00:12:18 · Christoph Klink, Sebastian Johnson
[00:12:18] S1: Very much. And I think what what we haven't seen before is those juggernauts starting to exist in Europe. Right? And the... One of the one of the the areas where we're also seeing that is before 2020, we didn't see Deca coins. Now we've seen 13 DecaCoins in Europe, right? And that's something that we haven't seen before. Yes, there's a bit of inflation in it, but other than that, it really is a different quality of company and a different kind of size of outliers that we that we may be seeing there. And I think that's a great sign of how European tech's maturing, actually, and how it is possible. Most of us have always said that. Right? It is possible to build great outcomes in Europe. It may be harder. Maybe. But it actually is possible. And now we're seeing more and more of those pinpoints that are showing that it actually is. [00:13:10] S0: Do you think there'll be a split as we move forward on the Decacorn layer between those jets and those juggernauts? I think about... When I'm thinking about some of those recent Decacorns, Lovable, the ICI, Bending Spoons, supposedly Legora. I don't know. I'm not... Actually, it seems fairly balanced, Helsink. I don't know. Do do you see a world in which Europe ends up doing one thing really well over the other?
00:13:35 · Christoph Klink, Sebastian Johnson
[00:13:35] S1: I think I think we're gonna be seeing both of these, but I I feel like there's great appetite of investors for those juggernaut companies. Because a lot of it is also about building solutions, building technology solutions that make us independent and then again launching something into space, and then again building solutions of our own that are independent of the geopolitical risk around that. Right? So we've we've seen Isar Aerospace this week, actually, the the first European company launching from Continental Europe on a commercial space mission. Right? That's that's something that I think Europeans have woken up and have understood it may be strategically important for them to have that capability of doing that because it could lead to so many more things that they can stack on top of that. I think that's that's a bit of a logic that in, let's say, the the 2010 era of European tech probably wasn't there. If you build a mobile app or if you build an e commerce company, what are you gonna stack on top of that? Right? If you build a rocket company, if you build a fusion company, then this has all sorts of ripple effects that are gonna make you go further, that are gonna gonna make you more powerful in what you can stack on top. [00:14:56] S0: And let's talk about London. Right? So I saw the report that I think 43% of all jets and juggernauts are headquartered in London, which I think was like a 15 percentage points. It was 28% before 2020. What's going on in London? Why has this become, you know, such a big winner in this new age?
00:15:15 · Christoph Klink
[00:15:15] S1: It's... I think there's two ways of looking at it. One way of looking at it is this is no news because London has always been the biggest tech ecosystem in Europe and frankly, the the most competitive one as well. But when you look at kind of the last twenty years, then London has been insanely successful. However, there had been a number of really spiky outliers, and some of them two of them coming out of Stockholm were those jets that scaled incredibly quickly, right, that became visible very, very fast and that actually made headlines maybe a little bit earlier than some other companies. So one way of looking at it is just the balance of power is restored. London and The UK has always been a great ecosystem. It has always been the largest European ecosystem and it's probably something that everybody could learn from. I think the other way of looking at it is it doesn't really matter and venture has grown a lot more distributed geographically than it has been ten, fifteen years ago. When you look at globally there's been now more than 400 cities in which a unicorn has been born. That number has five, six, seven folded within just ten years. And so I think we're seeing overall a trend that great companies are being built outside of those big centers. When you look into Germany for instance, what's happening right now is that the growth of tech is way more resembling what Germany looks like from a geographical point of view. Germany is not just Berlin. The German economy by far isn't clustered in Berlin. Right? But the early stage ecosystem for a while was really, really clustered in Berlin. Then they've added Munich to it, which has become the center of deep tech for at least for Germans or for continental Europeans. And now there's a number of smaller cities that are also contributing quite well to that growth. So I think overall it is further being stretched out, but I don't think there's gonna be an argument that The UK and by that London is very likely the leading tech ecosystem that we have in Europe. But Yeah. I think overall, we... We're gonna be so much stronger if and when we work together.
00:17:39 · Sebastian Johnson
[00:17:39] S0: Yeah. I... And it and it even feels like the European giants are becoming much more European than specifically to a city. You know? Like, you know, Lovable's in London now, NatWest in London. Like, a lot of the great companies are all over the place, and they're they're becoming more European feeling, I think. One final question before I let you go. What are the key takeaways? What are the key fixes? You know, whether it's improving that conversion rate, getting more investors at the early stage. What do you think Europe should take away from this and where we should think, okay. This is what we need to do to either fix the issues that we have or make us just be even stronger?
00:18:19 · Christoph Klink
[00:18:19] S1: So I think the the first one is on that on that one side of that coin, we need to keep backing, investing, and singing the song of those winners that we are seeing. Because those winners are more spiky, more accentuated, they're getting bigger and we have to be proud of that and we have to make sure that actually those great successes turn into durable successes, That it's not just a temporary flame. And that will take everybody there, will take growth stage investors actually continuing to come in, that will mean that we'll all be sourcing from them, that will mean that governments are actually somewhat flattening regulatory surfaces there that we work on capital markets to actually create markets that are ripe for exits. But secondly, we believe there's a ginormous opportunity for investors right now in the early stages of investing. And we love to see more new managers coming in at Preseed Seed and Series A to be backing some of these companies that are currently in that funding gap. Because there has to be greatness in that. Yeah. I think in that funding gap, there's gonna be some companies that are gonna be very successfully bootstrapping. They won't need us as investors and that's great. They're gonna be way more lean in what they what they need in terms of resourcing because of Aon. Then there's probably gonna be some companies that... Sorry for saying it, but should never have been started and only have been started because all of a sudden somebody could. Because it's become easier to build a product, become easier to launch a company, and it's become easier to build a company that makes 100 k in ARR. So, some of them are just gonna not survive because they have just been built without kind of the deep, deeply rooted foundations. But thirdly, there must be some that are perfectly good companies that are right now lacking the capital and the attention to actually earn the right to scale. And I think that's where great opportunity is and that's where we as investors need to double down on backing even more great founders. It looks like the founders have outgrown the investors right now. So that's great, right? Because too many investors, too few founders is the worst thing. So too many founders and too few investors is the is the right thing.
00:20:42 · Christoph Klink, Sebastian Johnson
But I think we need some catching up on the side of investors and lean forward into more of those deals that maybe handle a little less pedigree. [00:20:52] S0: Yeah. Amazing. And and it just shows there's a real opportunity. Right? That's a great opportunity for early stage fund managers if they can raise the money, deploy it in a way which is not just consensus and following everyone else. There's gonna be great opportunities for them. Well, Christoph, thank you so much for joining me. It's a great report, some really great data points, and it's gonna be interesting to see how people react. But, yeah, we'll have you back another time. [00:21:12] S1: Lovely, thanks for having us there.