Riding Unicorns: Venture Capital | Entrepreneurship | Technology
00:15:05 · James Pringle
[00:15:05] S0: Well, that's great to hear and hopefully other funds are taking a similar approach. I mean, I think that there is a really diverse background of entrepreneurs certainly that we've had on this podcast. I mean, yes, you do get the sort of imperial engineers who then did finance and then launched the company. You're always gonna have that kind of like pathway for very talented people, but equally, we've had people who have come from absolutely nothing and built unicorns. So I hope through just reflecting on our own guests that we've kind of seen that in action. So Yaron, how does this reflect itself in your investments? Presumably, some of this thinking not only is from research, but it's also from experiencing this through your own portfolio. So can you touch on some of your best investments and any of them which are founded by immigrants who took a very different view of an industry? Can you share some of those sort of real tangible experiences from your investments?
00:16:04 · Yaron Valler, James Pringle
[00:16:04] S1: I'll give you two examples from our portfolio. Not necessarily my investment in at least in one case, but something that I was very close to. Take a look at a company called DocPlanner. DocPlanner was a company that I invested in in 2025. It was a Polish company, but their aspirations were global. They very quickly teamed up with a Spanish company that they ended up acquiring and then basically moved the merged company from Poland or the majority of it into... So there were a few things that I was looking for. One was this product understanding that is transcending borders for a Polish entrepreneur to identify an opportunity in Spanish speaking countries, find the right company to merge with, find the right product mix to pitch there, and eventually move the company is exactly the type of flexibility and the type of opportunity and risk taking that we are looking for. That's one great example. The other example is the living... [00:16:58] S0: That's quite... Yaron, can I just touch on that? Yeah. It's true. Course. That was really fascinating because I think you're right. If you were born in England, had your whole career in England, start a company in England or The UK, you probably aren't thinking of moving your company to Spain just because you've seen a bit of an opportunity. Whereas that immigration mindset is we go where the opportunity is, so we're willing to uproots and take that risk. That's quite a fascinating decision. Had they already made that decision by the time you invested or did that happen whilst you were already...
00:16:58 · James Pringle, Yaron Valler
[00:16:58] S0: That's quite... Yaron, can I just touch on that? Yeah. It's true. Course. That was really fascinating because I think you're right. If you were born in England, had your whole career in England, start a company in England or The UK, you probably aren't thinking of moving your company to Spain just because you've seen a bit of an opportunity. Whereas that immigration mindset is we go where the opportunity is, so we're willing to uproots and take that risk. That's quite a fascinating decision. Had they already made that decision by the time you invested or did that happen whilst you were already... [00:17:30] S1: It was it was happening as we were investing, and that was the basis on which we invested. [00:17:36] S0: Amazing. And they've raised like 140,000,000 now, so are they a unicorn? [00:17:41] S1: Oh, yeah, for sure. So we've exited most of our position there, and it was essentially more than $1,000,000,000 valuation. I can't say exactly how much, but it was very good exit for us. [00:17:52] S0: Amazing. And then you were about to mention the second one.
00:17:52 · James Pringle, Yaron Valler
[00:17:52] S0: Amazing. And then you were about to mention the second one. [00:17:55] S1: The second one, Delivery Hero. And Delivery Hero, first of all, know, being probably one of the biggest success stories to come out of Europe, but almost completely immigrant founded. The idea and the main founding team came out of a Berlin based group that was founded by a guy called Lukas Gudovsky, who was a very well known German entrepreneur. Lukas is an immigrant himself, a first generation immigrant, and brings a lot of that passion and a lot of these qualities that I talk about in the book. And then the company is managed by Niklas Ostabergo, was managed by Niklas Ostaberg, who was an immigrant from Sweden. So again, this is, you know, sort of a different kind of immigration because it's from one western nation to another, but again, the cultural flexibility, moving to Berlin, building a team of thousands of employees in Berlin, and building one of the biggest unicorns in Europe out of the city that you didn't grow in is exactly with that flexibility that I'm talking about.
00:18:47 · James Pringle
[00:18:47] S0: Yeah. It's absolutely fascinating. And I guess it points to that idea that you have that it's not just about moving across continents. It can literally just be, entering an ecosystem that isn't native to you so that you see things from a different angle, which is key that we're trying to unlock here. So very, very interesting. And Yaron, the current venture market is in a state of a very bullish market. Let's say, AI has reenergized an industry that probably was at the end of a cycle, but then got re pumped up by the exciting new AI development. ChatGeePity came out almost four years ago, so it's still relatively early. What do you think that has changed about the industry, and what do you think is the sort of opportunities going forwards from your perspective of managing a large fund?
00:19:36 · Yaron Valler, James Pringle
[00:19:36] S1: What's happening with AI is very interesting. You know, obviously, we are seeing some investments that will yield credible results, whether it's investments in inference or in LLMs or in other foundation areas. At the same time, we're seeing lots and lots of investments in utility models around AI, which are gonna be more challenging because it's more challenging to create and mold with these companies. And I think many of these investments are coming out of the sentiment that many of us investors have towards utility models, towards, you know, which was very evident in the investments that we made as an industry into software. We tried to solve real world problems that we understand, whereas if you're looking today, most of the return and most of the investment is going into the nuts and bolts of the industry. So it's interesting how this will develop. [00:20:26] S0: Yeah. And have you adjusted kind of how you look at the industry? Have you started to look into spaces that maybe were too difficult previously or that you wouldn't have explored, but now it's like everything has come slightly more into view, like robotics, space tech, etcetera. Have you kind of evolved what you're looking at or has it been just more of the same but deeper into this AI vertical?