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00:37:24 · Ed Leon Klinger, Kosta, Angela, William Loveday Powell, Sam
[00:37:24] S3: It's the [00:37:25] S0: bane of my life. So we could... I... I'd love to... Headphones on because I... You're gonna have to hear us, I think, if possible. Looks amazing. Let's catch [00:37:35] S8: Look at that. [00:37:36] S0: Yeah. You can [00:37:36] S2: hear us cool. [00:37:37] S8: Yeah. Yeah. [00:37:37] S0: Yeah. Amazing. [00:37:38] S3: Do you [00:37:38] S8: guys always match? [00:37:40] S0: Wear suits on the show. This was not [00:37:42] S1: actually planned. [00:37:43] S3: Yeah. Okay. [00:37:43] S1: But we do have... This was gifted, you know, by you guys. Yes. Fair point. Fair point. [00:37:47] S0: The time will be loved this, by [00:37:48] S1: the way. [00:37:49] S8: I like it. [00:37:49] S0: I have one mine. Would love to get into it there. Give us I guess I'd love to know where most of your time is spent today. What is getting you excited? I'm sure your role has changed so much over the years in terms of like where you're spending most of your time, what is the next big opportunity. But how... What does it look like right... Like today? What what... What's top of mind for you?
00:37:49 · Kosta, Angela
[00:37:49] S0: I have one mine. Would love to get into it there. Give us I guess I'd love to know where most of your time is spent today. What is getting you excited? I'm sure your role has changed so much over the years in terms of like where you're spending most of your time, what is the next big opportunity. But how... What does it look like right... Like today? What what... What's top of mind for you? [00:38:08] S8: Today, I think... So I've been at the firm twelve years. And some have managed to get more excited every year. I think this is the most exciting time to be a builder, the most exciting time to be an investor. You know, exciting and relevant to The UK ecosystem. We invested in a pricing for insurance company three years ago out of London, and it was just bought, I think, the largest acquisition of a private company in The UK by $2,100,000,000 for Guidewire, which closed [00:38:36] S0: a couple of weeks ago. [00:38:38] S8: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, like, the London startup ecosystem, you've always had lots of things to celebrate, but you've got you've got a pretty big one to celebrate now. [00:38:45] S0: I saw that it was a... How how it was going... Sorry. How how it started? How it's going now? I saw the tweet. Tell it that... Because this is a... Well, I mean, you said it yourself. It's it's not... It's it's a rare thing in The UK, I think, to get something of that scale. Tell us a little bit about this bet. You made it three years ago. We've also had an amazing outcome.
00:38:45 · Kosta, Angela, Sam
[00:38:45] S0: I saw that it was a... How how it was going... Sorry. How how it started? How it's going now? I saw the tweet. Tell it that... Because this is a... Well, I mean, you said it yourself. It's it's not... It's it's a rare thing in The UK, I think, to get something of that scale. Tell us a little bit about this bet. You made it three years ago. We've also had an amazing outcome. [00:39:01] S8: The journey throughout... There's there's gonna be more. There's so there's so many talented people here building great things. And you should have Amrit on the show to to tell [00:39:08] S0: yourself the CEO. [00:39:09] S1: We would love... Would love...
00:39:09 · Sam, Angela, Kosta
[00:39:09] S1: We would love... Would love... [00:39:10] S8: How it started, how it's going. The best part of this job is meeting just, I would say, unicorn people with interesting backgrounds that, can then decide to to start companies, especially in antiquated industries. My joke in insurance is it's a $7,000,000,000,000 industry that pushes around PDFs. Not anymore. Not anymore because there's a lot of really great companies. But Amrit can tell his story but it... It's pretty unique. He's got a computer science background and then became an actuary. Then worked, in several different markets as an actuary at large insurance companies, and then decided to start this company because he just saw how inefficiently risk was priced. And so it's very rare to have CS actuary background, and then have the magnetism that you can attract high quality people to work on... You know what? Sounds like a pretty boring problem unless you get into it. It's actually an incredibly interesting problem. [00:40:05] S1: Okay. [00:40:05] S8: And then the... How it started... How it's growing company is their their first office was in a car park. [00:40:11] S0: No way. This is old school stuff. [00:40:13] S8: Outside outside of London. I love it. And so I was at the... They announced the acquisition at the large Guidewire user conference, like, thousands of people. And I was like, alright, man. You've gotta have a good picture from the early days. [00:40:23] S1: Yeah. [00:40:23] S8: So they sent me this cart pack shot. [00:40:25] S0: It was like, yes.
00:40:25 · Kosta, Sam, Angela
[00:40:25] S0: It was like, yes. [00:40:26] S1: Hello. How do you find those people? Like, that is an incredibly rare human being. How is that? How does that even come about? How did that come about two years ago? [00:40:35] S8: Like, what is that gain a reputation in industry. [00:40:39] S0: Okay. [00:40:40] S8: But it's a couple things. Like, the... Like, it was just how I got so excited about financial services and insurance. It's just such an interesting class of problems. [00:40:49] S1: Yeah. [00:40:50] S8: And so I did a presentation for our LP conference, maybe 70 ago, just kind of mapping out the insurance industry where I thought some of the possibilities were. And that is a great beacon for smart people that are working in the industry and, like, alright. You know, Angela might not understand the intricacies of the problem I'm working on to the same degree I do. At least, I hope not. The CEO should know a lot more than investors. But at least there's some depth in the space. And then it was actually a credit to my, my partner, Joe Schmidt, who worked a lot in insurance too. He was over in London. He was talking to someone else. And they're like, actually, the smartest guy in insurance is is Amrit over here. And that's how we started to build that relationship. [00:41:28] S1: They just build that. They just have a little flag in the industry and and... [00:41:31] S8: Well, come... Like, if you're looking at insurance, how many CS turned actuary turned. Right? But again, like you have to be looking for the problem.
00:41:31 · Angela, Sam, Ed Leon Klinger
[00:41:31] S8: Well, come... Like, if you're looking at insurance, how many CS turned actuary turned. Right? But again, like you have to be looking for the problem. [00:41:39] S1: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And so in terms of the the market that you kind of operate in, that you look at, what is the thing that you're most excited about now? You know, what is that thing that you're like, if someone's building in this particular kind of vertical within the space, I really wanna talk to them. [00:41:55] S8: Yeah. So my favorite expression borrowed from Marc Andreessen now is there's no bad ideas, only early ideas. [00:42:01] S1: Okay. [00:42:01] S8: So all of these CCs I thought weren't gonna work are now working. So think old legacy system that wasn't worth rip and replacing. Now the risk of not replacing it is way higher than actually replacing it. [00:42:14] S3: Yeah. [00:42:14] S8: So Amrit was doing that in pricing. I've got some other folks that are, Val and Investo that are doing it in mortgage. If you look across regulated industries, there's many more systems that are doing that. So that's that's kind of bucket one. Yeah. And then bucket two is once you've even agreed to swap it out, arguably, the even harder part is implementing it. And so mapping the processes on the old system and getting the new system in. And I think we're very early in that gnarly problem, which is part technology, but also very very human.