This Much I Know - The Seedcamp Podcast

Byron Reese is an award-winning author, entrepreneur and futurist, currently serving as the CEO and Publisher at GigaOm. In his most recent book, “The Fourth Age: Smart Robots, Conscious Computers and the Future of Humanity”, he examines periods of innovation in human history leading up to artificial intelligence and discusses different viewpoints of the future. As Byron explains: “After reading the book, you may still be afraid of AI, you may not, but you’ll be able to say that you know, why, for example Elon Musk thinks of AI like he does.” Tune in to hear more about Byron’s personal journey to the field of artificial intelligence through founding various successful companies and get a glimpse of the potential future scenarios perceived in the book. Links: Seedcamp: www.seedcamp.com GigaOm: https://gigaom.com Carlos: medium.com/@cee www.linkedin.com/in/carloseduardoespinal twitter.com/cee Byron: byronreese.com medium.com/@byronreese www.linkedin.com/in/byronreese/ twitter.com/byronreese

Will Beeson is one of the founding members of CivilisedBank, a new challenger fintech business bringing together people and technology to help UK companies do business and people save money with an overall mission to make banking more civilised. In this podcast, Will shares his journey from investment banking into fintech with stops in New York, London and Rome along the way. It was in Italy, where Will worked on transforming a paper-based underwriting operation into something fit for the 21st century and became fascinated with the potential impact of technology on financial services. In addition to his role in CivilisedBank, Will investigates the future of financial services through hosting the Rebank podcast, where he tackles topics ranging from consumer banking to roboadvisory. Tune in to hear his thoughts on the challenges ahead and where impact is yet to be made in the financial sector. On one of the hottest segments of the market, consumer banking, Will notes: “We have seen the marketing and user acquisition side, but I feel that the natural next step has to be the lending model component of banking. I don’t see long-term success for retail or business banks, who don’t leverage lending as a core component of what they are doing." Links: Seedcamp: www.seedcamp.com CivilisedBank: https://www.civilisedbank.co.uk/ Rebank Podcast: https://bankingthefuture.com/ Carlos: medium.com/@cee www.linkedin.com/in/carloseduardoespinal twitter.com/cee Will: https://www.linkedin.com/in/willbeeson/ https://twitter.com/will_beeson

Danielle Blumberg Ullner holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and has more than 20 years of experience in management consulting and venture capital. Before joining BCG Digital Ventures, Danielle worked as an operating partner in Pico Partners in Israel. “An operating partner is either a subject matter expert in a narrow field, or an overall ninja, who helps to identify gaps in existing structures and has a go at solving them with resources available to them. In my case, I was called the ninja.” Her everyday included mapping out the gaps in functional areas for Pico’s portfolio companies and solving problems wherever she deemed necessary. Tune in to hear more about her thoughts on building relationships between investors, consultants and the team, and learn about the importance of the COO role in scaling a product past the initial product-market fit. Links: Carlos: www.linkedin.com/in/carloseduardoespinal | twitter.com/cee Danielle: www.linkedin.com/in/danielle-blumberg-ullner/ Carlos Medium: medium.com/@cee Seedcamp: www.seedcamp.com BCG Digital Ventures: https://www.bcgdv.com Pico Partners: http://www.pico.partners

In this week's episode of This Much I Know, Seedcamp founder, Moritz Plassnig, talks to Carlos about his journey from scaling a prototype into the creation of a company, CodeShip, that in spring of 2018 was acquired by CloudBees. Moritz founded Codeship aged just 21 and demonstrated maturity beyond his years in his decisions and accounts most of his success to being close to the customer. On dilemmas of speed vs. understanding, he notes the following: “As a VC, you are hedging your bets and hoping for those couple of companies, who will become extremely successful. However, as a founder, you are instinctively a bit more careful, as you want to be successful but on the other hand, the cycle, in our case, took up to 7 years, which means that you do not want the business to fail just by risking too much. Finding the risk-reward balance is extremely important.” Speaking candidly with Carlos, Moritz shares the many stages of the company’s progress and touches upon his own evolution as a manager. In addition, Moritz discusses the acquisition by CloudBees and analyse the importance of an inclusive, but decisive culture. “At the end of the day, if you are the CEO, you have to own it. Any decision made in your company is also your decision and the only recommendation one can give is to never compromise on your underlying values.” Links: Carlos Medium: https://medium.com/@cee Seedcamp: www.seedcamp.com Codeship: www.codeship.com CloudBees: https://www.cloudbees.com Carlos: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carloseduardoespinal https://twitter.com/cee Moritz: https://www.linkedin.com/in/moritzplassnig https://twitter.com/moritzplassnig

In our last podcast, we had a fantastic discussion with Andy Bromberg from CoinList on the trends and problems of ICOs from the viewpoint of an industry-leading token offerings platform. In this episode, we go more in-depth and learn even more by exemplifying one of the most successful token fundraising events in near history. Coming out of Lithuania is the remarkable success story of Justas Pikelis, the 27-year-old co-founder of Monetha. Monetha aims to tokenize trust and create a decentralised reputation system for global commerce. “Explained in simple terms, we want to reward good and penalise bad online behaviour through a token incentive system.” In August of 2017, the company raised more than $37 million in under 18 minutes with its initial coin offering. Arguably timing their ICO at the peak of the token financing boom, Justas sheds light on his thinking and methodology prior to the round. Furthermore, he touches upon the decreasing location barriers for raising capital outside of Silicon Valley and Europe and shares tips on how to recognise ICOs with strong growth potential and what to look out for when going through the journey. Seedcamp: www.seedcamp.com Monetha: www.monetha.io Related bio links: Carlos: linkedin.com/in/carloseduardoespinal | twitter.com/cee Justas: linkedin.com/in/justaspikelis | twitter.com/justaspikelis Kyran: linkedin.com/in/kyran-schmidt

Andy Bromberg’s is one of those stories made famous by the likes of Mark Zuckerberg in the movie Social Network. While enrolled at Stanford University, Andy and his colleagues started working on the Stanford Bitcoin Group, doing academic research and building side projects in the industry. However, his journey to the world of cryptocurrencies was not as straightforward as it may seem. In 2014, he dropped out of Stanford and co-founded Sidewire, a media company aiming to highlight discussions and debates of prominent opinion leaders. All the while, he closely followed the development of cryptocurrencies and in the summer of 2017 took a leap of faith and joined the management team of CoinList in order to bring transparency to initial coin offerings. Talking with Seedcamp Managing Partner Carlos Espinal and Analyst Kyran Schmidt, Andy shares lessons learned from building companies in two vastly different industries and Andy dives into the differences in evaluating and structuring ICOs compared to traditional business models. "No investor is going to use a couple of million dollars worth of tokens", says Bromberg referring to the need for further development in the structure of ICOs. Show notes: Carlos Medium: sdca.mp/2entVR3 Seedcamp: www.seedcamp.com Coinlist: www.coinlist.co Related bio links: Carlos: linkedin.com/in/carloseduardoespinal / twitter.com/cee Andy: www.linkedin.com/in/andybromberg/ / twitter.com/andy_bromberg Kyran: www.linkedin.com/in/kyran-schmidt/

Edward Wray graduated Oxford University to pursue a job at JP Morgan, where he spent 7 years eventually leaving as the VP of Dept Capital Markets & Derivatives. Going on to co-found Betfair in 1999, he was its first Chief Executive until 2003, when he moved to Australia to set up the company’s joint venture. It floated on the stock market in 2010, valued at £1.4 billion and is now one of the world’s largest online sports betting operators, processing more than 5 million transactions a day. In this Seedcamp session, Ed shares many aspects of his journey, from raising £1m from his family and friends, as no VC was prepared to back him, to important life lessons he learnt through first time mistakes, like trusting your gut instinct. Now Director of Funding Circle, Ed says that when joining as director of a company, it’s imperative that employees live and breathe the business as well as understand that they themselves don’t always have the answers. Show notes: Carlos Medium: sdca.mp/2entVR3 Seedcamp: www.seedcamp.com Funding Circle: https://www.fundingcircle.com/uk/ Related bio links: Carlos: linkedin.com/in/carloseduardoespinal / twitter.com/cee Ed Wray: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edward-wray-b25b011/ / https://twitter.com/edwray21

David Siegel is one of the world's first web designers, a strategist, bestselling author, and a pioneer of the "personal data locker" concept. He's the CEO of the Pillar Project - a next-generation universal smart wallet that uses tokens and 20.30, a community of people who want to build the decentralized world, which includes blockchain, cryptocurrencies, decentralized apps and more. Having built one of the earliest websites on the internet in 1994, David went onto help Fortune 500 companies get themselves online, before eventually selling to KPMG. Speaking to Carlos, he outlines how bodies like the SEC should move towards evidence-based regulation of crypto assets. David argues that we are not in a crypto bubble, as bubbles imply the total collapse of an asset class value forever. Meanwhile, he says, the 'value of all cryptocurrencies will continue to rise, though with plenty of volatility for the foreseeable future.' Show notes: Carlos Medium: sdca.mp/2entVR3 Seedcamp: www.seedcamp.com The Pillar Project: www.pillarproject.io Related bio links: Carlos: linkedin.com/in/carloseduardoespinal / twitter.com/cee David: linkedin.com/in/siegelventures/ / twitter.com/pullnews The Token Handbook: hackernoon.com/the-token-handbook-a80244a6aacb

Earlier this year, we headed out to Berlin to speak to early-stage founders at The Factory and share stories from a couple of our more recent investments in the region. In this live episode, Carlos is joined by Samir El-Alami, Co-founder and CEO of doctorly, a cutting-edge cloud-based practice management software for doctors, and Lara Hämmerle, Co-founder and CPO of Vantik, who are out to re-invent private pension plans for young people of today. Tune in as Lara and Samir share their insights into the investment process, giving tips on how to attract investment, acquiring first customers and becoming reputable in the face of larger organisations in the early days. Carlos Medium: sdca.mp/2entVR3 Seedcamp: www.seedcamp.com Factory, Berlin: https://factoryberlin.com/ Doctorly: http://doctorly.org/ Vantik: https://www.vantik.com Related bio links: Carlos: linkedin.com/incarloseduardoespinal Carlos Twitter: twitter.com/cee Samir Twitter: https://twitter.com/SamirElAlami Lara Twitter: https://twitter.com/larahaemmerle

Room to Read has brought the enduring gift of education to 11.6 million children in 15 countries. Its founder, John Wood left his position as Director of Business Development for Microsoft’s Greater China region to found the organisation. Seventeen years later, with over 20,000 schools and communities served, millions have been impacted by John’s decision to help a headmaster in Nepal fill his school’s library. Speaking to Seedcamp partner Carlos Espinal, John recounts his journey from leaving Microsoft to supporting girls' education and children's literacy in Asia and Africa. He also discusses how businesses are stronger when they incorporate an idea of cause and purpose into their actions -- and how it can represent a competitive advantage in today's commercial world. If you want to support room to read through the Techbikers initiative discussed in the podcast, here is the link: www.justgiving.com/fundraising/ezerider Show notes: Carlos Medium: sdca.mp/2entVR3 Seedcamp: www.seedcamp.com Room to Read: www.roomtoread.org TechBikers: www.techbikers.com Purpose Incorporated: www.purposeincorporatedbook.com Related bio links: Carlos: linkedin.com/in/carloseduardoespinal / twitter.com/cee John: linkedin.com/in/johnwood8 / twitter.com/johnwoodRTR