Welcome back to Being Invested, where we explore the personal stories of the people who make the markets. My guest for Episode 8 is Mike Reid, founder and senior partner of Frog Capital, based in London and investing across Europe. We get into critical, thorny and transformational aspects of scale-up investing, emphasising effective processes and human interactions as the engines of great returns. Frog invests growth capital in software scale-ups that have a clear net positive impact on society, high growth potential, and proven revenues and profitability. I have the pleasure of working with Mike as a non-executive director on the Frog board, and can vouch that Mike walks the walk - he is relentlessly curious about innovation and tech, understands the scale-up phase and ingredients for success like few others, focuses on people and team dynamics, and always makes time for the important in-person conversation and getting to the heart of the matter. Mike lived in five countries before the age of 14, and this comfort with rapid, unpredictable change has set him in good stead for a career in venture and growth investing. He graduated from Bath University and subsequently spent 13 years at 3i before founding Frog. I thoroughly enjoyed this open and illuminating conversation, and I hope you will, too.

Thank you for listening. Please stay tuned for future episodes - and I love to hear your feedback! If you'd like to suggest a guest, you can find me on LinkedIn.

WHAT'S IN STORE

• "I think number one is … self awareness, both at the individual level, but also at the team level.”
• “Be calm about your successes because, yes, they were great, but don't let it get to your head…In the technology arena, with such ups and downs in the market, you see some extraordinary exits … where, literally, if the business had been going six months later, it probably would have gone bust…from Hero status to … probably the end of the firm.”
• “The more experience you have, the more challenging it can be because you've got too much information, you've got too many memories and it can affect your ability to take risk.”
• “One of the pieces of content we put into our papers is a deliberate devil's advocate section … typically filled in by people in the deal team who are not so close, to actually argue against the deal in the paper. Why shouldn't we do this deal— really succinct? It is a really simple but really interesting way to ensure there's a diversity of thought.”
• “I was very lucky at 3i, where there was a huge focus on soft issues around relationship building, influencing and winning trust. … Entrepreneurs are marrying investors and it's a long term relationship. So whilst the price of the deal, et cetera, is really important, ultimately when they wake up or go to bed at night, they'll be thinking, who do I want to have to call when the quarter didn't quite go so well? They want to be ringing people they get on with and can trust. That whole softer piece is less easy to teach but is a really key area to keep honing the whole of your career.”
• Book Recommendations: Philip Kerr novels and ‘Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It” by Chris Voss

FIND MIKE: https://frogcapital.com/profile/mike-reid/

HUGE GRATITUDE TO:

Sound: Alexander Russell, Design: Sophie Hardy, Music: Tom McKean, Photo: Dom Rodgers

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