity firm, or started
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: a venture capital firm, or started a political lobby all. So,
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: I think that part of that is the education for
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: the people that do have resources. They may not be
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: able to do it themselves, but collectively, and they're not expertise.
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: That's what he said, I'm not expert. Well, you don't
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: have to be an expert. This is when you bring
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: somebody that has an expertise in to run the company,
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: just like somebody might not be an expert in fashion,
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: but they'll bring a designer in and they'll So I
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: understand why white people would while a white man would
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: lend to a white man. But it is not sustainable.
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: Here's a reason why the economies is on the decline.
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: This is what I told we was in front of
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: we was in Bloomberg. I told the room full of Bloomberg.
• 31:23
  Speaker 3: I said, look, the way that the capitalistic society in
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: America has worked is not working. And if you keep
• 31:31
  Speaker 3: if you keep with the same philosophy of empowering, the
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: problem is that a lot of people look at empowering
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: disenfranchised people as charity.
• 31:40
  Speaker 5: It's really it's best practices.
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: If you keep looking at like his charity, this is
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: why we are declining, right, and other countries are English.
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: So I think that we have to start pushing a
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: narrative of this, Like we got to push a narrative
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: to even make people aware that most people don't even
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: know that. They don't even know about private equity in
• 32:02
  Speaker 3: venture capital with different things that nature. So it's like,
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: we need more private acqu more venture capital. But if
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: they're not even aware of it, or if the narrative
• 32:10
  Speaker 3: is not pushed for it, then we're not even in
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: a position where we can even try to help ourselves.
• 32:15
  Speaker 5: I think you're right. But how it happens at scale,
• 32:20
  Speaker 5: I think is something that we can really take you know,
• 32:24
  Speaker 5: we can really take charge of if you take court capital.
• 32:26
  Speaker 5: We raised one point two billion. As part of my
• 32:29
  Speaker 5: participation with them, I said, we are going to invest
• 32:31
  Speaker 5: in ten black lead businesses each and every year, right,
• 32:34
  Speaker 5: which is cool. Does it shift the needle entirely? Probably not.
• 32:39
  Speaker 5: The main reason that's important to me is it will
• 32:42
  Speaker 5: condition these guys to reviewing, you know, fifty sixty businesses. Right,
• 32:48
  Speaker 5: so now they see sixty businesses that they may not
• 32:50
  Speaker 5: otherwise not have looked at. We'll invest in ten and
• 32:53
  Speaker 5: you get you start to change that familiarity cycle. And that,
• 32:56
  Speaker 5: for me is the main thing. Changing that familiarity cycle.
• 33:00
  Speaker 5: That's why these conversations are great. That's why you know,
• 33:03
  Speaker 5: my career I think has been important. Away from the numbers,
• 33:06
  Speaker 5: there's now a set of private equity firms who think
• 33:09
  Speaker 5: what we backed. We backed Dean, we made free for
• 33:12
  Speaker 5: six times our money. So when the next Dean walks
• 33:14
  Speaker 5: through the room, they kind of going, well, we don't
• 33:16
  Speaker 5: want to miss the next Dean, so maybe like we
• 33:18
  Speaker 5: listen to this a little bit differently. For me, it's
• 33:20
  Speaker 5: like breaking that familiarity cycle. But we like we got
• 33:24
  Speaker 5: to show up with ver a game, like we got
• 33:27
  Speaker 5: to take responsibility for that.
• 33:28
  Speaker 6: For all the entrepreneurs here, what project, products or innovation
• 33:32
  Speaker 6: needs to be created and there's a new landscape that
• 33:35
  Speaker 6: will allow them like an irresisible path to get funded.
• 33:39
  Speaker 6: So we have enough social media companies, we have enough
• 33:42
  Speaker 6: door dash and delivery service type companies.
• 33:45
  Speaker 4: What's the next wave?
• 33:46
  Speaker 6: AI is already here, So I think most of us
• 33:49
  Speaker 6: may have missed the boat on that. What do you
• 33:51
  Speaker 6: think is the next innovation or project or product that
• 33:53
  Speaker 6: we need to create that can get funded.
• 33:55
  Speaker 5: The thing I struggle with the most for Terror, The
• 33:59
  Speaker 5: thing we struggle with the most at Courton and the
• 34:04
  Speaker 5: businesses we look at at Corton and even for Tierra
• 34:06
  Speaker 5: struggle with is talent. It is you know, finding brilliant people,
• 34:12
  Speaker 5: you know, getting them into the company, keeping them in
• 34:14
  Speaker 5: the company for the right amount of timing. And I
• 34:16
  Speaker 5: know it sounds strained, but like extracting value from them
• 34:19
  Speaker 5: whilst they're kind of a talent of our company. So
• 34:23
  Speaker 5: I think any technology solution that is helping companies find
• 34:28
  Speaker 5: the right talent, engage the right talent, extract value or
• 34:32
  Speaker 5: not extract, exchange value because people should be compensated for
• 34:35
  Speaker 5: their work. Like that to me is a really important
• 34:39
  Speaker 5: place right now. Our strategy to create value for TIRA,
• 34:43
  Speaker 5: I think is very defensible. Market conditions are favorable. Whether
• 34:47
  Speaker 5: or not I'm successful depends on you know, the two
• 34:50
  Speaker 5: thousand people that come to work every day, the three
• 34:53
  Speaker 5: hundred of them that will leave, and the six hundred
• 34:55
  Speaker 5: of them are replaced with like how does that cycle move? That?
• 35:00
  Speaker 5: That is where success or failure will be determined to
• 35:03
  Speaker 5: anything around optimizing human capital. And you've been talent real quick.
• 35:09
  Speaker 4: You think we have more talent if tech companies decided
• 35:12
  Speaker 4: to pay more. You want's a TEXTI here, somebody's going
• 35:17
  Speaker 4: to work tomorrow that I can we be very honest here.
• 35:22
  Speaker 6: And in the States, there are a lot of people,
• 35:24
  Speaker 6: I think who are looking for jobs, but it seems
• 35:27
  Speaker 6: when I talk to people on a daily basis, they've
• 35:29
  Speaker 6: almost given up hope that almost all the good jobs
• 35:31
  Speaker 6: are gone. Or if I have a tremendous value. I
• 35:34
  Speaker 6: won't does everyone in here feel like they're getting paid
• 35:37
  Speaker 6: what they're worth? Does anyone here feel like they are
• 35:43
  Speaker 6: getting paid what they're worth?
• 35:46
  Speaker 4: Shot out to.
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: You, nobody's gonna pay you like you pay yourself off.
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: So you're never gonna get paid how much you work
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: unless you're paying yourself.
• 35:55
  Speaker 4: Great point. They took their clap back.
• 36:01
  Speaker 5: I don't know if if compensation creates talent and if
• 36:06
  Speaker 5: I don't know, if I pay a person more, they
• 36:08
  Speaker 5: become more you know, they become more talented. I do
• 36:13
  Speaker 5: think there's like a comp issue. Like in the text space,
• 36:15
  Speaker 5: we see Facebook been people. Google have laid off a
• 36:17
  Speaker 5: bunch of people. I think even Amazon have announced the
• 36:20
  Speaker 5: length of people. So yeah, there's a there's a there's
• 36:23
  Speaker 5: clearly a talent and compensation issue in the tech space,
• 36:26
  Speaker 5: for sure.
• 36:27
  Speaker 4: I think the beauty but not.
• 36:28
  Speaker 5: My company like that.
• 36:29
  Speaker 4: We got to be clear, not well coming, well commersated. Uh.
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: The thing about tech and I love it is because
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: of the growth and because of innovation and because of
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: disruption that it causes.
• 36:40
  Speaker 4: We said, AI is here.
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: I wonder how you look at it from a private
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: investor in terms of are you looking for companies that
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: are creating new forms of AI. Are you looking at
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: companies that if they had AI can enhance their performance?
• 36:55
  Speaker 5: That we love the latter, Like, if a company is
• 36:58
  Speaker 5: doing great and just haven't figured out out that applying
• 37:01
  Speaker 5: AI could create a bunch of value, then yeah, you
• 37:04
  Speaker 5: acquire that company, you put the AI in, and you
• 37:06
  Speaker 5: created a set of value that you know they may
• 37:09
  Speaker 5: be they may be missed out. And so yeah, we
• 37:12
  Speaker 5: you know, we love AI. We're doing some interesting things
• 37:16
  Speaker 5: you know with with AI at the moment. But any
• 37:18
  Speaker 5: any company that we can acquire where the application of
• 37:21
  Speaker 5: AI is an immediate accelerant is a is a great
• 37:24
  Speaker 5: deal to go after.
• 37:25
  Speaker 4: Can I get to follow up real quick? Absolutely?
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: So in terms of creating talent, I want to go
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: back to that a little bit, because yes, AI will
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: make things more efficient until that talent level kind of
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: gets decreased unless they have the talent inside of that space.
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: How do we go about forming intentionality around crafting the
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: talent or creating an incubator in a sense to have
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: talent so that we know where we can go if
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: we need it.
• 37:51
  Speaker 5: Yeah, Like, there's been a lot of debates about AI,
• 37:53
  Speaker 5: like wiping out mass jobs and these kinds of things.
• 37:56
  Speaker 5: And it comes back to like the innovation question, you know,
• 37:58
  Speaker 5: like over over time over decides disruptions innovation to happen
• 38:02
  Speaker 5: in the market. The wheel took out a bunch of
• 38:05
  Speaker 5: jobs where people would carry stuff from one place to
• 38:07
  Speaker 5: another place. Then we had the wheel, so now it
• 38:09
  Speaker 5: needed one person to drive wherever it was. So like
• 38:11
  Speaker 5: this stuff happens, you know, all of the time, So
• 38:15
  Speaker 5: like humanity will just redefine itself. I think, although AI
• 38:19
  Speaker 5: is probably the biggest you know, innovation and disruption of
• 38:22
  Speaker 5: the of the twentieth century or twenty first century, in
• 38:26
  Speaker 5: terms of talent, people are staying less in education than
• 38:31
  Speaker 5: they ever have, and people are staying shorter tenures in
• 38:34
  Speaker 5: jobs than they ever have. So as an employer, I
• 38:38
  Speaker 5: am a little bit worried about like the depth of expertise. Right,
• 38:42
  Speaker 5: So where people stayed ten years in a job and
• 38:45
  Speaker 5: they built up incredible expertise and the main knowledge in
• 38:47
  Speaker 5: the job, don't really do that anymore. And where people
• 38:50
  Speaker 5: stayed in education and got PhDs because it was the
• 38:54
  Speaker 5: thing to do, they don't. They don't do that anymore.
• 38:56
  Speaker 5: So you know, statistically you would expect the degree of
• 39:00
  Speaker 5: expertise to fall off, which as an employer is a
• 39:04
  Speaker 5: worrying a worrying phenomenon.
• 39:07
  Speaker 4: Question, how are you, how are you?
• 39:09
  Speaker 3: You say you're excited about AI as far, how are
• 39:11
  Speaker 3: you utilizing AI and what are your plans to utilize
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: AI in your in your businesses?
• 39:16
  Speaker 5: So so at for Terra the main application of AI,
• 39:20
  Speaker 5: which I think is pretty cool. So so we serve
• 39:23
  Speaker 5: industrial companies who are usually manufacturing goods right, manufacturing you know,
• 39:28
  Speaker 5: different elements of machinery, et cetera. So for some of
• 39:32
  Speaker 5: our customers there, the goods and products that they make
• 39:35
  Speaker 5: are kind of weather dependent. So we have a weather
• 39:37
  Speaker 5: customer who makes garden furniture. So we are using AI
• 39:42
  Speaker 5: to predict sales demand, which is based on historical trends,
• 39:48
  Speaker 5: effectiveness of their salespeople, plus weather patterns forward forward facing
• 39:54
  Speaker 5: weather patterns, so we know in you know, good weather times,
• 39:57
  Speaker 5: people all the more kind of garden furniture and bad
• 39:59
  Speaker 5: weather they don't. Now that's important because instead of buying
• 40:04
  Speaker 5: I don't know, to have a garden table, which is
• 40:06
  Speaker 5: predominantly glass, So instead of buying fifty glass sheets for
• 40:10
  Speaker 5: these tables because they've got fifty two orders, they buy
• 40:15
  Speaker 5: three hundred glass sheets because they anticipate three hundred orders,
• 40:19
  Speaker 5: and as we know, you buy three hundred at a
• 40:21
  Speaker 5: lower price per unit than you buy fifty. So it's
• 40:24
  Speaker 5: just unlocking margin for them with clever use of AI,
• 40:27
  Speaker 5: and you apply that across all of their products, all
• 40:31
  Speaker 5: the timelines, all the sales people. You help them incrementally
• 40:35
  Speaker 5: buy elements and components of their products at a lower
• 40:40
  Speaker 5: and lower per unit price. You also help them not
• 40:44
  Speaker 5: stock things that they're not going to sell, so now
• 40:46
  Speaker 5: they're not buying things, deploying cash, putting it in the warehouse,
• 40:50
  Speaker 5: paying for its storage. So you're just helping them gain
• 40:53
  Speaker 5: more and more margin. Very very simple but effective use
• 40:57
  Speaker 5: of AI and machine learning.
• 40:59
  Speaker 6: You've had a few successful exits, just talk like it's
• 41:02
  Speaker 6: just me and you feel like maybe you you how
• 41:05
  Speaker 6: the hell you pull us off this many times? Like
• 41:07
  Speaker 6: walk us through your process and can you tell us
• 41:09
  Speaker 6: how difficult it is to have that many exits? But
• 41:12
  Speaker 6: for all the aspiring entrepreneurs entrepreneurs in the building, did
• 41:16
  Speaker 6: you start with that end goal in mind? Or like
• 41:19
  Speaker 6: what was your rationale? Because like to be able to
• 41:21
  Speaker 6: do what you've done and be a unicorn. That's not
• 41:24
  Speaker 6: by accident.
• 41:26
  Speaker 5: Uh. Actually I always had like each project at a time,
• 41:31
  Speaker 5: like I was never when I was at Premiarere. I
• 41:34
  Speaker 5: was never thinking one day I'll be in a company
• 41:37
  Speaker 5: would do with the a unicorn. I was just kind
• 41:39
  Speaker 5: of at Premiera thinking, man, like, these people are talking
• 41:42
  Speaker 5: about this thing going for three hundred four hundred million,
• 41:44
  Speaker 5: and I've got three percent of this company that will
• 41:47
  Speaker 5: be like life changing. So now this still has to
• 41:49
  Speaker 5: get done because that's gonna And then that happened and
• 41:52
  Speaker 5: you go to KDS and KTS was a much smaller
• 41:55
  Speaker 5: company losing money. So that was a pride thing where
• 41:58
  Speaker 5: it was like, Okay, I've come out of the comfort
• 42:01
  Speaker 5: of Oracle, you know, the cachet of being in one
• 42:05
  Speaker 5: of the world's greatest tech companies. I'm in this kind
• 42:08
  Speaker 5: of startup in France. It's going badly, so now this
• 42:11
  Speaker 5: has to work, right, So now you're trying to make
• 42:13
  Speaker 5: that work. And that was very difficult. And then I
• 42:15
  Speaker 5: went to core Hr and I was asking myself, are
• 42:20
  Speaker 5: you any good? You did Primavara, you weren't the CEO.
• 42:24
  Speaker 5: You did KDS. Okay, you've done one. You need to
• 42:27
  Speaker 5: prove that you're actually good and you know what you're doing.
• 42:30
  Speaker 5: So that became the core HR thing. And then when
• 42:32
  Speaker 5: I came out of core HR and I had this opportunity. Yeah,
• 42:35
  Speaker 5: that's when I put the billion on it to say,
• 42:38
  Speaker 5: I like the sound of two billion and exit, So
• 42:40
  Speaker 5: this now has to be two billion. It was always is.
• 42:44
  Speaker 6: Here casually he says that, like it's two.
• 42:49
  Speaker 5: You know something and it's something I've heard you guys
• 42:51
  Speaker 5: talk about as well. I was very lucky, like people
• 42:56
  Speaker 5: broke my horizons because growing up, how I grew up,
• 42:59
  Speaker 5: and how long people grow up, like you cap your horizons,
• 43:02
  Speaker 5: you start to think that certain things are not possible,
• 43:06
  Speaker 5: or certain numbers just sound too big. I remember pitching
• 43:09
  Speaker 5: KDS to Google and we were in the hotel room
• 43:12
  Speaker 5: the night behind before we wanted Google to buy KDS.
• 43:15
  Speaker 5: So we're in the hotel room the night before. We've
• 43:16
  Speaker 5: had business plan and everything I said about investing in
• 43:18
  Speaker 5: well thought our business plan to just pulls that for
• 43:21
  Speaker 5: a second, because we're in the hotel room going through
• 43:24
  Speaker 5: the business plan, going this isn't exciting enough for them
• 43:26
  Speaker 5: to add a zero, add a zero to all of
• 43:28
  Speaker 5: these numbers, it's adding zeros, and then we're looking at
• 43:30
  Speaker 5: it again.
• 43:30
  Speaker 6: Going we've all done and when applan for a job,
• 43:33
  Speaker 6: that's the same thing at.
• 43:34
  Speaker 5: A higher level, and then we're like I steal, like
• 43:37
  Speaker 5: add another zero, like just get at it. So we're
• 43:39
  Speaker 5: just dumping numbers into this business plan and rehearsing the
• 43:42
  Speaker 5: business plan to say like the authority like we really
• 43:45
  Speaker 5: did it. And we went into Google and the guy said,
• 43:49
  Speaker 5: see if we achieved this business plan, what would be
• 43:51
  Speaker 5: our market share in those in those economies? And I
• 43:55
  Speaker 5: think we said, you know, we'll get up to like
• 43:57
  Speaker 5: fourteen fifteen percent, which isn't bad market share. And the
• 44:00
  Speaker 5: guy said, how do you measure market share? And we said,
• 44:02
  Speaker 5: so of all of the companies that would use a
• 44:05
  Speaker 5: product like this, will have fifteen fourteen fifteen percent of
• 44:09
  Speaker 5: them And he said, oh, we measure market share differently,
• 44:12
  Speaker 5: So I said, how do you measure it? He said
• 44:13
  Speaker 5: by population of the globe that have Internet connectivity.
• 44:18
  Speaker 4: Jesus perspective is key.
• 44:21
  Speaker 5: So so you're just like, all, you know that we
• 44:24
  Speaker 5: couldn't have put enough zeros in this thing to make it,
• 44:27
  Speaker 5: you know, to make it relevant. But I'm lucky I've
• 44:29
  Speaker 5: had those. I've had those moments where people have just blown,
• 44:33
  Speaker 5: you know, blown my context. I remember when we were
• 44:36
  Speaker 5: pitching a I think it was KDS again and we
• 44:39
  Speaker 5: had an offer for sixty five million, and I was
• 44:42
  Speaker 5: telling the then investor that it was really difficult and
• 44:45
  Speaker 5: maybe we should accept this offer. You know, it's good
• 44:48
  Speaker 5: off for sixty five million. And it was on his jet. Actually,
• 44:51
  Speaker 5: we sat on his private jet talking through this, talking
• 44:53
  Speaker 5: through this offer. And I've never seen anybody be more disappointed.
• 44:57
  Speaker 5: He invested four million dollars, by the way, and he
• 44:59
  Speaker 5: was going to get by sixty five and I've never
• 45:01
  Speaker 5: seen anybody more disappointed in that return profile like he.
• 45:05
  Speaker 5: And he said to me, I never forget it. And
• 45:07
  Speaker 5: I've told this story before. He said, you know what
• 45:09
  Speaker 5: you're going to do if we started coming from sixty
• 45:11
  Speaker 5: five million, you know you're going to make a bit
• 45:13
  Speaker 5: of money. You're going to buy a beach house, a
• 45:15
  Speaker 5: holiday house in the south of France, a watch and
• 45:18
  Speaker 5: a Porsche, and then what you're going to do?
• 45:20
  Speaker 4: Right, But he was telling me a truth, though, But
• 45:24
  Speaker 4: I was thinking, that sounds about that sounds great.
• 45:29
  Speaker 5: You know, you got it. I don't need to but
• 45:31
  Speaker 5: he was so disappointed that my aspiration for this company
• 45:35
  Speaker 5: was so mediocre because for him it wasn't and he
• 45:39
  Speaker 5: he was spending far less time in the company that
• 45:42
  Speaker 5: I was. So it made me think, if I'm going
• 45:44
  Speaker 5: to put six days a week into this like I
• 45:46
  Speaker 5: should get do you know what I mean? So we
• 45:48
  Speaker 5: have I've had those moments that have just blown my horizon.
• 45:52
  Speaker 5: So two billion, I know, is a lot of money,
• 45:55
  Speaker 5: but it's not nearly enough, like enough.
• 45:58
  Speaker 4: How much is enough the tractra horizons?
• 46:02
  Speaker 5: The number for me isn't so for Tira, we did it.
• 46:05
  Speaker 5: We did it a billion. I think by the time
• 46:06
  Speaker 5: we get done, you know, three years, four billion.
• 46:09
  Speaker 4: Would be a good How much is enough for you? Though?
• 46:12
  Speaker 5: In turn of my own my own my own personal money,
• 46:17
  Speaker 5: I'm okay, now.
• 46:21
  Speaker 4: Clap it up for that.
• 46:22
  Speaker 3: So before we before that's a fact, before we leave,
• 46:27
  Speaker 3: last question, I wanted to ask you about the wine,
• 46:29
  Speaker 3: Oh sparkling wine.
• 46:32
  Speaker 4: This is in tech, now, this is a different industry.
• 46:34
  Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, I've I've never invested outside of my
• 46:39
  Speaker 5: two comfort zones of property in tech, but I've always
• 46:41
  Speaker 5: been curious about our culture and our culture is But
• 46:45
  Speaker 5: forgive me it's kind of music, food and you know
• 46:49
  Speaker 5: drink to a degree, right, that's kind of our culture
• 46:52
  Speaker 5: when we're enjoying ourselves, when we're celebrating our successes plus
• 46:56
  Speaker 5: family and friends. That's really our culture. So I always
• 46:58
  Speaker 5: wanted to do a drink. I always kind of had
• 47:01
  Speaker 5: this passion to do that, but I knew I couldn't
• 47:05
  Speaker 5: put it in our culture. I don't have the connectivity
• 47:07
  Speaker 5: to you know, music and the social culture in that way,
• 47:11
  Speaker 5: so I never I never really committed to it. And
• 47:14
  Speaker 5: then by chance, Corle Loco, who's you know, chairman of
• 47:18
  Speaker 5: Black Seed, which is a VC investing only in black founders,
• 47:22
  Speaker 5: had me come and speak at an event and I
• 47:24
  Speaker 5: bumped into a friend of mine do Me, who I've
• 47:26
  Speaker 5: known a long time, but we've never really collaborated on anything,
• 47:28
  Speaker 5: and we're just chatting backstage. He says, what do you
• 47:31
  Speaker 5: think of this? He shows me the pitch deck and
• 47:33
  Speaker 5: it's the pitch deck for Severn, which is a sparkling wine.
• 47:37
  Speaker 5: And the theory behind the wine is it's a it's
• 47:40
  Speaker 5: an African grape, so South African Charlon, a grape that
• 47:44
  Speaker 5: we bring over to the UK and finished and Dumi's
• 47:46
  Speaker 5: thing was it's born in Africa, finished in the UK,
• 47:49
  Speaker 5: which is which is us. And if you if you
• 47:52
  Speaker 5: met do me or you know Domi's like a damon
• 47:54
  Speaker 5: dash like when you sit with me, like you get
• 47:57
  Speaker 5: tired listening to him because he's liked, you know, we
• 47:58
  Speaker 5: gotta do this, and culture need this, and we're gonna
• 48:01
  Speaker 5: make a bunch of money and we need to stop
• 48:02
  Speaker 5: drinking other people's drinks. And he just he was so
• 48:06
  Speaker 5: like passionate about it. And he managed wiz Kid, you know,
• 48:10
  Speaker 5: jessej Tiny Temper, so He's and many others. So his
• 48:13
  Speaker 5: connectivity to the culture was there. He's got amazing energy
• 48:17
  Speaker 5: and passion. Started in Africa, finished in the UK, which
• 48:20
  Speaker 5: is which is us. So I was, I was, I
• 48:24
  Speaker 5: was in and I think that the beautiful part of
• 48:26
  Speaker 5: that was he had a little bit of equity left
• 48:29
  Speaker 5: for investors and it wasn't enough for me because I
• 48:32
  Speaker 5: wanted to be a meaningful investor. So I said, you know,
• 48:35
  Speaker 5: is there a way for us to make it bigger?
• 48:36
  Speaker 5: And he was just like, yeah, we're gonna, you know,
• 48:38
  Speaker 5: we're going to do that because this is a thing
• 48:40
  Speaker 5: for us, So we want us involved in it, and
• 48:43
  Speaker 5: it was was kind of a beautiful moment for him
• 48:45
  Speaker 5: to just open the door in that way, and I'm
• 48:48
  Speaker 5: like excited. We got bottles backstays. We've been drinking before
• 48:50
  Speaker 5: we came out here, So Severn and Wines, everybody, go
• 48:56
  Speaker 5: check it out, and I'd love to hear what you think.
• 48:57
  Speaker 5: If you buy it and you like it, tell me.
• 48:59
  Speaker 5: If you buy it you don't like it, you can
• 49:01
  Speaker 5: tell me to We're trying to get it right. It's
• 49:03
  Speaker 5: a very very important investment for me.
• 49:06
  Speaker 4: So we can't wait to go backstage and shippy with you.
• 49:10
  Speaker 4: Ladies and gentlemen. Make some noise for thinking. Thanks you
• 49:17
  Speaker 4: so much.