Tech Deciphered

In this episode, we will deep dive into the world of productivity tools, processes, habits and hacks. We will share our principles of productivity, calendaring, favorite communication, hardware and broader productivity tools (e.g. CRM). Finally, we will share what tools we are still missing and wish we had. As an “easter egg”, we will also share how to best get in touch with us, so do listen in.

Navigation:

Introduction (01:24)

Section 1 - Principles of Productivity (02:20)

Section 2 - Calendaring & Tasks (13:35)

Section 3 - Communication Tools (28:30)

Section 4 - Broader Productivity Tools (Note taking, CRM, LinkedIn, etc) (43:51)

Section 5 - Hardware (51:54)

Section 6 - Tools We Wish We Had (59:03)

Conclusion (1:03:10)

Our co-hosts:

Bertrand Schmitt, Tech Entrepreneur, co-founder and Chairman at App Annie, @bschmitt

Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, co-Founder and Managing Partner of Strive Capital, @ngpedro

Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news.

Subscribe To Our Podcast

Full transcription: may contain unintentionally confusing, inaccurate and/or amusing transcription errors

Intro (01:24)

Nuno: Episode 14. In this episode, we will deep dive into the world of productivity tools, processes, habits, and hacks. We will share our principles of productivity, calendaring, favorite communication, and broader productivity tools like CRM. Finally, we will share what tools we're still missing and wish we had.

We will also share some hardware and some gadgets. As an Easter egg, we will also share how to best get in touch with us. So do listen in 

Bertrand: Hi Nuno, I think that's so very interesting topic for today. Definitely more tactical than usual coming out of a trilogy of the next decade but I think we got a lot of interest on this topic as well, and ultimately that's one topic that can make us better hopefully near immediately. I hope at least you will find some interesting habits and ideas. 

Section 1 - Principles of Productivity (02:20)

Nuno: And the first section today is going to be around some principles of productivity. So just sharing the high level, how do we think through productivity for ourselves? How do we organize ourselves? What do we optimize for, you know, how do we think through things? And so maybe I'll start and we'll go from there.

The first thing for me is, productivity is everything, you know, the ability to optimize my time. To make the most out of my time, so that I have time for myself on a personal level, but I also have time to interact with people, have meetings, calls, time to work, time to actually do some works, do some thinking, write a memo, do a power point presentation, review actual work.

All of that's really, really important. So I spend  a ton of time, literally, normally, actually on my Sundays planning my week, thinking through what are the flows of my week. We'll get to calendaring in a second, but really thinking through what sort of things am I trying to get out of this? And it's very easy to get sort of stuck into tactical stuff, the day to day, do I do 30 minutes conversations or do I do one hour conversations?

Do I do a coffee for this? And then I need to go for that. Under COVID, life is a bit easier because we're just back to back in zoom calls, but actually during normal life, we actually have to travel. So, you know, thinking through, do I want to go to that place that day to San Francisco, do you want to go to Menlo park?

Do I want to fly to somewhere else? And how many days would I stay there? So all of that, I spent an actual amount of time just around planning.  Once in a while I have moments, I can't say they're very well established, but I have moments maybe a couple of times a year where I go back to the drawing board.

And I recall my objectives for the year  and my objectives for the year are normally pretty high level objectives. And then I attach some relatively detailed bullet points of things I do want to get done, and I do want to achieve that year, but certainly I have level objectives. And I revisit those objectives a couple of times a year.

I go back to them. I don't do like a retreat. I don't go off and read books for two or three days. I know there's a bunch of people that do that. Like bill Gates. I actually just spent some time looking to the more strategic elements of my year and how it's panning out and how that aligns with my tactical stuff.

And those are the times where I start pulling back. So for example, if I feel I'm spending too much time doing, for example, first calls with entrepreneurs. I'll step back at that moment in time. I'll stop doing as many calls at that moment in time. And I'll step back from, you know, doing maybe one hour calls and one hour first calls to 30 minutes.

So I adapt my world around this decision on tactical stuff and operational stuff, but also on the more strategic objectives I want to achieve from the year. And I'm always trying to optimize based on that. 

How about you? Bertrand?

Bertrand: First for me there is a question of where are you, which stage are you in your personal and/or professional life because that will have .a big impact in  framing what you can do, can not do, how you can physically organize yourself as well as what's truly needed for the job. So depending on if you are VC constantly doing first time meetings with entrepreneurs, if you're a sales person, or or if you are an exec, or if you are an engineer, then  definitely your calendar needs are going to differ widely. So I think you want to get that, and obviously are you still single, are you married or you married with family, definitely will have an impact on your time available, your responsibilities.  

Myself when I was  CEO for instance, I had a very different calendar but also even when I was running the business for App Annie for eight years, every 18 months to two years I had to re-adjust how I was thinking about the business, but also how I was organizing my calendar. My responsibilities were different, my reports were different,  the scale at which we were operating was different, the quantity of travel I had to do was different so I had to regularly re-assess, how I was working and doing my business and part of how you're working is obviously managing you're calendar.  

Nuno: I  think that's a good point. I used to travel a lot more in my previous life. When I lived in Asia Pacific, you know, 150 flights a year, which is a lot more. And so I always organized also my work around my flights and going to the airport and having to go through security. And that was always an input into how I did things.

I never liked rushing to planes. I still have this, I've never missed a plane in my life, you know, knock on wood.

Bertrand: It happened to me once

Nuno: Knock on wood. 

Which means I arrive to the airport earlier and I would work from the airport and do calls from the airport from lounges,  from wherever I could, but I would organize my life around that.

I think the elements you're talking about around having family, not having family is also pretty essential. The type of work you do, does it require a lot of concentration at specific times of the day? Are you a morning person or an evening person? We know from Pink's "When" book that obviously different people react to different things and some people are more morning person, morning people.

Some people are definitely more evening people. I'm more of a morning person right now, but it's very funny. Because I used to be definitely a very late evening person when I was in college as an engineer, even through great parts of my career at the beginning of my career. And somehow I don't know how I guess, because I'm in the West coast now.

I'm now definitely a morning person. And I wake up earlier and I get a lot of my really creative work done in the morning. When I need to do a presentation from scratch, a public speech from scratch. Work on a product, work on a difficult spreadsheet, et cetera. I would do that in the morning.

And it's interesting. Cause as you say, there's a lot of variables here. People change through life. But in any case, you know, I would say I've become a morning person. Definitely I am a hardcore calendaring person. We'll talk about that in a second. I plan my life as much as I can. 

I think COVID in some ways has been the worst thing that could ever happen. Cause I plan it even more than I used to. 

I love people, so I make time for people. Obviously right now it's a little bit more difficult under, you  know, shelter in place and under all the constraints we're in. But I do definitely like to meet people and go and meet them sometimes in their surroundings. 

Being in venture capital, as you said, I'm switching all the time between meetings and calls.

So that's part of my life. And in some ways I need to adapt to that and be part of that. In normal circumstances also need to travel quite a bit, but normally it's by car. Some domestic traveling a little bit of international, but certainly not the 150 flights a year I used to do when I was based in Asia Pacific.

So for me, those are sort of some of the core principles, spending time with people. And then the final piece is I need time for myself. I need time for myself  and for my loved ones, for meditation, for my spirituality, to think through things, we sometimes spend so much time doing things that we forget to actually think through things.

Bertrand: So Nuno, you are not a robot, that's what you are telling us, you are not just an AI on a screen.   

Nuno: I'm trying to become one, but I'm still failing. Bertrand you know me very well now. I'm a bit of an extreme person in both senses....

In this, the third and final episode on the 2020s decade, we look forward, with our scenario planning methodology, into the late 2020s and specifically discuss Next Platforms & Structural Tech, Venture Capital & Start-ups and end with an overall framing of the decade ahead of us.

This concludes our 2020s “Time Travel Trilogy”, in which in episode 11, we deep-dived into what lies ahead on the Governmental/Geopolitical and Non-Governmental arenas, as well as shifts in User Paradigms around Work, Home and Mobility. In episode 12, we continued projecting forward in the decade, delving into the future of Energy & Climate Change, Healthcare, Education, Financial Services, Retail & Commerce, Leisure & Entertainment and Social & Communication. Please listen to these episodes, as well.

Navigation:

Introduction (01:24)

Section 1 - Next Platforms & Structural Tech (02:30)

Section 2 - Venture Capital & Start-ups (32:48)

Section 3 - Overall framing of the 2020s (50:46)

Conclusion (56:07)

Our co-hosts:

Bertrand Schmitt, Tech Entrepreneur, co-founder and Chairman at App Annie, @bschmitt

Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, co-Founder and Managing Partner of Strive Capital, @ngpedro

Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news.

Subscribe To Our Podcast

Full transcription: may contain unintentionally confusing, inaccurate and/or amusing transcription errors

Intro (01:24)

Nuno: In this episode 13, on the decade of the 2020s, the decade ahead of us, we will be resuming our scenario planning exercise for a couple of other topics. We will be discussing next platforms, technology infrastructure, and the structural tech layers, VCs and startups and how that world will evolve, and we will then bring it all together in some overall framing of the 2020s and their scenarios. For further reference, please listen to our episode 11 and 12, where we talk a lot about a variety of things: the home, work and mobility use cases, we discuss various industries like healthcare, energy, climate change. So listen to our previous episodes that are concluded today in our trilogy of the 2020s. Let's start today with next platforms, the scenarios for what the world will look like in 2029, 2030, around next platforms

Section 1 - Next platforms & Structural Tech (02:30)

Next platforms - Deep tech

Bertrand:  So let's talk about deep tech and deep tech is a fantastic topic to start,   episode 13 today. There are of course, a lot of topics in deep tech and we cannot cover all of them, but let's start with space.

I think what has been amazing was just a few days ago, SpaceX, sent humans to the space station and it worked,  they are in great shape. I believe it was nine years, since the last time astronauts have been sent to the ISS from the US, not needing a hitch from the Russians.  I must say it has been amazing. The last 10 years, what SpaceX has achieved, moving from... I'm not sure they had a single rocket working 10 years ago, to sending now humans, and not just sending humans to the ISS, but sending humans through a very, very cost-effective rocket with a state-of-the-art shuttle. It's really amazing.

So when you think about 10 years from now, what could be there? Could we ready be on Mars? Nuno what's 

Nuno: I don't know. everyone keeps saying it's the next frontier. There are certainly a lot of things that we can do in space, around low orbits, around communication, around infrastructure that helps us, for example, visualize what's happening earth, and making more powerful, our decision making processes here on earth. So there's certainly a lot of potential that I see in space.

I'm not sure we're gonna start colonizing things by the end of the decade, so I'm not sure we'll have people in the moon or we will get to Mars or will do a variety of things by the end of the decade. Fascinating times, the reduction of cost is extreme, which, you know, creates a bunch of possibilities in terms of the technology infrastructure that we start setting around us in space, but I'm less positive on the whole final frontier we will start colonizing other areas of our solar system.  

Bertrand: Because if I look at what SpaceX helped create, I mean, there was a wave of new space, companies, but a few years ago it started to not be as hot anymore, probably in 2017 was the peak. I wonder if what SpaceX just achieved might help generate even more interest, in term of startups and investment in the space. I mean, this is a very, very big, milestone they achieved. So for me, it would be interesting, yes, 10 years sounds optimistic, but maybe the 2030's would be the decade we finally go to Mars. 2020's might the moon, or if we think like, Jeff Bezos, may be another approach is to actually bring asteroids closer to us.

I don't know if it's truly a low earth orbit, maybe not too, not to low orbit, and to start building stuff inside these asteroids. Because obviously there is a huge amount of space available inside an asteroid, and you could, hollow the asteroid, take stuff from what's inside and ultimately build a new habitat,  for people there.

So, I actually believe it might be  potentially a smarter option than trying to go to Mars, but it's tough not to recognize the attraction of another planet in our minds and imagination.  Personally very impressed and amazed by what Elon Musk has achieved, and others with SpaceX. 

Nuno: And there are probably some quick wins, some low hanging fruits from space exploration that we have not fully maximized yet, and as the cost comes down we can do a lot more exploration, bring new materials back to earth, new that are incredibly valid and valuable even before colonization becomes an important item. So for me that's the exciting piece of what we're seeing in space. It's the usage of low orbit, the usage of satellites in a different position and different use cases that we've done in the past, the maximization of coverage of earth, and all those elements added to exploration materials and things we can bring back for me is very, very powerful. That we can do that sustainably with lower and lower risks to the humans involved is already a huge win.

And then, you know, mining asteroids, using asteroids as habitats, inhabiting the moon, inhabiting other parts, getting to Mars, maybe that's sort of an afterthought that's on Horizon 3, so to speak, element to it. In some cases I think exciting times ahead, in space exploration, but we won't get Star Trek just yet. 

Bertrand: Indeed  maybe one last point you talked about satellites.  Definitely, there is a fight around constellation of satellites. SpaceX has its own. Others are trying. Some are going bankrupt. Some went bankrupt one or two decades ago. So that's also another angle will we see more, way more satellites in low earth orbit or different orbits. That's definitely an interesting question, and with space getting cheaper, definitely it's a possibility. The question would be, what's the benefit? What's a use case? 

Nuno: And moving  maybe the discussion to other things more here in our earthly surroundings still a little bit in the air, like drones. I know you and I have slightly different views on, you know, how much drones from a civil perspective will occupy a space, in particular in terms of logistics, and how we will exist with these, electronics around us. 

I'm relatively bullish. I believe by the end of the decade, we will have deliveries made by drone. We will have the ability to deliver things around the world, even long distance by drones or similar types of constructs. 

And that will change a lot of things,  cause we know today, there's a really significant part of traffic that is actually driven by logistics and by on the ground logistics. So the usage of the air as a new mechanism is something that I'm excited about. 

And if we're all traveling less, there will be less planes in the air, so there'll be less things for us to worry about. But certainly, I'm a big believer in drones as a logistic mechanism. On the area of transportation of people by drones, a little bit more skeptical. I think we will find different ways of lifting up people and moving them around. Over this decade, I'm not sure they will become mainstream. There's also economic reasons, obviously, the airline industry is getting super affected by what's happening right now with COVID, and so there are a number of incentives for industry to recoup its costs and also continue to exist.

So maybe a little bit more skeptical on transportation of people, very, very bullish on transportation of goods.

Bertrand: You already have today, drones, transporting some specific products. If I take in the medical space, Zipline, for instance in Africa, 

Nuno: investments at Grishin Robotics.

Bertrand:  And is launching drones with blood plasma or medication so that it can be made available very, very quickly to some remote hospitals where it would have taken way too long to get the appropriate resource and where they have limited storage capacity.

So that's for me an example of something that works. Definitely less bullish that it would go at scale. For me it will stay into some niche product where the high cost is worth the immediacy of the delivery, but we will see.

Where I am probably more bullish is on robotics, automation. So, stuff that, mostly, is on wheels, or is not even on wheels because it's not moving. It's your robot on a chain. So that, I can't see that there would be a lot happening. You have cameras getting cheaper, we have AI system technologies getting cheaper, more efficient, and we'll talk more about this.

So, I can see big change happening, all of this is around probably the big, umbrella of Industry 4.0. And,...

In this episode, the second part of our discussion on the 2020s, we will use our scenario planning methodology to project forward into the latter part of the 2020 decade, so that we can deep-dive into the future of Energy & Climate Change, Healthcare, Education, Financial Services, Retail & Commerce, Leisure & Entertainment and Social & Communication. 

Please also listen to our previous episode 11, where we started our time traveling and discussed the Macro landscape - both Governmental/Geopolitical and Non-Governmental, and also User Paradigms around Work, Home and Mobility.

Join us for our next episode, episode 13, which will conclude our “Time Travel Trilogy” of the 2020 decade, by delving into Next Platforms & Tech, Venture capital & Start-ups and an overall framing of the 2020s. 

Navigation:

Introduction (01:24)

Section 1 - Energy & Climate Change (02:03)

Section 2 - Healthcare (06:30)

Section 3 - Education (10:06)

Section 4 - Financial Services (14:49)

Section 5 - Retail & Commerce (18:13)

Section 6 - Leisure & Entertainment (25:26)

Section 7 - Social & Communication (41:18)

Conclusion (47:13)

Our co-hosts:

Bertrand Schmitt, Tech Entrepreneur, co-founder and Chairman at App Annie, @bschmitt

Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, co-Founder and Managing Partner of Strive Capital, @ngpedro

Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news.

Subscribe To Our Podcast

Full transcription: may contain unintentionally confusing, inaccurate and/or amusing transcription errors

Intro (01:24)

Bertrand: Welcome back to Tech Deciphered episode 12 on the 2020s. 

If you remember our previous episode, episode 11, we started talking about the 2020s, our view about the next decade. Trying to do some scenario planning, trying to project what are the  possible scenarios in 10 years from now of where the world will be. Where some technologies will be. Where some consumer habits will be, and try to walk back from that perspective  and think carefully about what it means and how it could happen or not happen. And obviously, share our opinions of the most likely  scenarios.

Section 1 - Energy & Climate Change (02:03)

Nuno: And we will start today with energy and climate change. I'm generally optimistic about the discussion around climate change coming out of this shelter in place and lockdowns that we've had around the world. Where people are seeing the effects that we actually have on the environment, and those effects are very obvious.

You know, we've taken a little bit of pause. There's a reduction in pollution, and we see the world changes around us. So the momentum, I believe for climate change after this will be a positive one. Just by the nature of what we're observing. There will be two negative levers to this. the first lever that will be negative is the fact that we need to have an economic recovery.

And at this moment in time, that economic recovery needs to be fast. So we need to start moving and we need to start moving even faster. In some ways, that will generate probably the impetus for certain governments and certain corporations to more aggressive about manufacturing, logistics and things that we know are implicitly creating pollution.

And then the second piece that is negative to this climate change agenda, and us obviously adopting more renewable energies, better technologies, and everything that would make this world that we're currently in, in lockdown, more sustainable into the future is the fact that obviously the price of oil has come down plummeting to levels never seen before. And so it's actually very, very cheap. 

So those are the two forces that I believe we're having infighting on. There's many other forces we could have around this, we discussed in the previous episode: the notion around the hermit scenario, or it's certainly the notion that we will spend a lot more time in our homes and in suburban lives, but still then we'll need mobility.

So where will we end up on energy? Where will climate change be? Will we finally reverse climate change? Will we have a shot at it in this decade? Will this be the grand decade that we all get better energy, more technology aware energy.

Bertrand: Yes, me, I might have an unpopular opinion on this topic. I felt governments of the world were very, very, very, very focused on climate change, trillions of dollars invested. Honestly, not so much to show for it, and very obviously, a complete total miss on some things that was relatively highly probable, which is the emergence of a pandemic. Very, very little spent, nearly nothing. If we talk about bio-defense investment, it was close to zero by most countries in the world. So, for me it raises a few questions: ultimately, it's a choice between what you decide is the most important.

And the other piece that has always worried me is the solution. When your solution to climate change is to close nuclear energy stations, and replace that by what?  By renewable energies? Solutions that are either too expensive or cannot power enough, or are not always available when you need them. That's really a big issue I have. And when you see countries that are polluting more as a result of their energy policy, for instance by using way more coal than before I am very worried.

If we cannot pick the rational technological solutions, it's pretty worrisome to me. So one hope I have is that we finally invest more, in the right solution, which is more nuclear. Maybe different type of nuclear, but more of it, not less of it. Then I will start to be excited again about trying to solve this. But as long as we have some very, very weird strange policies, I just start to wonder, what is it that we are trying to really solve.  

Nuno: We have full agreement on the fact that we will need to re-explore nuclear as a core source of energy. And that's probably one of the very few paths, going forward that allows to us to be more clean in some ways in consumption. 

Bertrand and I have disagreements around the importance of tackling climate change, et cetera. For me, this is two sides of the same coin. What we're seeing with the virus is also what we've been seeing with climate change is our mistreatment of the place we live in, is the mistreatment of the place of earth effectively. So we were getting kicked because we just misappropriate assets that were here, and we just think it's all ours because obviously we are the overlords and we control all of this.

I do think, you know, climate change needs to still be tackled, agree that nuclear and other options are important for us to move forward. But we will always have this disagreement. 

Section 2 - Healthcare (06:30)

So maybe let's move to a topic where we have more agreement, which is healthcare. And it can never be the same. Let's start with that. 

Healthcare can never be the same, we both live in the US where the system is totally broken, where regulations are now being suspended, we discussed that in a previous episode. So healthcare needs to fundamentally shift. Remote health and telemedicine are a given. There's no scenario I see going forward, telemedicine or remote health are not part of that scenario. Remote diagnostics and ways of doing diagnostics at a distance are more important than ever. You've already talked about bio defense, and maybe you want to go into that too  in a little bit. 

All the effects that we've had around the supply chain and pharmaceuticals, PPEs. Everything that is happening in the genetic space needs  to actually accelerate. I predict  a golden age of health care going forward  and pharma because we need to, we need to be prepared for whatever's next. We need to be prepared for the next pandemic.

Bertrand: Healthcare it's fantastic when you think about it. The first thing we have to do in this crisis is to throw up decades of stupid regulations that were slowing down the pace of innovation. And not just slowing down by six months, slowing down by a decade some development of new medicines, some development of remote health. This is pretty insane. And I mean, when you think about how easy it was to remove that , but it's also shocking. Let's not forget the other side of that coin, is that these regulations were not there for the right reason in many situations.

Of course, you want some level of regulation, but my point is that, we went so overboard, we didn't care in a way if medicine had any impact on people anymore. What matter is that everyone would be as safe as possible in the sense that there is never an issue, there is never a risk for anyone, the patient, the, the doctors, the pharmaceutical companies, and as a result we  killed innovation. We destroyed innovation for the past 10, 20, 30 years, no one wanted to build vaccines anymore because there is just a little gain and too much risk in term of getting sued if there is an issue with your vaccine.

So my point is that, this world was completely, completely broken in so many ways. And what has been happening the past few weeks and months has shown that. To be clear, I believe strongly and very thankful about all the doctors, who have been saving life, and nurses and technicians. I just feel they have been constrained in an horrible system designed by politicians and administrators, who don't invest in change, are actually trying to slow things down for all the wrong reasons.

So when you think that, you talk about the U.S.,  medications are 3X the price than Canada or Europe for the same medications. So we'll see what change. 

Maybe one more point  because we talk about a lot of very important topics, but there are a lot of other stuff super exciting happening  in healthcare, from understanding more the impact of genetics,...

In this episode, we will start discussing the 2020s. We will introduce a unique and novel framework that we will follow around scenario planning, frame when exactly the 2020s start (hint: starts with a C and ends with 19), debate the macro landscape - both governmental/geopolitical and non-governmental and finalize with the user paradigms around Work, Home and Mobility.

We will continue this discussion of the 2020s in the next episodes, including the second part of our analysis of the 2020s, in which we will delve into the future of Energy + Climate Change, Healthcare, Education, Financial, Retail & Commerce, Leisure & Entertainment and Social & Communication. Look out for episode 12. 

Navigation:

Introduction (01:24)

Section 1 - When did the 2020s start? (02:41)

Section 2 - Macro, World Governance, Geopolitics and Non-Governmental (03:24)

Section 3 - User Paradigms (28:08)

Conclusion (53:49)

Our co-hosts:

Bertrand Schmitt, Tech Entrepreneur, co-founder and Chairman at App Annie, @bschmitt

Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, co-Founder and Managing Partner of Strive Capital, @ngpedro

Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news.

Subscribe To Our Podcast

Full transcription: may contain unintentionally confusing, inaccurate and/or amusing transcription errors

Intro (01:24)

Nuno: In today's episode, episode 11 we will start talking about the 2020s, the decade that we have ahead of us. We will drive this into different episodes and we will choose a framework that's a little bit different than those normally followed by people that we normally listen to. We will choose a scenario planning framework.

The difference between a scenario planning framework and simply a forecast framework is in forecasting. We're trying to extrapolate the future from where we start today. In a scenario planning exercise, we really doing a little bit of time traveling to start with. We're moving ourselves into the future and to 2025, 2029 and we're trying to figure out, from there, what things would need to happen to give rise to those scenarios. In some cases, we will share very strong views, which we hope you're okay with, but in others we will really structure two or three potential scenarios for some of the elements that we will discuss. The objective is to start the discussion going and to the best of our knowledge, really frame what's ahead of us in the next five to 10 years.

Section 1 - When did the 2020s started? (02:41)

Bertrand:  We will start with, where does it start? When did the 2020s started? And I guess everyone will agree that right now under shelter in place we have a pretty momentous event with us. We're in the middle of COVID-19 emergency, we are in a new world, a brave new world, I guess, and that's how the 2020s started. Obviously it will be more difficult to guess exactly when this decade will be over, beyond, the digits, but more based on inflection points.

Nuno: So we start with crisis.

Bertrand: We start with crisis. Hopefully we don't end with crisis 

Nuno: It seems like every decade has been defined by crisis. So the likelihood of that we shall see.  

Bertrand: Indeed

Section 2 - Macro, World Governance, Geopolitics, Non-Governmental (03:24)

Nuno: We are gonna talk about scenarios for what the world will look like in 2029, 2030, from what I call the outlandish, to the predictable. And we're going to start with the macro space, world governance, geopolitical, and non-governmental elements.

2.1 Covid-19 impact

So we'll start with coronavirus, which is obviously in our minds today, and we've already dedicated episode 9A and 9B to the discussion around coronavirus. So today we will not repeat what we discussed in that episode. So go back to episode 9A and 9B to really see our views on what's happening with coronavirus.

Rather, we're going to focus a little bit further out on what we see  from that impact.

2.2 Government interventions / regulations

Bertrand: Yes, I think it makes totally sense. So let's move to government interventions, government regulations, where do we see the world ending in that decade.

Personally,  I am definitely expecting more and more regulations, at least in tech. I'm not saying we should wish that because actually, you could argue that some of these regulations at least played a role in where we are today, which is not a great situation regarding COVID-19. We had maybe too much regulations. We have seen that some regulations have been actually removed in the emergency. Now you can do in the US medicine across state lines, you can do remote medicine for instance. So maybe there is some positive regulation actually going on, meaning less of it. 

But on the other end, it's very clear we should end up with more in many ways. If we think about fake news, if we think about elections, it's highly probable that we will end this decade with a lot more, and what we know today as social platforms might have a very very different face as a result, because they're often the target of regulations.

Privacy is another one. There has been a lot of changes in the past decade with GDPR, with now some new California regulations. How far will it go? It's highly probable there will be more of it. What is very highly probable is that it will be everywhere. What you have in US and Europe will be there for the rest of the world. That would be at least my expectation. 

Another question because we see that a lot, is around breaking down some big tech companies. I don't know if we will see that, but it's definitely a possibility that more in that direction. What's your take 

Nuno: Nuno?  

So I would do the time traveling, the time-traveling piece and talk about government roles to start with. I think all the topics you mentioned are very much top of mind. But if we look maybe 5 to 10 years ahead, what will be the role of government. And for me, scenario one is, as this scenario where we will have democratic governments elected that are not exceptionally competent, but they're whatever the people choose, that are most of the time ill prepared for crisis, but otherwise do a decent job and we're all happy with that. 

I think the second scenario to go a little bit more extreme, is what I would call mummy governments, and we end up in governments that basically we expect that everything will be taken care of for us. So we expect government takes care of our infrastructure, they care of our wellbeing, of our health. And in that scenario, even countries like the US will migrate more and more to a sustainable system where people do have access to healthcare, where people do have access to justice, and do have access to all the infrastructure they need to have, which today they can't take for granted.

So it's sort of the mummy logic. The government will take care of us. They need to take care of us because we've had a pandemic, maybe we'll have another one who knows, but we need to have a government and institutions that really take care of what we need to do. 

The other extreme, on the other hand, is sort of governments die in some ways. Governments are there just to manage the upper layers, and the basic infrastructure of the country. But in some ways, the private sector once and for all just fully takes over. And that scenario would be a scenario under which our belief in the government is no longer there. We believe that the companies around us, are really much better equipped to serve our needs, to serve our privacy or lack thereof if we're willing to accept it.

And in that scenario. You know, our view on the governments is just,  for the basic things and basic regulation. 

So if we look at three scenarios as potential scenarios, I would say, you probably have the most regulation in scenario one and two. 

And in the other scenario that I just talked about, which is the mummy government that takes care of us and that mommy government, as you said, all the key issues are around, undue power of the private sector, issues around privacy, issues around access to healthcare, issues around any regulatory intervention that allows things to be fair and non discriminatory. 

Whereas you move to a scenario where we just stop trusting our governments, we're going to be in a world that really is more and more in the hands of some of the giants around the world. The energy giants, the financial service giants, and obviously the tech giants. 

Bertrand: I think it is not just a question of trusting, not trusting our governments, or system of government. My take for instance is that it's clear that at least in the West, the response to this COVID crisis has been pretty poor, while in some other countries like Asia it has been pretty great, much less infection rate, much less death. And the way I'm looking at it is, maybe we end up with a similar system of government, but what is changing is who is in charge. Do we move to a place where instead of the lawyers being in charge in many governments, do we move to a world where we have more experts, more scientists?

Interestingly enough, there are a few countries that are actually led, by scientists or former scientists that did actually pretty well during this crisis. So do we move to a place where it's a new type of politicians that are taking over because we have been proven that we cannot trust, the current type of politicians but the system can sustain a different approach, a new type of politicians that might be less populist, more focused really on the good the people.

And, I think what we went through is also showing us some level of incompetence at so many level that it's really scary. So will it push some change. I think it can only come from the bottom up, from the citizens, for this change. I'm hopeful....

We split this episode into two parts: in this, the second and final part (10B), we discuss the significant shifts in business models and the funding landscape that happened in the 2010s. We deep-dive into these business models, e.g. freemium, advertising/free at the point of consumption, subscription, and we give you the no-BS view on the fundraising landscape, what REALLY changed and what (mostly) stayed the same.

Please also listen to the first part of this episode (10A), in which we discussed the macro-trends of the 2010 decade and the underlying technological tectonic shifts, including analyses of the OS, platform and product & application spaces

Navigation:

Introduction (01:24)

Section 1 - A brave new world ... of business models (01:56)

Section 2 - The switch in funding landscape (27:59)

Section 3 - The end ... of the world, as we know it?! (37:38)

Our co-hosts:

Bertrand Schmitt, Tech Entrepreneur, co-founder and Chairman at App Annie, @bschmitt

Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, co-Founder and Managing Partner of Strive Capital, @ngpedro

Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news.

Subscribe To Our Podcast

Full transcription: may contain unintentionally confusing, inaccurate and/or amusing transcription errors

Intro (01:24)

Bertrand: Welcome back in this , the second part of Episode 10, Episode 10B, we're still focus on the 2010s, that incredible decade that we spent some time discussing in Episode 10A and now, we are going to be focus on the dramatic changes in business model that happened, as well as the switch in funding landscape. For further reference, listen to the first part of this Episode, Episode 10A. Let's start today with dramatic changes in business models.  

Section 1 - A brave new world ... of business models

Nuno: So software is eating the world, Marc Andreessen famously wrote, I believe in 2011 and the world was going to be basically not only fully digitized as software was going to entrench itself and disrupt every single industry. Part of that promise, I believe, was realized in the last decade where we have the advent of a lot of things that we discussed in episode 10A, but also I believe that the whole thesis around software is eating the world is not the full story.

In some ways, the world got totally digitized, but the physical world didn't catch up. And one of the stupid examples I always give is in a world where, for example, we are going to have self driving cars, well, the cabin of a car needs to change because you don't need to drive anymore. So what is it going to become?

Is it going to become an office, a living room, a bedroom? Is it going to be a flexible space or not. So Mark's comment I think is well taken. The comment that digitalization is going to overrule many industries. There is not any other moment, but the current moment in which we're in the midst of COVID, that would make that point.

But I do think it missed part of the story. Part of the story is that the physical world will have to change as well. And it's very interesting that Marc just published a manifesto of sorts on how the world needs to change going forward. And he talks a lot about core infrastructure in that manifesto, which is, by the way, an exceptionally well written piece of text.

But as I said, I think software wasn't the only part of the story. There is also a hardware and physical part of the story.

Bertrand: Yes, totally. It's as you say, pretty interesting that he started the decade with this very famous article and is starting a new decade with a new article. I think he was definitely right on the first one. Software is indeed eating the world, but as you say, the physical world was not following up. The good news is that these days the physical world is digitalizing as fast as they can, learns to use some tools that us been using for a while. It's definitely a tale of two worlds, but these are going to merge. 

So, in term of change of business model, let's go to first the B2C side and we'll talk later on about B2B. 

I think the first biggest phenomenon has been the rise of apps. Long time ago, there was a lot of discussion about why do we even need apps, there was a lot of discussion of native apps, web apps, et cetera. Now it's very clear that it was huge. Interestingly enough, initially Steve Jobs didn't want native apps.

He was fine with web apps, changed his mind dramatically after a few months, launched what was the biggest revolution, thanks to the app store, which was not just a new technology, but truly a new business model. A new way to discover, distribute and monetize content at a scale, never seen before. And that has been since copied by every other platform. From, Android to Windows to of course, MacOS and other platforms. And, interestingly enough, they started first with music. The concept was started with iTunes, then it was followed by Amazon with their Kindle platform. But finally it started to go really big with the app store. Just to give you some numbers, of course, we know that we have millions of apps, more than a dozen million apps across different app stores.

But in term of downloads, we got more than 200 billion downloads in 2019 alone, 200 billion downloads. We have seen in term of consumer spend directly through the app stores, so excluding e-commerce, excluding advertising, more than 120 billion U.S. dollar of consumer spend in 2019 alone. Per day, the average user of a smartphone is spending 3.7 hours, more than three hours and 45 minutes every day on their smartphone. So, it's really been a huge revolution coming from zero to the biggest new way  to distribute applications. And, that's probably been the biggest change in the history of B2C in term of rise of a new business model. 

Nuno: I think in hindsight it's always obvious that, basically this was going to be a success anyway, but this is a time for you and I Bertrand to gloat because we were people that bet on this. You with App Annie, I with Strive Capital, we bet that mobile apps was going to be its own thing. And it was going to be its own economy.

It was going to be a content form that was just different from anything else. And so this is a time where we say we were right guys. You all told us that we were wrong. We were right. It wasn't HTML 5, it wasn't some other thing. This is its own thing. And back to your point on the economy side.

We've had a lot of innovations that really in some ways I believe were facilitated and certainly gained momentum through mobile apps and starting with the first one, freemium. Obviously the most monetized area of apps are games and games. In some ways, innovated in how you propose to your end user and potentially customer to get paid for. 

They innovated by saying, we'll give you something free that gives you utility that you can play with. But if you want to extend the range of things you do, if you want to extend utility of what you do with it, you need to pay. And that innovation is dramatic. And as we'll discuss later, also pretty apparent in what happened in the B2B space.

Bertrand: Yes and it's an  actually started in Asia, specially in Korea  in gaming, copied pretty quickly in China, initially in PC gaming and ultimately came to the West with mobile. So, invented in Asia, in a PC gaming situation, transposed in the West, in mobile situation. Freemium was a huge, huge enabler for gaming for sure, but also for a lot of other type of products that benefited from such a business model. And we'll talk more also on the B2B side, where it had a real big impact. 

Nuno: And then my favorite pet peeve around business models. Since probably 2004 2005 I've been saying free isn't really free. Free at the points of consumption comes with some costs. And in many cases that cost was supported by advertising based business models. A lot of the services we had were paid for by the ability for the provider of that product or service or application to serve me ads.

For a long time we were very happy with that because free is great. Free, I don't pay. As we will later on discuss, the issue was that the free was done at some cost to me because my information was being manipulated, used for things that maybe I didn't know it was being used for. And then I was served back with advertising.

Now, I'm not saying advertising based business models are all wrong. I don't think that advertising based business models have been negative. Actually, quite the contrary. They have supported a lot of services that we use that are significant to us. Who could imagine not using Google search if we didn't have advertising based business models?

But clearly that was a trade off that was all but misunderstood by most users. People never understood the trade off. People were like, free is great. I'm not willing to pay anyway. But they didn't understand that there was something being done with their information and that manipulation. The advent of advertising based business models is a very interesting counterpunch to now the advent of subscriptions, which were really looked down on for significant part, even of the early decade of 2010s. 

Subscriptions is like the old business model. Nobody wants to pay for that. That's the old model of feature phones where you have so called value added services. And you pay for things that you don't know you're paying for, or you have subscriptions that your telco charges you that you don't know why you have them. But somehow subscriptions did make their way back in the late 2010s, and today they are wildly adopted business model and one that we've seen across every single area, like entertainment, gaming, et cetera. So subscriptions have taken over in some way for the fact that we do like free,...

We split this episode into two parts: in this, the first part (10A), we argue the 2010 decade actually started with the 2008 crisis, the advent of the iPhone, the App Store and the move of the world to the cloud. We go in-depth into the macro-trends of the decade and the underlying technological tectonic shifts, including analyses of the OS, platform and product & application spaces. 

Look out for the second part of this episode (10B), where we will discuss the shifts in business models and the funding landscape that happened in the 2010s.

Navigation:

Introduction (01:24)

Section 1 - When did the 2010s really start? (02:24)

Section 2 - The Backdrop: Macro-trends and overall context (03:41)

Section 3 - The Tech Stack: Operating Systems, Devices & Platforms (19:09)

Section 4 - Products & Applications (38:18)

Our co-hosts:

Bertrand Schmitt, Tech Entrepreneur, co-founder and Chairman at App Annie, @bschmitt

Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, co-Founder and Managing Partner of Strive Capital, @ngpedro

Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news. 

Subscribe To Our Podcast

Full transcription: may contain unintentionally confusing, inaccurate and/or amusing transcription errors

Intro (01:24)

Bertrand: Hi Nuno, how are you today?

Nuno: I'm well and you Bertrand, how are you?

Bertrand: I'm doing good. I'm doing good, enjoying shelter in place. 

In today's episode we're going to discuss, the 2010s, the past decade. A lot happened in that past decade in tech. So it will be a pretty, pretty high density episode. We will talk first about a more higher level, macro view of what has been happening in tech. We will deep dive into the underlying of the technology industry, operating systems, devices, technologies, platforms, and then we will talk about the dramatic changes we also saw in business models.

It's actually pretty amazing when we think about everything that changed there. It's not just the technology. And finally, we will conclude around the switch in funding landscape and how much has changed as well. We will be splitting this episode in two. So that it's more digestible. 

Section 1 - When did the 2010s really start?

So Nuno, I will start with a question. When can we say that the 2010s really started?

Nuno:  Well in my opinion, the 2010s start with the 2008 crisis that prolonged itself well into 2009 and to the beginning of the 2010s. And in some ways that's a really good timing to choose because 2008 was also the year in which the Apple app store launched for the iPhone. It's also the year where, in effect, Android became a real threat to iOS and Apple, and it really defined a lot of what was going to come into 2010s so we start with a crisis, as we'll see, we might end with a crisis as well, which will be interesting. So maybe decades actually do get defined by crisis, but for the purposes of this episode, we will go back a little bit in 2007, 2008 to give us more context into what the decade really looked like.

Bertrand: Yes, it's might be sad to start and end with crisis, but at least it's pretty clearcut, and crises definitely generate very strong inflection points. 

Nuno: And  we had the 2000/2001 already with the bubble. So  in effect, beware of  end of decades.

Bertrand: Indeed, indeed. If we make a full comparison, the decades themselves are pretty good. It's the ending and the starting.

Section 2 - The backdrop: Macro-trends and overall context  

So let's talk about the more macro trends that we saw in tech. And I feel the first big macro trend was really how in the 2010s, technology started to insert itself right in the middle of society, in the middle of us.

It has been pretty amazing, to see technology scope, enlarging, growing  into our daily interactions. Nuno, what's your perspective on that?

Nuno: Yes. If we talk about IT or tech in some ways, we sometimes use them interchangeably. Tech is definitely in the middle of all society. We all use different technologies. Software based technologies, Internet based technologies, mobile based technologies, and the 2010s were really the years where these changes happened most dramatically.

Where to your point, technology definitely got in the midst of us. Everyone uses today, smartphones, everyone uses today the Internet. And that was not a given in 2008, 2009, as we said, the beginning of our journey into the 2010s. But today it is true. So definitely a huge shift in this decade. I would say a real significant emergence of technology around the world in developed markets and emerging markets alike.

Bertrand: Yes, for me, what's been amazing is as you say, it's not just developed markets, but also developing economies, where technology has been more and more important, more and more visible, and you could argue more and more transformational for people's life. As much as our life has changed in the US, in Asia, in Europe,  life thanks to technology has probably changed even more in developing markets.

You suddenly move from no smartphone, no Internet, maybe sometimes a feature phone, to suddenly discovering the Internet. There has been no PC or Mac or laptop,  stop gap like we had during the 90s or 2000s, it was suddenly move to discovering, the Internet and all its connected services.

And we'll talk more about some of the ways that technology inserted itself. But it's pretty exciting to see how our daily life has been changed from, ordering taxis, ordering food. 

We could talk about the digitalization of society at large. Who remembers  using a paper plane ticket, for instance, we have all gladly transformed to using our phone for that,  in the past decade  where we could still travel.

So it's really for me, that part that has been exciting and we already talked in a previous episode how, COVID is a big impact. So I think that digitalization of societies that really happened in 2010s is only going to accelerate,  in a way, thanks to COVID.  

Nuno: Yes. And with effectively a new decade with a tremendous shift towards technology, we see the emergence of winners and new players that dominate the market. There's always these classic charts on who's the largest market cap in the world, and it's very interesting in how they changed through the years.

And obviously if we look at what happened in the last decade, we see really the emergence of companies that were somehow a little bit significant already, but not definitely as significant as they are right now. And we obviously talk about Apple, which obviously with the iPhone became a significant player in the late 2000s and then 2010s. 

Google, that was already very significant player. That only became a  stronger player in particular with Android and YouTube becoming of age. Amazon becoming a household name to all of us, and a dominant force in e-commerce, but also in infrastructure, which we'll talk about in a second, and Facebook becoming the real win around social.

We obviously can't forget Microsoft, which had its resuscitation in some ways and found its groove again in particular in the late 2010s. 

But obviously, you know these five big, I would be very specific about it, these five big Western dominant players really leading the world in terms of market cap and really showing us how, how much tech has taken over the world and eaten the world in some ways.

Bertrand: Yes, you  to highlight Nuno, that it's really the Western players, but in Asia there are some very strong players in that space. We can talk about a Rakuten in Japan, we can talk about an Alibaba and a Tencent in China, and some new players like Xiaomi as well during that period in China.

So indeed, it's an emergence of some very strong players, that are scaling from devices, to cloud computing, to web to mobile, to IT infrastructure,  whose scope of operations,  have really grown in the past 10 years.  Some of them were pretty specialized players. Take a Google, much more specialized in search, at the time and you could argue they still monetize very well search. But it is a much bigger and very different company today.

Facebook, multiple acquisitions, well done, actually. Acquisitions over the past 10 years,   they have you could argue an amazing track record. Some would say "too" amazing track record in acquisition.  But we cannot, not acknowledge this.  And talking about the Asian players, I think there's one theme, is that there's has been the emergence of China as a tech superpower and overall global superpower.

But if we focus on tech for a moment, it's clear that 10 years ago in the eyes of many, China in term of business model had a focus on serving Chinese market and in many ways of copying more what was existing in the West in term of business model. And I think it's fair to say is that China is emerging the 2010s some of the biggest tech giants of the world. With giants, who are not just focus on the China markets, but are now global giants themselves.

And these very large Chinese players, like in the West, are not just focusing anymore, on one region or one product. They've really become companies that span across products and that ultimately have actually created new business models. We keep talking about Tencent, with WeChat that has built an app that is bigger than some other apps, the super app.

We have seen, the fastest penetration of e-commerce and payments in China, that the world has ever seen.  And China is now leading the way in e-commerce, in digital payments. That might come as a surprise  to some. So China, Asia, definitely, in a very different place than it was. 

Unfortunately, sadly, so for Europe we cannot say that there has been, there's similar level of transformation. I think there has been a positive transformation,...

We split this episode into two parts: in this, the second and final part (9B), we discuss the implications of COVID-19 in the Venture Capital and the Start-up ecosystems. We share our no-BS view on how easy/how difficult it will be to fundraise, depending on the space you are in, on what will likely change when the “new normal” comes into play and what to focus on in order to make your business survive this, the biggest and most ruthless of all storms (recorded on April 16th).

Navigation:

Introduction (01:27)

Section 1 - Impact on Venture Capital firms (01:44)

Section 2 - Impact on Start-ups (14:37)

Section 3 - Boards and Governance (31:02)

Conclusion (38:23)

Our co-hosts:

Bertrand Schmitt, Tech Entrepreneur, co-founder and Chairman at App Annie, @bschmitt

Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, co-Founder and Managing Partner of Strive Capital, @ngpedro

Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news. 

Subscribe To Our Podcast

Full transcription: may contain unintentionally confusing, inaccurate and/or amusing transcription errors

Intro (01:24)

Nuno: In this, the 2nd part of episode 9, episode 9B, we will be discussing the impact of COVID-19 on VC firms and startups. For further reference, listen to the first part of this episode, episode 9A. Let’s start today with Venture Capital firms.

Section 1 - Impact on Venture Capital firms (01:44)

I recently shared with a number of you, on Twitter and a couple of other social networks my own views on what's happening in venture capital. And let's start from the bottom up.

Let's start with the individual impact. I know it's shocking, but we, VCs are people, and therefore as people, we have the same issues as everyone else. When we go into shelter in place, we might have families that we need to take care of. We might have kids that we need to take care of, spouses, and we need to articulate complexities.

Like, for example, all of a sudden, if you have two kids, if you have a spouse that's also working, you might have three or four zoom sessions at the same time. And you know, houses are not of unlimited space. So obviously people need to articulate. I was seeing a social media post from a well known general partner saying that he was taking his calls in his car because that seemed to be the only real quiet space in his house.

So again, we as individuals are dealing with the same complexities as any other individual. And one needs to take that into account. What that implies is, there's a lag. You have a latency right now, if you're a company fundraising, you have to deal with this latency. The first step to that latency is what I just talked about.

It's the fact that I as an individual, as a venture capitalist, need to deal with this new reality and this new complexity. I might not be more productive immediately. It might take me a while to get back to my productivity. 

The second level of latency that I have to deal with, if I again, am a startup fundraising, and trying to fundraise from a venture capital firm, is the fact that VC firms have portfolio companies, and portfolio companies in some cases right now are going through complex times.

And the way I normally categorize portfolio companies for a venture capital firm is you either have counter cyclical portfolio companies or cyclical portfolio companies. If they're cyclical, they're aligned with the current economic cycle we're in. If they're counter-cyclical, they're not.

If they're counter-cyclical at this stage, you're probably doing fine, your companies are probably doing well. If the companies are cyclical, your portfolio companies are normally either positively correlated or negatively correlated to the cycle, and if they're positively correlated meaning they're doing really well in the current cycle, we're in, basically you have issues like capacity. How do I hire faster? How do I scale? I'm having issues around regulation that I need to sort out, but normally it's about hyper growth. Many would say that's a great issue to have. Yes it is, but it also creates other issues in terms of capacity supply and how you, for example, as a board director of some of these startups need to deal with them.

Then there's the negatively correlated, the companies that are just getting killed. If you're in the travel space, if you're in the restaurant space, if you're in the hotel space. How are you dealing with this? And those companies need particular attention from, again, their investors at this stage. Some of them might have four months runway, five months runway. So how do you deal with that? 

So again, that's how VC firms now are dealing with this. Those are the latencies that are subject to. 

On the other side of latency, you have to take into account that many VC firms are raising money, or probably in the process of raising their next fund, or their first fund in some cases. 

When this happened, those VC firms are going to have difficulty doing what we call a close of getting capital commitments from their own investors so that they can start investing in companies. Now, there are venture capital firms that are deploying capital, that are closing funds right now.

We just heard Lightspeed closed another record fund. And so those are deploying capital and are in the market. But again, they need to deal with their limited partner base. They need to deal with their own investors. And it might be the case that some of their own investors right now are having their difficulties.

It's not unheard of that family offices, that even some institutional investors in VC firms at some point in time have too much exposure and might have low liquidity. So if I'm a venture capital firm and I need cash to invest in a company, and I do what I call a capital call, it might be that some of my investors actually don't have that cash to give me, and that generates its own issues. 

So when you're looking at VC impact, the VC impact comes at many levels, from the very individual person level, all the way to VCs' investors, all the way to the issues that they need to deal with their existing portfolio, et cetera.

So at this stage, VC impact is very significant coming out of COVID 

Bertrand: Yes Nuno, I totally agree with all these points. I think it's good to provide that big picture view of what's happening on the VC side, and yes VCs are human beings as well, and they have to go through that, like you are on the other side, as an entrepreneur for instance. So it's key to understand, who you are working with, and what's their situation.

I think another piece to think about, both from a VC perspective and  entrepreneur perspective, I've seen a lot of people comparing with 2008. 2008 , yes, that was a big crisis. So first after what we discussed, it's pretty clear 2008 is probably the best case, it's probably going to be worse.

But that's more than that. It's not just financial, this is a health crisis. People don't know, they might be dealing with their parents in very bad shape, that are at risk of getting this type of illness. They cannot meet, GPs cannot meet LPs, general partners cannot meet limited partners physically. Maybe you might close with people you know very well, but people you don't know very well, how are you going to even pitch them for your fund? 2008, it was not easy, but at least you could physically pitch, now you cannot physically pitch.

And the same is true with entrepreneurs with VCs. In the short term, I see a lot of VCs saying, " business open as usual." Yeah, but if you where not used as a VC to work remotely, I don't think you are open as business as usual. You are already changing everything how you operated, so some VCs are used to operate remotely, but they are rare. Nearly everybody else was not used to that, required in-person partner meeting, in-person meetings, and this is not there anymore. So business as usual, like some are claiming, I have a lot of trouble to believe, and by your description, it's pretty clear that it's a near mathematical impossibility.

Of course, some are closing deals because they knew each other for a while. Deals don't happen in a few weeks usually, you have met people before, so this kind of stuff is going to work out for the coming weeks, but at some point, we need to go to the next stage, which is, "Hey, we have not met, but we can still not meet physically face-to-face, how do we go from there?"  and I think that will create change in process. 

And to be clear, it's not just VCs and startups obviously, if you are in any sales situation, that's the same question. Some new etiquettes will be put in place, that yes, you can do some deals remotely, and it's okay, but right now, we don't know yet how some will adjust to that new reality, and that's part of your analysis as an entrepreneur, as a VC, on how to deal with that, and potentially delay some action.

I would personally strongly suggest to wait a bit before fundraising, and do everything to not need it, so that you can get a bit of sense of where the world is going,  and how to position your business the right way.

Nuno: And as it is always the case in times of great volatility, there's also great opportunities, and so VCs that are aggressive, that have capital to deploy. That want to be aggressive going to the market, that want to build the brand, NFX actually just announced nine days or less to go from first conversation to commitment to start ups. Smaller checks, but still, that's an interesting thing. 

This is a great time to be in the market. It's a great time to invest. It's a great time to have capital to deploy if you are a venture capital firm. A lot of companies that need capital right now or that are fundraising right now,...

We split this episode into two parts: in this, the first part (9A), we discuss the broad implications of COVID-19, the short-term and long-term implications, how this is the “end of the world, as we know it”, but why there are many reasons to be hopeful about the future to come (recorded on April 16th). 

Look out for the second part of this episode (9B), where we will be focusing on the impact of COVID-19 in the Venture Capital and Start-up ecosystems.

Navigation:

Introduction (01:27)

Section 1 - COVID-19 - “the end of the world, as we know it” (02:36)

Section 2 - What the future holds (05:53)

Section 3 - Economic impact (12:03)

Section 4 - Long term impact of COVID-19 (18:41)

Our co-hosts:

Bertrand Schmitt, Tech Entrepreneur, co-founder and Chairman at App Annie, @bschmitt

Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, co-Founder and Managing Partner of Strive Capital, @ngpedro

Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news. 

Subscribe To Our Podcast

Full transcription: may contain unintentionally confusing, inaccurate and/or amusing transcription errors

Intro (01:24)

Nuno: In today's episode, we will be discussing the impact of COVID-19 and the pandemic. Specifically, we will go through an introduction. We are recording this on April 16th so the numbers that we have today, we will also talk about what the future holds.

We will be sharing the opinions of several people that we've been reading as well as our own opinions. We will be discussing the core assumptions economically and how the world is supposed to recover from this. We will discuss the longterm impact of COVID-19 in our own view, and how do we expect to be exiting this pandemic?

We will talk about the impact to venture capital firms in their own fundraising, in their own operations. We will discuss the impact on startups, how and where they play, their markets, their operating models, the complexities that they're going through. And finally, we will finish with the impact on board of directors and governance in these companies. We will, be splitting this episode into two so that it is more digestible. We will not be talking about the scientific ramifications of COVID-19, we are not experts in that space and therefore we will stay away from those discussions. 

Bertrand a difficult start to this episode, it is the end of the world as we know it. The REM song is a little bit happier than this, but in some ways it is the end of the world as we know it.

Bertrand: But it is not the end of the world.  Hopefully, we are going  to grow back. It's definitely tough times. As of today, we have more than 2 million cases, confirmed. Close to 150,000 dead. It's really, really, big numbers. It's amazing the change in society that have happened over the past few weeks, few months, since early January, since it was starting from Wuhan in China. Expanded to China, and then expanded step by step to the rest of the world. We saw Europe, we saw US, and many other countries are going to get even more impacted from South America to Africa.

It's an event like you have every 50 or 100 years. So, it's a very, specific moment in time and, a surprising timing for us launching our podcast. Nuno?

Nuno: It's been an interesting, and by interesting, obviously we can't really minimize the tragedy of what is going on. The stress that is basically affecting all our infrastructure hospitals, food supplies, the effect that we're having in our own lives as people are locked down, they're sheltered in place.

So in this episode, although we will talk about a lot of things that we hope to be hopeful about and more positive about, we did want to start  in this more somber note of acknowledging all the deaths and all the people that have been affected dramatically by the virus already, and those that still will be affected by it.

So today, everything that we will share with you is our own opinions as best informed as they are at this point in time.

Bertrand: Hopefully having both lived and worked across US, Europe and Asia, having lived in China many years, we have some level of global perspective on all of this. Myself, I've been following quite closely the situation since late January, since the quarantine was official  in China. 

And it gives us some perspective on where do you go next, and specifically, Asian countries went through that first,  not just through COVID-19, by the way, but through other episodes from SARS,  to MERS, to different type of epidemic in the past. So, in many ways, they were also the most prepared for this type of situation.

Nuno: And in some ways we've been blessed. We have people that are very good friends, even in some cases, family members, that are based in Asia, that have gone through this as the first blunt, hit China, and we've gotten a lot of feedback. Both of us have been very conservative in how we've approached mobility in the time of COVID.

We both went into shelter in place, pretty early on, actually, even before Northern California, started shelter in place. We had an interesting exchange  of devices and equipment to record the podcast at a distance already. And so I think for us, people that have connections to other parts of the world , we have treated the situation with the due respect that it deserved. And we've been both been in very strong shelter in place now for over four weeks.

Bertrand: Yes, definitely, I think we were probably more prepared than most. It's not just our global perspective, perspective of China, but also the fact that  we understand numbers, or at least, we try to understand numbers. And definitely, there was a lot to be scared from the numbers coming from COVID-19. 

Section 2 - What the future holds (02:36)

So,  it's time to go into our section around what's going on, what's going to happen on the very short term in term of shelter in place, how long will it stay there, how is life going to change around the coming few weeks or months. Again, we don't have a crystal ball, but we will try to share some informed perspective based on what we have learned over the past few weeks, especially from other countries, and the the latest from the news.

Nuno: I think the level of preparedness that we have seen work, does command a very strong discipline around a few dimensions and we can go into them. One is the dimension around testing that testing is readily available because  if we can't test people either for antibodies or if they're infected, it's very difficult to know who's out there that's already infecting other people.

So the ability to let people out of shelter in place depends very strongly on the testing infrastructure available to have tests and other mechanisms to make that work. So that is clearly something that we would be looking at in the case of the countries that are still in shelter in place or in lock down equivalents.

Bertrand: Yes, as you say what we have learned from Asian countries is definitely that  you have to do a lot of tests , you have to be able to track and trace, what has been happening, people who got infected. So, there is a lot of tools that have been already discussed, in some case vetted. We have just seen actually,  recently Google and Apple, working together to build better apps, to help track, who you met through your smart phone using Bluetooth connections.

I think there has been quite a few weeks where it was not really clear where we were going. But it's starting to be more and more clear what would be the criteria to reopen states and countries. And not just by looking at what Asian countries have done, but by listening to what our governments are telling us right now across Europe or in the US.

We just have actually today, President Trump talking about opening up America again,  sharing guidance of what states should we looking at, when they decide to reopen. What different level of opening you could do: a phase one, a phase two, a phase three. And we have seen similar things in France, in Europe. With many countries trying to put a date around, sometimes in May, sometimes in June. I think no one is really sure. Governments who give you precise dates are probably,  either wrong or trying to just share their best estimate.

I think what is key is understand this criterias and what it means. And therefore, you would get a better understanding of: will this state potentially change, get delayed. And that will help you make the right business decision.

I think another piece that is quite key is to understand what means reopening, leaving a shelter in place. It doesn't mean we go from black to white, in a minute. It will be a gradual release. And if things go wrong, and I'm sure they will go wrong in some states and countries, there will be some level of rollback to some previous measures.

And that will be some things to be very careful in term of our understanding of where we might end up because all of these parameters might change, might be readjusted. And might depend  on decisions by state, by countries. All will have their own approach to manage this. And some might be doing it really well, some  might have some more issues. Some might try to favor a lot more personal freedoms, some might not care as much about that. So, there will be different roadmaps by different countries. And we need to acknowledge that.

And maybe a last point is that, obviously, what's going to give us our full freedom back again is getting access to either extremely good treatment that limit the level of pain and death we get from that virus, and ultimately having a good vaccine. I think it's pretty clear for everyone following this, that's really the criteria  to going back to true normal.

What we are going to experience in a few weeks will be a new nor

We demystify a whole lot in this episode of Tech DECIPHERED. We demystify Venture Capital and its nitty gritty decision-making processes and operating models. We demystify Private Equity vs Venture Capital and explain the differences between both. We discuss factors for Start-Up success and demystify entrepreneur “ageism”. Last but not least, we disagree … on the Tesla Cybertruck.

Navigation:

The other side of the table - Entrepreneurs who become VCs (02:31)

Decision-making and the operating model of Venture Capital (05:10)

VCs have to make lot of decisions with incomplete information (08:23)

Are VCs much less ambitious that PEs? (23:39)

Key reasons why start-ups succeed (31:27)

What successful second time founders do differently? (43:59)

Are older entrepreneurs more successful than younger ones? (56:08)

Tesla's new Cyber-truck (59:28)

Resources:

Andreas Goeldi, What I Didn’t Understand About VCs When I Still Was a Founder - https://bit.ly/3bbf4UU

Auren Hoffman, Venture Capitalists are MUCH LESS ambitious than their private equity siblings - https://bit.ly/2V5itin

Alex Ponomarev, The Five Reasons Why Startups Succeed, According to a Legendary Investor - https://bit.ly/34wQuLy

Feliks Eyser, What Successful Second-Time Founders Do Differently - https://bit.ly/3b86aYn

Mark Travers, For Entrepreneurs, 45 Is The New 25 - https://bit.ly/3a3ypWz

MotorTrend, Tesla Cybertruck - https://bit.ly/2V6jSoY

Our co-hosts:

Bertrand Schmitt, Tech Entrepreneur, co-founder and Chairman at App Annie, @bschmitt

Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, co-Founder and Managing Partner of Strive Capital, @ngpedro

Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news. 

Subscribe To Our Podcast

Full transcription: may contain unintentionally confusing, inaccurate and/or amusing transcription errors

Intro (01:24)

Bertrand: Welcome to Tech Deciphered Episode 8. 

Hi, Nuno, how are you today?

Nuno: Hey, Bertrand, how are you? I'm well.

Bertrand: Pretty good, thank you, Nuno. 

So, what are we going to discuss today?

Nuno: So we're gonna discuss a couple of different areas. 

One, we're going to demystify VC: a couple of articles on the venture capital space and we'll agree with some of the points made, we will disagree with others, we'll again go in depth and try to demystify the discussion. Then some other articles on de-mystifying startups and founders in particular, and what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur.

And finally we'll talk about gadgets and we'll talk about cars today, which is really, really cool.

Bertrand: I know you are very excited.

Nuno: I am super excited. We only have one article on cars, but I think we can go on for some time.

Bertrand: And which car are we going to talk about? 

Nuno: We are going to talk about the cyber truck, that thing that does Tesla announced.

And we're going to talk about other stuff that's cooler and what's happening in the space.

There was a recent announcement as well, of a couple of new electric cars, and so we'll go a little bit off piste on that one.

The other side of the table - Entrepreneurs who become VCs (02:31)

So, let's start with our first topic today , and we'll start with this good article, from Andreas Goeldi,  titled "What I Didn't Understand About VCs When I Was Still a Founder". It's great that he's coming with his perspective having been a founder, an entrepreneur, now on the venture capital side, and being able to relate, in a way, more easily, from a founder perspective, entrepreneur perspective what it is to be a VC. 

And let's go point by point on this one. So the first point that he makes, I agree actually with all of his points. I think there's some nuances around some of the explanations and rationale that he's giving that I would like to elaborate a little bit more. I do think he misses a few points in his rationale certainly. 

So the first one is VCs have a limited attention span because they have to context switch so often. 

This is true. We have to context-switch a lot. And actually it's a little bit broader than that. Sometimes if you are, even in a thesis driven venture capital firm, it's likely that's you're looking at different sub-industries.

You could be meeting someone in construction tech in the morning and meeting someone in the retail space in the afternoon. You could be meeting someone who's direct to consumer in the morning and someone who's B2B to see in the afternoon. So you do have to context-switch, not only in the sense you're meeting different companies, very different stories, sometimes even different stage of development.

But actually you have to interact with sub-industries as well that in many cases are very different. And sometimes you get sub-industries that come through the door that you haven't necessarily spent a lot of time on. They might match your thesis because there are somehow, for example, direct to consumer or B2B, but they might not match necessarily the industries where you spend most of your time.

And so that amount of context switching is pretty important.

Bertrand: Yes, I've spent more times these past few months meeting with a lot of entrepreneurs,  investing in a few startups, advising some VCs. And  probably one of the fun part actually of being a VC, is to see so many different industries, so many different type of business models. And hopefully from that you can form better judgment.

Nuno: Yes. And if you have a top of funnel, he mentions his own firm: 3,500 to 4,000 pitch decks in any form. So I normally talk about this as top of funnel: which might mean a pitch deck that is sent to us inbound, it might mean a first call, it might mean a reference from someone, but really the top of funnel. 

If you're seeing 4,000 - 5,000 different companies a year, and let's say you're making five to six investments a year. His firm does do more than that, they do 20 to 30, which is quite a lot, certainly on a yearly basis. You know, the funnel is very, very steep, which means not only there's a lot of context switching, but there's a lot of attention that you need to pay to the companies. We'll come back to that below. 

Decision-making and the operating model of VC (05:10)

He makes another point on decision-making and why it is so important to get decisions right, that links maybe better to the funnel and the drops off from the funnel. One thing I'd like to add as well, often hear entrepreneurs complaining to me saying: well, these partners are always speaking at events and there's always shindigs and all this stuff, and they spend money, and all these different things that they do.

Well, that's part of being a venture capitalist as well. And the reason for that is, certainly in a very classic playbook of venture capital, you're attracting,  startups to you in many cases, inbound, which means you need to have a brand, you need to create a brand. You need to be known to the market for something, either because of your thought leadership or because you participate in events or network a lot.

Or is it because of your circles of influence that are present in your team? The access you have to different types of alumni networks, the different types of academia, institutions, et cetera. But people end up spending a lot of time doing these events, talking publicly. I personally talk a lot in public, not because we don't have better things to do, but because we do need to create brand and we do need to have people recognize us for something.

Otherwise it's very difficult to attract inbound deal flow. And that also means context-switching because we're not just context switching between startups and companies. We're context switching between speaking in public, writing an article, being at an event, networking, we are context switching as well in the case of many VC firms, between sort of operations where you need to manage the day to day, hire people, manage the office.

A lot of these VC firms are small, so you literally need to do everything. A general partner might have decisions in a day that go from: should we buy more paper or not, to shall we invest in this company or not? So it seems very glamorous all the time, but it's actually like a tiny little startup that really manages a lot of capital at the end of the day.

Bertrand:  And to be fair, each firm will have a different strategy. Some have been historically very secretive, more a Sequoia type of approach, and even them, they have changed over time, while some other firms, especially newer ones, ones that have established themselves in the past 10 years have to demonstrate more who they are. If you don't have 20 or 30 years of history, you have to make yourself known and spend some time, building a brand, and not just building a brand. For entrepreneurs, what you see coming from the partners should hopefully give you a good sense of who they are, what are their thesis, what is their approach to business. And hopefully, as entrepreneur, you can make a better pick and a better choice, initially based on that.

Nuno: There are very, very, very few venture firms that are staying off the press these days. You mentioned Sequoia, Sequoia's more and more active, certainly more than they were five, 10 years ago. The only ones that occurred to me that are really still relatively away from the limelight but really more open in the last five years then they were before, would be a Benchmark. I would say probably Sutter Hill continues not being in the news at all, and it's one of these really old firms that a lot of people don't talk about that all, but with incredible track record. But there's really very few venture firms that are really off the limelight. Accel has stepped back from the limelight quite a bit,...

We launch into why 100 Bn in value just evaporated from “Silicon Valley” and why that is a good thing for private companies and investors going forward. We discuss the rationality of public markets and go into the IPO landscape... B2B vs B2C, as well as hardware vs software. We analyse direct listings and why that may (or may not) matter. Finally, we discuss secret teams at Apple, the controversy around its Activation Lock and Amazon steadily making their role noticed in the Tablet market.

Navigation:

Silicon Valley bubble bursts? (02:18)

Hardware IPOs continue to struggle, but public performance is not always bad (11:53)

B2B vs. B2C IPOs (22:49)

Direct listings (28:33)

Apple’s (not so) secret satellite team (37:32)

iFixit controversy (43:17)

State of the Tablet market (47:20)

Resources:

WSJ, Silicon Valley adjusts to new reality as $100B evaporates - https://on.wsj.com/2TRGKYD

Top Tier, B2B vs B2C IPOs - http://bit.ly/2INnoxz

Tech Crunch, Hardware IPOs continue to struggle - https://tcrn.ch/2IQXZmJ

CNBC, NYSE proposes allowing companies to raise fresh capital in direct listings - https://cnb.cx/39TjMWx

Bloomberg, Apple Has Secret Team Working on Satellites to Beam Data to Devices - https://bloom.bg/39VjVsy

Walt Mossberg, Apple has added the infamous "Activation Lock" to Macs, and it's going to cause tons of perfectly good laptops to go to waste -  http://bit.ly/2wYuGMe

iFixit, Apple’s Activation Lock Will Make It Very Difficult to Refurbish Macs - http://bit.ly/33mrCWr

Business Wire, Strategy Analytics: Prime Day and Alexa Catapult Amazon to #2 Tablet Spot Globally - https://bwnews.pr/38U1Nyb

Our co-hosts:

Bertrand Schmitt, Tech Entrepreneur, co-founder and Chairman at App Annie, @bschmitt

Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, co-Founder and Managing Partner of Strive Capital, @ngpedro 

Our show:

 

Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news.

Subscribe To Our Podcast

Full transcription: may contain unintentionally confusing, inaccurate and/or amusing transcription errors

Nuno: Episode 7. 

In this episode, we're gonna discuss news around IPOs, initial public offerings, or exits, as we like to call them. We will be talking about , the de-mystification of venture capital and startups. And finally, we'll end up with some gadget news.

Bertrand: Excellent Nuno, thank you. 

Let's start with IPOs and as you say, sometimes we talk about IPOs and we equate that with exit. I think that might be actually  dangerous to think too much as an exit, at least from an entrepreneur perspective. Yes, from a VC perspective, but from an entrepreneur perspective, it's often a stepping stone, to getting bigger and getting, maybe out of your teenage years, but definitely an exciting time when it happens.

Nuno: Correct. And you get to ring bells and do all sorts of funny things that are interesting. 

Silicon Valley bubble bursts? (02:18)

That said, sometimes reality sets in, which brings us to the first article today, which is the article on Silicon Valley, adjusting to the new reality as a $ 100 Billion evaporates, the Wall Street journal article.

This article goes into quite a lot of detail on the significant haircuts that have happened with companies that have IPOed in the last few years. So companies that have lost a lot of value from their initial public offering price,  and also companies that almost IPOed and manage not to IPO and had significant hair cuts in their private market caps, with the case of WeWork being obviously, probably the most discussed one.

Bertrand: Exactly. I think today in this article, actually the most value lost has been by private companies moving from one private round to another private round instead of an IPO per se.

Nuno: And the interesting thing for me is that public markets, have been incredibly rational. So the question that I'm often asked are we in a bubble? I always say we're not in a real bubble in the sense of what happened around 2000, because public markets, unlike in the late nineties, public markets have been incredibly rational in their valuation of companies.

And that justifies a lot of the haircuts we're seeing. It justifies that we've had some failed IPOs companies that really didn't manage to underwrite their IPO, because of that. So for me, public markets have come to the rescue and they are now, effectively pushing back on a lot of the late stage private market valuations, which were, let's say, rather silly.

Bertrand: Yes, and they have been coming to the rescue and at the same time there's a question, is that usually 10, 20 years ago companies will have gone public much sooner in the life of the business, and here now, you could argue companies are going public much later, in the life of their business.

So you could argue public markets now have way better tools and ways to analyze a business, because businesses going public are much more mature businesses. So there is less of a bet on the business than before. The bet is not just early on fully done by the private market as always, but even later on, at later stage it's still being done by the private markets.

And in a way, public markets are not playing that part of the game anymore. They are just accepting companies when they are very mature, very predictable. And as a result, if it doesn't look like that, not predictable enough, not exciting enough, then I think it's an easier say for the market to give an opinion.

Nuno: Yes. And there's this interesting chart at the end of this article that talks about the difference the haircut, on IPO value, versus the valuation of last round of venture capital.

And we've had some really significant haircuts, companies like Cloudera, Blue Apron, Dropbox, Domo, Pinterest, and obviously companies that have stayed and remained private, like WeWork and Juul Labs, which have been very, very significantly pushed in terms of their valuation.

Bertrand: And I guess for Juul Labs, given what's happening, it's probably even optimistic, that " only" 14 billion lost in market cap, I think their business model is fully truly at risk, all of it.

Nuno: And the new federal law, I believe, announced that basically demands that you can only sell these products to 21 year olds or older.

Bertrand: Yes. And they also restrict what type of flavors, should be made available. So there are a lot more restriction. But I think this graph doesn't share the full story. Because if I take a "Blue Apron" for instance, yes, there is some haircut between last round and IPO, but not by much actually, but you could argue this one end up being a big bad story in the public market. Moving from a $ Billion plus initial market cap, maybe even $2 Billion, to less than $100 million today of market cap.

So even as we just said, we talk about public market being mature, realistic, the initial reception to Blue Apron was actually, I would say pretty good. But what happens, the following quarters was definitely a disaster. So you could argue Blue Apron really went public too soon. Their business model was still not clear enough, not valid enough.

Nuno: And although the two of us, we're not experts in public markets, but obviously we understand the notion of underwriting. And so the propping up of the value when the company actually IPOes is sometimes linked to the institutional investors that are underwriting, or there are behind basically the company going public, unless there's a direct listing, we'll come back to that in a second.

So in some ways, the propping up of value doesn't immediately go away when the company becomes public, because there are retail investors that are coming on to that round effectively. That's the last round, effectively. And that signal in the market stays there for a few days, we've seen. So it's very customary that you'd do an analysis beyond the first five days of the company being public, one month out, after the first release of earnings, as a public company and a few other options down the road.

So in some ways, the market doesn't immediately adjust.

Bertrand: Yes. And actually it goes even to the first six months. Because usually you have a lockup, for the first six months of post IPO, of shares, meaning insiders cannot sell their shares during the first six months, at least not in a traditional IPO process. So, that's also another thing that's happening.

So it means that usually, the first six months are an early indicator, but nowhere near a clear indicator of what should be the true value of the company and how much supply and demand is truly there.

Nuno: Yes. I think this is good. So I think it's good news that the public markets are being rational. I think it's great news that valuations are becoming, I would say, more realistic towards what companies are actually delivering in terms of profitability. the business model. That they're anchored around and how they make their money. 

A little bit the case around WeWork is that a real estate company, or a tech company? I may think the market has spoken and has sort of said it is real estate, and therefore the multiples that which it trades need to be aligned with that market. So I think this is all great, and positive news.

Bertrand: I agree. I think overall it's good.  It's not solving every problem, however. Because you still have probably in a way too much money now in the private markets. Because if the expectation was "easy IPO", a lot of money needed for a lot of private companies, and now we realize actually maybe not as much money is needed because the most crazy business models are "out" and now it's more about smarter growth, then what will happen?

A lot of money chasing fewer deals, or a lot of money chasing as many deals,...