00:18:19 · Laura Connell, Sebastian Johnson
[00:18:19] S1: Yeah, I think the one is just that from a founder perspective, just the ambition, the audacity to go after absolutely enormous markets. That's the first thing. Right. And I think that that's always what we look for at any stage. And by the way, this could be a specific industry, it could be a specific problem within it, just all of those companies have in common, just this incredibly audacious goal going after potentially an absolutely enormous and in some ways unsizable market. So that's the first thing. I think the second thing, given the nature of the technologies that they're building, you to assess for the quality of the team from a technical perspective. And the way I often put it is these are founders that can move at least as quickly as frontier teams building in tier one hyperscalers or perhaps startups that are further along theoretically from a funding perspective. So really solving for technical talent density. And so, one of the things that we'll habitually do is beyond the founders, of course, like look at the quality of the rest of the team when you know that R and D is the key asset to really create compounding value. And so that's the second thing. And then I think the third thing is a team that has a sense of incredible urgency. And I think that to build fast now, it was always the case that you needed to move quickly, but now the speed at which markets are evolving often [00:19:41] S0: have
00:19:41 · Sebastian Johnson, Laura Connell
[00:19:41] S0: have [00:19:41] S1: to pivot and iteratively in a much shorter amount of time than was ever the case, which is also why you're seeing much larger rounds to boss a balance sheet, right? To kind of buy yourself the call option to do that iteratively. So those would be three of the kind of key things. And fourth, I mean, this would be more generally about any kind of frontier investment is that you really have to believe that there's something compelling, interesting to be done from an IP perspective where you're really talking about unique IP. [00:20:09] S0: When we talk about talent, this kind of change in the market towards much more technical academic talent, you spent a couple of years being Gavin, I think an assistant researcher in brain things, brain, I don't know quite what it was, but has that given you some sort of unique advantage or insight to then assessing highly technical academic talent, do you think?
00:20:09 · Sebastian Johnson, Laura Connell
[00:20:09] S0: When we talk about talent, this kind of change in the market towards much more technical academic talent, you spent a couple of years being Gavin, I think an assistant researcher in brain things, brain, I don't know quite what it was, but has that given you some sort of unique advantage or insight to then assessing highly technical academic talent, do you think? [00:20:33] S1: Well, I think what it gives you is a enormous sense of humility. The things that I spend a lot of time on now over fifteen years ago now, the half life of that knowledge is just rapidly diminishing. And so, I think that's an appreciation for how quickly things are moving. My research was in cognitive, the intersection of cognitive neurosciences and AI. So I was in a team called the brain sciences team at Imperial. And in some ways, really got out answering some of the questions that I thought were quite interesting in my first degree, which were in philosophy, kind of theory, the theory of knowledge and intelligence and cognition. So, you know, epistemology and the like. And a lot of those questions actually, a lot of the topics that were part and parcel of both of those degrees really underpin a lot of a discussion of course now around AGI and how to reason about reason and a mechanistic view of human intelligence and computation. So I think at least perhaps it doesn't give you a particular edge, but at least it gives you an understanding of the type of questions you should be asking when you're looking at things that touch on AGI and AI generally.
00:20:33 · Laura Connell, Sebastian Johnson
[00:20:33] S1: Well, I think what it gives you is a enormous sense of humility. The things that I spend a lot of time on now over fifteen years ago now, the half life of that knowledge is just rapidly diminishing. And so, I think that's an appreciation for how quickly things are moving. My research was in cognitive, the intersection of cognitive neurosciences and AI. So I was in a team called the brain sciences team at Imperial. And in some ways, really got out answering some of the questions that I thought were quite interesting in my first degree, which were in philosophy, kind of theory, the theory of knowledge and intelligence and cognition. So, you know, epistemology and the like. And a lot of those questions actually, a lot of the topics that were part and parcel of both of those degrees really underpin a lot of a discussion of course now around AGI and how to reason about reason and a mechanistic view of human intelligence and computation. So I think at least perhaps it doesn't give you a particular edge, but at least it gives you an understanding of the type of questions you should be asking when you're looking at things that touch on AGI and AI generally. [00:21:44] S0: At this moment in time, we're sort of living in the age of the academic or the researcher, we're seeing science being pushed forward quite drastically and there's a real opportunity to take science, probably to say like solve science, right, with sort of like a super intelligence, Does that make you miss research at all, academia at all?
00:21:44 · Sebastian Johnson, Laura Connell
[00:21:44] S0: At this moment in time, we're sort of living in the age of the academic or the researcher, we're seeing science being pushed forward quite drastically and there's a real opportunity to take science, probably to say like solve science, right, with sort of like a super intelligence, Does that make you miss research at all, academia at all? [00:22:01] S1: Oh, totally. You know, I think it's a, if you're in any way intellectually curious, I think now's the time you could basically be sitting reading all day and every day and for every minute you're not ingesting kind of the latest information and research, there feels feels like an enormous opportunity cost. So I think that's one of the hardest things to balance right now. It's really kind of continuously learning at pace, given how quickly the market is moving and it'd be glorious to sit and read and ponder the meaning of things and what we're building. But actually one of the most incredible bits of the job is you get to work with founders who are really building at the frontier and I learn an enormous amount from them about all topics. So I try to balance things, but yeah, that would certainly be one the frustrations, you can't be doing two things at once currently. [00:22:48] S0: Well, thank you so much for your time. It's been amazing to chat. It's great watching you do exciting investments. It's great work, so thank you very much. [00:22:58] S1: Thanks so much. Thank you. Bye, Seb.