London

“The product culture is stronger in America, and the services culture is stronger in Europe, and in particular in London and the UK.”

“So in London, we tend to really only do fintech right from the very start because we picked that there would be a huge group of investors around the fintech space and a lot of great exits.”

“Passion Capital runs a co-working space called White Bay Yard here in EC One in London, so more, more the east side than the west side of London, where half of the companies in which we have invested choose as their starting office.”

“Certainly in London, we are probably slightly more heavily weighted towards FinTech, for example, than we might be if we have a San Francisco fund.”

“No. No, because I would say London is, is certainly becoming a center of FinTech. I don't like to use the word Silicon Valley. That's a very unique ecosystem and geography and community. But I would certainly say that London is, you know, I, it's funny, I hear…”

“I could probably name you 10 VCs in London who can write a good Series A check and will do more than a couple of those a year, and that's a problem for the community, I think.”

“EIS is a fantastic example that has made London one of the best places, and the UK generally, one of the best places to raise venture capital funding in Europe, and it's brought a lot more capital into the market from sources that might otherwise not be lookin…”

“So when I interviewed in 2006, they had 250 people in London. And when I joined three months later, it was more like 500.”

“If you're trying to hire teams that have, you know, that financial services experience, then London's by far the best place in Europe and one of the best places in the world to do that.”

“SEIS has, you know, has really come into its stride since 2011, and basically, you know, created a whole new pot of capital, which is you know, sometimes not motivated to deploy the capital for the right reasons. They're seeing it as a de-risked investment. An…”

“And so London is ahead. But if you look Berlin's on a faster growth trajectory.”

“And I think, if anything, Berlin, it's easier to do that than it is in London right now. And Berlin's got a little bit of a zeitgeist moment right now, And the immigration is slightly easier and it's slightly more attractive to people coming from the US.”

“You know, I'm not sure there's going to be one or I, I'm not sure it's, there's necessarily for one to emerge. I think London is, is doing well. Berlin is showing a lot of energy, but you also have you know, Tel Aviv and you have Madrid and Barcelona and you h…”

“New York in an entire financial quarter raises as much money as London does in a year.”

“They're saying two thirds of all the money in, in, in London, at least in the tech community at the series B stage is, is now funded by American VCs. And when I say American VCs, I don't mean Accel in the UK. I mean, guys who are in the U S who are flying over…”

“We see very few of the current crop of great winners coming from here, whereas clearly Stockholm, the Nordics are punching way above their weight.”

“There is a kind of proliferation of money at seed and Series A, particularly here in London at the moment as well as Series B and beyond actually.”

“How London's sort of kind of catching up at New York, but it's still a ways away from where Silicon Valley is”

“I think on all levels, London is just the number one ecosystem in Europe. And that won't change for, you know, either for a long while or ever.”

“London has more success in fashion technology than any other city, certainly in the West.”

“Yeah, I think it does vary by region, and I think a lot of that is a byproduct of the micro or the ecosystem on the capital side within those regions. So investors within a region really, I think, are setting the price for what may be the norm there, and so we…”

“So execs with that kind of scale-up experience is something I think you get a lot of in Silicon Valley, and really not a lot of in London yet.”

“Well, I have to say, primarily amongst, it was 95% male, and 95% London so very, very skewed to a certain demographic but it was really powerful and kind of kickstarting that community, so just a lot of hard work.”

“Something like 30% of our customers are in London, but 70% are outside London.”

“I think one thing that we did a really good job of early on, and it was a strategic decision, but it was building a hub and spoke type model where we knew we were going to be a global company from day one because we were born Right. Started in Romania and expa…”

“I think London has now become a Clear option that you could run a very successful business from London, but I think that's happened most other places in the world that I think that probably San Francisco is not where you need to be anymore, and actually it may…”

“There were only three firms in London that did VC.”

“And it's Nick, for instance, we started it in Tel Aviv and in London. And in Tel Aviv, I had, you know, this like, you know, anything is possible, fearlessness, sort of tech depth, security depth. And in London, I had kind of, you know, product discipline, dev…”

“80% of our staff in the UK live outside of London.”

“And they'll do it in London.”

“So in the US, the CAC would be two thirds sales and one third marketing because salespeople are so expensive if you're sitting in San Francisco and, or even London for that matter.”

“We couldn't raise a single penny of investment in 2011.”

“London has continued to maintain a real, basically an equivalent dynamism of entrepreneurialism as it did pre-Brexit, which is a total shock to me, but it's absolutely true.”

“I think in, in London, it's much more plausible that you build a truly world-class research team and keep them together for long enough to really see the impact.”

“We do a lot more business in the rural areas, villages in UK than London, for example, and Paris, and the like, and America.”

“The number one company we have to give credit to is DeepMind. DeepMind built an incredible talent base, and they built it out of London.”

“Does the best talent want to come to London? And the answer for me is no.”

“So to get going in a city like London, you need to invest ballpark at least a hundred million euros to reach that critical mass. Otherwise it's just not going to work.”

“Like I've, in our journey, I've seen that it's easier to move people from the Valley to London than from the Valley to New York”

“What we're seeing in the London ecosystem is that we're actually building global leaders, not just, like, regional winners of, like, expense management or something like that. Like, you have 11 Labs who are leading in voice. You have us, which is leading in en…”

“Probably London.”

“Because I would start my day at two or three every morning, which is already 10 o'clock or 11 o'clock in the morning here in London.”

“Now, I do not think that developers or great founders want to build businesses in London, and I would like to be changed my mind on, so.”

“There's 1100 family offices in London.”

“I say that it's easier to build an AI company in London than it is San Francisco. Everyone goes, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah. And it's like, we have the supply of AI talent from some of the best institutions and universities, but crucially, we don't have the churn…”

“I recommend founders take enough secondary so that they can live an account for life, right? They don't need to worry about how do they feed the family? How do they support the kids? How do they, you know, buy a house? You know, I think they should, you know, …”

“I think when you dig beneath the surface, the smart ones are going, actually, I can get better people, Often for cheaper in London, where DeepMind is, where unbelievable AI talent is.”

“If every STEM and design graduate from every high quality London college isn't figuring out how to get on a plane and go to San Francisco, I don't know what they're thinking.”

“The greatest founders that I know are motivated by the internal fire and being in London. I push myself every day to be better. Yeah, everyone around me is relatively mediocre in terms of London, generally speaking, generally group population wise. I didn't ne…”

“London is incredibly dynamic. You know, it's the only city in the world where you have a relevant center for politics, a relevant center for entertainment, a relevant center for finance that are within a mile of each other.”

“I think there is no systematic sourcing strategy. It's the partners and the brands are so strong and they're so networked in the, you know, S tier founder community that they're just in, they're just gonna be a first call for a lot of these firms.”

“Imagine if every nurse and every lawyer and every accountant that works in London becomes a AI agent of some company in the United States in the next 10 years. You're going to hollow out a lot of your labor productivity and give it to a U S company or a Chines…”

“So first of all, it's probably the only place in London where you can keep expanding offices, right? So you can keep upgrading office without incurring a big penalty in your lease.”

“Power is not fungible across time and space. So you have a lot of power, for example, wind power in north of Scotland. That are being told to turn off because the power is not getting to where it needs to be.”

“And I felt that there was actually less competition here for that sort of talent. And we could even draw in the best talent from the top European universities. And that's what it was like in the early days of DeepMind. So I think it was a huge structural advan…”

“Jeff Bezos's Project Prometheus establishes AI Lab in London.”

“If you're just like moderately interesting, you can become friends with anyone in San Francisco. It's less stratified. In London, the rich keep to themselves in their fancy clubs. In San Francisco, you can play pickleball with anyone.”

“If you're hardcore about startups outside of the United States, I think London is second to none as well.”

“Given the whole like visa situation in the United States, I think there's actually a phenomenal opportunity for London to become like a center of AI and a center of tech.”