Every argument clarity score on this site is built from rows on this page. Each
question and answer was assessed with names hidden, the host's own answers included, on
four things from 1 to 5:
directness (does it answer the question asked), coherence (do the ideas follow),
precision (concrete details and clear references), compression (says a lot per word). The weighted
mix (30/30/25/15) is the exchange score. A person's published score averages their exchange
scores on raw tape only, at least 8 of them, shrunk toward the cohort mean.
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Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 5 5.00
Q Which stage of the cycle, then, would you say you prefer? I mean, some say, I think Chris Sacker says that downturns lead to a flushing out of, kind of, weaker funding sources and startups. Do you agree with that, and do you think that's, then, maybe a good time, the trough is a time of opportunity?
A Yeah, I think, listen, I think the real point for any VC, um, is to appreciate that every single fund cycle lasts at least 10 years. So typically you will have at least one up and downturn in a single fund cycle. So, so your job really as a VC is to make sure to anticipate it and manage value through upturns and downturns. And I think people often forget that the best vintage years are driven As much by how good the exits markets are when you're ready to sell out of the companies as anything else. So in, in that sense, personally, I suppose I, I prefer to invest without extreme ups or downs. And, uh, if, if I look at our current biggest winners, um, Spotify and, and Avito, we invested in the A-round and Spotify just before the party, uh, uh, finished in, in September of, uh, when the bull market was still very strong. And, And, uh, Avito reinvested in, in the deep bear market. So the point being that, you know, you can find the great winners in any part of the cycle, and great winners always manage through the cycles. It's, it's usually, uh, the less strong companies that, that often don't recover out of the bear market.
AI assessment note: “personally, I suppose I, I prefer to invest without extreme ups or downs.”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 4 4.85
Q And then you mentioned some of your portfolio companies there, but with the likes of, say, market invoice, you show a particular interest for fintech. So what's attracting you to the fintech space?
A Yeah, fintech is a massively important theme for us, and, um, we've done quite a few recently, um, Klarna, iSettle, uh, Market Invoice, et cetera. I think the underlying driver is obviously that if you look at customers, both business and consumer customers, um, The way they want their banking services, in particular they want it online, is very different to what is being offered. I think banks have sort of gone to sleep and forgotten to service their customers for a long time because they've had this monopoly. So the reality is from a service side, it's a very right market to, uh, to disrupt. And I think from a business side of, of, of the equation, reality is if you invest in an e-commerce company and they're selling, uh, whatever goods they're selling, the margins are for Uh, often quite slim. If you look at banking services, typically, there's a lot more revenue that can be driven, and if you then see the discrepancy between the cost you have for acquiring the customer and running the customer, it means that you can drive quite big margins, and that's exciting.
AI assessment note: “it means that you can drive quite big margins, and that's exciting.”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 4 · Cm 4 4.60
Q And then you mentioned some of your portfolio companies there, but with the likes of, say, market invoice, you show a particular interest for fintech. So what's attracting you to the fintech space?
A Yeah, fintech is a massively important theme for us, and, um, we've done quite a few recently, um, Klarna, iSettle, uh, Market Invoice, et cetera. I think the underlying driver is obviously that if you look at customers, both business and consumer customers, um, The way they want their banking services, in particular they want it online, is very different to what is being offered. I think banks have sort of gone to sleep and forgotten to service their customers for a long time because they've had this monopoly. So the reality is from a service side, it's a very right market to, uh, to disrupt. And I think from a business side of, of, of the equation, reality is if you invest in an e-commerce company and they're selling, uh, whatever goods they're selling, the margins are for Uh, often quite slim. If you look at banking services, typically, there's a lot more revenue that can be driven, and if you then see the discrepancy between the cost you have for acquiring the customer and running the customer, it means that you can drive quite big margins, and that's exciting.
AI assessment note: “it means that you can drive quite big margins, and that's exciting.”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 4 · Cm 4 4.60
Q And where would you say we are now in the cycle?
A Hmm. I, I saw, I saw a great presentation actually by Frank Cattrone just last week, and, uh, I think he, he felt we were all the way at the, at the very peak, uh, right now. I, I think, I think, uh, that's to blanket a statement. I see a lot of valuation bubbles, uh, uh, in certain subsectors or in late stage, uh, VC investments, and that's really because you have a lot of tourists coming in, like hedge funds and, and other, other non-consistent players putting money into the VC game, and I think as you see the down cycle, they will, they will step out again. So, so we, we certainly in a frothy time, but it's not, it's not across everywhere.
AI assessment note: “we certainly in a frothy time, but it's not, it's not across everywhere.”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 4 · Cm 4 4.60
Q And where would you say we are now in the cycle?
A Hmm. I, I saw, I saw a great presentation actually by Frank Cattrone just last week, and, uh, I think he, he felt we were all the way at the, at the very peak, uh, right now. I, I think, I think, uh, that's to blanket a statement. I see a lot of valuation bubbles, uh, uh, in certain subsectors or in late stage, uh, VC investments, and that's really because you have a lot of tourists coming in, like hedge funds and, and other, other non-consistent players putting money into the VC game, and I think as you see the down cycle, they will, they will step out again. So, so we, we certainly in a frothy time, but it's not, it's not across everywhere.
AI assessment note: “we certainly in a frothy time, but it's not across everywhere.”
Answered raw tape
D 4 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 4 4.55
Q Now, let's kick off today's show by discussing your route into venture. I mean, how did you become a Dane living in London, investing in tech?
A Yeah, I probably had a slightly unusual way in. I was working as a junior analyst in corporate finance at Deutsche Bank. And we just had this hugely successful Frank Controne, who probably still is the most successful tech banker who today runs, uh, Catalyst. But at the time, he was a Deutsche Bank. He just left with 90% of the team. So we were a few new joiners scratching our heads how to win any business. And we went together with the first European editor of the Red Herring. Uh, I think there was seven of us, and, uh, we, uh, got together to convince the bank that the only way to get any business was by buying it effectively through doing a pre-IPO principal investments. Being the late nineties, that, uh, meant that it worked out pretty well, and, and very quickly the principal investments were way more profitable business than the, uh, advisory business. So, uh, that's how I got started.
AI assessment note: “So, uh, that's how I got started.”
Answered raw tape
D 4 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 4 4.55
Q Which stage of the cycle, then, would you say you prefer? I mean, some say, I think Chris Sacker says that downturns lead to a flushing out of, kind of, weaker funding sources and startups. Do you agree with that, and do you think that's, then, maybe a good time, the trough is a time of opportunity?
A Yeah, I think, listen, I think the real point for any VC, um, is to appreciate that every single fund cycle lasts at least 10 years. So typically you will have at least one up and downturn in a single fund cycle. So, so your job really as a VC is to make sure to anticipate it and manage value through upturns and downturns. And I think people often forget that the best vintage years are driven As much by how good the exits markets are when you're ready to sell out of the companies as anything else. So in, in that sense, personally, I suppose I, I prefer to invest without extreme ups or downs. And, uh, if, if I look at our current biggest winners, um, Spotify and, and Avito, we invested in the A-round and Spotify just before the party, uh, uh, finished in, in September of, uh, when the bull market was still very strong. And, And, uh, Avito reinvested in, in the deep bear market. So the point being that, you know, you can find the great winners in any part of the cycle, and great winners always manage through the cycles. It's, it's usually, uh, the less strong companies that, that often don't recover out of the bear market.
AI assessment note: “personally, I suppose I, I prefer to invest without extreme ups or downs.”
Partly raw tape
D 4 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 4 4.55
Q Ok, so you've seen the evolution of the European tech environment over two full cycles, upturns and downturns, so how have you seen that develop, and which stage do you prefer?
A Yeah, I think during that period, the, the overriding factor has really been the rise of the digital economy. I mean, when I started, you had less than a hundred million people online, and now you have whatever, over three billion. You literally have nil smartphones, and now you have over two billion. So I think the main difference in the tech market is that 1015 years ago, we were mainly focused on putting down the plumbing for the connectivity, So we spent a lot of time in telecoms and infrastructure. My own first investment was CoCom, which was a fast modem supplier, and we sold it to Cisco. And indeed, the gorillas we all revered and feared were HP, Cisco, Vodafone, etc. Now, it's shifted. We had the connectivity in place, and it's all been about then applications, then services, and obviously, we've seen amazing rises recently from that. So that's been the main That's been the main change. And on the VC side of things, I think it's important to remember that for Europe, that was hardly anything there before 2000. The first VC firms in existence. Um, if you look at in the nineties, you had Apex, Warwick, Pinkus, Three Eye, et cetera, and they, they were doing an integrated VC buyout model, uh, thinking that that was the right way to do it. And, and obviously that's possibly a reason why so many failed, because if you look at the VC strategies, there were simply two transact…
AI assessment note: “So I think the main difference in the tech market is that 1015 years ago”
Partly raw tape
D 3 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 4 4.25
Q Ok, so you've seen the evolution of the European tech environment over two full cycles, upturns and downturns, so how have you seen that develop, and which stage do you prefer?
A Yeah, I think during that period, the, the overriding factor has really been the rise of the digital economy. I mean, when I started, you had less than a hundred million people online, and now you have whatever, over three billion. You literally have nil smartphones, and now you have over two billion. So I think the main difference in the tech market is that 1015 years ago, we were mainly focused on putting down the plumbing for the connectivity, So we spent a lot of time in telecoms and infrastructure. My own first investment was CoCom, which was a fast modem supplier, and we sold it to Cisco. And indeed, the gorillas we all revered and feared were HP, Cisco, Vodafone, etc. Now, it's shifted. We had the connectivity in place, and it's all been about then applications, then services, and obviously, we've seen amazing rises recently from that. So that's been the main That's been the main change. And on the VC side of things, I think it's important to remember that for Europe, that was hardly anything there before 2000. The first VC firms in existence. Um, if you look at in the nineties, you had Apex, Warwick, Pinkus, Three Eye, et cetera, and they, they were doing an integrated VC buyout model, uh, thinking that that was the right way to do it. And, and obviously that's possibly a reason why so many failed, because if you look at the VC strategies, there were simply two transact…
AI assessment note: “So that's been the main change. And on the VC side of things”
Redirected raw tape
D 2 · C 4 · P 3 · Cm 3 3.00
Q And in the past, you've attributed North Zone with a rarity of investor quality in saying that you as investors, like entrepreneurs, have ambition and have ambition for the startups that you invest in. How do you assess your ambition and how do you ensure that it is feasible and kept kind of relatively in check?
A Yes, it's, it's, uh, it's a hard one. It's, it's not all about rational thought and money. It's, uh, ambition is really a mindset. Um, it's about that feeling that you're on a mission to challenge the establishment and about that recklessness and purity of thought and saying, we just want to win. Uh, and inside Northstone, we try to emulate the startup. So we make sure we never static. We always have people arriving and leaving. We make sure hunger is always present and getting new input. Uh, Uh, and then we make sure, of course, everything is about performance. Uh, if you don't set yourself up that way, you end up, uh, alienating yourself from, from what you actually do in the, in the, in terms of the world we see in the startups. I often hear about the, um, The notion that venture capital is supposed to be patient capital, and I always smile, because I think the opposite is all about being impatient. If something is not working, change it. Don't wait and see if it improves. You, you constantly got to learn through failure, A, B testing, and so when it comes to ambition, I think it's always about leveling up. It's about saying, how fast can you learn to be the best, and, and deliver the best product?
AI assessment note: “when it comes to ambition, I think it's always about leveling up.”
