James Wise of Balderton Capital explains the firm's fund constraints and target ticket sizes compared to equity crowdfunding.
Opinion
Wise: Hiring VCs strictly from banking or consulting is outdated
“Look, I think that's an outdated model, and I think the only people who are still following that model are people who haven't realized that the venture game has changed considerably.”
Prediction Held up
Wise: Europe's next $100B tech giants will focus on AI, fintech, fashion
“They're going to go and build the third wave, which is the 10, fifty, hundred billion dollar companies. And they're obviously not going to be competitive with the types of companies built in San Francisco in the same fields, not in sort of the information sear…”
Prediction Held up
Wise: Balderton will invest in narrow AI applications, not general AI platforms
“So once again, I don't think we're going to make investments in AI companies as a whole, right? I don't think that's the thing, but I think companies which have already thoughtfully found ways to apply what have been recently Some significant breakthroughs in …”
Insight
Wise: Venture capital struggles to scale in its traditional model
“It's really, really difficult to scale venture capitalists. The companies we invest in, they have to scale, but we personally, we're not very good at it. So VC really, you know, struggles to scale in its current model, at least”
Assertion Supported
Wise: Europe produced over 30 billion-dollar tech exits in 10 years
“Europe, if you look at the tops of billion-dollar tech exits, or unicorns, or whatever you want to call them in the last 20 years, there's been, or 10 years, rather, there's been over 30 coming out of Europe, and there's many more in the pipe.”
Insight
Wise: Core VC tasks do not require prior operational experience
“It's really not clear that you need to have huge amounts of entrepreneurial experience in order to do the two things which VCs should be able to do really well. One is insightfully source companies. So find interesting companies in areas which are fast growing…”