When you bring together two people who have been perfecting their craft over several decades, great things happen. Just check out this interview of Danny Rimer, 22 years at Index Ventures, and John Thornhill who beats him with 35 years at the Financial Times. Here are some of my favourite gems from their conversation, published as a 4000-word interview this morning. Entrepreneur can be both born and made. “You can be born an entrepreneur because you’ve just been that way from the get-go. You can also be an entrepreneur because you’ve been so frustrated in your [non-entrepreneurial] day job that you’ve learned the skills to then become an entrepreneur. "We always talk about companies getting bought, not sold. So we certainly never invest in companies unless they want to be a standalone company, which means that they want to go down the IPO path." On taking the risk to shut down or pivot: "While it might be a profitable business, it’s a profitable business that employs 20 people rather than an incredibly talented team that could have shut down and started afresh and built something that had global significance." "The biggest challenge for Europe, to date, has been surrounding great entrepreneurs with great talent — in other words, talent that scales. The reality is, the better that Paris does, the better it is for London, the better it is for Europe, from an entrepreneurial standpoint." A huge amount of the opportunity is going to be created on the application layer of AI. That is going to be left up to small companies that are specialised and really focusing on particular parts. “There are not many investors who have taken start-ups from seed to multibillion outcomes on both sides of the ocean.” – Kathryn Mayne, managing director at Horsley Bridge Partners, which has invested in Index for almost 20 years. Thanks Kathryn! Enjoy it!
John and Danny together!! Can’t wait to read!
Venture Capital Investor @ GoHub Ventures
5moGreat Stuff Vojtech! Thanks for sharing