00:00Let's start with the conversation you had on stage.
00:01What was it that you kind of wanted to get across
00:04and what was it that you heard in response?
00:06Well, first of all, the speed of innovation here at the moment
00:10feels like it's even faster than driving a Formula One car.
00:13It's pretty incredible, pretty scary at times even,
00:18because especially, I mean, it's Anthropic who's leading the charge at the moment
00:22and disrupting one vertical after another.
00:25So, yeah, I mean, it's impressive.
00:28And nevertheless, I think the value creation is going to be insane.
00:31So you cannot sit on the sidelines.
00:33You need to get involved.
00:34You need to invest, be part of it.
00:36But, yeah, I mean, interesting times.
00:38You have a portfolio that has around 35 direct investments into all kinds of startups.
00:44Just on the Anthropic piece real quick, on stage I was with Mike Krieger, Anthropic.
00:48He leads the labs team now but was CPO.
00:50And Rebecca Torrance, our colleague, wrote that that's the talk of HumanX,
00:53what Anthropic is doing.
00:55Mythos came out.
00:56What was your sort of interpretation of that?
00:58I was with a startup last night, and they said to me,
01:02whoa, we've just reduced our spend on all observability tools,
01:05because now we have our built agents with Cloud Code
01:09who do the observability in an automated way for us.
01:12Right.
01:13So that was another example of another space that Anthropic broke into just recently.
01:19That's kind of in the last days, you know, these things have been happening.
01:22And it's very difficult to predict how far this is going to go, you know,
01:25and how much of the value Anthropic and the other frontier models are going to capture with time.
01:31Nico, you do things differently, and I'm interested as to what your philosophy is.
01:35You're someone who's bringing sort of the expertise and the European perspective here over into the West Coast.
01:42But also you have a fund of funds.
01:44You also have direct investing.
01:45How are you thinking about building out your exposure to the private side right now?
01:50Very, very important is always you have to diversify.
01:54You know, that's essential.
01:55Not only diversify across sectors, but also across time.
02:00So you do have to plan to deploy capital across time into the private markets,
02:05and that's what we're trying to do,
02:07because this is not going to be a straight upward trajectory here.
02:11It's going to be a very, very bumpy ride.
02:13That's almost guaranteed with the pace of this innovation.
02:16The leaders are constantly changing as well.
02:19Every three months there's a different leader.
02:21So I think it's very, very important to diversify.
02:24But it's so important, especially to be involved in venture capital at the moment,
02:29because so much more of the value creation happens before going public in private markets,
02:34and especially venture capital is perhaps the only way to get exposure, you know,
02:38to the likes of these frontier models and all the other things that are happening now.
02:43So it's a very, very exciting time,
02:44and I think huge potential for this asset class in the next years.
02:48And already the last two years have been incredible.
02:50I mean, Nico, you keep dropping in the odd little idea around Formula One
02:55and using that as some sort of descriptive factor.
02:59What's also descriptive maybe is that, like in Formula One,
03:02we have a lot of real leaders of the pack when it comes to VC.
03:04You have companies like Klein Perkins or like Thrive or like A16Z with enormous new fundraisers.
03:11And then you have everyone else who's worried about liquidity,
03:13worried about being able to get money into the LP's hands.
03:16How are you distinguishing between those funds to be able to allocate your fund into your fund of funds?
03:22Yeah, at the moment, it definitely looks like the winning strategy is to back those multi-stage,
03:28large incumbent funds because they're capturing more and more of the value creation in this asset class.
03:35They are becoming bigger, backing more of the winning founders.
03:39So it's really the power law is exaggerating even more, it seems, at the moment.
03:44And the performance is being concentrated more into these top funds out there,
03:49like even top 10, top 12.
03:51That's really where you needed to be in the last couple of years.
03:54So we're pretty pleased with the strategy that we've been going after.
03:59Let's talk a little bit about the technology in F1, if we can.
04:02You're a former F1 world champion in 2016 when you retired.
04:05The powertrain already had an element of being hybrid.
04:08But the new regulations this year is smaller, lighter cars, active aero, 50-50 system.
04:14And everyone talks about that, the drivers, the principles, and then the fans.
04:19Your interpretation, your opinion, your read on these new regs.
04:23Of course, F1 is pursuing the technology that is most relevant to society.
04:28So these engines are probably, this power unit is probably one of the most efficient there is in the world.
04:3450-50, 50% battery power.
04:37That's, of course, a lot.
04:38And also, as you know, the fuels are CO2 neutral, biofuels, synthetic fuels, a mixture of that.
04:45So it's a CO2 neutral fuel.
04:49But, of course, there's a lot of criticism at the moment as well.
04:51Because you can see, like at the last race, they go down the straight through a flat-out bend
04:57and have to downshift after the bend whilst they're still on the straight
05:01because their battery power switches off.
05:03And they have time to get on comms and say power's gone.
05:05Of course, that, like from a spectator point of view, is a bit like, that's a bit awkward
05:09when you're supposed to be going flat-out with the highest-performing Formula 1 car.
05:13Nevertheless, I'm a bit more easygoing on that because, from my point of view,
05:17it's as long as there's great battles, intra-team, other teams into the battle,
05:24you know, hopefully Ferrari can use this gap now to close up to Mercedes.
05:27McLaren was there already now in the last race.
05:29So if we get, like, a really cool battle there, then I think all the fans won't mind, you know,
05:35what the technology is and we'll just love and appreciate the racing and the battles.
05:39And what an amazing story.
05:40We have 19-year-old Kimi Antonelli, the ultimate underdog,
05:45is leading this world championship three races in, you know.
05:47So that's wonderful.
05:49He has so many fans.
05:50Even yesterday at the conference here in San Francisco at Human X,
05:54loads of Mercedes and Kimi Antonelli fans as I was walking up on stage.
05:58So it's nice to see.
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