Society Works Best When It’s Organised Around the Entrepreneuer * Why POWA Matters * The Ariadne Capital Way

After 15 years of building Ariadne Capital, we’ve only started to realise how valuable and precious The Ariadne Capital Way is in building the gold standard for the financing of entrepreneurship – which has always been our mission.    In a world full of people threatened by, indifferent to and jealous of entrepreneurs, we stand with our friends in the industry who know that society works best when it’s organised around the entrepreneur.   

Once you understand what is at stake in how we build the future, namely how will we create a world in which prosperity rips through society instead of one where just a couple of people become billionaires, you don’t have time to or feel that you should worry about small stuff anymore.   Big things are at stake.

At Ariadne, we have always cared about how to get prosperity ripping through society.   This is why the great men and women of my team show up everyday to fight the good fight.    But more, we know what to do to make it happen – not just care.   And that makes all the difference.

A number of people have been commenting on POWA Technologies’ administration in a negative way over the past couple of days.    Here’s what we say:

Elon Musk will never admit what he learned from Shai Agassi ... Ever ... But he did ... Before every breakthrough moment are the ‘so-called’ failures, and if we can't get comfortable with that, then we aren't being honest but more importantly society is held back.   That's the point. We'll never really know what happened at Powa, but it's pretty damn important Dan Wagner tried to do what he did.    He has good people around him who have worked with him for 15+ years.   Read the Business Week Bloomberg story with the baby Elon Musk on the cover:   one of the most honest depictions of entrepreneurial life I have ever read: the line between success and failure is a very thin line indeed.   And most honest successful entrepreneurs will privately admit that.   But what was amazing about Musk in Business Week was that he more or less admits it very publicly. I don't think it helps the UK to call Dan Wagner a bad actor. We should welcome him to our stages etc and say, what next? Wellington and others investors put in hundreds of millions behind him, a major global corporation, China Union Pay, concluded a deal with him. I have been to Heron Tower and people there were passionate about building a great firm.      We need more entrepreneurs who think that they can and try to build billion pound enterprises in the UK.   

All this hype about entrepreneurship is just so much bullshit unless we realise that unless we support entrepreneurs in the trenches when they are being shot at, we might as well just go to the movies instead.    Entrepreneurs are constantly being shot at in society.    If entrepreneurs turn on other entrepreneurs as well when they are in their near death experiences, then we are no better than the rest.

Let's not piss on someone's failure for once.     We’re better than that.